"I'm sorry about your friend," Gideon said. "I didn't realize."
It was the truth, or close enough. He hadn't known Savannah had been close to either of the victims. He could see that she was hurting, but there was something more going on too, and the warrior in him was suspicious of what else he didn't yet know about the situation.
"I did hear something on the news recently about a robbery at the Art History building on campus," he said casually. "Your friend and the professor were attacked during a break-in and theft of some type of relic, wasn't it?"
Savannah stared at him for a long moment, as if she couldn't decide whether to answer. "I'm not sure what happened that night," she finally murmured. She uncrossed her arms and moved one hand to the edge of the door. She took a step backward. The hand braced on the door now began to close it by fractions. "Thanks for checking in on me, Gideon. I'm not much in the frame of mind for talking right now, so--">Together, they glanced up at the panel depicting that part of Arthurian legend, the chair at the Round Table that would spell death to anyone taking his place there who proved unworthy of seeking the Holy Grail.
Savannah could feel Gideon studying her, despite that his gaze was fixed on the painting overhead. The heat from his big body, nearer to her than she'd noticed, seemed to burn through her clothing, imprinting itself on her skin. Her pulse ticked a bit faster as the seconds stretched out between them.
"Freshman," he said after a while, an odd pensiveness in his tone. "I didn't realize you were so young."
"I'll be nineteen in a few months," she replied, inexplicably defensive. "Why? How old did you think I was? How old are you?"
He gave a slow shake of his head. Then he brought his gaze around to look at her beside him. "I should go. As you said, the library's closing. I don't want to keep you from your work."
"It's all right if you want to stay awhile. I won't need to kick you out for another fifteen minutes, so until then, feel free to enjoy the art." She took one last look at Sir Galahad being led to the chair that would either confirm his honor or spell his doom, and couldn't help reciting another of Plutarch's quotes: "Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks."
Gideon's answering smile threatened to steal her knees out from under her. "Indeed, Savannah. Indeed it is."
She couldn't hold back her smile either. And for the first time all day, she felt relaxed. She felt happy. She felt hopeful, as odd as that seemed. Not weighted down with grief and numb with shock and confusion.
All it took was a chance meeting with a stranger, some unexpected conversation. A few moments of kindness from someone who had no inkling of what she'd been through. Someone who wandered into her workplace on a whim and ended up making the worst day of her life seem less awful simply by being in it.
"Nice to meet you, Gideon."
"Likewise, Savannah."
This time, she was the one who held out her hand. He didn't hesitate to take it. As she expected, his grip was warm and strong, his long fingers engulfing hers easily. As they broke contact, she wondered if he felt the same jolt of awareness that she did. God, their brief connection went through her like a mild electrical current, heat and energy zinging into her veins.
And she couldn't escape the fact that something about him seemed so vaguely familiar...
"I should go," he said for the second time tonight. She didn't want him to leave so soon, but she couldn't very well ask him to stay either. Could she?
"Maybe I'll see you around again sometime," she blurted, before she had the bad sense to let impulse take over her brain.
He stared at her for a long moment, but didn't respond one way or the other.
Then, like the mystery he'd been the moment she first saw him, he simply turned and strode away, out the door and into the waiting night.
Gideon waited, crouched low like a gargoyle on the rooftop corner of the library, until Savannah exited the building a few minutes later.
He meant to leave, as he'd said he would. He'd decided after talking with her for just a few minutes--after learning that she was an eighteen-year-old college freshman, for crissake--that his quest to find out more about whoever had that damned sword would need to unfold without involving a bright, innocent young woman.
He couldn't use Savannah for information.
He wouldn't use her for anything.
And he sure as hell didn't need to be lingering around her place of work, following her in stealthy silence from one rooftop to another, as she made her way from the library to the T station. But that's just what he did, telling himself it was a need to see a vulnerable female home safely in a city rife with hidden dangers.
Never mind that she might rightly count him among those dangers, if she had any idea what he truly was.
Gideon leapt down to street level to slip into the train station a healthy distance behind her. He boarded a different car, watching through the crowds to make sure she was unmolested for the duration of the commute. When she got off at Lower Allston, he followed, tracking her to a modest five-story brick apartment building on a side street called Walbridge. A light went on behind a curtained window on the second floor.
He waited some more, keeping an unplanned vigil from the shadows across the way, until the dim glow of Savannah's apartment light was extinguished an hour and a half later.
Then he melted back into the darkness that was his home and battlefield.
Chapter 7