“He did appreciate that you sent over the electronics from the Elijah Smithenson job yesterday when you first arrived, but since you waited an entire day ... and you’re in here right now, I’m sure you see where I’m going here.”
“Rushing things along?” she asked.
Cree shrugged. “Is what it is, kiddo.”
Penny scowled at that title. One he’d called her since she first walked through the front doors of this hellish place. “I’m twenty-three.”
“And I’m old enough to have gray instead of black hair, but these genes of mine are determined to keep me young. What is your point?”
“Since when does Dare get you to do his dirty work?” Penny flipped a hand toward the ceiling and the upper levels of the complex where she knew, without a doubt, Dare was currently watching their exchange on one of his many cameras. People couldn’t change who they were—another thing The League taught her—they could only hide who they used to be. “He knows where to find me.”
“You are deflecting,” Cree murmured, “but this time, it’s not about the piano. Just like the piano thing a minute ago wasn’t about the piano, Penny. I get the feeling the job didn’t go exactly as planned, you’re likely aware that we know, and that’s why you don’t want to go upstairs.”
A frown pulled at her lips.
He wasn’t wrong.
Again.
“Well?” Cree asked.
She wished she had even a tenth of the percent of information about this man that he knew about her. Or even the guy upstairs. She didn’t even know her handler’s last names; only that they let her kill every monster they could find.
All she knew about Cree and Dare and this place they called home were the things they could do—to her, to people she cared about, and to the ones she hated more than anything.
Everyone had to make choices. She had made hers long ago. Which was why she left the piano bench and headed upstairs to brief Dare. Even if that was the last thing she wanted to do.
“LAPTOP WAS WORTHLESS,” Dare said when Penny finished recapping the important details of her trip to New York and the hit on Elijah Smithenson. “As was his phone, but we expected that.”
“And the USB drive?”
“You didn’t find that little device anywhere near the computer, did you?”
“Nope.”
“Filled with what you would expect for a man of his tastes,” Dare informed with a dry inflection that said nothing he found on the drive shocked him. That was a sad fact about this entire world she had fallen into; the monsters were everywhere, and they did the most monstrous of things. Nothing was surprising. “All files were, of course, wiped of anything usable regarding metadata, but we’ll see what our people can do with the videos and photos. Connect it back, if possible. I assume you don’t want to see—”
“Would rather not,” Penny interjected shortly. “I don’t need visuals when I already have a whole memory bank of my own to get me through cold nights, thanks.”
Beside her, Cree folded his arms over his chest but avoided looking her way. Still, he said quietly, “Have you considered you might be able to help those ch—”
“I am helping.”
Cree let out a weighted exhale. Dare didn’t miss a step and continued with his previous discussion like the exchange between Penny and his partner beside her didn’t happen at all.
“We can safely assume if Mr. Smithenson was willing to go outside his usual connections within The Elite for his fix,” Dare said, his back facing Penny while he observed the many security cameras keeping watch on the halls and rooms of the compound, “then perhaps other members will do the same in the coming months. That will make knocking out a few more of them easier than we’d hoped. This is a good thing.”
“Did you consider it might only be because of recent events?” Penny asked.
Dare lifted his silk-covered shoulders. The sky-blue hue of his button-down was a stark contrast against the light of the screens in front of him. “Depends on what you mean.”
“I think it’s likely the only reason he did go outside of the group is that their members keep showing up dead. Do you think they haven’t caught on yet that someone is hunting inside their group? It was bound to happen.”
“We don’t have proof of that.”
“Yet,” Penny muttered. “It is inevitable. We knew that when we moved on to the group in the states. I’m sure they know it, too.”
Dare didn’t reply.
He rarely did to her attitude.
“Either way,” Dare added, “we continue like we have. Carefully. One step at a time. We don’t move without purpose, and we don’t hit without—”
“I know.”
Finally, Dare turned on his heels his ice-cold stare burrowing holes into her stoic form across the room. “Anything else you want to fill me in on while you’re here? Or should I pre-emptively lock all the doors leading to the music room, so you can play unbothered for the next two hours before you leave?”
“Does my playing bother you?”
Cree tipped his head her way. “Penny.”
She knew it didn’t bother them.
They gave her the room.
“This entire conversation would go faster—and easier—if Dare just said what he wanted to say instead of trying to dance around it like I’ll willingly offer it.”
“Why won’t you?” Dare asked.
Like Cree, her other handler was approaching a later age in his life. Gray had started to color his hair, though, and the lines on his face gave him a visual sense that he had learned many things in his life. But the same way Cree could just look at Penny and know things, so did Dare. She wasn’t sure if that was because she wore her truths on her sleeve or if it was something else. Something about them.
Either way, she hated it.
“Because it wasn’t an issue,” Penny said.
“A man that has been tracking you for years finally catches up to you while you’re on a job, causes a problem during the—”
“After, Dare. The hit was done.”
“Fact remains. He is an issue.”
“Luca Puzza is just a man who knows my face,” Penny said firmly. “You’re right, he’s been chasing my trail for years, and this is the first time he got close. A stroke of luck, nothing more. It’s not something we need to act on. I handled it. Get your people on the reason why he found me, and work to make sure that doesn’t happen again. There’s no reason to make it bigger than it is.”
Dare’s jaw tightened. A sure sign he was pissed.
And didn’t believe her.
He shouldn’t.
Not that Penny would willingly say that out loud. Seeing her past right in front of her eyes had been a frank reminder of things—and people—she had been running away from for years. That didn’t mean she planned to do anything with the complication he posed.
“He could be a problem to the grander plan, especially now that you’re slightly easier to track being in the states more often while we infiltrate and dismantle The Elite,” Dare explained. “I’m giving you the option now to allow me to correct the problem before I make the choice on my own because you leave me nothing else to work with. You know the deal, Penny. To make this work, nothing else exists ... nothing from your past, your present, or your future.”