Both of her escorts immediately began to speak, but Lucian held up a hand for silence. When they snapped their mouths shut,he hit the play button on the computer. They were all silent as they watched the action play out; Valerian and Tybo were asfast as cheetahs as they raced across the parking lot. Unfortunately, the parking lot was huge, and despite their inhumanspeed, the attacker had dragged the woman into the van, slammed the door closed and somehow subdued her and got in the driver’sseat before they arrived at the van.
Reaching the vehicle just as it started to pull away, Valerian leapt onto the roof like a monkey leaping into a tree and ranalong the top of the van toward the front, probably intending to swing in through the front passenger window. It ended upbeing unnecessary, however, because instead of joining him on the roof, Tybo—just a couple of steps behind Valerian—caughtthe bumper and lifted the back of the vehicle off the ground in a beautiful display of superman strength that had the tiresspinning in midair and brought the van to an abrupt halt.
Valerian then jumped off the van roof on the driver’s side, reached through the window to turn off the vehicle and pulled the hulking driver out with one hand to let him dangle in the air. Meanwhile, Tybo set the van back on all four wheels and moved around to open the side door and retrieve the unconscious young woman inside. Valerian was still holding the would-be kidnapper by the neck and Tybo had just brought the girl back to consciousness when the campus police showed up on the scene.
“We didn’t know she was filming,” Tybo blurted when Lucian hit the button to end the recording. Turning a scowl on Ildaria,the dark-haired Enforcer added, “I still can’t believe she did. She knows we aren’t supposed to draw attention to ourselves.”
“This is not Ildaria’s footage,” Mortimer said when Lucian remained silent. “It’s by someone who goes by T.O.eyes, and theircaption was Holy shit! Superman times two in Toronto.”
“Shit,” Tybo muttered, slumping back in his seat.
“Ildaria’s video was from a different angle,” Mortimer continued. “And hers was captioned, Special project for Film class. Awesome job peeps! Looks so good even I almost believed it was real.”
When Tybo and Valerian both blinked in surprise and then turned to her, Ildaria shrugged irritably. She’d been rather enjoyingtheir chagrin and anger, but the jig was up. “I thought I should do some damage control.”
They were all silent for a minute, and then Valerian frowned and asked, “This will not affect the arrest of the bastard whotried to take the woman, will it?”
“We read his mind,” Tybo put in with concern. “She wasn’t his first victim. The bastard’s a serial rapist. If the police thinkit was just a film class stunt—”
“No,” Lucian interrupted firmly. “I will see to it that he is brought to justice.”
The two men nodded, and then glanced from Ildaria to Lucian, looking like they wanted to say something. Whether it was to stand up for her, or thank her for what she’d done with the video, she didn’t know, and never would since Lucian turned to her then and said, “You have been naughty, Angelina.”
Ildaria noted the startled expressions on the other men’s faces at his use of her first name, but ignored them and said quickly,“I only did what Tybo and Valerian did on that tape. I just wasn’t lucky enough to have someone with me to do damage control.I promise I wasn’t playing the vigilante like in Montana. I wasn’t wearing my leathers and didn’t go looking for bad guysto beat up. I was just walking along minding my own business when . . .” She shrugged rather than say, “the shit hit the fan.” Which was what had happened each of the three times she’d stopped to save a fellow student. The first time it had been agirl getting mugged. Ildaria had chased down the culprit, got the girl’s purse back and returned it to her before walkingthem both to the campus police office so the man could be charged.
The second time it had been a drunken asshole beating up his less inebriated girlfriend. She’d taken them both to the campuspolice as well, having to control the girl to make her admit what had happened. Something Ildaria still had trouble fathoming.The minute she’d got involved, the girlfriend had sided with her boyfriend as if Ildaria was the bad guy.
The last incident had been a man who had attacked a student out for an evening jog and pulled her off the path into the woods intending to rape her. She suspected that was the one that had been videoed and got her in trouble. It was the only one where she’d been “tossing around” someone twice her size as Valerian had put it earlier.
Ildaria’s mouth tightened at the memory. She’d known she shouldn’t do it, but she’d been infuriated. She had a special hatredin her heart for rapists. She’d taken great pleasure in beating the man and wiping the path with his face before the campuspolice had arrived to take him into custody.
Unfortunately, while Ildaria had noticed that others had arrived at the scene, she hadn’t even considered someone might recordit and post it online until she’d spotted it this morning. She’d known then that she’d probably be in trouble once Mortimeror Lucian saw it. Ildaria just hadn’t been sure when that would happen . . . until Valerian and Tybo had shown up at her class.
“Hmm,” Lucian said finally. “There appears to be a lot of crime on campus at night.”
Ildaria gave a small shrug. “It’s a university with loads of beautiful young women. It’s nirvana for perverts and draws themlike flies to shit at night.”
“At night,” Lucian echoed thoughtfully.
“Si. Well, it’s generally safer during the day. More people about and fewer dark places to hide,” she pointed out.
“Yes.” Lucian nodded. “That’s the answer then.”
Ildaria tilted her head
