Page 24 of Wicked Little Secret

NEW PERSON, SAME OLD MISTAKES - TAME IMPALA

What’sdrizzle when I start my drive back toward the art festival quickly spirals into cold, wet bullets pelting down. The windshield wipers blur across my windshield as they attempt to keep up with the downpour.

Streetlights blot into fuzzy dots, and the glass fogs up from the cold air. I lean closer to the steering wheel, squinting at the road ahead.

Evergreen Road turns into Manchester turns into Castlebury Drive.

The occasional straggler car passes me by on the opposite side of the road, high beams bright enough to blind.

I keep squinting. Keep searching.

Scanning the sidewalks for the slightest sign of Nyssa. Where could she be? Did she make it home that fast?

It couldn’t have been more than five, ten minutes since I drove by with Theo. Unless someone else spotted her and gave her a ride.

Someone she knew. Someone who would ensure she made it safely home.

Not someone with nefarious intentions. Not someone of the psychotic-serial-killer-picking-up-a-vulnerable-young-woman-on-the-side-of-the-road variety…right?

A thousand possibilities unravel inside my overanalytical mind. Dozens of potential scenarios of what could’ve happened and where Nyssa could’ve gone. After Kane Driscoll’s recent death, some in town are worked up into a frenzy at the rumor the long elusive Valentine Killer has returned. He’s slowly about to start picking people off like he’d done twenty years ago.

What if he’ll target vulnerable young college students next? Someone like Nyssa?

And then there’s the most sensible thought of all—the possibility she’s already warm, cozy, and dry at her apartment.

I shake off the rampant thoughts spiraling beyond my control, my grip tightening on the wheel as I come to my senses.

This is ridiculous. Not just ridiculous.

This is stupid.

I drove all the way home and then proceeded to drive back toward the festival in the pouring rain to look for a student. All because I happened to see her walking home in stormy weather. What business of mine is it if she was?

Scoffing at how irrational I’ve behaved, I flick on my turn signal to make a U-turn. In the second before I do, Nyssa materializes out of the sheets of rain. She’s half a block up, the umbrella she’s walking with flapping inside out due to the hostile winds.

As I initially thought, she hasn’t made much traction in the few minutes since I drove by. My pulse picks up, returning to the same level it had reached once I’d made thespontaneous decision to come back for her. I switch off my turn signal and push down on the gas to drive by.

The abrasive honk of a horn sounds from the lane to the right of me. The truck it belongs to comes barreling down the road, whizzing by me, halting on a dime as it pulls over against the sidewalk where she’s walking.

She spins around in surprise, and I duck behind the steering wheel as if expecting to be seen.

But really, she’s turned toward the gas-guzzling pickup truck that’s just stopped at her side. Her startled expression melts away as the driver’s door springs open and out hops Wicker.

Otherwise known as doucheface in my head.

Of course.

He jogs over in his letterman jacket like he’s a superhero swooping in to save the day. Never mind the downpour and the way it soaks him as he steps onto the sidewalk and they come face to face. He takes her umbrella from her to hold it higher over the both of them and their lips move, exchanging words I can’t make out.

It would be convenient to be a skilled lipreader right about now…

I squint, my windshield wipers still whooshing back and forth across the glass view I’m afforded. You’d think I hadn’t stopped in the middle of the road the frivolous way I’m idling, staring at them from half a block down.

If anyone else were out in this weather, they’d care.

Whatever Wicker says to Nyssa cancels out his doucheness from earlier in the day. A small smile breaks onto her face as she tosses her arms around his neck and he lifts her off her feet.

By the time he sets her down, his meaty hand has drifted lower, sweeping down her spine toward herbackside. He’s so tempted, it couldn’t be more obvious—he wants to go for a grab.

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