One Step After Another (The After Another Trilogy Book 1)

by Bethany-Kris

  She stepped forward when a ray of light shone across the carpeted floor. The elevator doors had opened. Like a fool, he’d been stuck staring at her instead of moving and was about to lose his one and only chance in five fucking years to catch her.

  Luca yanked open the door at the same time Penny took another step. The noise of the heavy door had her glancing his way, recognition lighting up her eyes.

  Then again, it could have also been him calling out, “Penny.”

  4.

  Penny

  PEOPLE liked to say the past always catches up eventually. No matter how hard someone tried to leave it behind or how fast they ran away from it, it would eventually show right back up to laugh in someone’s face.

  Penny didn’t think the sentiment was untrue ... she had simply hoped that with enough time and distance, her past would stay where it belonged. It’s what she worked for—what her handlers tried to make happen by keeping her out of North America as much as possible for the better part of her first three years working under The League as an assassin.

  That way, everyone was safe.

  Or so she was told.

  All of that effort was totally blown to shit when Luca Puzza stepped inside the elevator after sticking his arm into the closing door to keep it from shutting completely. Given there were another five people in the space, a family guessing by the way they all chatted behind her, Penny did her best to keep from swearing out loud. She hadn’t expected people to be on the elevator at all when the Smithenson floor wasn’t available to other patrons of the hotel. But the elevator would open up to let people on from the Smithenson floor when it was carrying others from higher floors lower, she supposed. It was just her good luck that the elevator hadn’t been empty coming down.

  She didn’t, however, hide the burning stare she leveled on Luca when he cocked a brow and grinned as he came to stand directly in front of her, and the elevator doors closed behind him. Effectively closing the two of them together in a small space.

  Exactly what she needed to avoid. She’d hoped the door would close before he could reach it, maybe he’d make a run for the stairwell where he first came out of,

  but he couldn’t guarantee which floor she would exit on ... giving her a better chance to get away.

  She wasn’t so lucky.

  And didn’t he look happy about it.

  The handsome bastard.

  Fuck.

  It was those green-blue eyes of his—so intense and familiar—that threw her back in time. Years. So many years. Back to an entirely different world when she was a different person running from monsters instead of just hunting them down. To a family—who despite not being her own blood, had loved her, and taught her how to love—she had left behind.

  It wasn’t just her past Penny ran from but everything she left there, too. Her feelings and fears; her truths and lies.

  Now, one of them was staring her right in the face. She might not have laid eyes on Luca in five years, but time meant nothing at that moment. Time stopped. Everything about his face was exactly the same from the chiseled cheekbones and strong jaw to the way his stare froze her in place from the heaviness that grew in her chest.

  “Been a while,” Luca said. “Hasn’t it, Pen—”

  “Don’t.”

  He stopped talking.

  She didn’t say more.

  The last thing she needed was this man saying her first name in an elevator full of witnesses after she had just murdered a man. Not that they knew it—or even Luca.

  The family behind her kept talking.

  Luca’s lips twisted in a smile that made Penny’s chest even heavier when he reached behind himself to push a button on the elevator as he asked, “Ground floor, then? You leaving? I’d like to come along. Have a word. Naz and Roz miss you.”

  Apparently, time meant nothing. That weight making her heart pound harder was the same thing she used to feel whenever this man smiled at her all those years ago. What a cruel, sad joke that even her foolish notions of a young woman would chase her into adulthood, too.

  Her crush, that was.

  On Luca.

  Everything about Penny was different from how she used to be. She made sure of that. Her training helped. Her handlers promised it. It seemed that also wasn’t the case because Luca could still make her tongue-tied at the worst possible time.

  She hated how smug and gorgeous he looked when he moved to stand beside her, also putting his back to the chatting people in the elevator. She hated it even more that she noticed how well his suit fit him and that she could appreciate that fact when she could only remember one other time when he’d worn a suit in her presence.

  Her eighteenth birthday.

  The same night they kissed.

  Her first real kiss.

  If she cared to indulge that thought, then she knew damn well her mind wouldn’t let her forget how it felt to have him kiss her. All because she asked; she had wanted nothing more than to be kissed simply because she wanted it. Something on her terms; born from her desires. With someone she trusted.

  That someone had been him.

  “Did you know about me?” Luca asked.

  Penny didn’t know what he meant for sure, but she had a damn good idea. “That you’ve been tracking me for years?”

  “All these years, in fact.”

  Right.

  Couldn’t let that slide.

  “Why do you think they make it so hard for you to catch up?”

  Luca nodded, a glimmer of appreciation in his gaze that stayed nailed on her as though if he blinked, she might disappear. Hell, he wasn’t exactly wrong. If he gave her the chance to get out of there without him on her tail, then she was absolutely going to take it.

  She didn’t have a choice.

  Penny came and went.

  She didn’t leave a trace.

  “You know I can’t let you go tonight, right?” he asked.

  She was only grateful for the fact that he kept his tone down, frankly. Too low for their guests to hear and below the shitty music playing through the speaker overhead. The speaker that was located right beside the blinking number that kept dropping with every floor they passed on their way down.

  “Give me a day—or night, rather,” Luca said. “Go see them. Naz and my sister, I mean. Explain what the fuck happened. What did happen?”

  Penny didn’t reply because she couldn’t. What difference would it make to a man who had been chasing any and all breadcrumbs of her very existence for years? All on what, the off chance that he might be able to return her to people she had been forced to leave behind?

  It wasn’t like she could explain why.

  They wouldn’t understand.

  Even she didn’t.

  Not completely.

  Her gaze snapped up to the numbers overhead still counting down.

  Five ... four ...

  She needed a plan and fast. Chances were, her handlers from The League wouldn’t be willing to let actual contact between her and Luca slide. Not when the entire point of her taking the offer to train and work as one of their assassins had rested upon the need of leaving everyone in her life behind. Beyond that, this could only cause more trouble for the actual job.

  Another reason for the people above her to get rid of the issue altogether.

  “I’m a bit confused,” Luca murmured, sticking his hands in his pockets which was at least one thing she didn’t have to worry about. Fewer appendages to fight back when she took him by surprise in another couple of floors, right? That was the only way to fix this situation by all accounts. She needed to make it out of here cleanly.

  Or as clean as possible.

  She didn’t want to do that to Luca. At the same time, he really didn’t give her a choice tonight. Any other night, had he accosted her—though she had no clue how he managed to track her this time, but they knew her working in the states would be dangerous—then she might have been able to do ... anything else.

  Indulge his conversa
tion. Lie. Run.

  Tonight, there was no option.

  She had to get away.

  Without him.

  “Confused,” he continued, tipping his head her way, “because clearly you have freedom. See, I have heard the rumors about the organization you work for. What they do—who you are. And in all this time, if you knew we were looking for you ... why didn’t you try to come back? Or call? Anything? Did you think the time you were with my sister and Naz meant nothing to them? To me? We lo—”

  “Shut up,” she snapped.

  Her sharp hiss did quiet the people behind them. She could practically feel their gazes burning into the back of her head. Probably taking in the long-sleeved gown she wore and the color of her hair. Imprinting the image of her to their memory, so they could relay it later to police when the dead body was found upstairs, and the mysterious woman caught on camera coming and going from the eighth floor was connected.

  Two and two always made four, after all.

  Jesus.

  Penny was really screwing this job up.

  Not her usual style.

  Luca sighed. “You’re not even going to say a thing to—”

  The elevator jumped when it came to the third floor. Rubber squeaked when the doors opened to the hotel’s floor with the pool. The same floor that had been lit up on the elevator’s switchboard from the second she stepped inside.

  Had Luca been slightly less distracted by her and trying to get her to talk, then he might have noticed the same things she did. That the people behind them weren’t exactly dressed for the party downstairs. That they all held towels. Even the light on the switchboard designating the floor they intended to get off on ...

  Where the pool was.

  It told her a couple of things. She did have her opening to escape. This would end badly for Luca because he hadn’t given her a choice. And his chance to find her tonight had happened so quickly that the man didn’t even have time to properly check out the hotel in such a way that he would be aware of the pool on the third level.

  The people moved forward, forcing Penny and Luca apart and creating a sea of five moving bodies that acted as a curtain for privacy between them. He didn’t see her reach into the bag she had been carrying all night—the one that held the gun, the electronics she had taken from Elijah’s room, her wig, and anything else she might need for the night.

  Including a syringe full of a sedative that would work in less than six seconds once injected straight into the neck. The people didn’t look back as they exited the elevator.

  Luca didn’t even see the needle coming.

  “Fuck,” he snarled when she hit him with the syringe, arm swinging for her but missing because she had already shoved down the plunger and yanked her arm back. His wild gaze swung on her, angry and betrayed. “What did you just—”

  “Tell them I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I always am.”

  She at least caught Luca before he hit the floor. She got out on the second level instead of the ground floor because it wouldn’t exactly look good to come out on the ground section full of a busy entry with a body in the elevator.

  Right?

  The job came first. Everything else was second. That was Penny’s life now.

  It had to be or no one, including Luca, would like what came next.

  5.

  Luca

  “SIR ... sir, I’m going to need you to calm down, please. Can you follow the light? Look into the light and follow where it goes.”

  Luca didn’t know that voice, who it belonged to, or why the person it belonged to was currently holding him down. It was never a good thing to wake up confused, disoriented, and immobile against something hard.

  His mind raced to catch up; to fill in the blanks as something bright waved in front of his blurry vision. He didn’t know where he was, how he got there, or why it all happened. The faceless man behind the light spoke again, or his mouth moved anyway, but Luca didn’t understand a thing the guy was saying.

  Or he just didn’t care to.

  If he could see, and breathe, despite the fuzzy line of sight and the cloudiness in his brain then that only meant one thing to him. He was alive. What did it matter what the asshole with the flashlight was trying to say to him?

  The next time the white light swung past his eyes, Luca attempted to strike out to make sure the prick didn’t shine it in his face again. But when his arm didn’t do what he wanted, or rather, stopped completely within a couple of inches, he finally understood why his body and limbs weren’t doing what they wanted.

  Lifting his head slightly from the hard surface beneath him, he could see the restraints locked around his wrists and attached to the metal bars of a paramedic’s gurney.

  Fucking hell.

  How did that happen?

  The click-click of wheels had him jerking on the bed, but the paramedic didn’t miss a beat, keeping up to the moving gurney like it wasn’t a problem at all. Overhead, Luca saw the name of a hotel written in a fancy script.

  Luca slammed his head back into the gurney as the paramedic asked, “You were found unconscious in the hotel’s elevator—do you remember what happened at all? What is your name? The date?”

  A new voice came from behind Luca’s head. “Anything?”

  “Nothing verbal,” said the man with the flashlight that Luca was going to shove up his ass the first chance he could. “Pupils are reacting, though. He can hear me, but he’s not responding otherwise. Vitals are stable either way.”

  “Room eight-oh-one,” he heard someone else say. Not the guy attempting to make conversation with him or the one navigating the gurney. “Found a body. Also, a guard choked out in the stairwell, but the guy said he didn’t remember a thing when they finally got him conscious and talking. My bet, this dude’s about to say the same.”

  “This guy wasn’t choked out,” Luca’s new friend barked back.

  “You don’t know—”

  “Yes, I do. No bruises or anything to suggest that’s what happened. Also, there’s a needle prick in the side of his neck, and he’s so out of it that he can barely lift his head for more than a couple of seconds at a time. Drugged.”

  “We need to talk to him,” the other guy said. “Witnesses say he was in the elevator with the woman we think is connected to the murdered man upstairs ... possibly even talking to her. Security footage is being pulled as we—”

  “And you can talk to him, officer, as soon he is conscious and aware of his surroundings while stable. At the moment, he seems to be only two out of three of those things. We will see you at the hospital.”

  “But—”

  “At the hospital,” snapped the paramedic.

  That was the last of the conversation between the cop and the medics. In the next second, the gurney bumped into something hard enough to rock Luca before he was lifted higher, and the wheels rolled along something that sounded like metal. He had a clear view of the officer waiting outside the ambulance and the doors that closed him out.

  Everything was becoming a hell of a lot clearer to Luca even if he didn’t plan on acting like it. He couldn’t; not if he wanted to get out of this current situation without cuffs on his wrists. That much was obvious. He was also grateful that the identification he brought along for the night was fake so anything they took off his unconscious body wasn’t going to lead them anywhere once he got to the hospital.

  What bothered him more?

  That he remembered what happened.

  Everything.

  In painfully clear detail.

  Penny did this.

  She did all of it.

  But why?

  “MR ... KUTNER,” THE officer said, glancing down at the medical chart he’d taken from the edge of Luca’s hospital bed to double-check for the name he clearly hadn’t been able to remember. “That is your name, correct?” Not even close.

  Luca shrugged where he stood beside the bed, already dressed in his clothes from the night before—minus the bloody b
lazer that no one had seemed to notice—and ready to leave. His ride would be arriving soon. He didn’t plan on this conversation with the cop lasting any longer than it had to.

  “That’s what the file says,” Luca replied. “And my ID.”

  “Right, right.” Flipping over a paper on the chart, the cop huh’d under his breath before glancing up to meet Luca’s stare. “Yikes, hope someone is coming to drive you home because the drug you got hit with last night ... a horse tranquilizer, apparently. How much do you remember about—”

  “Little to nothing. As I told the nurses and doctors and the last cop that came in here. He was a bigger asshole than you, though. Chose the right career because I don’t think he would have made it as the doctor he pretended to be with a bedside manner like that.”

  The officer chuckled. “Some of us have interesting methods of interviewing.”

  “Or some of you just like to have fun.”

  “Or you’re lying.”

  Luca didn’t bother replying to that. What would be the point? He didn’t intend to shoot himself in the foot ... or stick it in his mouth, for that matter.

  “See,” the cop continued, still eyeing Luca for even the slightest sign of a lie, not that he would find it, “security footage tells us a lot about your movements and our mysterious woman’s last night. What we’re slightly more interested in than the fact you seemed to take the same stairwell where one of the Smithenson family’s security detail was found unconscious is what we saw in the elevator.”

  “Which was?”

  “You talked to her. She didn’t talk back. What did you say?”

  “Can’t remember,” Luca replied easily.

  Or lied easily.

  Depending on how one wanted to look at it.

  “You seemed familiar. Like you knew her.”

  The cop who hadn’t even bothered to introduce himself to Luca reached for a paper on top of a pile he had sat on the table at the end of the bed. Holding the one on the top up, it was a photo of Penny and Luca standing side by side in the elevator. It didn’t show Penny’s face—the wide brim of her hat hid that. Her white hair was visible, however, as was the way he clearly looked at her from the side with a grin that spoke of interest. Couldn’t hide that.