One Second After Another (The After Another Series #3) - Bethany-Kris Page 0,25
wasting his time at all. “The white ghost.”
“Yeah, man. So—”
“Did he have her location nailed down within New York?”
It was the only thing he cared to ask. The only thing that really mattered.
Keys quieted, and Luca had his answer before the man even said it. His heart sunk deep in his gut when the hacker muttered, “Most he could say was she had been in the state for a while and he could pinpoint her at or near the Hudson river in the past two days because she confirmed it. And we know that basically tells us nothing.”
The urge to punch his steering wheel came on so strongly that it shocked even himself. Luca swallowed back the desire, remembering the little boy still eating his gelato in the backseat. Not that the kid hadn’t occasionally seen violent things. It was the nature of their life.
He at least tried to give Cross some semblance of normal when he could—a lot like his father had done for him, and Naz still tried to do. Which was every reason why when something came up for business unexpectedly on Naz’s side of things, Luca was quick to jump in and take his godson off the man’s hands even though he had his own shit going on.
“Man, I’ve already said too much. It’s ... the code, okay?”
“Nothing you know will help me? That’s all I wanna know.”
“She put it on herself.”
“What?”
Keys swore severely under his breath before spitting out, “The bounty. She put it on herself.”
Jesus Christ.
The silence stretched on deafeningly as Luca tried to absorb what that meant for Penny. He couldn’t even pretend he came from her ... world. He only graced the surface with his business through Naz and doing retrieval work over the years. It wasn’t the same as the life Penny lived as an assassin for The League. He knew that.
But he wasn’t so ignorant that he couldn’t comprehend what it meant for her to take a step to put a bounty on herself. A world-class assassin whose moniker had only been whispered about in the tightest of circles for years.
It might take a week for New York to be in a state of chaos as anyone who had the means and motive to see the bounty through mobilized to New York to hunt down the infamous white ghost, but the next few days would be dangerous for Penny to even breathe near an uncovered window where she might be recognized or seen.
“You still there?” the hacker eventually asked.
Luca swallowed hard as his car came to a stop at a red light. “I ... I gotta go.”
He had to catch up to Penny.
Somehow.
And his day wasn’t over yet.
BEFORE NAZ HAD EVEN called Luca that day, he’d already been set on a task that needed his attention immediately. Time was running out for him to look into it when he’d gotten word about it that morning through a friend with connections to the journalist that had published the piece in the Times about Allegra’s history—using both her married name Dunsworth, and connecting it to her maiden name, Hatheway.
He didn’t have time to take his godson off Naz’s hands—even if it was just for a drive to drop him back off with his mother—but he also couldn’t say no. Not when he knew his friend was trying to get as much time with his son as possible while also dealing with the politics of family business as he took his father’s vacated seat for the business side of things.
And that was all before Keys called to drop his bomb.
Luca was pulling double-duty and doing so dangerously. He knew it as he leaned in the rear passenger door to hand his cell phone to his godson, telling Cross, “Play one of those games you like—I’ll be back in five minutes. Do not unlock the car for anybody. Got it, shithead?”
Cross gave him a look from the side. “Got it.”
“You better.”
“I do.”
All that attitude in such a small body. The kid just didn’t know what to do with it. A lot like his father, Luca supposed.
“Be good, buddy.”
Cross was already flipping through the pages of Luca’s phone when he closed the door and pulled out the fob to lock the car. Satisfied somebody wouldn’t be punching out the window of his car on a cool day when he was right across the street, he darted through slow