One Second After Another - Prologue & Chapter One
Copyright © 2020 Bethany-Kris. All rights reserved.
Ch 1 - Luca
Present Day, Nevada …
Mere seconds could change everything. Even, the span of time it took Luca to open his eyes and know he was alone in the hotel room. He didn’t need to turn in the bed to see it was empty of Penny’s presence. He felt the loss.
Knew it was real before it actually was. The weight sitting on his chest, and the cold cloud surrounding him made the white ceiling seem like it was closing down in on him. The absolute silence—but for his steady breaths and the beats of his heart—confirmed what he already knew even though he didn’t want to believe it.
He was alone.
Absolutely.
“Penny,” he dared to call.
Daring himself to be wrong.
Willing her to prove him wrong, even.
His call went unanswered.
Before that moment, Luca hadn’t realized loneliness could be such a tangible thing. Beyond a feeling, there was a real presence about it. A heaviness around him that made it all the more real.
And cruel.
There was something to be said about the way loneliness could leave a man confused. Like as he sat up in the bed, confirming Penny’s side was empty and so was the rest of the room, he just couldn’t catch up to speed. He was quite aware Penny wasn’t beside him in the bed like she had been the night before when they fell asleep. And yet, a part of him didn’t want to believe that even when he grabbed the blanket and yanked it away from her empty pillow. Even the indentation of her head was gone.
The room was just … chilly.
When had she gotten up?
Did she leave or--
“Penny!”
Luca’s shout undoubtedly carried out through the bedroom door to the rest of the hotel room, but to no avail. He didn’t get an answer just like the first time.
Fuck.
He was trying not to panic. Excuses raced through his mind in a shitty attempt to quell how the nervousness skimming over his skin when he exited the bed. Cold floors met the soles of his feet while he thought … she’s just getting food—maybe coffee. Shit, he couldn’t pretend to know what Penny did during her days. He’d only been back in her life for a short while. Who was to say she didn’t have an entire routine in the mornings, right?
Bullshit.
He knew it.
His heart screamed it.
Of course, that didn’t stop his sleepy brain from trying to brush off the obvious. Like the differences in the bedroom—the shoes Penny had kicked to the side were now gone. Her laptop sat open on the chair, but only the back of the screen faced him. As if she had been sitting there with it, and just left it where it was because she wouldn’t need it. The wall safe next to the bed had been left open.
Why didn’t he hear that?
Right.
Because he thought he was safe. Stupidly, he believed that he had the upper hand where Penny was concerned. Why would she leave again? Hell, she brought him here.
That’s why it didn’t make sense. Why he couldn’t catch up, so to speak.
The obvious stared him in the face as he gathered his clothes from the night before in his arms and headed for the connected bathroom, but he still refused to accept it. He had one leg stuffed into the pair of jeans and was shoving in his second leg as he came to a complete stop in the doorway of the bathroom.
There was no ignoring it now. Everything became painfully clear.
And written in red.
Literally.
The bathroom looked like someone had went knife happy on the place—or rather, over the sink. The shirt dangled from Luca’s clenched fist as he dared to step closer to the mess, reading the words that had been hastily scrawled on the mirror that faced him while he took in the bloody mess in the sink.
A knife sat on the rim. Half on, blade hanging over the edge. Balancing dangerously … like the woman who put it there, he knew. Holding on, but barely. Blood still red on the blade.
In the mirror, he read Penny’s bloody words: Sorry, this is on my terms now. He had the distinct feeling the message wasn’t directed at him, and yet, it still stung just the same.
Luca started moving a little faster, then. While he raced to put everything together—to figure out how he went to bed with Penny only to wake up alone with a bloody bathroom next door—he managed to shove his shirt down over his head.
Maybe he could catch up with Penny … wherever in the hell she went. And deal with whatever reason for her disappearance, too. Punching his arms through the sleeves, he went in search of his hoodie and jacket but--
Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Penny, open up! Penny!”
Luca’s stride came to a stop just beyond the bathroom threshold as the noise became louder.
“Penny, open this goddamn door right now!”
Not that Luca needed more confirmation that Penny had disappeared the night before after she let him fuck her and slept tucked into his side, but the noise outside the hotel room did exactly that for him. He didn’t even have time to figure out how that made him feel or what it meant that she left.
Again.
It wasn’t the same as the last time.
He knew that.
It still … hurt.
The banging came again--louder and harder. The hint of desperation in the familiar voice calling through the thick hotel door made Luca think the man didn’t want to believe what was happening, either.
He recognized the man’s voice even though he had only heard it once before. Cree. Given their first meeting, he couldn’t exactly forget the man.
“Penny, come on—open the fuck up!”
Luca almost missed it. To his right, the flicker of the laptop screen, he almost fucking missed it because he was distracted by the bloody mess behind him, and the unwelcomed visitors barking at one another between hitting their fists against the door. He could have blamed the fact he just woke up, too, but now he was wide awake so that didn’t work.
Nonetheless, Luca saw it.
He watched as the screen of Penny’s laptop flickered—the cursor jumped from one side of the page to the other, tabs closing and opening, pages scrolling downward fast before flipping to another one. He didn’t even have the chance to blink. He was watching, in real-time, as someone hacked Penny’s laptop.
The only good thing about it?
He could see what they saw.
Probably the same thing Penny had been looking at before she set the laptop down and walked away from it the night before. The last thing he saw before the laptop’s screen went entirely black was an image and a headline.
He was only able to read the name in the headline: Allegra Hatheway. Except he knew that woman—the one in the image at the top of the article before the screen blanked out—as Allegra Dunsworth, Penny’s mother. Once, he sat at the same table as the woman while lawyers worked out the final details of an estate that was split between two beneficiaries.
Penny and her mother.
But he knew a lot more about Allegra through his years of tracking down every scrap of Penny’s history and proof of existence that he could find. It wasn’t a lot. It was just enough to tell him that there had never been anything good between the two.
That was all he knew.
So why was she looking up her mother?
And why did she leave when she found her?
Those were answers Luca didn’t have and wouldn’t have the time to figure out. At least, not at the moment. The yelling from outside the hotel room brought him back to reality and out of his self-pity in a flash.
“Open the door or I am breaking it down,” he heard called.
Well …
Time for him to go.
It took all of two seconds for Luca to realize what Penny had done and why there was blood in the bathroom. She told him once that The League could find her no matter where she was. He bet the blood wasn’t the only thing she left behind for them to find. Might they find a tracking chip at the bottom of the sink drain?
He didn’t plan to find out.
How would this situation end for him if Cree—and whoever was with him—broke down the hotel door just to find Luca in there alone? Fuck, they already threatened to kill him. He wasn’t about to give them another reason to see it through.
He did like being alive.
Even if he didn’t know why.
Luca was just beginning to scale the ledge of the hotel room’s small veranda when he heard wood crack as the door was kicked in. Lucky for him, it wasn’t the first time he had to make a quick exit … or take an unconventional route of escape.
Unluckily for the people in the hotel room below Penny’s, too. Because the naked couple—the redheaded female riding her partner on the bed facing the veranda down below where Luca landed—certainly hadn’t expected him to dart through their hotel room with a quick, “My bad!”
The woman shrieked, scrambling off her partner and grasping for the sheets that really did nothing to hide her body. The man only swore.
“Nice tits, though,” he called over his shoulder.
They didn’t even have time to react. He was already exiting their smaller hotel room before the two even fully understood what had happened. The hallway was empty. He had no idea what was happening above his head a floor higher or if this plan of his would even work.
If he could call it a plan.
Could he if he didn’t know what he was doing?
Likely not.
What did it matter?
Luca doubted running would work for him—Nevada wasn’t his territory, after all. He didn’t have connections, didn’t know the streets, and on top of that, still needed to get out.
Would it work?
Probably not.
Fuck him if he wouldn’t try, though.
Where are you, Penny?
That was the real question.
The entire fucking problem, honestly.
*
Luca already had a familiar number dialed, and the cell pressed to his ear with the call ringing through when the remaining man in the airport bathroom finally left. Without washing his hands—disgusting prick.
Not that Luca had time to focus on that. Naz picked up his best friend’s call in less than two rings, but that wasn’t surprising. How many weeks had he gone now without even a text to Naz to explain what was going on?
Too many.
Even he knew it.
No doubt, the conversation wasn’t going to end particularly well but if Luca needed help, then he only had one person to go to for it, really. Naz. That was it.
“Where the fuck are you?”
The first words out of Naz’s mouth the second he picked up Luca’s call. Scrubbing a hand down his face, irritated by the thick patch of facial hair that had started to grow out since he’d been without a razor for too damn long, Luca tried not to sigh.
Tried being the keyword.
He failed.
“I’m … in Nevada,” he muttered.
“What—”
“With Penny—or I was.”
Silence answered him back.
He waited Naz out.
“What?” his friend snarled.
Like a record on repeat.
“I don’t have long,” Luca said, not realizing how true that statement would actually be in just a few short minutes. “But I found her, man. I don’t have time to explain everything right now. We went from New York to Nevada—now she’s gone again.”
“But you were with her,” Naz replied.
It wasn’t even a question.
Luca swallowed hard. “Yeah—”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
Anger clung to his friend’s words. Luca understood that all too well even if he didn’t have the time to indulge whatever Naz felt about the news he had just dropped on him without warning. Welcome to Luca’s life—that shit was a regular thing now.
“Point is,” Luca said, trying to get the conversation back around to what was important, “she got me here, but then she left. And now I think she’s got people after her, Naz. Except they’re probably after me, too. I’ve got thirty minutes before I’m jumping on a flight. Better to be back in New York than here, no doubt.”
“You were with her and didn’t tell me.”
“Naz.”
He knew good and damn well why that was the thing Naz wanted to focus on. The entire reason why Luca stood where he did boiled down to the fact his friend asked him to find Penny in the first place. He’d done that. And didn’t tell Naz.
“What does that mean—she left?” Naz asked. “How can she leave, Luca? The girl is already gone.”
“Woman,” he corrected just because that was the only thing his stupid brain decided was most important to say. “She’s not—”
“Luca, what is going on?”
God.
He wished he had an answer. An excuse. Anything.
Instead, he was left saying, “A lot has happened, man.”
“I fucking guess!”
“And—”
“Where is she?” Naz demanded.
Luca blew out a breath, refusing to even turn toward the mirrors where he could see his reflection staring back. Like he needed the visual reminder of the mess this had become and his failures. He felt it more than enough.
“I don’t know,” Luca admitted. “I basically forced my way to Nevada with her when the people she works for here called her back, but she seemed all right about it. Except I woke up and she’s gone, people are banging down the door, and this is all bad. Every bit of it.”
“None of that makes any sense.”
“It does. I just haven’t explained the rest.”
Any of it, really. And he wouldn’t have the chance to.
Three figures slipped into the airport bathroom, making Luca quiet as he recognized one of the men. The one in the middle with his neat braid flipped over his shoulder and dark eyes nailing into him as if he’d just caught his prey.
“Cree,” Luca greeted.
Were they on a first-name basis now? He figured … why not? It wasn’t like this situation could end well for Luca, so he might as well do what he wanted while it happened.
“Luca, what’s happening?” Naz asked, a worried tinge coloring his tone.
“Nothing—”
“Hang up the phone,” the man to Cree’s right said.
The one on the left was now pointing a gun at Luca.
All good things.
Not.
“In a sec,” Luca replied. And then to Naz, he said, “It’s really bad now, man.”
“Who?”
That was all Naz asked.
Luca simply said, “The League.”
“Hang up the phone.”
He did.
Not that he wanted to.
Up until that moment, Cree had said nothing. Only the men that accompanied him—men Luca didn’t know—spoke. Since he didn’t care about the other two, he looked to the man in the middle for what would happen next.
“She’s not with you,” Cree said, the statement sure and certain.
Nothing else was.
“No,” Luca returned, gaze darting back and forth between the two men who stepped closer to him with every second. “Did I give her a head start?”
He didn’t need an answer.
Cree’s expression was enough.
Yes. They wasted their time chasing him when they should have been looking for Penny. Good. At least, he did something right this time around.
He didn’t know why Penny ran.
Or why she left him behind.
He could have been pissed off about that fact—maybe he would be given enough time to think about it—but all he knew was that she did it. And she must have had a reason. He bet part of it was The League and why they forced her back to Nevada.
“You’re coming with us,” the taller of the two, on the left, said.
He was already reaching for Luca.
“Don’t think so,” Luca replied, swinging out of the man’s reach.
He just forgot about the other guy. He wouldn’t, however, forget how hard the man’s punch landed against the right side of Luca’s jaw. The hit sent him sprawling to the floor. It was the kick to his head that had stars bursting behind his clenched eyelids, though.
Bastards.
But what did he expect?
Ch 2 - Penny
Rain clung to the streets of Brooklyn. Penny avoided the rivulets of water dripping from the eaves of buildings when she dared to stop underneath one as best she could.
The black windbreaker she wore did nothing to keep the wetness from seeping through to her clothes and skin underneath. Despite the chill in the air and the raindrops plastering what white-blonde strands of her hair managed to escape from beneath the jacket’s hood, she didn’t shiver.
Really, she barely felt it at all.
The discomfort was a comfort. Something else she was used to now. A constant sense of unrest—that nothing was right or good in a real way. A little bit of water wasn’t going to make it any better or worse.
Right?
Penny’s gaze swept the quiet Brooklyn street, thankful that the rain had decided to fall despite the weather forecast giving only a fifty-fifty chance of showers. It cleared the streets of almost everyone who didn’t need to be on them for one reason or another. With the sun starting to fall beyond the view of the high buildings, darkness had finally begun to creep through the streets.
She felt safe.
Or safer.
At least, to be out and about like she was. With barely twelve hours on the ground in New York, Penny had to start moving fast. Part of her plan had been put into motion the second she opened up the safe in her hotel room. It was where she kept several sets of fake identification, a burner phone—one The League didn’t know about—and cash she stacked up. She was running on a limited timeline to get certain things done before someone came looking for her.
Someone like The League.
Or The Elite.
If they hadn’t already.
Penny was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. She was neither ignorant, nor arrogant. Certainly not enough of one or the other to think that her decision to go AWOL from her handlers would be met with sighs of resignation and little else.
And shit.
The Elite was already hunting her. Might as well make it worth it.
Stepping out from under the entrance of an apartment building, rain splattered against Penny’s face as she started her walk again. Cabs were an option if she cared to hail or call one. There was something to be said for walking, though.
Like the fact it let her think. She hadn’t been doing that enough lately. Well, not for herself, anyway.
Time to do that.
It wasn’t as though Penny was just walking to walk—she did have a purpose for being on the streets of Brooklyn in the middle of a cold rain while the sun crept lower and lower with every passing minute. That purpose became clear when she slipped into an alley two blocks away from the last place she stopped.
A car waited there.
The two-door Lexus coup flicked on its lights—once, and then twice, as was agreed upon—illuminating her wet figure in the mouth of the alley. Penny wasted no time slipping further down the alley to the passenger side of the car. Had it been less wet outside, she wouldn’t even have bothered with getting inside the vehicle.
Instead, she slipped into the passenger seat and shoved her hood back to expose the fishtail braid flipped over her shoulder that kept most of her hair out of her face. The guy sitting in the driver’s seat didn’t even turn to give her a hello, let alone a look.
“It’s in the back,” Carson told her.
“Everything?”
“Anything you asked for. I made a list.”
Penny rolled her eyes, but smiled, too. “You made a list?”
“You made it clear when you called that this was important. I didn’t want to miss anything. Not really good for business, you know?”
She did.
All too well.
Penny found the black duffle bag in the backseat like Carson promised. The independent contractor didn’t really have a specific job—he was known to do many things as long as the pay was good and came through. He’d do it without much talk, and he didn’t sell information when the chance was on the market, so to speak. She only knew of the guy through other assassins at The League who used him on occasion when in the New York area.
Or Jersey.
Vermont, too.
Carson was flexible.
He also wasn’t owned. By anyone. Penny liked that a lot more.
Dropping the duffle bag on her lap, Penny yanked open the zipper and spread the top apart to see what was inside. Carson hadn’t lied. A pile of burner phones, a small laptop, phone cards and more stared back at her. Sticking her hand into the bag, she moved things aside to find the wigs she asked for. There was also a case of FX makeup, a forty-five millimeter and nine with ammo and a silencer … and finally, antibiotics, a few knives, and a particular obsidian blade with a soft touch handle setting on top of new cargo pants and other black clothing.
Penny closed the bag. “It’s all there, thanks.”
Carson shot her a look, his tattooed hands never leaving the steering wheel when he asked, “Did you expect anything different?”
“Some of it was unusual.”
Like the makeup. And the specific knife she had wanted.
The man only chuckled, asking, “Yeah, I thought so, too. What, are you going to war or on a stage?”
“Maybe both.”
Anything was possible now.
In the inner pocket of her windbreaker, Penny pulled out an envelope that was only a little damp from the rain. She passed it over to the man in the driver’s seat. His payment that he took without as much as a thank you, not that she expected acknowledgment for their business together.
This was how it worked. They saw nothing. Knew nothing. Said nothing.
But just in case …
“If anyone asks,” Penny said when she reached for the door handle to exit the vehicle, “you didn’t see the white ghost in New York. It won’t end well for you if you bring up my name to anyone. Understood?”
Carson lifted one shoulder, unbothered but still recognizing that she warned him. “You know, I don’t usually work with people who make it a habit to threaten me, Penny.”
So be it.
Except …
Penny laughed as she stepped out of the vehicle, calling back into the man, “I’m not the one you’ll have to worry about seeing the threat through, though. Keep it in mind.”
There were always worst monsters waiting in the wings. Penny was only one of them.
She closed the door. The last thing she saw from the man was red taillights as he pulled out of the alleyway. That was fine with her.
One thing done.
She was one second closer to ending it all …
*
The motel room Penny rented in the Bronx wasn’t much to look at. Peeling wallpaper with a faded flower design gave the single room—and attached bathroom—some color, at least. The brown, shag carpet had been laid at least three decades before she even existed. God only knew the things these walls had heard and seen.
That was about all she could say for the motel.
Then again, the place was booked by the hour. She was probably one of the only patrons in the place who paid for several days upfront which should have said enough. Nonetheless, she avoided focusing on the stains on the carpet never mind pulling the sheets off the bed. The old furniture had seen better days but the single table, chair, twin bed, and three-drawer dresser all served their purpose.
She’d stayed in worse.
Hell, she’d been raped in worse.
At least, she was out of the rain, had a place to sleep, and there was a decent diner down the street when her hunger became enough of an annoyance that she had no choice but to deal with it. The motel hadn’t required identification to book the room when she slapped down an extra thousand dollars to cover any damages.
Shit.
They could keep the money.
Maybe spruce up the room.
Penny wouldn’t come looking for it, anyway. And if she could help it, then she wouldn’t bring any problems to the motel, either. After all, the entire point of her getting a room was to use it to stay out of sight. No paper trail. She left nothing behind for someone to use to find her.
Since she didn’t have anything else to do, Penny had at least taken the time to open the duffle bag from Carson to look through the items inside properly. Her wigs were now hanging from wire hangers on the shower’s metal bar to keep them in decent shape should she need to use one. All the makeup that she might need to change her appearance had been set out on the table alongside three pairs of folded black jeans and matching tank tops. Not that the weapons needed to be cleaned, but she took her time with the gun, silencer, and even the knife just because she could.
What was time?
She had too much of it.
For now.
Keeping busy, even if it was only arranging her things and attempting to settle into the motel room for however long her stay would be, was something she could do. Actions she could control. A way to keep her mind from traveling elsewhere.
To keep her heart from hurting.
It always hurt, though.
Always.
Was it all a bit much? Not really. It was, however, exactly what Penny needed. The League had done more than teach Penny how to kill while giving her the chance to change history … even if it had taken her entirely too long to figure out the past never went away. They had also given her the ability to take care of herself.
In every way.
Mentally.
Physically.
In business.
Having already discarded the burner phone she used to contact Carson, she went ahead and picked a new phone from the pile on the dresser along with one of the cards to activate it. If the man followed her directions—and she knew he did—then each card and phone had been purchased from different locations. Despite burners being incredibly hard to track, it wasn’t actually impossible given enough time and the right hacker to do it.
Penny didn’t want to take chances.
Every single time she used one of the phones, it would be destroyed after. Including this time.
From the pocket of her black jeans, she produced a folded piece of paper that had barely made it through the day’s rain. The edges tore at her rough handling, but she didn’t care because she didn’t plan to use the number written inside again after today.
The thing about politicians?
Anything could be found with little effort. Including their addresses, home phone numbers, and even the names of the schools where their children attended.
Penny only cared about one of those—the phone number to the home where her mother had apparently moved in with her soon-to-be husband, the New Jersey senator, Gilles Tracey. Though they apparently lived in Jersey with the senator’s two daughters, they also kept a home in New York and frequently traveled between the two states.
Or, so Penny learned through her searches of the internet. Anything could be found … if someone looked hard enough.
Activating the phone and minutes on the card took little time, and before long, Penny had punched in the number. She put the phone on speaker and held it in front of her as she paced the short length of the motel room while the call rang through.
Once.
Then twice.
A third time.
She honestly didn’t know what she expected—getting the number had been a last-minute decision, and not one she really thought out entirely. So much about her mother and the last several years of her life hunting the woman and anyone connected to her had been carefully planned events. Nothing was left to chance.
The thing was …
Penny wanted Allegra to see her coming, now. Nothing else would do.
“Tracey residence—Joesph speaking,” came a male voice through the speaker.
Penny almost hung up.
Almost.
She didn’t think her mother would actually pick up the phone. She bet the senator had a whole house full of employees to handle every aspect of his daily business. That was before Penny factored in the people her mother probably had on hand.
Nothing about this would be easy.
She already knew it.
“Is Allegra home?” Penny asked opting to just … see.
“Ms. Hatheway is upstairs in her sitting room. Give me a moment—I’ll put you through. Who am I speaking to?”
“An old friend.”
The man didn’t even question it.
A click sounded on the phone before a ringing started again. This time, it only rang twice before the call was picked up.
The feminine voice that answered the call was unconcerned and blasé in tone, but the sound of her mother saying hello still felt like a knife raking down Penny’s spine.
“Hello,” Allegra greeted.
Penny dragged in a slow breath.
Allegra waited one second, and then another before saying again, “Is anyone there?”
“Do you think about me?”
Silence answered back.
It actually made Penny smile.
Then, her mother sucked in a hiss before saying, “Penny—”
She didn’t get more out.
Penny wouldn’t let her.
Nothing was on Allegra’s time anymore. She controlled nothing about Penny. It took years to figure that out, but here she was.
“Did you see me coming?” she asked.
A squeak echoed on the other end of the call, as if Allegra had jumped out of her chair. The woman’s next words came out sharp and stinging when she said, “You little bitch—do you know the mess you’ve caused us? You are dead. How long do you think you can last before we find you?”
Yes, she knew.
Too well.
She regretted nothing.
It had to happen.
“I only need to stay ahead of you, actually,” Penny returned. “What’s left of your organization now, Mother? Every move I’ve made has taken something else from you, hasn’t it? There isn’t very much left. Is The Elite even capable of going up against me now—or someone else, for that matter, if you step on the wrong toes trying to get to me?”
The League, she meant. Not that she would say it. That would simply give her mother information she might not otherwise have. Penny wouldn’t play that game. Just this phone call was dangerous enough.
And she only had one thing left to tell Allegra. Little else really mattered, and she refused to give the woman any more of her life or time than she needed to. Even in her death, Allegra Dunsworth would only get what she deserved and nothing more.
It was all Penny could promise.
The only thing she guaranteed.
“The white ghost is coming for you,” Penny told her mother. “Watch for me, Allegra. I’ll be seeing you.”
Penny ended the call as her gaze found the clock on the motel room’s wall. Directly over the bed, it was the only thing on the walls. The second hand kept ticking. A lot like the beats of her broken heart that smashed against her ribcage because just talking to her mother was enough to damn near unravel everything that kept Penny sane.
Tick, tick, tick.
The sound of the clock echoed in the back of her mind. It continued counting down the seconds until she could finally finish this. One after another. She watched the time go.
What choice did she have?
Present Day, Nevada …
Mere seconds could change everything. Even, the span of time it took Luca to open his eyes and know he was alone in the hotel room. He didn’t need to turn in the bed to see it was empty of Penny’s presence. He felt the loss.
Knew it was real before it actually was. The weight sitting on his chest, and the cold cloud surrounding him made the white ceiling seem like it was closing down in on him. The absolute silence—but for his steady breaths and the beats of his heart—confirmed what he already knew even though he didn’t want to believe it.
He was alone.
Absolutely.
“Penny,” he dared to call.
Daring himself to be wrong.
Willing her to prove him wrong, even.
His call went unanswered.
Before that moment, Luca hadn’t realized loneliness could be such a tangible thing. Beyond a feeling, there was a real presence about it. A heaviness around him that made it all the more real.
And cruel.
There was something to be said about the way loneliness could leave a man confused. Like as he sat up in the bed, confirming Penny’s side was empty and so was the rest of the room, he just couldn’t catch up to speed. He was quite aware Penny wasn’t beside him in the bed like she had been the night before when they fell asleep. And yet, a part of him didn’t want to believe that even when he grabbed the blanket and yanked it away from her empty pillow. Even the indentation of her head was gone.
The room was just … chilly.
When had she gotten up?
Did she leave or--
“Penny!”
Luca’s shout undoubtedly carried out through the bedroom door to the rest of the hotel room, but to no avail. He didn’t get an answer just like the first time.
Fuck.
He was trying not to panic. Excuses raced through his mind in a shitty attempt to quell how the nervousness skimming over his skin when he exited the bed. Cold floors met the soles of his feet while he thought … she’s just getting food—maybe coffee. Shit, he couldn’t pretend to know what Penny did during her days. He’d only been back in her life for a short while. Who was to say she didn’t have an entire routine in the mornings, right?
Bullshit.
He knew it.
His heart screamed it.
Of course, that didn’t stop his sleepy brain from trying to brush off the obvious. Like the differences in the bedroom—the shoes Penny had kicked to the side were now gone. Her laptop sat open on the chair, but only the back of the screen faced him. As if she had been sitting there with it, and just left it where it was because she wouldn’t need it. The wall safe next to the bed had been left open.
Why didn’t he hear that?
Right.
Because he thought he was safe. Stupidly, he believed that he had the upper hand where Penny was concerned. Why would she leave again? Hell, she brought him here.
That’s why it didn’t make sense. Why he couldn’t catch up, so to speak.
The obvious stared him in the face as he gathered his clothes from the night before in his arms and headed for the connected bathroom, but he still refused to accept it. He had one leg stuffed into the pair of jeans and was shoving in his second leg as he came to a complete stop in the doorway of the bathroom.
There was no ignoring it now. Everything became painfully clear.
And written in red.
Literally.
The bathroom looked like someone had went knife happy on the place—or rather, over the sink. The shirt dangled from Luca’s clenched fist as he dared to step closer to the mess, reading the words that had been hastily scrawled on the mirror that faced him while he took in the bloody mess in the sink.
A knife sat on the rim. Half on, blade hanging over the edge. Balancing dangerously … like the woman who put it there, he knew. Holding on, but barely. Blood still red on the blade.
In the mirror, he read Penny’s bloody words: Sorry, this is on my terms now. He had the distinct feeling the message wasn’t directed at him, and yet, it still stung just the same.
Luca started moving a little faster, then. While he raced to put everything together—to figure out how he went to bed with Penny only to wake up alone with a bloody bathroom next door—he managed to shove his shirt down over his head.
Maybe he could catch up with Penny … wherever in the hell she went. And deal with whatever reason for her disappearance, too. Punching his arms through the sleeves, he went in search of his hoodie and jacket but--
Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Penny, open up! Penny!”
Luca’s stride came to a stop just beyond the bathroom threshold as the noise became louder.
“Penny, open this goddamn door right now!”
Not that Luca needed more confirmation that Penny had disappeared the night before after she let him fuck her and slept tucked into his side, but the noise outside the hotel room did exactly that for him. He didn’t even have time to figure out how that made him feel or what it meant that she left.
Again.
It wasn’t the same as the last time.
He knew that.
It still … hurt.
The banging came again--louder and harder. The hint of desperation in the familiar voice calling through the thick hotel door made Luca think the man didn’t want to believe what was happening, either.
He recognized the man’s voice even though he had only heard it once before. Cree. Given their first meeting, he couldn’t exactly forget the man.
“Penny, come on—open the fuck up!”
Luca almost missed it. To his right, the flicker of the laptop screen, he almost fucking missed it because he was distracted by the bloody mess behind him, and the unwelcomed visitors barking at one another between hitting their fists against the door. He could have blamed the fact he just woke up, too, but now he was wide awake so that didn’t work.
Nonetheless, Luca saw it.
He watched as the screen of Penny’s laptop flickered—the cursor jumped from one side of the page to the other, tabs closing and opening, pages scrolling downward fast before flipping to another one. He didn’t even have the chance to blink. He was watching, in real-time, as someone hacked Penny’s laptop.
The only good thing about it?
He could see what they saw.
Probably the same thing Penny had been looking at before she set the laptop down and walked away from it the night before. The last thing he saw before the laptop’s screen went entirely black was an image and a headline.
He was only able to read the name in the headline: Allegra Hatheway. Except he knew that woman—the one in the image at the top of the article before the screen blanked out—as Allegra Dunsworth, Penny’s mother. Once, he sat at the same table as the woman while lawyers worked out the final details of an estate that was split between two beneficiaries.
Penny and her mother.
But he knew a lot more about Allegra through his years of tracking down every scrap of Penny’s history and proof of existence that he could find. It wasn’t a lot. It was just enough to tell him that there had never been anything good between the two.
That was all he knew.
So why was she looking up her mother?
And why did she leave when she found her?
Those were answers Luca didn’t have and wouldn’t have the time to figure out. At least, not at the moment. The yelling from outside the hotel room brought him back to reality and out of his self-pity in a flash.
“Open the door or I am breaking it down,” he heard called.
Well …
Time for him to go.
It took all of two seconds for Luca to realize what Penny had done and why there was blood in the bathroom. She told him once that The League could find her no matter where she was. He bet the blood wasn’t the only thing she left behind for them to find. Might they find a tracking chip at the bottom of the sink drain?
He didn’t plan to find out.
How would this situation end for him if Cree—and whoever was with him—broke down the hotel door just to find Luca in there alone? Fuck, they already threatened to kill him. He wasn’t about to give them another reason to see it through.
He did like being alive.
Even if he didn’t know why.
Luca was just beginning to scale the ledge of the hotel room’s small veranda when he heard wood crack as the door was kicked in. Lucky for him, it wasn’t the first time he had to make a quick exit … or take an unconventional route of escape.
Unluckily for the people in the hotel room below Penny’s, too. Because the naked couple—the redheaded female riding her partner on the bed facing the veranda down below where Luca landed—certainly hadn’t expected him to dart through their hotel room with a quick, “My bad!”
The woman shrieked, scrambling off her partner and grasping for the sheets that really did nothing to hide her body. The man only swore.
“Nice tits, though,” he called over his shoulder.
They didn’t even have time to react. He was already exiting their smaller hotel room before the two even fully understood what had happened. The hallway was empty. He had no idea what was happening above his head a floor higher or if this plan of his would even work.
If he could call it a plan.
Could he if he didn’t know what he was doing?
Likely not.
What did it matter?
Luca doubted running would work for him—Nevada wasn’t his territory, after all. He didn’t have connections, didn’t know the streets, and on top of that, still needed to get out.
Would it work?
Probably not.
Fuck him if he wouldn’t try, though.
Where are you, Penny?
That was the real question.
The entire fucking problem, honestly.
*
Luca already had a familiar number dialed, and the cell pressed to his ear with the call ringing through when the remaining man in the airport bathroom finally left. Without washing his hands—disgusting prick.
Not that Luca had time to focus on that. Naz picked up his best friend’s call in less than two rings, but that wasn’t surprising. How many weeks had he gone now without even a text to Naz to explain what was going on?
Too many.
Even he knew it.
No doubt, the conversation wasn’t going to end particularly well but if Luca needed help, then he only had one person to go to for it, really. Naz. That was it.
“Where the fuck are you?”
The first words out of Naz’s mouth the second he picked up Luca’s call. Scrubbing a hand down his face, irritated by the thick patch of facial hair that had started to grow out since he’d been without a razor for too damn long, Luca tried not to sigh.
Tried being the keyword.
He failed.
“I’m … in Nevada,” he muttered.
“What—”
“With Penny—or I was.”
Silence answered him back.
He waited Naz out.
“What?” his friend snarled.
Like a record on repeat.
“I don’t have long,” Luca said, not realizing how true that statement would actually be in just a few short minutes. “But I found her, man. I don’t have time to explain everything right now. We went from New York to Nevada—now she’s gone again.”
“But you were with her,” Naz replied.
It wasn’t even a question.
Luca swallowed hard. “Yeah—”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
Anger clung to his friend’s words. Luca understood that all too well even if he didn’t have the time to indulge whatever Naz felt about the news he had just dropped on him without warning. Welcome to Luca’s life—that shit was a regular thing now.
“Point is,” Luca said, trying to get the conversation back around to what was important, “she got me here, but then she left. And now I think she’s got people after her, Naz. Except they’re probably after me, too. I’ve got thirty minutes before I’m jumping on a flight. Better to be back in New York than here, no doubt.”
“You were with her and didn’t tell me.”
“Naz.”
He knew good and damn well why that was the thing Naz wanted to focus on. The entire reason why Luca stood where he did boiled down to the fact his friend asked him to find Penny in the first place. He’d done that. And didn’t tell Naz.
“What does that mean—she left?” Naz asked. “How can she leave, Luca? The girl is already gone.”
“Woman,” he corrected just because that was the only thing his stupid brain decided was most important to say. “She’s not—”
“Luca, what is going on?”
God.
He wished he had an answer. An excuse. Anything.
Instead, he was left saying, “A lot has happened, man.”
“I fucking guess!”
“And—”
“Where is she?” Naz demanded.
Luca blew out a breath, refusing to even turn toward the mirrors where he could see his reflection staring back. Like he needed the visual reminder of the mess this had become and his failures. He felt it more than enough.
“I don’t know,” Luca admitted. “I basically forced my way to Nevada with her when the people she works for here called her back, but she seemed all right about it. Except I woke up and she’s gone, people are banging down the door, and this is all bad. Every bit of it.”
“None of that makes any sense.”
“It does. I just haven’t explained the rest.”
Any of it, really. And he wouldn’t have the chance to.
Three figures slipped into the airport bathroom, making Luca quiet as he recognized one of the men. The one in the middle with his neat braid flipped over his shoulder and dark eyes nailing into him as if he’d just caught his prey.
“Cree,” Luca greeted.
Were they on a first-name basis now? He figured … why not? It wasn’t like this situation could end well for Luca, so he might as well do what he wanted while it happened.
“Luca, what’s happening?” Naz asked, a worried tinge coloring his tone.
“Nothing—”
“Hang up the phone,” the man to Cree’s right said.
The one on the left was now pointing a gun at Luca.
All good things.
Not.
“In a sec,” Luca replied. And then to Naz, he said, “It’s really bad now, man.”
“Who?”
That was all Naz asked.
Luca simply said, “The League.”
“Hang up the phone.”
He did.
Not that he wanted to.
Up until that moment, Cree had said nothing. Only the men that accompanied him—men Luca didn’t know—spoke. Since he didn’t care about the other two, he looked to the man in the middle for what would happen next.
“She’s not with you,” Cree said, the statement sure and certain.
Nothing else was.
“No,” Luca returned, gaze darting back and forth between the two men who stepped closer to him with every second. “Did I give her a head start?”
He didn’t need an answer.
Cree’s expression was enough.
Yes. They wasted their time chasing him when they should have been looking for Penny. Good. At least, he did something right this time around.
He didn’t know why Penny ran.
Or why she left him behind.
He could have been pissed off about that fact—maybe he would be given enough time to think about it—but all he knew was that she did it. And she must have had a reason. He bet part of it was The League and why they forced her back to Nevada.
“You’re coming with us,” the taller of the two, on the left, said.
He was already reaching for Luca.
“Don’t think so,” Luca replied, swinging out of the man’s reach.
He just forgot about the other guy. He wouldn’t, however, forget how hard the man’s punch landed against the right side of Luca’s jaw. The hit sent him sprawling to the floor. It was the kick to his head that had stars bursting behind his clenched eyelids, though.
Bastards.
But what did he expect?
Ch 2 - Penny
Rain clung to the streets of Brooklyn. Penny avoided the rivulets of water dripping from the eaves of buildings when she dared to stop underneath one as best she could.
The black windbreaker she wore did nothing to keep the wetness from seeping through to her clothes and skin underneath. Despite the chill in the air and the raindrops plastering what white-blonde strands of her hair managed to escape from beneath the jacket’s hood, she didn’t shiver.
Really, she barely felt it at all.
The discomfort was a comfort. Something else she was used to now. A constant sense of unrest—that nothing was right or good in a real way. A little bit of water wasn’t going to make it any better or worse.
Right?
Penny’s gaze swept the quiet Brooklyn street, thankful that the rain had decided to fall despite the weather forecast giving only a fifty-fifty chance of showers. It cleared the streets of almost everyone who didn’t need to be on them for one reason or another. With the sun starting to fall beyond the view of the high buildings, darkness had finally begun to creep through the streets.
She felt safe.
Or safer.
At least, to be out and about like she was. With barely twelve hours on the ground in New York, Penny had to start moving fast. Part of her plan had been put into motion the second she opened up the safe in her hotel room. It was where she kept several sets of fake identification, a burner phone—one The League didn’t know about—and cash she stacked up. She was running on a limited timeline to get certain things done before someone came looking for her.
Someone like The League.
Or The Elite.
If they hadn’t already.
Penny was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. She was neither ignorant, nor arrogant. Certainly not enough of one or the other to think that her decision to go AWOL from her handlers would be met with sighs of resignation and little else.
And shit.
The Elite was already hunting her. Might as well make it worth it.
Stepping out from under the entrance of an apartment building, rain splattered against Penny’s face as she started her walk again. Cabs were an option if she cared to hail or call one. There was something to be said for walking, though.
Like the fact it let her think. She hadn’t been doing that enough lately. Well, not for herself, anyway.
Time to do that.
It wasn’t as though Penny was just walking to walk—she did have a purpose for being on the streets of Brooklyn in the middle of a cold rain while the sun crept lower and lower with every passing minute. That purpose became clear when she slipped into an alley two blocks away from the last place she stopped.
A car waited there.
The two-door Lexus coup flicked on its lights—once, and then twice, as was agreed upon—illuminating her wet figure in the mouth of the alley. Penny wasted no time slipping further down the alley to the passenger side of the car. Had it been less wet outside, she wouldn’t even have bothered with getting inside the vehicle.
Instead, she slipped into the passenger seat and shoved her hood back to expose the fishtail braid flipped over her shoulder that kept most of her hair out of her face. The guy sitting in the driver’s seat didn’t even turn to give her a hello, let alone a look.
“It’s in the back,” Carson told her.
“Everything?”
“Anything you asked for. I made a list.”
Penny rolled her eyes, but smiled, too. “You made a list?”
“You made it clear when you called that this was important. I didn’t want to miss anything. Not really good for business, you know?”
She did.
All too well.
Penny found the black duffle bag in the backseat like Carson promised. The independent contractor didn’t really have a specific job—he was known to do many things as long as the pay was good and came through. He’d do it without much talk, and he didn’t sell information when the chance was on the market, so to speak. She only knew of the guy through other assassins at The League who used him on occasion when in the New York area.
Or Jersey.
Vermont, too.
Carson was flexible.
He also wasn’t owned. By anyone. Penny liked that a lot more.
Dropping the duffle bag on her lap, Penny yanked open the zipper and spread the top apart to see what was inside. Carson hadn’t lied. A pile of burner phones, a small laptop, phone cards and more stared back at her. Sticking her hand into the bag, she moved things aside to find the wigs she asked for. There was also a case of FX makeup, a forty-five millimeter and nine with ammo and a silencer … and finally, antibiotics, a few knives, and a particular obsidian blade with a soft touch handle setting on top of new cargo pants and other black clothing.
Penny closed the bag. “It’s all there, thanks.”
Carson shot her a look, his tattooed hands never leaving the steering wheel when he asked, “Did you expect anything different?”
“Some of it was unusual.”
Like the makeup. And the specific knife she had wanted.
The man only chuckled, asking, “Yeah, I thought so, too. What, are you going to war or on a stage?”
“Maybe both.”
Anything was possible now.
In the inner pocket of her windbreaker, Penny pulled out an envelope that was only a little damp from the rain. She passed it over to the man in the driver’s seat. His payment that he took without as much as a thank you, not that she expected acknowledgment for their business together.
This was how it worked. They saw nothing. Knew nothing. Said nothing.
But just in case …
“If anyone asks,” Penny said when she reached for the door handle to exit the vehicle, “you didn’t see the white ghost in New York. It won’t end well for you if you bring up my name to anyone. Understood?”
Carson lifted one shoulder, unbothered but still recognizing that she warned him. “You know, I don’t usually work with people who make it a habit to threaten me, Penny.”
So be it.
Except …
Penny laughed as she stepped out of the vehicle, calling back into the man, “I’m not the one you’ll have to worry about seeing the threat through, though. Keep it in mind.”
There were always worst monsters waiting in the wings. Penny was only one of them.
She closed the door. The last thing she saw from the man was red taillights as he pulled out of the alleyway. That was fine with her.
One thing done.
She was one second closer to ending it all …
*
The motel room Penny rented in the Bronx wasn’t much to look at. Peeling wallpaper with a faded flower design gave the single room—and attached bathroom—some color, at least. The brown, shag carpet had been laid at least three decades before she even existed. God only knew the things these walls had heard and seen.
That was about all she could say for the motel.
Then again, the place was booked by the hour. She was probably one of the only patrons in the place who paid for several days upfront which should have said enough. Nonetheless, she avoided focusing on the stains on the carpet never mind pulling the sheets off the bed. The old furniture had seen better days but the single table, chair, twin bed, and three-drawer dresser all served their purpose.
She’d stayed in worse.
Hell, she’d been raped in worse.
At least, she was out of the rain, had a place to sleep, and there was a decent diner down the street when her hunger became enough of an annoyance that she had no choice but to deal with it. The motel hadn’t required identification to book the room when she slapped down an extra thousand dollars to cover any damages.
Shit.
They could keep the money.
Maybe spruce up the room.
Penny wouldn’t come looking for it, anyway. And if she could help it, then she wouldn’t bring any problems to the motel, either. After all, the entire point of her getting a room was to use it to stay out of sight. No paper trail. She left nothing behind for someone to use to find her.
Since she didn’t have anything else to do, Penny had at least taken the time to open the duffle bag from Carson to look through the items inside properly. Her wigs were now hanging from wire hangers on the shower’s metal bar to keep them in decent shape should she need to use one. All the makeup that she might need to change her appearance had been set out on the table alongside three pairs of folded black jeans and matching tank tops. Not that the weapons needed to be cleaned, but she took her time with the gun, silencer, and even the knife just because she could.
What was time?
She had too much of it.
For now.
Keeping busy, even if it was only arranging her things and attempting to settle into the motel room for however long her stay would be, was something she could do. Actions she could control. A way to keep her mind from traveling elsewhere.
To keep her heart from hurting.
It always hurt, though.
Always.
Was it all a bit much? Not really. It was, however, exactly what Penny needed. The League had done more than teach Penny how to kill while giving her the chance to change history … even if it had taken her entirely too long to figure out the past never went away. They had also given her the ability to take care of herself.
In every way.
Mentally.
Physically.
In business.
Having already discarded the burner phone she used to contact Carson, she went ahead and picked a new phone from the pile on the dresser along with one of the cards to activate it. If the man followed her directions—and she knew he did—then each card and phone had been purchased from different locations. Despite burners being incredibly hard to track, it wasn’t actually impossible given enough time and the right hacker to do it.
Penny didn’t want to take chances.
Every single time she used one of the phones, it would be destroyed after. Including this time.
From the pocket of her black jeans, she produced a folded piece of paper that had barely made it through the day’s rain. The edges tore at her rough handling, but she didn’t care because she didn’t plan to use the number written inside again after today.
The thing about politicians?
Anything could be found with little effort. Including their addresses, home phone numbers, and even the names of the schools where their children attended.
Penny only cared about one of those—the phone number to the home where her mother had apparently moved in with her soon-to-be husband, the New Jersey senator, Gilles Tracey. Though they apparently lived in Jersey with the senator’s two daughters, they also kept a home in New York and frequently traveled between the two states.
Or, so Penny learned through her searches of the internet. Anything could be found … if someone looked hard enough.
Activating the phone and minutes on the card took little time, and before long, Penny had punched in the number. She put the phone on speaker and held it in front of her as she paced the short length of the motel room while the call rang through.
Once.
Then twice.
A third time.
She honestly didn’t know what she expected—getting the number had been a last-minute decision, and not one she really thought out entirely. So much about her mother and the last several years of her life hunting the woman and anyone connected to her had been carefully planned events. Nothing was left to chance.
The thing was …
Penny wanted Allegra to see her coming, now. Nothing else would do.
“Tracey residence—Joesph speaking,” came a male voice through the speaker.
Penny almost hung up.
Almost.
She didn’t think her mother would actually pick up the phone. She bet the senator had a whole house full of employees to handle every aspect of his daily business. That was before Penny factored in the people her mother probably had on hand.
Nothing about this would be easy.
She already knew it.
“Is Allegra home?” Penny asked opting to just … see.
“Ms. Hatheway is upstairs in her sitting room. Give me a moment—I’ll put you through. Who am I speaking to?”
“An old friend.”
The man didn’t even question it.
A click sounded on the phone before a ringing started again. This time, it only rang twice before the call was picked up.
The feminine voice that answered the call was unconcerned and blasé in tone, but the sound of her mother saying hello still felt like a knife raking down Penny’s spine.
“Hello,” Allegra greeted.
Penny dragged in a slow breath.
Allegra waited one second, and then another before saying again, “Is anyone there?”
“Do you think about me?”
Silence answered back.
It actually made Penny smile.
Then, her mother sucked in a hiss before saying, “Penny—”
She didn’t get more out.
Penny wouldn’t let her.
Nothing was on Allegra’s time anymore. She controlled nothing about Penny. It took years to figure that out, but here she was.
“Did you see me coming?” she asked.
A squeak echoed on the other end of the call, as if Allegra had jumped out of her chair. The woman’s next words came out sharp and stinging when she said, “You little bitch—do you know the mess you’ve caused us? You are dead. How long do you think you can last before we find you?”
Yes, she knew.
Too well.
She regretted nothing.
It had to happen.
“I only need to stay ahead of you, actually,” Penny returned. “What’s left of your organization now, Mother? Every move I’ve made has taken something else from you, hasn’t it? There isn’t very much left. Is The Elite even capable of going up against me now—or someone else, for that matter, if you step on the wrong toes trying to get to me?”
The League, she meant. Not that she would say it. That would simply give her mother information she might not otherwise have. Penny wouldn’t play that game. Just this phone call was dangerous enough.
And she only had one thing left to tell Allegra. Little else really mattered, and she refused to give the woman any more of her life or time than she needed to. Even in her death, Allegra Dunsworth would only get what she deserved and nothing more.
It was all Penny could promise.
The only thing she guaranteed.
“The white ghost is coming for you,” Penny told her mother. “Watch for me, Allegra. I’ll be seeing you.”
Penny ended the call as her gaze found the clock on the motel room’s wall. Directly over the bed, it was the only thing on the walls. The second hand kept ticking. A lot like the beats of her broken heart that smashed against her ribcage because just talking to her mother was enough to damn near unravel everything that kept Penny sane.
Tick, tick, tick.
The sound of the clock echoed in the back of her mind. It continued counting down the seconds until she could finally finish this. One after another. She watched the time go.
What choice did she have?
