“Yes, sir,” he says with a nod.
Pulling a wad of cash from my pocket, I count out several hundred dollars. “Don’t spend this all at once,” I say. “And don’t spend it all on liquor.”
“Th-thank you!” the man sputters, staring slack-jawed at the exorbitant amount of money in his hand.
Heading down the street and around the corner from the train station, I keep my head on a swivel as I watch for any glimpse of Anika.
If he saw her just last night, Anika’s staying close to the train station—likely searching for a way to leave town now that she’s been relieved of money and a train ticket.
I can only hope nothing worse has happened to her since then.
Whether it’s because they took one look at me and decided I was bad news, or if the soup kitchen staff genuinely hadn’t seen Anika, I couldn’t tell, but I feel the frustration starting to mount again as we quickly slam into another dead end.
Gio drags me from the dingy nonprofit building just shy of allowing me to start interrogating the staff, and as irritated as I am with him for drawing a line, I know he’s right.
It takes a special kind of screwed in the head to hurt someone who feeds the homeless in their spare time.
But I’m getting desperate.
I’ve even called in favors with the officers I know at the police department. But so far, no one’s seen her.
“What am I going to do, Gio?” I ask, combing my fingers through my hair as my sense of urgency mounts. “I’m losing my mind.”
Gio’s sad eyes watch me with a depth of sympathy that rattles me to my bones. If anyone could understand what I’m going through, it’s him.
He lost the love of his life after she was taken by an enemy clan.
And I can see the dark, haunting truth in his eyes that he’s either smart or kind enough not to voice.
But that doesn’t make it any less obvious what he’s thinking.
Anika’s gone. Likely dead if we haven’t found her by now.
That’s when I hear her voice.
For a moment, I’m sure I’ve imagined it—the sweet sound of her softly pleading. “Please,” she whispers, the sound so faint I’m almost certain it’s in my head.
But I know it’s real when Gio cocks his head, his brows furrowing.
“Please, just let me go.”
God, if words could cause physical pain, hers would have left me dead on the ground. Because they echo the same thing she said to me all those weeks ago—when she first tried to run, but I wouldn’t let her.
“Anika,” I breathe, spinning in place as I search wildly for a sign of her.
I don’t find it.
But what I do find is the broad shoulders of a man with his back turned to me.
He’s almost invisible in the deep shadows of the alley between two buildings next to me, and I easily would have overlooked him—if he’d remained quiet.
“This’ll hurt a lot less if you stop struggling,” he promises.
Gio and I are down the alley in an instant, and my stomach turns as my eyes land on the scene before me.
The man—tall and bulky, dressed in dark clothes with a hoodie pulled up around his face—has his fingers wrapped around Anika’s throat, his other hand at the button of her jeans.
Anika, for her part, is doing an impressive job of trying to put space between them, but she’s not strong enough to move his considerable weight. And her face is slowly turning a shade of bluish purple as he cuts off the supply of oxygen to her head.
