Page 73 of One Second After Another

As she had been the one to seek him out and ask for his help, who was she to say that he wasn’t right? She was trying to trust him.

As much as she could.

Penny was surprised to see Dare followed through on his promise to only bring as many people as the Donati side of things. They made two, and their driver made a third. Cree stood a few feet behind Dare with his hands folded at his back, as usual. The man who didn’t exit the black four-door SUV kept his window rolled down with a sharp gaze on the new arrivals.

Penny and Cross stepped out of their vehicle at the end of a dirt road that stopped at the mouth of a large farming field far outside of New York City’s limits. Rows of gold wheat swayed like waves against the black backdrop of the open sky. She might have admired the many stars that dotted the sky and how peaceful it all seemed far away from the noise and movement of the city, but she couldn’t.

Not considering the circumstances.

“I appreciate you agreeing to this meeting, Dare,” Cross said.

The League’s highest-ranking member didn’t reply. Not at first. His piercing stare followed Penny’s every footstep until she and her companion were only five feet away from the man standing in his pressed slacks and red, silk button-down. Not an inch of Dare suggested the man was anything but calm and unbothered, but she knew that couldn’t be true.

After everything ... he must hate her.

She didn’t blame him.

“I had my reasons for agreeing,” Dare murmured, finally giving Cross his attention. “And let me say, it had very little to do with you.”

Cross nodded. “That’s fair.”

Penny asked what Cross didn’t—what she felt was the most obvious and important thing. “Then, why did you agree to this?”

Dare’s stare darted back to her and for a second, silence answered her back. She couldn’t even hear her own breath or heartbeat as the man considered her. If he really wanted her dead, she had no doubt that she would already be six feet under.

So, what was he waiting for?

“Because I have something to say—the only offer I am willing to make,” Dare said, “and there was no other way for me to tell you.”

“I did make it hard for you to catch up, didn’t I?”

Dare chuckled. “And yet here we are ...”

Exactly.

“The offer?” Penny asked.

“It’s more like the consequences, Penny,” her former handler explained. “We’re going to allow you to finish what you started with The Elite ... without interference from our organization.”

Her next exhale stuttered, but she didn’t have time to reply.

Dare was quick to add, “However, The League will be available and ready to collect on the bounty of a former member once your task is completed. You have two weeks without any contact or issues from us to kill Allegra Dunsworth, but that’s it. We will come to collect one way or another when the two weeks are up. Someone will be there, Penny. Look for them.”

Beside her in the darkness, Cross stiffened. Yet, the man didn’t speak. This wasn’t about him, after all. He had simply made this meeting possible for her to do with what she wanted.

He’d been right.

She was here to learn how it would end.

The only illumination of the quiet people, dirt road and wheat field came from the moon overhead and the dimmed lights of their vehicle still running twenty paces back. Penny did find solace in the silence and the finality of it all, even as she wished Cree would speak where he stood behind Dare, or that she felt better about the weight now sitting inside her heart.

Instead, she was numb when she told Dare, “I’ll take that deal.”

• • •

“PENNY—”

“Do you have a phone?” she interrupted, not giving Cross a chance to say a thing after they had watched the taillights of the SUV disappear down the dirt road.