Page 27 of One Step After Another

The reply was short and sweet: The white ghost is already gone—typical job. The hotel in Manhattan. No problems.

Penny blinked, surprised at how brazen the asshole was in the information he gave about her work in New York. Placing the laptop to the table next to her chair, she grabbed the cell phone she had shoved in the pocket of her cut-off jean shorts and dialed a familiar number.

The League’s number one hacker picked up.

“Did you see the latest on the forum?” Penny asked before the girl could even greet her.

“I did not,” Jewel replied, “but you know the program we have constantly running will flag it and scrub it. Like it always does.”

“Recently posted. Probably too early for the program to catch it. I did. They called me out by the moniker.”

“Mmm, the white ghost. You would think they might get a little more ... original.”

Penny rolled her eyes. “That’s not the point. Wipe it, would you? Don’t let it stay up until the program finds and flags it. That could take until the morning. I found it; it’s there. Scrub it clean.”

Jewel sighed heavily, the noise cracking on the phone. “Should I just expect you to call me every time you go on one of your dark web binges? This is the third time this week, Penny. I liked it better when they had you overseas, and the time zones fucked up your ability to contact me on a regular basis. Cree told me to stop enabling you, by the way. I think he’s right.”

Well, this was nice and all, but ...

“Are you going to scrub it or not?”

Jewel muttered something unintelligible under her breath before the clack of computer keys echoed in the background. “Already working on it ...” A few seconds later, the hacker said, “Ah, your buddy’s little friend again, I see. You know, I looked him up.”

“Looked who—”

“Luca Puzza—the one who chases you all the damn time. Figured if he could look for you, then we could look for him. Better to know your common enemy, as the saying goes.”

Penny’s brow dipped. “And?”

“As someone keeping your existence on the down-low ... he’s an ornery fucker that I doubt is going to give it up any time soon. But.”

“But what?”

“As a woman with two eyes, a vagina, and working ovaries that make me do stupid things when I see a good looking man, I mean, listen ... it might not be such a bad thing to let the guy catch you. Even once.”

Penny didn’t even reply to that.

She couldn’t because her throat had suddenly grown tight. Like her stomach, too, and the way she squeezed her thighs together at the very idea. And this was exactly why she didn’t want to respond to Jewel’s comment about Luca. That stupid little crush of hers from back when she was a teenager seemed to follow her straight into adulthood; being a different person with a whole new life did nothing for her hormones, apparently.

She was not that weak. A gorgeous man and a few memories from her younger years shouldn’t be enough to make her stupid. Yet, it did. So, Penny wouldn’t indulge it at all.

Simple.

“I am going to follow Cree’s advice and stop enabling you, though,” Jewel said. “Nothing good comes from you getting on those classifieds and forums, and you know it. Shit, the last time you found old photos of yourself up for sa—”

“Thanks, Jewel. Later.”

Penny hung up the phone and tossed it aside before Jewel could say something that might unintentionally send her spiraling into a dark place. God knew she visited that hell more often than she should.

Besides, Jewel wasn’t wrong. Neither was Cree. That didn’t mean Penny intended on telling either of them they were right.

She considered doing another scan of the forums or classifieds, but it probably wasn’t going to do much for her except leave her in a shitty headspace for the rest of the night. Gathering her things, she left the balcony for something better.

Ten minutes later, she sank beneath the hot water that she used to fill the clawfoot tub in the bathroom. So hot, in fact, that steam curled up around the edges of the tub. Setting her arms along the edge for her fingers to hang over the edge, she listened to the droplets of water fall from her digits to the floor.

Drip.

Drip.