Page 74 of One Second After Another

She didn’t have a reason to believe Dare would return with Cree and their driver to go back on his word and finish the job of killing her early, but ...

“Of course, I have a phone,” Cross replied.

“I wasn’t sure. I thought maybe you hadn’t brought one—no way to track you.”

He rolled his eyes. “You work with too many hackers.”

“Your son is a hacker.”

Sort of.

Point was, if he wanted to state the obvious, then so could she.

Cross scowled, then, muttering, “I know the risk. What do you need a phone for?”

That was a tricky answer, and not particularly one she wanted to give. Yet, as Cross stared at her from the side, waiting for a viable reason that she would want to use his phone at a time like this, she decided to be honest.

“I’d really like to speak to Luca,” she admitted.

It was selfish. She wouldn’t be able to tell Luca anything about what was happening. Not without sending him into a panic that might put him in danger. She wouldn’t do that. He was going to ask, though.

She knew it.

And yet ...

“Could I use your phone?” she asked quietly.

Cross let out a sigh as he dug for the phone that he eventually produced to her. Penny took the device he dangled without comment, but he was quick to ask, “He’s a good man, isn’t he?”

She blinked, not expecting that.

He didn’t give her time to react before he added, “And he wants to be yours—your man, or so I was told. How is he supposed to do that now?”

Truth was power.

But truth was also pain.

Penny hid hers well even as he took the phone without reply to his statements. Instead, she asked, “Where should I call? I don’t think he has a phone and—”

“I heard he’s been staying with my son. I assume you know Nazio’s home phone number. He’s never changed it.”

She did know it.

Penny dialed the number without much thought to what she would say when someone answered the phone. Someone did—it was Roz. Through a painful whisper, she asked for the man who had given her everything to live for more times than he probably knew.

She didn’t know what she would say to him, either. And because of that, when Luca’s dark Penny echoed through the phone’s speaker, she lied.

But she also told the truth.

“I love you, Luca—I’ll see you soon.”

20.

Penny

THE sniffles, soft murmurs, and footsteps followed the sea of the grieving that walked behind a casket made of gold. From the bars the ten pallbearers used to lift the ornate, gaudy casket to the lids that had shut Charles Hatheway into his coffin.

Well ...