Page 69 of One Step After Another

“There are at least a dozen members inside The League’s complex at any given time,” Penny said, shrugging. “Coming and going ... doing whatever the fuck you want them to do when they’re not out on a job. If you wanted my companion dead, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation, and he wouldn’t be tuning the piano right now.”

That comment had both men looking at the screens. Sure enough, Luca had opened the Baby Grand and already had a little box of tools they kept beneath the piano opened in front of him while he leaned over the side to work. Despite being alone in an unfamiliar place, one that felt like danger the second a person stepped inside the building, he didn’t seem very concerned about his predicament.

He was either crazy.

Or ... something else entirely.

Penny didn’t know, but she would be foolish to say a part of her didn’t like it. Because she did.

“Someone would already be moving his corpse while you told me it was inevitable. Am I wrong?” she asked.

Dare openly glared.

He didn’t deny her words, though.

Quietly, Cree told her, “I requested that he step back and try to handle the Luca situation in another way. For you.”

That was surprising.

Penny didn’t show it.

“Downstairs, you acted like—”

“Like you disobeyed orders and instructions,” Cree interjected, “because you did. It’s the whys that interest me more, Penny. I’m just not sure you’re willing to discuss those reasons quite yet.”

Well ...

She changed direction.

What was the point of this conversation, anyway?

“Are you sure the meeting in Hell’s Kitchen was a trap set to draw me out?” she asked Dare.

“Without question.”

“And why wasn’t it caught?”

Dare scrubbed a hand down his face, the frustration rushing back to his features in a blink. “Because your feelings got in the way and I seem to indulge the emotional needs of my people instead of telling you all to shove it up your fucking ass—”

“Dare,” Cree spoke up, not unkindly.

“It’s true!” Anger exploded from the normally cold man, his red blazer unbuttoning from the force of his arms flying outward wildly. “We all knew she wouldn’t be able to turn her back on the idea that a girl needed help, and we fed her right into the mouth of a wolf. We lost a damn good member of this organization because one of us wasn’t willing to send her on that job alone. All because not a single one of you wanted to look at her and tell her no. She is not a child. The rest of them, they’re not children, either. They know what they signed up for here. If we just stopped factoring in the way we feel about these people, Cree, and focused on their jobs—”

“They’re not robots. You tried that. They—”

“Oh, fuck off.”

Cree quieted.

Dare made a harsh noise under his breath, telling Penny, “We didn’t do nearly enough homework on what we were dealing with—had we done so before sending you to New York on a last-minute wild goose chase, then we would have seen what they didn’t want us to. That they were using the same tactics we did to draw them out. It’s not a mistake we’ll make again. Any side trips after this will not be happening.”

Penny didn’t blink. “Fine. What about the rest of The Elite?”

“Renzo passed along the information about that side of things, I assume?”

“A little,” she said. “I want to hear the rest from you.”

“They’re working with what they have. Which just changed into a whole lot more than we might be able to handle.”