Page 38 of Rune’s Solace

“I’m nervous.”

“Noticed.”

“You look like you’re deciding where to bury somebody. It’s not helping.”

“Sawyer.”

“Right. Sorry.” He took a breath, and when he spoke again the humor dropped away. “I know when to leave her alone. Maybe not always, but with this? I know. If I tell her there’s a strange man following her, she’ll thank me for telling her, and then she’ll go home, lock it up inside her head and deal with it completely by herself until she can’t anymore. That’s what she does. That’s all she does.”

I knew that.

Better than he did.

Didn’t much enjoy finding out he knew it too.

“So I’m not putting one more thing on her unless I have to.” He looked straight at me then, and there was nothing boyish about him for a second, just somebody who loved her enough to be scared and had decided being scared wasn’t an excuse to be stupid. “I’m putting it on you.”

My jaw tightened.

“Because you’re the guy sitting on a motorcycle outside her building every day for some reason nobody will tell me, and I’m not an idiot. Whatever’s going on, you’re here because somebody thinks Amy needs watching. Fine. I can live without knowing why.” He paused. “Actually, that’s a lie. I hate not knowing why. It’s killing me. But I can shut up about it.”

Barely.

“And if I’m wrong about this guy, you can make fun of me later. Or glare at me. Whatever it is you do for fun.” His eyes went past me toward the building where Amy was still inside, and when they came back the fear was there again. “But I’m not wrong.”

No. He wasn’t. And just like that, the damn grudge I’d been carrying against the kid went out from under me.

Because he wasn’t standing there trying to prove anything. Wasn’t competing with me, wasn’t marking territory, wasn’t doing one damn thing I’d spent weeks accusing him of in my own head. Far as Sawyer knew, there’d never been a contest. That had been all me, something I’d built up and fed every time I saw his hand on her or his mouth near her ear or watched her laugh at something he’d said, while the kid kept bringing me blueberry muffins and running his mouth and doing the one thing that mattered now.

Looking out for Amy.

He’d gotten scared for her, figured out he was in over his head, and came straight to the biggest dangerous thing he knew was already watching her.

Me.

I’ve done worse things than hate a kid for loving somebody. Couldn’t think of many lately. “Tell me what he looks like.”

“Older. Fifties, maybe? I’m terrible at ages once people get past thirty.”

“Sawyer.”

“Right. Sorry.” He concentrated, all the nerves pulling in enough for him to think. “Big. Not fat, just...thick, I guess. Like he works with his hands, lifts heavy stuff or murders people recreationally. Weathered face, really lined. Buzzed hair, gray coming in. And he’s got this way of standing—”

Sawyer stopped.

“What.”

“He looks like he’s not scared of anything.” The humor was gone again. “You know how everybody on a college campus looks at least a little bit like they’re in the wrong place? Even the professors sometimes. This guy looked like the campus was in his wrong place.”

Cold moved up the back of my neck.

“Clothes.”

“Work jacket. Jeans. Boots. Nothing you’d remember. He looks like somebody’s dad who came to fix your sink.” Sawyer frowned. “Except for the tattoo.”

“What tattoo.”

“He’s got a tattoo. On his neck, right here — ” Sawyer put two fingers on the side of his own throat, under the jaw. “It’s dark. Like really dark, and kind of messy? Blurry, almost, like it got smeared. It’s some kind of animal. A snake? Maybe a lizard, I don’t know, it’s got legs, so I guess not a snake. It’s ugly. It’s not… you know how tattoos are usually nice?” He gestured vaguely at my arms, at everything, the green sprawl of my mother’s work climbing up out of my cuffs. “That’s a nice tattoo. His isn’t a nice tattoo. His looks like somebody got drunk in a garage with a pen and a personal grudge.”