Page 6 of One Step After Another

“Mr. Smithenson?” Penny called when the hotel door clicked shut behind her. “Your delivery is here and ready for your attention.”

“Just a sec,” came the reply.

From a room across the large space; probably the master bedroom in the space. A quiet, dimly lit hotel room stared back at her as she pulled the nine-millimeter from the bag that the men in suits downstairs hadn’t even bothered to check.

So fucking sloppy.

It was kind of sad, really.

“A million dollars earned to smile and eat dinner. Two hundred guests at five thousand dollars a plate. I can do the math ... not a bad night for a politician raising funds for his next run,” Penny said, screwing in the silencer she had taken from the bag.

“Oh, that’s before the donations are added into the—”

Penny glanced up when Elijah’s words cut off. She took in many things at once. The suite was about as fancy, large, and expensive as she expected. Luxurious rugs. Rich tapestries. Ornate lighting overhead and furniture that was appropriately stuffy but also old. Nothing that interested her.

Except for the man who had come to stand in the doorway across the room. He was already prepped to party. Dress shirt unbuttoned; slacks undone and showcasing the band of his briefs. A glass of something amber colored in his left hand.

Maybe it was the shock of seeing only one woman—and no little girl—standing there or it could have been the gun in her hand that stunned him into silence.

“What the fuck are—”

“Nighty night,” Penny said, not wasting time.

She couldn’t. Not when she had to be in and out of the hotel in fifteen minutes or less.

Before Elijah could react—run, scream or otherwise—Penny did what she was there to do. Fifty hours of target practice with weapons meant she didn’t miss a shot. Shit, she didn’t unholster a weapon unless she intended to fire it, and she didn’t shoot unless she meant for it to hit the target in front of her.

That was her training. She couldn’t forget it.

It was a single shot. Hit Elijah between the eyes.

Penny had already tucked the weapon back away into her bag and stepped further away from the door before the dead man’s body hit the carpeted floor with a dull thud. Such a morbid, but indifferent, sound for the end of a life.

Not that this particular life mattered.

If given the choice, Penny would have taken a lot more time with the kill. Really made it worth her time to be there in the first place while Elijah suffered as she was sure he’d made many others suffer. People like her ... even if he hadn’t hurt her.

Monsters just like him did before. Could she be blamed for wanting to play with her kills in that case?

She didn’t bother to give the corpse a second glance before stepping over it to finish the rest of her job. Killing Elijah was certainly on the list but gathering anything that would lead to anyone else—higher, more powerful people—doing even worse things than him ... well, that was a better deal.

Two birds, one stone.

Penny liked that. The people she worked for preferred efficiency, too.

She found his laptop and phone in the bedroom. And a USB drive in the pocket of a pair of pants hanging in the back of the closet. All in all, the kill and collection took less than five minutes.

That was a new record.