Gary felt his body tense with the same sort of instinct that had a combat vet's eye always scanning the cover and the high ground around him, never able to rest. Ben has warped your mind. "The wicked flee where no man pursueth." Crime rate on this campus sits so far below national average you'd need a microscope to see it.
Still, Gary's heart thumped as he turned off the campus mall and into shadows. "Crime rate" was a mass of statistics and probability. It didn't say a damn thing about a fool who walked into the tall grass after telling the tiger where and when he was going and the exact path he'd be following to get there.
Did Jane care enough for him to see past the threat? He knew things about her, things she'd prefer that no one knew. He saw an easy solution to that problem. It involved the proverbial silence of the grave.
He checked his watch. 8:23, full darkness even with Daylight Savings Time, early for the meeting he'd tried to set. If she'd even read the email. But he wanted to show up early. That would give her time to scout his trail, prove that he'd come alone.
A pair of stone benches waited, Class of 1947 carved across the backs, and he practically had to force himself to sit on the one that put his face in the dappled light. The other one, the one in darkness, looked so much more comfortable. Maybe that was what Jane had seen in him, seen another creature of the shadows.
Shadows. Gary sat in the light and brooded about his father's shadowy mind. Did he have to live that way? Never trusting, never walking a straight line between two points? Forced away from love by the iron hand of secrets that he couldn't share? Ben had loved Aunt Elaine, you could see that in the way he treated Caroline. The old Don Juan had loved Mom, too, in the tangled tortured love-hate triangle between her and Dad and a too-solid ghost. Ben couldn't marry either woman. The Morgans' family business and the Dragon wouldn't allow anything so simple.
"You sent goons to trash my place."
Gary swallowed a scream and settled back on the bench. Her voice came down from above his left shoulder, not close but not shouted. The roof of Angell Commons, most likely, a single-story dining hall that connected to four other buildings. He'd have used it himself, if he'd been in her shoes. That was why he'd set this place for the meeting.
His brain spun through the connected buildings and covered walkways and trees with overhanging branches. Probably a dozen ways she could run, even if she didn't have a key to the roof hatches.
"That wasn't me. That was my father. He's paranoid."
"Fuck that. Your father's dead."
"Not really." And those two words let her inside Morgan secrets just as deadly as her own. He'd been rehearsing this for days. If she was ever going to trust him, she had to know.
She digested his words in silence, long enough that he could check his watch. 8:35, exactly on time.
A sigh came from the darkness, faint but it was hard to judge distances in the wet heavy silence, he guessed thirty feet, forty feet away. "Okay, Lover Boy. I'm here. What did you want?"
The mist had turned into drizzle, cold, forming halos around the lights. Gary felt a deeper chill, as if he could feel the gun's muzzle touching the back of his head. If he survived the next five minutes . . .
"Two things. If you need to hide, we can hide you better than anyone else. We've been hiding people for centuries. Morgans don't end up in jail."
Silence, digestion time again. He waited, fists clenched, wondering if he'd even hear the shot.
"And?"
"Second thing, you don't need to hide. My father stole some files, police and DHS. I've got them with me. You're clear."
More silence. This was where she'd shoot. Gary squeezed his eyes shut and waited to die. Sweat chilled his back and belly. He didn't even dare breathe.
"What the fuck you mean?"
He took a deep breath, wondering if it was his last. "I know about the Sweeneys. I know why. I know why you're afraid of cigarettes. I've seen those burn scars. And the cops didn't find any of your fingerprints. Someone else's, but not yours. It's all in the files. Crime scene fingerprints, and the set DHS took for their records. No match."
She might have other secrets, just as nasty. But if she could trust him on this . . .
He waited.
Chapter Seventeen
The guy looked like a pizza deliveryman. The guy looked like Gary, twenty years older. Jane saw that face and the world went blank for a second and she tried to walk right through a cinder-block wall. But it wasn't Gary, no matter how much she hoped he'd come back and give her a chance to explain two bullets. The guy just looked like him.
She caught herself, leaning against the dorm corridor wall and fiddling with her shoe as if that had been the problem. Don't catch his attention. You're just another coed, not even a pretty one. Hair curlers under a wet bandanna, baggy sweats, backpack full of books, no makeup, no hair dye. If Gary described you to his family, damn sure you don't fit the image he gave them. Be invisible, just like Gary.
And nobody paid any attention to the guy, just like with Gary. Sometimes she swore she was the only person who could see that boy. Like the
