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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.
