When Tybo and Valerian both blinked in surprise and then turned to her, Ildaria shrugged irritably. She’d been rather enjoying their 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 who tried 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 think it 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 guys to 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 a girl getting mugged. Ildaria had chased down the culprit, got the girl’s purse back and returned it to her before walking them 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 campus police 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 hatred in her heart for rapists. She’d taken great pleasure in beating the man and wiping the path with his face before the campus police 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 record it and post it online until she’d spotted it this morning. She’d known then that she’d probably be in trouble once Mortimer or 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 them like 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 to the side, positive her confusion was showing on her face. “The answer?”
“You will switch to day classes,” Lucian announced.
“What?” she asked with disbelief.
Lucian considered her briefly and then said, “At Jess and Raffaele’s wedding your old captain, Vasco Villaverde, told me you were a trouble magnet, but had a good heart.”
Ildaria sighed inwardly over the fact that the man had tattled on her about her tendency to get herself into scrapes. She’d been in trouble several times in Punta Cana. In fact, if it weren’t for Vasco, she probably would have been executed long ago. He’d saved her hide repeatedly, and Ildaria would be forever grateful for that. She just wished