One Second After Another (The After Another Series #3) - Bethany-Kris Page 0,30

the shadows.

But the days turned into hours. And then minutes.

Luca should have been used to chasing ghosts by now, but it didn’t get easier. For whatever reason, the universe had decided to bless him with putting him in the right place at the right time that morning as he watched Penny scout the office building with several floors currently undergoing construction.

She was just there. He thought he’d hallucinated.

But no.

“In most cases,” he said, staying back behind the shadowed line that the hatch door afforded him. A three- or four-foot space on the roof separated him and Penny—a stream of yellow light illuminating the nothingness between them from the security light overhead. He doubted anyone could see her from the position she rested under the metal hood of the air conditioning unit, though. “But not for you. See, when I treated you like anything—anyone else—that I was tasked with finding, it always led me nowhere. You were never the same. You’re not like other people ... or things. How can I expect you to act like it?”

She made different choices. Her reasoning came from a different place. It couldn’t be the same.

He watched Penny’s back rise with a deep breath that he had to wonder was meant to steady her when she said, “If I ask you to leave—”

“I won’t.”

“You have to.”

She still hadn’t looked away from the scope. That crosswind came in strong with the next gust, and Penny cussed as her elbow tucked back along her side, telling him she had been preparing for a shot.

“I can’t fucking get it,” she muttered.

He still had a chance to make her think clearly. It was one last thread for him to grasp on and use because the rest of him felt battered like an old flag from the winds of chaos that this woman could create.

“It’s a big night—you know this is a stupid fucking move,” Luca told Penny. While the black fabric of her cropped tank top and cargo pants melted into the shadows around her, he could still see the way she tensed at the truth. “So you make a clean kill but then what—you spend the next six blocks in a gunfight with every person that’s hunting you.. There’s got to be a better way, Penny.”

“She can’t keep living.”

That was it.

That was all she said.

And God knew he understood ...

Penny was born into privilege. She had every reason to succeed. Except the people meant to love her had been the same people who hurt her in ways no one would ever truly comprehend. There was no innocence—no chance to be innocent. No gray when the world had to be so very black and white for her. She couldn’t be normal when they had broken her first, and then someone else had to go and make her the exceptional.

Only to tell her she couldn’t be that, either.

An exceptional lie.

He wondered if her entire life felt like it had led up to this moment. If so, then yes, he understood perfectly well why she wanted to take her chance tonight. Despite the risks, he might even do the same.

He simply didn’t think she had to.

“Penny—”

“She can’t keep being free,” Penny snarled from the ground.

“But you could do this in a better way.”

He dared to take a step forward, but that was the wrong move. The noise of his sneakers scuffing the roof had Penny jerking away from the rifle. She moved like lightning, sliding gracefully to her feet and darting through and beyond the stream of light to push him back toward the stairwell leading inward from the hatched door.

“Stay out of the light,” she told him.

Not go.

Not leave me alone.

Not even this is my business.

All of which he would have understood and even respected. Instead, she told him to stay out of the light, and he knew why. Anyone higher might see them—her. Him. He locked stares with her, desperate to find what she had left behind there. That thing growing between them. He was sure he found it in her wide blue orbs that reflected fear when her hand hit his chest again and she hissed, “Goddammit—stay out of the light, Luca.”

“Penny—”

“I didn’t have a clear shot.”

That was all she said before she turned away, ready to head back for her rifle. The festering anger and panic that had accompanied him from the moment he realized she had left him behind in Nevada finally came rushing to the surface when she dared to walk away from him at