Twice Around the Quad

Ana Chandra's evening run is the one hour that belongs to nobody else: twice around the quad, past the chapel and the library steps, while the lamps come on. Then the man in the fedora starts appearing under the elms.

The first time, a car door swings open beside her and a hand reaches out. She gets away. The second time there are three of them, and they know her route, her schedule, and her name. Campus police find nothing. The dean suggests she is imagining things.

Ana isn't imagining anything. Someone wants her badly enough to try twice. What she can't work out is why they seem to care as much about how she runs as where.