Page 4 of One Step After Another

2.

Penny

“MISS Carter, wheneveryou’re ready.”

Regardless of how many times Penny Dunsworth used aliases—many times over her five years as an assassin working for The League—she had never really become accustomed to the revolving door of identities. It was part of the job. Expected, even. Yet, hearing another name that wasn’t hers still took Penny a second to answer.

“Thank you,” she told the driver currently holding the right side, rear passenger door open. “We won’t need further help, or the car.”

“I was told to be here at twelve to—”

“Excuse me,” Penny said, stepping out of the vehicle and turning her back to the man as she grabbed the edge of the car door. It forced the driver to move, but also allowed the other passenger in the rear seat to exit as well. “Hurry. We’re not drawing attention here, Delilah. Remember?”

Compared to Penny’s form-fitted black gown, matching hat—that was better suited for the beach than the formal dinner and event happening a few doors away inside the Manhattan hotel—Delilah’s white get-up was quite a sight as she left the vehicle. Well, Delilah wasn’t her real name, but it was what her papers said, and Marise liked the option when Dare handed over the five different identifications for the job. Choices were always good.

Today, Marise was Delilah. Penny was Georgina. And none of it was true.

The skirt of Marise’s white gown, made up of layers of chiffon, ruffled in the wind but not much. The silk cloak with the large hood that kept her blonde hair and most of her face hidden from any view up above—camera angles, mostly—kept the loose layers of the gown from blowing wildly.

Side by side on the street, Penny and Marise probably appeared to be total opposites. She towered over the girl’s four and a half feet by a foot and half in her patent leather pumps. Their gowns were a contrast in both color and style. Even their hair—Marise with blonde curls, and Penny in her pin-straight black wig—couldn’t be more different.

And yet despite those obvious physical differences, if anyone asked, the story was simple—Penny was Marise’s mother. Or ... the identities they had taken on were a mother and daughter pair, for that matter.

On the surface, anyway.

Beneath that, well, things were a lot darker. As was usually the way in their business. A person couldn’t play with monsters and never come face to face with one, after all. In all her twenty-three years, it was one lesson Penny almost wished she had never learned. Thing was, if she hadn’t learned it, then she wouldn’t be who she was now.

“Miss Carter, this way, please,” said the man in a three-piece black suit with coiled wire hanging down from the comm in his ear. He held open the front door of the hotel while another man, dressed similarly, stood a foot back in the entryway. Definitely not hotel security—more likely part of the team for the father of the man Penny would soon be visiting upstairs in a suite.

Penny smiled. “Absolutely. Delilah, follow me.”

Her partner on the job said nothing but didn’t hesitate to trail behind Penny who followed the two men dressed in black. The men didn’t speak to each other, or the women walking only two feet behind. Or to any of the many people milling about in the large entry of the upscale hotel. Music and laughter filtered in through the open doorways of the bar and ballroom decorated in lengthy, sheer drapes.

Penny took all of it in. And barely even moved her head to do it.

Besides, it wasn’t like she hadn’t been to a dozen of these kinds of events when she was younger. A wealthy family, too much privilege and power ... of course, she had been dressed up and dragged to things exactly like this just because it was good for their last name to be tied to it all.

Not that she cared to think about it.

She never did.

Liar, her mind hissed as a hundred memories passed through her brain, making her heart beat harder and her chest tight. She was a liar because she thought about it too much.

Penny had just become better at hiding it. The League helped with that. Not that she was willing to admit the training they put her through had helped beyond anything more than teaching her how to kill another human in fifty different ways.

“Step inside,” the man to the left said as he and his partner came to a stop near the elevators. Only one was already open and waiting.

Penny moved into the open elevator at the far right of a bank of four. Marise didn’t need to be told to follow, nor did she raise her head enough to allow the cameras outside or inside the elevator to catch more than a shadow or the curve of her lips. The same way Penny’s hat kept her face from view despite it not really going with the outfit.

Win some, lose some.

“Floor eight, right?” Penny asked, smiling at the suits waiting outside.

“Floor eight. Suite eight-oh-one.”

She knew that, too.

At least the assholes could feel like they were really doing something more than just delivering a man’s fetish.