Page 128 of Driftwood Daffodil 3

Veda ducked down a little more when a man in uniform walked by, and watched him through the gap in the steering wheel.

My eyes swung between her and the cop. He was just minding his own business. He hadn’t even looked at the truck, yet she was cowering like a frightened kitten. Shouldn’t Veda be going in there to be with her sister, instead of sitting huddled against the door?

I’d be in there right now Romeo didn’t pull me away, and I was supposed to hate Nova. Yet her sister, a person who wassupposed to love and protect her, was hiding in an old ass truck. Talk about fucked up.

“Hey,” I rapped my knuckle on the window.

Veda screamed, threw something fuzzy, and jumped, banging her back on the door. After which she sat there and stared at me with her wide eyes. I waited for her to move or say something. When she didn’t, I arched a brow and motioned with my hand for her to roll down the window.

She looked from me to the door and back again. “What do you want?”

I was not doing this. Once again, I gave her the motion to roll down the window.

Veda rolled down the window alright, but not the one I was standing beside. She cranked the handle on the driver’s door. Not much, just enough for someone to maybe stick their fingers in.

“What do you want?” She repeated.

This was ridiculous, but what was I going to do? Smash the window? That wasn’t going to help, not that I cared, but Nova would.

With a sigh, I slowly walked around the front of the truck to the other side.

Veda followed me the entire time. Her eyes locked on my movements so intensely that I half expected her to bolt to the other side of the seat when I approached the driver’s side window. But she didn’t. She did sit up and slide an inch back though.

For someone so scared, she was alert. Not once did her attention veer from me. She watched me like a cat stalking its prey. Except in this situation she wasn’t stalking anyone. If anything she was the prey. All tense and ready to bolt at a moment’s notice.

Timid little things like her didn’t realize that we didn’t chase them because we thought it was fun. It was their reactions that made it fun. Men like me could smell fear a mile away. That shit was an aphrodisiac to us. If Nova looked at me like her sister was right now, she’d find herself tied to my bed for a week.

I stepped up to the window and spoke through the open crack, “what are you doing?”

“The police called.”

As I expected, but, “where’s your grandma?”

Technically she had custody of Nova. Not her sister.

“She’s not available.”

That was the exact answer children were trained to give strangers when their parents weren’t home. I knew this because that’s what I was told in grade school during a class on how to stay safe at home alone. Where Nova’s grandma was, I had no idea, but I had a sneaking suspicion that my father had something to do with it. He did mention something about sending her on some kind of golf thing so she would be out of the way this weekend.

“So, the cops called you?”

“Yes.” Veda responded.

“To pick up Nova I assume?”

“Yes.”

“So, why are you sitting out here?”

Her eyes darted to the diner for a fraction of a second then snapped back on me. “There’s a lot of people in there.”

She was fucking kidding, right?

“Your sister was almost shot. Of course there’s a lot of people. They’re called cops.”

Was she fucking afraid of them too?

“I don’t trust them.”

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