One Second After Another (The After Another Series #3) - Bethany-Kris Page 0,21

called his name again. “Yeah, but with a hug. Right?”

“The way I thought a hug should feel. If someone made one with music. If I could hug you through mine.”

Not that she ever told anyone that fact.

“Okay.” Cross turned back toward the house. “That’s what I thought.”

“Cross, are you in those damn woods again?”

Penny sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of Nazio strolling down the steps of the porch and heading their way. Toward the woods.

“I have to—”

Penny didn’t even get to finish her sentence before the boy had turned back around. He darted for her, his small arms wrapping around her middle. The hug was light at first, and then it tightened with warmth.

“Please don’t tell them you saw me,” she whispered, hugging the boy back. “I only want to help them, okay?”

If she could have stayed right there in that moment with a piece of her past cementing her between then and now, she would have. Forever.

“I won’t tell.” Cross peered up at her when he took a step back and let her go, asking, “You’ll come back, won’t you?”

She chose not to lie.

“I’m sure gonna try.”

7.

Penny

ALLEGRA was being smart.

Too smart, really.

Penny didn’t think for a minute that anything the woman did was just because. Every decision Allegra made had a purpose. From staying out of the spotlight for many years to announcing a marriage to a man who was a public figure. All of it did something for Allegra at the end of the day. It served her needs.

Hunting her when she was underground had been difficult—and the focus for Penny had always been taking out other Elite members until it was time to go after the ones sitting at the very top. However, it hadn’t been entirely impossible.

Allegra’s newest hat trick, the marriage to the New Jersey senator, made everything harder. Or at the very least, it made Penny’s job difficult. That job being to kill her. Well, it wasn’t hard to do that, per se. The difficulty came from the fact there was no clean way out. The woman was surrounded at all angles by people protecting her.

But Allegra wanted attention, right? Why else would she decide to marry a man that she knew would cause her face to be splashed across the papers and evening news reports?

Oh, yes.

Because she stupidly thought that would also protect her. That there was no way anyone would come after her because it wouldn’t be a clean hit with all the cameras watching. How would someone get away without scrutiny after it was all said and done?

Allegra made shit hard.

Penny decided to ... help.

“Jocelyn,” Penny greeted, taking a seat at the two-chair table in a quiet cafe in downtown Manhattan. She wouldn’t usually travel so deep into the city—but especially not where there were so many suits around. Something about it made her uncomfortable in a way she didn’t care to explore, but sometimes, it couldn’t be helped.

The journalist sitting on the other side of the table glanced up with wide eyes at the sight of Penny. Her hair was the color of wind-swept wheat, tied back into a neat ponytail at the nape of her neck. The way she tried to fix the waistband of her pencil skirt and then her black heels, one of which she beat rhythmically against the table leg, spoke to her nervousness at simply having Penny nearby.

She should be nervous. All of this was dangerous.

“What are you doing here?” Jocelyn demanded, her brown eyes darting from Penny to the windows that overlooked the bustling street outside. No one was paying them any mind, but that didn’t stop the woman’s paranoia from showing itself. Penny expected that. “You told me—”

“Everything is fine. I wasn’t followed. No one even knows where I am.”

The reassurance didn’t stop Jocelyn from swallowing hard enough for Penny to hear it across the table. The woman drummed her manicured nails to the table, the white tips reminding Penny of the first time she approached the journalist at her favorite nail salon with a story for an article—and proof on hand—that she wouldn’t be able to refuse.

She hadn’t.

Two days ago, the article published on the third page of the Times newspaper detailing the crimes Allegra’s last husband—and Penny’s dead father—had been convicted of and how his wife walked away without a scratch despite the suspicions and proof of her involvement in his acts. Penny dared to use one of her phone cards and a new burner to watch the