One Second After Another (The After Another Trilogy Book 3)

by Bethany-Kris

  ONE SECOND AFTER ANOTHER

  The After Another Trilogy, Book 3

  BETHANY-KRIS

  National Sexual Assault Hotline: 800.656.HOPE (4673)

  Chat Online: online.rainn.org

  CONTENTS

  ONE SECOND AFTER ANOTHER

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  20.

  21.

  22.

  23.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  OTHER BOOKS

  Copyright

  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?

  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.