One Second After Another (The After Another Series #3) - Bethany-Kris Page 0,59
make shit move in little time. He figured it was about time that he started spending some dollars. What good was it sitting there doing nothing, anyway?
It was also another way for him to distract himself from the giant hole in his life. A black space that seemed to be sucking all the good energy he had left with every passing second that he tried to pretend it wasn’t there.
He assumed this was what it felt like to be heartbroken—a little empty, lost, and too quiet. Not quite right.
“Thanks,” he told the enforcer when the man passed an envelope into the car. Luca packed it away in a bag on the passenger seat, and was already maneuvering the car out of the parking spot by the time the man had turned to leave. He gave the enforcer a two-fingered wave but didn’t glance the man’s way to see if it was returned.
Just as he pulled the car back onto the road, the Bluetooth in the car connected a call from the newest cell phone he had picked up to keep in contact with the important people who needed him. Or those he was paying to keep him up-to-date on information.
The number on the screen told him he was dealing with the latter.
“Keys,” Luca greeted when he picked up the call. “Tell me the good news, man.”
He drummed his fingers against the steering wheel as the car came to a stop behind a white SUV at a red light. Good news was reaching—he mostly expected the same news Keys had been giving him for days when it came to Penny and any possible sightings or word about the white ghost.
“Where are you?” the hacker asked.
“What’s wrong?”
It wasn’t unusual for Keys to ask Luca about his position when the man called—he was convinced it was because the hacker just couldn’t help himself and everything was a challenge. Even finding Luca’s digital footprint down to the goddamn millisecond.
It was strange for the man to be so soft-spoken ... so unsure.
“Luca—”
He swallowed hard, his fingers wrapping the leather of the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white from the pressure. When was that light going to turn green? “Keys.”
“The bounty’s been collected, man. The bounty for the white ghost. It was just announced on a vanishing forum with digital proof—for a cost, of course.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“Luca—”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s a sealed file of a single photograph—it’s her; if she wasn’t dead, she would have been pretty soon after. Confirmed by a second witness on a another vanishing forum. The bounty is claimed—it’s been paid. She’s dead.”
He had a lot of questions. Details he would never have. A horn blared behind him because the light was finally green, it seemed.
His vision was blurry as wet lines made tracks down his cheeks to his clenched jaw. He really only wanted to know one thing more than anything else.
Why.
That wouldn’t be answered, either.
THERE WAS A STILLNESS in the darkness that Luca appreciated. The quiet looming of shadows when the sun finally started to fall beyond a treeline was one of his favorite sights to see. He tried to show respect to the end of every day by taking a moment to watch it go because it meant he would soon be given the gift of seeing another start anew.
Except he didn’t find the usual solace at the end of a day as he stared over the rear property of his family’s home. He wasn’t sure why Zeke and Katya’s home was where everyone—from Naz and Roz to even Cross and his wife, Catherine—gathered, but they did. Food was cooked as calls were made and hushed tones turned to angry yells. Between friends, fathers and sons ... shit, Luca even wanted to rage at himself.
They looked for her.
All of them tried—every man who had a contact they could pull tried to find her. Hospitals, morgues, organizations, and even walk-in clinics were called and given the same questions. None had seen the blonde, blue-eyed woman they asked about—Penny was a ghost all over again.
“Still nothing,” Naz said when he stepped out onto the rear veranda of Luca’s parents’ home. In the wicker rocking chair, Cross finally glanced away from the cigar he had been working on lighting while Luca was lost in his thoughts and the oncoming night. “A new day is coming—let it be a restart.”
Luca didn’t even look the man’s way when he muttered, “A restart to what?”