Page 51 of Charming Villain

He blinks slowly. “No, man, sorry.”

“She came through here recently,” I insist, jabbing a finger against the photo. My desperation scrapes my throat raw. “Young woman, alone, probably wearing a sweater or something, maybe looking upset. Anything ring a bell?”

He shrugs, eyes flicking to the clock on the wall. “Lots of folks come through here, man.”

My patience is razor-thin. The voice in my head is telling me to lash out, break something, force the cashier to review the cameras. But I can’t afford the police trailing me. So I grit my teeth and snarl, “Are you sure you haven’t seen her?”

He flinches, and a flicker of fear in his gaze feeds some rabid part of me. But he shakes his head. “No, sorry.”

I slam a fist on the counter, rattling the gum display. “Fine.” I whirl, storming toward the entrance. A red haze tinges my vision. It takes all my self-control not to punch through the window. This is the fifth station tonight that’s yielded nothing. I’m running myself ragged, but I can’t stop.

Halfway out the door, I hear a nervous mumble. “Wait.”

I freeze and spin back around. The clerk looks rattled, stepping from behind the counter, a cautious expression on his face. “I remember a girl,” he says. “She asked about the next bus stop or something.”

My heart leaps. “What did she say? When was this?”

He scratches his nose. “A few hours ago? She was real quiet. Already on a bus heading west that just made a pit stop here.”

West. My mind races. Of course. She could slip from station to station, crossing half the damn country by bus. “Do you remember which line?”

He shakes his head again. “Sorry. That’s all I got.”

For a moment, I want to wring more details from him, but I see the genuine confusion on his face. With a muttered curse, I toss him a crumpled hundred-dollar bill anyway. “If you remember anything else, or if she comes back, call me.”

He eyes the money like it’s suspicious but pockets it anyway and grabs a pen, scribbling my number down on a napkin. “Sure thing, dude.” I leave with a renewed sense of urgency. It isn’t much, but it’s something.

The next lead doesn’t present itself until several stops later, at a bus depot as run-down as the one before it. The attendant there—an older woman with nicotine-stained fingers—hesitates when I show her Gianna’s photo. Her watery eyes flick from me to the image, and I see a hint of recognition.

“She might’ve been here,” the woman admits, voice gravelly. “Poor thing looked scared. But I didn’t see which bus she took.”

I clench my jaw, rummaging through the bins, the trash, anything. It’s a long shot, but I’m desperate, and something in my gut says this is what I need to do. As I sift through crumpled receipts and ticket stubs, I find one with a faint name scrawled on it: Gianna. The breath whooshes out of my lungs. That looping G is so obviously hers, even if the rest is mostly illegible. My entire body ignites. I can’t contain the hoarse shout that rips from my throat. She was here. I’m going in the right direction.

My next hours bleed together, an urgent spree of questioning bus drivers, scanning half-faded security tapes, and threatening punks in hooded sweatshirts outside convenience stores, all in some middle-of-nowhere corridor of the Great Plains. The raw desperation in my voice must scare the hell out of them, but I don’t give a damn. I only see her face in my mind’s eye, pale and drawn, wandering alone. Is she hungry? Cold? Sick? Is she…

I refuse to finish the thought. If she’s pregnant, all of this is even more critical. I can’t have her out here in the freezing dead of night with no protection.

Exhaustion hammers into me in waves, but I keep pushing, keep driving. My heart is like a diseased animal in my chest, beating too fast to be healthy. I can’t slow down. Every second I waste might mean Gianna falls further out of my reach—or that someone else finds her first.

When I finally pull up to another sorry excuse for a bus depot, the neon sign half-burnt out, I’m convinced this will be another dead end. But the clerk inside—a balding man with a sour expression—barely glances at the photo before jabbing his thumb over his shoulder. “She was here last night,” he grunts, bored. “Got on a bus out to the next town. She looked like death warmed over.” He eyes me with vague curiosity. “You her boyfriend?”

Something dark flares in my chest. I am her everything. “Yes,” I grind out. “Which bus? Where?”

He gives me the details—an approximate route and the next likely stops. It’s enough for me to continue my chase. Before I go, I slip him some cash and meet his gaze. “If you see her again, call me.”

I peel out of the parking lot with my phone pressed to my ear. Salvatore answers, his voice thick with worry. “You finally remembered you have a phone, huh?”

“I’m close,” I rasp. “I’m following a lead.”

“Luc, you need rest. You?—”

I hang up. I’m not going to waste my time explaining myself to him.

The next hour is the worst. I nearly run out of gas on some lonely stretch of highway dotted with battered billboards. I stop in a panic at a gas station that looks like it’s straight out of a horror film, feed the car as quickly as I can, and drive on. My eyes threaten to close, but my grip on the wheel is iron. I slice through the darkness, mind fixating on the image of her scrawled name. Gianna. She’s going this way. She has to be.

Then, at long last, I come across a sign readingMOTEL—VACANCY. It’s the only lodging for miles and conveniently located just down the road from a bus depot. My instincts scream that she’s holed up here—it’s cheap, out of the way, with minimal questions. A perfect hideaway for someone wanting to disappear. My pulse leaps as I park and stride inside the office as the sun starts peeking over the horizon.

The moment I enter, the clerk—a tired-looking woman with watery eyes—jerks her gaze up from a magazine. She meets mine, unimpressed, and yawns. The place smells like stale smoke and cleaning fluid. There’s a haze of dust over everything.

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