Stealthy Steps (Nanostealth Book 1) by Vikki Kestell

Stealthy Steps (Nanostealth Book 1) by Vikki Kestell

Author:Vikki Kestell [Kestell, Vikki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Faith-Filled Fiction(TM)
Published: 2015-05-31T23:00:00+00:00


Chapter 12

Zander called a few times and came by twice more, but I didn’t answer the door or pick up his calls. I didn’t hear from him after that and, while it smarted a little, I was also relieved. I turned my attention to my job instead.

I was late getting going the day of my next scheduled visit. Dawn was much too near when I packed groceries into my backpack and carried it out to my car. Emilio sat on my curb, his small blade carving through another scrap of wood.

“You goin’ hiking again?”

I was so surprised by his unexpected question that I nearly dropped the backpack—which would have been rough on the eggs.

I turned toward him, face placid, framing an answer. “Yeah. I try to get out for the whole day, couple of times a month.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. Not exactly.

Emilio had never spoken to me. He’d rebuffed every greeting I’d offered when he’d moved in with his uncle, so I’d stopped trying a while ago. And our last encounter had been, after all, in my kitchen over a sack of pilfered food.

“That guy go with you?”

By “that guy,” I assumed he meant Zander.

“No.”

“He coming ’round soon?”

I sighed. “No. I’m sorry; I don’t think he’s coming to see me anymore.”

He mumbled something, a curse word, I thought. I couldn’t see his face. He was turned away from me and it was still dark.

“Where you go?” he asked finally. His eyes never left the chunk of wood in his hand or the blade he plied to it.

“Just up in the foothills.” My response sounded natural enough to my own ears, but my heart thudded in my chest. “Lots of trails to explore up there.”

“Yeah. I’d like to do that. Sometime.”

I placed the backpack on the floor of my back seat and closed the door. I was considering what he’d said, looking at it through my observations of his home life. The conclusions were distressing.

“Well, why don’t you go, then?”

He mumbled a few more words under his breath. I was certain he was cussing this time. His response confirmed what I’d guessed: He had no one to take him. His uncle would be more inclined to teach him how to cook meth than take him—God forbid—on a hike.

From everything I’d seen, Mateo didn’t allow Emilio to leave the block, which would partly explain why the kid was always perched on the edge of the sidewalk. Come to think of it, I’d never seen Mateo’s girlfriend Corazón leave the house either, except to walk to the little grocery a few blocks away—unless, of course, Mateo took her somewhere else. Yeah, from what I’d seen, Mateo ruled Corazón and Emilio’s every move, and he did so with an iron fist.

I shocked myself. “Want to go with me sometime?”

I wasn’t offering to take him today, of course, but he and I could go any day I wasn’t headed up to the tunnels. Not that I thought we’d ever go; I was certain he would turn me down.



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