Page 16 of One Step After Another

“You know of it?”

“Of it,” Naz agreed quietly, “partly. They deal with assassins. The training and selling of them. Handling their creations for their buyers for a fee. And that alongside everything else I’ve heard about them is enough to tell me to stay the hell away because I don’t want their problems.”

“That’s going to be tough to do if you want me to find and retrieve Penny Dunsworth, Naz. I’m almost positive she’s one of them.

“Almost positive?”

“It’s taken me five years to even lay eyes on her, man.”

Naz’s jaw tightened. “And?”

“And that tells me the people behind her—maybe back then but definitely right now—are every reason why it’s taken me this long. What do you want me to do now? Where am I going from here? Either I back off because I have a new starting point that’s too dangerous for you, or I keep searching. Which do you want?”

A shadow passed by the shaded windows, quieting the two men just long enough for whoever it was to continue past the hospital room.

“I promised my wife answers about Penny and what happened all those years ago,” Naz said. “She blames herself ... she misses her. I want those answers, Luca. Don’t you? Don’t you want to know why she left—or who made her leave?”

Tell them I’m sorry, Penny had told him. As the drugs she shot into his neck kicked in, and she helped him to the floor, she had added softer, I always am.

“What if she doesn’t want to give the answers to us, Naz?”

Because that was a real possibility.