He couldn’t move. All he’d done was talk to a girl and this bitch believed she could order him around? Intimidate him? “Are you threatening me?”

She turned her back on him and spoke to Lindy, holding out a business card. “Call the number on this card if he harasses you again. I have no tolerance for that sort of behavior.” Lindy took the card and rapidly walked away without a single glance at him.

Rage coated his skin. The cop bitch had completely blown the progress he had made with Lindy. Now she’d never speak to him again. The cop turned around and insolently tilted her head as she studied him.

“Didn’t your mother teach you not to pester girls? Maybe you need to take a class on body language. I heard every word the two of you said, and that girl was telling you in spoken words and body language that she felt nervous and wanted to leave. Couldn’t you see that?”

He couldn’t speak through his anger. She’s as bad as my mother.

“You’re in college, so here’s your lesson for the day: be nice to women. Don’t approach them on dim paths or dark streets. You’re bigger and stronger than us, and we automatically see you as a possible rapist and killer. Do you know what it’s like to wonder if the man you’re talking to is planning to hurt you? I bet it never even crosses your mind.”

Rapist. Killer. Her accusations stabbed him.

“Women shouldn’t be cops.”

She straightened, but still had to look up to him. “And why is that?”

“It’s a position of authority. You just told me no one listens to women and that men are bigger and stronger. It makes sense for a man to have your job.”

Her expression turned condescending again. “I’m not here to argue with you. I’m here to help college girls make it back to their dorm rooms safely. Now move along before I consider you a threat to myself.”

He wanted to punch the smug look off her face. His mother had looked at his father with the exact same expression when she’d thought she knew better than him. Dad had always let her know the reality. And then a female cop—just like this one—had dragged his father away.

“I said get going.” She glanced down at his hands.

At his sides his hands were in fists. Her expression narrowed and through his anger-fueled vision, he noticed her hand move to her belt.

He stepped back.

“If I catch you harassing other women, I’ll take you in.”

He turned and walked away, counting to ten, waiting for his vision to clear. The female cop said something else, but it didn’t register in his brain.

Fucking bitch. No one talks to me like that. No one.

Two days later he followed her home. For a cop, Silva didn’t take many precautions. It was easy to scope out the campus police station and wait for her shift to end. She stepped out of a side entrance of the little station in sweats and with her hair down, loose and flowing around her face. She could have been any other college coed, but she was a bit too old. She walked home, blending in with the students. None of them acknowledged her. He’d noticed that when she walked the campus in uniform, students stopped her constantly. They asked for directions and several of them thought it was funny to ask stupid questions. He’d moved closer when groups of college guys stopped her, curious to hear what they said to her. Their questions were lame:

What happens if you caught me with a joint?

Would I go to jail if you found me drunk on campus?

You can’t arrest me if I’m drinking in my dorm room, right?

Her answers had been serious and to the point, quickly taking the steam out of what the guys clearly thought was a hilarious topic. He’d watched them ridicule her as soon as her back was turned, and he’d smirked along with them. See? No one listens to female cops. Doesn’t she realize she’s the joke?

But in sweats she was invisible to everyone. Except him.

He’d discovered she lived in a tiny house about a mile from campus. Some snooping assured him she lived alone. The third time he’d followed her home, he’d noticed guys moving amps and speakers and other band equipment into the house next door. He walked closer, trying to see if it was a music group he’d heard of. One guy spotted him and shoved a flyer into his hands. “Only five bucks to get in tonight. And beers are a buck a cup. Gonna be packed.”

He took the flyer and walked back toward campus, an idea buzzing around his brain.

He’d show her.

32

Ava woodenly ordered her usual coffee drink. She wasn’t thirsty or craving the sugar and caffeine as on some mornings, but the therapist had suggested she continue her usual routine. She’d nearly fallen asleep at the wheel and hoped the caffeine would help, but she suspected her body and psyche were simply trying to shut down and hide from the world. Caffeine might not be enough to fight it.

The only thing that’d resonated with her from her morning session with Dr. Pearl Griffin had been the doctor’s suggestion that Ava stick to her usual daily activities. They might feel wrong at the moment, but once her mind caught up with what’d she’d been through, she’d be a few steps ahead by not having let the anxiety change how she functioned.

“If you usually go to church on Sundays, then keep going,” the psychiatrist had suggested. “If you see a movie with Mason every Friday, don’t stop. Make yourself do those regular things that don’t require much thought.”

Ava had known the therapy session was hopeless from the moment she’d shaken Dr. Griffin’s limp hand. There was no way her boss had ever met Pearl Griffin. She must have been the first doctor who had an opening. Dr. Griffin was from a different generation and her ability to relate to Ava was zero. Dr. Griffin should have been serving tea and crustless sandwiches at a retirement center as she advised lonely women on how to look nice to attract their next husband. Seriously. Dr. Griffin was a sweet woman, but Ava needed someone to kick her butt, not compliment her skin. She’d sat down in the freezing office and envied the doctor’s thick cardigan as she studied the tiny older woman. “Mousy” had been the primary adjective in her head. She’d reminded Ava of a grandmother on a sitcom, one who baked cookies and whose corny confusion always drew laughter.