Vanessa
Vanessa cleaned up the breakfast plates as Opal sat at the table, coloring. Every Saturday, they made pancakes, and today was no exception. She rinsed the sticky syrup from the dishes and dropped them in the dishwasher.
“Can I go play outside?” Opal asked, setting her crayons down.
Vanessa glanced out the window to the playground in the center of the apartment complex. There were several kids down there and a few parents. It was a beautiful day, and kids should be outdoors playing in weather like this. She hated to keep Opal inside so much, but it was just safer. She almost said no, but maybe going out for a little while wouldn’t hurt. She’d keep her eye on her and take her gun.
“Let me finish up these dishes, then we’ll go out, okay?”
Opal nodded and returned to coloring while she waited.
A few minutes later, Vanessa and Opal went to the playground. Vanessa took a seat on a nearby bench, holding Opal’s ball while she ran to the slide. In her past life, she would have brought a book and sat and read while Opal played. Not anymore. She couldn’t take her eyes off her for even a second, for fear she might be taken.
Opal slid a few times, then came to get her ball and started bouncing it off things. The wooden beams, the climbing bars, the pole of the swing set. Anything but the ground. She bounced the ball and caught it, then repeated.
“She’s pretty good at that.”
Vanessa managed to keep herself from crying out in shock as she jumped at the sudden sound. A man sat down beside her on the bench, watching Opal bounce the ball. Of course, it was Hunter. Where had he come from? What was he doing here?
“She is,” Vanessa agreed, refusing to look at him. She kept her eyes trained on Opal.
“Has she ever talked about playing basketball?”
“Nope.” Vanessa wondered if he would take the hint and leave. If she kept ignoring him and giving him short answers, how long would it take him to go?
She didn’t like how he just kept showing up. And he showed up at places with kids, when he came alone. That seemed far too creepy. He could be a child molester. One of these men who hung out at playgrounds and watched kids. Until he decided to take one.
“You just here to watch the kids play?” she asked. Maybe if she hinted at what he appeared to be, he’d get it. Or maybe he’d give her some information that could be helpful someone to her. Something about why he was hanging around.
He scratched his head. “Uhh, no. Not exactly.”
“Then why are you here?”
“It’s a nice park, nice day. Why not?”
Vanessa spared a moment to glance at him. Mistake. He was even more gorgeous than she had recalled in her dreams. “It seems a little strange, is all. You show up at the fair, now the playground. Places where kids are, but you never have a kid with you.”
He pressed his lips together and returned to watching Opal. “I can see why that might worry you. I don’t know if the real reason is any better.”
“Try me.” This should be good. What excuse could he possible give that would make him seem like less of a pervert?
“Yesterday, after I met you two for the first time, I just thought you were so beautiful. I couldn’t stop thinking about you. The fair was a complete coincidence. I told you I work around the corner from here. I’m the manager at a restaurant supply store, and one of the vendors placed a last minute emergency order for cups. I dropped off the order and was shocked to see you in the crowd. I guess I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to be closer to you to get to know you. Then today… I was hoping you’d come outside to play, and I have a view of the playground from my office window. So, I decided to come in to work on a few things, and sure enough, you came out to play, and I came down to make my move.”
Vanessa slid her eyes to him. He gave her a half smile in return.
“What’s your move?” she asked.
“Well. I was hoping to take you out. To get to know you instead of acting like a stalker.”
“I would prefer if you stopped acting like a stalker.” She returned her gaze to Opal. He wanted to take her out? Like a date? Her heart raced at the thought. Of both going out on a date, which she hadn’t done for years, and the thought of being so close to Hunter. But could she really trust him? Was his story the truth? Probably no one would pretend to do something so creepy as watch for her to show up in the park, so maybe he was telling the truth. Either way, was it a good idea to be dating?
Dating would cause her to be distracted. To have to leave Opal with a babysitter somewhere for at least a few hours. It was hard enough leaving her in her school classroom for hours, out of sight. Knowing she was just down the hall, and having the opportunity to look in on her throughout the day was all that got Vanessa through it. But being out with a man for several hours was a different story.
And of course, her biggest problem was trust. How could she be alone with him like that when she didn’t know him? Anything could happen. The whole dating process suddenly seemed like a very scary thing. How did women do it? Be alone with a strange man for hours? Get in his car and drive away? It was a wonder more women weren’t attacked in that situation. It seemed to her like the perfect recipe for disaster.
“What do you say? Can I take you to dinner some night?” he asked.
Vanessa met his eyes, ready to turn him down. But one glance in his sparkling blues and she couldn’t look away. “I… haven’t dated in a long time.”
“Then now’s the time to start.”
“Maybe it is.”
# # #
Hunter didn’t miss the fact that Vanessa had neither turned him down, nor agreed to go out with him. He would take this as a good sign. She was clearly reserved about dating, and he had managed to make himself look like a stalker. He hoped his cover up came off as genuine and maybe even endearing. The lonely bachelor watching out his window for the beautiful woman who lived down the street to appear. She seemed to buy it, and it wasn’t so far from the truth anyway.
He decided to let the date thing hang for now. He’d give it some time, then act like she’d said yes and pick a date and time. Right now, he grew quiet and observed her. She watched Opal like a hawk. If she did look away from her daughter, it wasn’t more than a moment or two, then she was right back. It seemed like more than the typical watchful mother would do. The other parents in the park held conversations and chatted, looking away plenty from their children, though they certainly kept looking back to make sure they were okay.
Hunter decided to take things up a notch, and Opal provided the perfect opportunity. Her ball bounced over toward him and he grabbed it up.
“Wanna play a little catch?” he asked, throwing the ball to her.
“Okay.”
He got up and moved to be several feet from her, what he thought was a good throwing distance for a child. He gestured for her to throw the ball back to him. As they tossed it back and forth, he moved them slowly farther away from Vanessa. Each time he moved to catch the ball, he strategically positioned himself farther away, making it look like just part of the game. When they were far enough away, he started talking to her.
“So, how do you like school?” he asked.
“Good.”
“Yeah? What’s your favorite subject?” He tossed the ball to her.
“I guess reading. I like to read.” She threw the ball back.
“Nice throw. Do you have many friends?”
“Not really. Not yet, but I’m trying to make friends. My mommy said friends are important.”
“They are. So, you haven’t lived here very long, have you?”
“No. Just a few weeks now.”
“How do you like your new apartment? Is it bigger than where you used to live?”
“No.” She shook her head and threw the ball back the farthest she had yet. “It’s much smaller. I used to live in a really big house.”
“Oh, I see.” He had to ask these questions carefully. If he asked the wrong way, he might alert her that he was trying to get information. But he had to keep her talking, too. “What was your room like?”
“It was all purple. That’s my favorite color. And it had a purple rug and a big kitty cat painted on one wall, and it said ‘Opal’ on the other wall and my bed had a curtain that was sparkly, and I had all my stuffed animals in a hammock that hung from the ceiling. I even had my own desk for doing homework.”
He didn’t miss that she’d slipped up and used her real name. “You don’t have any of that now?”
“No.” She looked sad for a moment as she caught the ball.
“Especially not ‘Opal’ painted on your wall.”
She looked at him with wide eyes. The ball slipped from her hands and she looked over at Vanessa with a fearful expression.
When Vanessa saw it, she jumped to her feet. “Katrin, come on! We need to get going.”
Opal ran to her, and they hurried inside. Vanessa stopped to wave at Hunter, then disappeared inside the building. He walked over to where Opal had been and picked up her ball.
He considered as he returned to his car. Opal had suddenly become very afraid when he used her real name. Vanessa had seen one glimpse of fear in her daughter and took off fast. Could this mean Jeremy was telling the truth after all? Was Opal afraid of what her mother would do to her if she found out Opal had slipped up and used the wrong name?
Or could it be that Vanessa had placed so much importance on their fake names to keep them safe and hidden from Jeremy that Opal was reacting to that fear? It could easily go either way.
Hunter reached his car, which he now always parked close to the restaurant supply company he claimed to work for. He tossed the ball in the backseat and drove back toward his hotel.
He still didn’t have enough information to know for sure. What he was sure of was that Vanessa was not the obvious monster Jeremy had made her out to be, though that didn’t mean she wasn’t still abusing Opal. She had chosen to run instead of calling the authorities to have Jeremy taken away. That made her look guilty. She was the one who filed for divorce, and he knew that many times when women were being abused, they rarely left. Had Vanessa just gotten the courage that most women couldn’t, or was she running and had demanded a divorce because Jeremy threatened to turn her in and take Opal away from her?
He needed to spend more time with them, needed to get to know them more. He thought things had gone well with Opal. She shared a little with him and hadn’t seemed too hesitant about it. Vanessa, though, was something like a closed book he’d need to carefully peel open. Hopefully she drank when they went out, and he could get her buzzed and talking. A simple trick, but it always worked. She certainly didn’t seem to be coke-snorting junkie Jeremy claimed she was.
He’d just have to convince Jeremy that this was all part of the process. Because there was no way he was going through with the hit until he knew for sure. And if Vanessa was anything short of the monster Jeremy claimed, he’d flip sides in a second and protect her and Opal from a horrible ex who was trying to have Vanessa killed for who knew what real reasons.
He turned onto the street where his hotel was, and as he approached, he noticed a black van that seemed out of place. The license plate was out of state, the back windows were all blacked out, and it sat right in front of the hotel entrance. It looked an awful lot like a surveillance vehicle, though not a very good one if he picked it out so easily.
Maybe the distrust of his employee went both ways. Jeremy might be having him trailed. He might be suspicious that Hunter was having doubts. And that made Jeremy seem highly guilty.