Page 17 of One Step After Another

6.

Penny

IVORY and sugar pinedanced beneath Penny’s fingertips. The notes that echoed from the keys she played reverberated through the empty, dimly lit room in a compound she hadn’t visited in weeks. That was usually how it worked when she was sent out on a job.

“I know you’re there,” Penny said, never looking away from the white cement bricks that made up the wall where the piano faced. “And you know I hate it when you stand behind me like you intend to—”

“I’m not going to sneak up on you,” Cree replied. “Just enjoying the music.”

Penny rolled her eyes.

Cree would say that, the asshole. The fact was, her handler—one of two at the League whom she answered to—knew her better than anyone. And even though she was supposed to be upstairs briefing Dare, the other asshole in the whole handler equation of her life, on her latest job ... the first place she visited when returning was never to him.

Of course, Cree knew.

He knew everything.

“I also know you just rolled your eyes,” Cree added like he could read her mind.

Penny didn’t even bother to glance over her shoulder. She didn’t need to in order to see the image of the large Native man with his glossy black braid falling neatly over his shoulder. Those dark brown-black eyes of his, the same color as molasses, would watch her with an aura of intensity she had become accustomed to over the years. His stare could feel both cold but probing at the same time. The man only needed to look at any one of the assassins he helped train to know the things hidden inside their souls.

It was kind of ... fucked up.

And freaky.

“Dare is waiting whenever you’re ready,” Cree said.

“I’m sure.”

“And he’ll wait for whenever you’re done.”

Yes, he would.

“Although, he would rather not wait in this case,” the man added.

Everyone here had come to learn a long time ago that when it came to Penny, it was far easier to get what they wanted by allowing her what she needed.

Nevada was supposed to be home. The place she always came back to again and again—year after year. Job after job. That was the rules she agreed to when she signed up to be trained here. No matter how far away she was sent for her next assignment, she always ended up right back in the Nevada desert inside a building full of people with the same skills as her.

It was a home, of sorts. Homebase for The League, maybe. She much preferred the hotel room that her handlers kept on a tab for her to come and go as she pleased whenever she stayed longer than a day or more in the state before heading off on the next assignment.

For her, she had forgotten what home felt like a long time ago. Before dark rooms, water tanks, knife training, and learning how many ways to kill a person while also memorizing the most effective methods to create poisons from simple ingredients found in a home.

The League didn’t take away the place she called home because she never had one even before she came here. She thought she did—once. Almost. Until the idea of having somewhere to call home meant causing the people who created it for her unimaginable pain.

It was a dangerous thing, hope. The one and only time she had allowed herself any kind of hope for her future it had been ripped away before she even knew what had happened. Partly by her own choice, if she were being honest.

Self-sabotage had long been one of Penny’s favorite pastimes. Back when she still had daily suicidal ideations and a blade that allowed her to feel something other than pain with every cut against her pale skin.

But that time was gone.

And now here she was.

It wasn’t lost on her that despite not being able to consider The League’s compound home—or the hotel she used as an apartment when needed—that she did, in fact, find comfort here. Specifically, the music room deep within the belly of the complex that had only been created after Penny’s arrival.

It just showed up one day.

She didn’t go near it—didn’t breathe within ten feet of it—for the first two years. After all, she had thought that coming to this place meant giving up every part of her that had come before. Including her promising career as a pianist.