Page 10 of One Second After Another

“Do you think about me?”

Silence answered back.

It actually made Penny smile.

Then, her mother sucked in a hiss before saying, “Penny—”

She didn’t get more out.

Penny wouldn’t let her.

Nothing was on Allegra’s time anymore. She controlled nothing about Penny. It took years to figure that out, but here she was.

“Did you see me coming?” she asked.

A squeak echoed on the other end of the call, as if Allegra had jumped out of her chair. The woman’s next words came out sharp and stinging when she said, “You little bitch—do you know the mess you’ve caused us? You are dead. How long do you think you can last before we find you?”

Yes, she knew.

Too well.

She regretted nothing.

It had to happen.

“I only need to stay ahead of you, actually,” Penny returned. “What’s left of your organization now, Mother? Every move I’ve made has taken something else from you, hasn’t it? There isn’t very much left. Is The Elite even capable of going up against me now—or someone else, for that matter, if you step on the wrong toes trying to get to me?”

The League, she meant. Not that she would say it. That would simply give her mother information she might not otherwise have. Penny wouldn’t play that game. Just this phone call was dangerous enough.

And she only had one thing left to tell Allegra. Little else really mattered, and she refused to give the woman any more of her life or time than she needed to. Even in her death, Allegra Dunsworth would only get what she deserved and nothing more.

It was all Penny could promise.

The only thing she guaranteed.

“The white ghost is coming for you,” Penny told her mother. “Watch for me, Allegra. I’ll be seeing you.”

Penny ended the call as her gaze found the clock on the motel room’s wall. Directly over the bed, it was the only thing on the walls. The second hand kept ticking. A lot like the beats of her broken heart that smashed against her ribcage because just talking to her mother was enough to damn near unravel everything that kept Penny sane.

Tick, tick, tick.

The sound of the clock echoed in the back of her mind. It continued counting down the seconds until she could finally finish this. One after another. She watched the time go.

What choice did she have?

3.

Luca

OVER the years, Luca occasionally found himself in ... precarious situations. For a lack of a better word. Situations where he didn’t think there was any way out. Yet, he always managed to do exactly that in the end.

He wasn’t sure this was the same. Never mind if it would end the same way.

At least, Cree and his men hadn’t bothered to do more than tie Luca up while they delivered him to the compound in the middle of the Nevada desert. He didn’t have to wonder where he was when he had already been there once—The League’s home base. But that was where the good side of things ended.

Luca’s prison stared back at him from where he sat in the corner of a room with cement walls and floors. Dampness coated his lungs with every breath, and the shivers crawled over his body the more he tried to get comfortable.

Or warm.