Page 38 of One Step After Another

A victim was on the line.

“Where’s the girl?” Penny asked, never taking her stare away from the men shutting their doors and doing a quick sweep of the street and movement around them. “She should be—”

“Maybe in the back. You know how this works out in broad daylight. Money first, transaction later. Sometimes at a different location. Play their game, and we see how it goes.”

Chase made sense.

Penny still didn’t feel right.

“That wasn’t the agreement made when contact was made,” Penny murmured.

“Shit changes all the time,” Chase replied. “You know that.”

That didn’t mean she trusted anyone but especially not skin traffickers who specialized in the trade of children. If there was anything she learned in her life, it was that monsters would always do the most monstrous things when given the chance.

Her current problem was bigger.

She didn’t have the time to reconsider their situation or the meeting. The men entered the pizzeria before Penny and Chase could discuss a change in their plans, forcing them to go ahead with their original one.

The thing was, that required a girl. One that was supposed to be delivered in exchange for the hundred grand that was to be transferred into an offshore bank account during the meeting. But there was no girl ... and she was pretty sure there wasn’t one waiting in the back of the black car—that they had left running—outside.

The few patrons of the pizzeria barely looked up from their pizzas or phones when the men entered. All the details had already been passed between the two parties. Chase and Penny could arrive first—although real names hadn’t been given, of course—and would sit on the right side of the bay windows together. Easily seen. Quick to leave when it was over. She would wear a black, long-sleeve dress with a red necklace. Chase would also wear a black suit with a red tie to match.

There was no mistaking them.

The men had no issue spotting them.

“Get this done,” Chase said, standing from the table as the men approached without greeting, “and we get the fuck out, right?”

“Right,” Penny agreed at the same, quiet level. “Once we have the girl.”

“Not if it means—”

“Where’s the product?” Penny asked the taller of the two men, the one on the left with a scar that ran down his cheek and left the side of his face droopy when they came to a stop only two feet away from their table. “Money won’t be transferred without at least an inspection.”

“Sorry, my wife is a bit ... particular about this sort of business,” Chase added, smiling tightly. “But she is correct. We were promised a look at the—”

“There is no girl,” Scarface said.

Shorty on the right quickly added, “The Elite send their regards to the white ghost.”

They wouldn’t. They wouldn’t be so brazen; so stupid. There wasn’t a chance.

And yet, Penny knew in that moment how badly of a mistake they had all made. Her, actually. Just her. She had made a terrible mistake. Maybe it was the emotion involved in these things that made it all unclear for her.

It didn’t matter.

Dare had been right—The Elite finally figured out what was happening to each of their members and that every kill Penny had made up, including her last, was all connected to them, their organization, and their business of trafficking children for wealthy pedophiles.

It was too late to fix her mistake.

Her ignorance ...

In a split second, as both men reached for the guns hidden in holsters beneath their jackets, Penny was all too aware that she was in the final moments of her life. The men paid no mind to the people or the employees of the business. They were clearly there with a mission—a job to get done.

Chase hit her from the side when the first gunshots rang out. Glass shattered—likely the window behind them. The screams echoed.

Penny was already reacting even as her body crashed to the floor with Chase’s heavy body falling on top of hers. She grabbed the gun that she kept in the holster at her inner thigh and the one Chase kept at his side before he could reach for it himself.