Page 18 of One Step After Another

Except someone had taught her that the piano always meant pain for her. She hadn’t learned to play for her own peace of mind, or even because she loved the music.

Not until Naz and Roz.

And then The League ... well, the piano became a solace in a very dark—

“Does playing when you’re here still take you away from what it all is—can you pretend to be someone else?” Cree asked.

Penny sighed. “Not when someone talks over my shoulder.”

“You’ve not even missed a note. I’m barely bothering you. Don’t deflect. I don’t indulge your sarcasm like everyone else does. Not when I see it for what it is. Another way to protect anyone from getting close enough to your sharp edges where—”

Her fingers slammed down hard on the keys, making deep notes clang through the room and stopping Cree from spouting anymore of his Yoda bullshit. He wouldn’t be wrong. She also just didn’t care to hear it.

Was that so wrong?

Penny swung around on the piano bench to stare at the towering, broad-shouldered man leaning in the doorway to ask, “Is there something you need? Something other than asking questions you already know the answers to?”

“Dare would like an update sooner rather than later.”

“I’m on my way.”

“He did appreciate that you sent over the electronics from the Elijah Smithenson job yesterday when you first arrived, but since you waited an entire day ... and you’re in here right now, I’m sure you see where I’m going here.”

“Rushing things along?” she asked.

Cree shrugged. “Is what it is, kiddo.”

Penny scowled at that title. One he’d called her since she first walked through the front doors of this hellish place. “I’m twenty-three.”

“And I’m old enough to have gray instead of black hair, but these genes of mine are determined to keep me young. What is your point?”

“Since when does Dare get you to do his dirty work?” Penny flipped a hand toward the ceiling and the upper levels of the complex where she knew, without a doubt, Dare was currently watching their exchange on one of his many cameras. People couldn’t change who they were—another thing The League taught her—they could only hide who they used to be. “He knows where to find me.”

“You are deflecting,” Cree murmured, “but this time, it’s not about the piano. Just like the piano thing a minute ago wasn’t about the piano, Penny. I get the feeling the job didn’t go exactly as planned, you’re likely aware that we know, and that’s why you don’t want to go upstairs.”

A frown pulled at her lips.

He wasn’t wrong.

Again.

“Well?” Cree asked.

She wished she had even a tenth of the percent of information about this man that he knew about her. Or even the guy upstairs. She didn’t even know her handler’s last names; only that they let her kill every monster they could find.

All she knew about Cree and Dare and this place they called home were the things they could do—to her, to people she cared about, and to the ones she hated more than anything.

Everyone had to make choices. She had made hers long ago. Which was why she left the piano bench and headed upstairs to brief Dare. Even if that was the last thing she wanted to do.

• • •

“LAPTOP WAS WORTHLESS,” Dare said when Penny finished recapping the important details of her trip to New York and the hit on Elijah Smithenson. “As was his phone, but we expected that.”

“And the USB drive?”

“You didn’t find that little device anywhere near the computer, did you?”

“Nope.”