“Quite aware, Dare. You shouted so loud when they first arrived that I’m positive anyone inside the complex right now heard it and knows he’s here.”
“I’ve had just about all of your smart ass comments that I can take today, Cree.”
“Fair enough,” Cree returned.
“But you.”
Dare swung around all at once, the scowl etched into his face looked deep enough to stick permanently. He pointed a finger at Penny like it was supposed to mean something to her, but she only stared back, unaffected.
“Yes?” she asked.
“We have enough problems on our hands without you adding more to it for us to handle,” he said, arching a brow as though he expected her to deny it. “And what did you do? Exactly that, Penny. You created another mess for me to clean. You know what I should do? I should have the man killed and buried out there in the desert. That would solve everything.”
Her heart dared to stutter in her chest, skipping a beat and clenching painfully at the very idea this might not end the way she had hoped it would by bringing Luca here.
Dare didn’t make threats.
Not ones he wouldn’t keep.
It was that reason alone Penny was quick to say, “No, you won’t.”
“Excuse me?”
Two pairs of eyes drifted her way, their curiosity and disbelief burning brightly. She wasn’t willing to rehash her previous conversation with Cree from downstairs, but she also didn’t think she had to. The clench of Dare’s jaw was enough to tell her that he had probably already heard it through one of his many cameras and knew she was right.
If he wanted Luca dead, it would be done.
Undoubtedly.
“There are at least a dozen members inside The League’s complex at any given time,” Penny said, shrugging. “Coming and going ... doing whatever the fuck you want them to do when they’re not out on a job. If you wanted my companion dead, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation, and he wouldn’t be tuning the piano right now.”
That comment had both men looking at the screens. Sure enough, Luca had opened the Baby Grand and already had a little box of tools they kept beneath the piano opened in front of him while he leaned over the side to work. Despite being alone in an unfamiliar place, one that felt like danger the second a person stepped inside the building, he didn’t seem very concerned about his predicament.
He was either crazy.
Or ... something else entirely.
Penny didn’t know, but she would be foolish to say a part of her didn’t like it. Because she did.
“Someone would already be moving his corpse while you told me it was inevitable. Am I wrong?” she asked.
Dare openly glared.
He didn’t deny her words, though.
Quietly, Cree told her, “I requested that he step back and try to handle the Luca situation in another way. For you.”
That was surprising.
Penny didn’t show it.
“Downstairs, you acted like—”
“Like you disobeyed orders and instructions,” Cree interjected, “because you did. It’s the whys that interest me more, Penny. I’m just not sure you’re willing to discuss those reasons quite yet.”
Well ...
She changed direction.
What was the point of this conversation, anyway?
“Are you sure the meeting in Hell’s Kitchen was a trap set to draw me out?” she asked Dare.
“Without question.”
“And why wasn’t it caught?”
Dare scrubbed a hand down his face, the frustration rushing back to his features in a blink. “Because your feelings got in the way and I seem to indulge the emotional needs of my people instead of telling you all to shove it up your fucking ass—”
“Dare,” Cree spoke up, not unkindly.
“It’s true!” Anger exploded from the normally cold man, his red blazer unbuttoning from the force of his arms flying outward wildly. “We all knew she wouldn’t be able to turn her back on the idea that a girl needed help, and we fed her right into the mouth of a wolf. We lost a damn good member of this organization because one of us wasn’t willing to send her on that job alone. All because not a single one of you wanted to look at her and tell her no. She is not a child. The rest of them, they’re not children, either. They know what they signed up for here. If we just stopped factoring in the way we feel about these people, Cree, and focused on their jobs—”
“They’re not robots. You tried that. They—”
“Oh, fuck off.”
Cree quieted.
Dare made a harsh noise under his breath, telling Penny, “We didn’t do nearly enough homework on what we were dealing with—had we done so before sending you to New York on a last-minute wild goose chase, then we would have seen what they didn’t want us to. That they were using the same tactics we did to draw them out. It’s not a mistake we’ll make again. Any side trips after this will not be happening.”
Penny didn’t blink. “Fine. What about the rest of The Elite?”
“Renzo passed along the information about that side of things, I assume?”
“A little,” she said. “I want to hear the rest from you.”
“They’re working with what they have. Which just changed into a whole lot more than we might be able to handle.”
“And what does that—”
Dare reached over and tapped a key on his laptop, silencing Penny instantly when the screens switched from security camera views to something else entirely. The pyramid made up of faces had changed since the first time she saw it. Now, a few of the faces were grayed out with a large, red X crossing over their images.
Men ...
Women.
All her victims.
Five years worth of her life stared at her from the glowing wall. Five years of hard work and pain to X out the few she had managed to end. After training that could only be described as complete and total hell, years overseas dismantling one organization kill by kill ... she had finally come back home.
Here.
To get all of them.
The faces of The Elite watched her without movement or emotion. Yet, despite only being digital photographs, their presence and lives were still all too real to her. Especially the two pictures at the very top.
Neither had an X.
She hated that the most.
Unable to look away from the top two images—the people who controlled the innermost aspects of the pedophile ring—Penny ignored the sinking sensation in her stomach. That wasn’t real, she had to tell herself. They no longer had the power to hurt her but especially not their images. She refused to even think their names.
“After a discussion with your boss,” Dare said, “we’ve decided that it would be the right choice to call off any further hits on The Elite until we have a better idea of what we’re dealing with.”
Stay calm.
Maintain composure.
She didn’t look away from the screens.
Couldn’t.
Still ...
“Why, because they’re fighting back now?” she demanded. “Sounds like we just need to ramp up the pressure. If a little made them crack, then a lot will make them break.”
“We need a safe route from—”
Penny scoffed, her sharp gaze finally cutting to Dare and breaking the haze she’d been in while staring at the screen. “Nothing about this was ever safe. We knew the risks. I know the risks and agreed anyway. It was the only way. You don’t get to decide when the risks become too much for me to take, Dare. It’s my choice.”