One Second After Another (The After Another Trilogy Book 3)

by Bethany-Kris

  “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?”

  Because for him, life looked a little too dark now. How was he supposed to restart anything when he had barely even been able to begin in the first place?

  He’d not been really living until he found Penny again ... and now he didn’t have her at all.

  “Dad,” Naz murmured, making Luca realize he still wasn’t alone despite how he kept falling back into his thoughts. “Leave it alone. I think you’ve done enough.”

  Cross sighed, shaking his head and repeating, “Let it be a restart.”

  22.

  Penny

  “THEY certainly make doing our job ... difficult.”

  “Quite aware,” came the murmur of another voice. “But as they have reminded this hospital time and time again, they also have a job to do.”

  “They could make a better effort not to impede ours. And how many times are you going to tell them she’s non-responsive? Cop after cop can come into this room and ask her questions, but clearly she isn’t answering them, Carter.”

  “They think she’s ... someone.”

  “Someone?”

  “Someone,” the male voice responded quieter like maybe he was worried someone else might overhear.

  Penny wanted to blink, especially when the bright white circle moved beyond the vision of her one eye and then the other, but she couldn’t. In fact, she quickly realized she couldn’t do anything. And while her hearing seemed to be taking in the strange, unknown voices around her, the fuzzy darkness allowed her no sight other than whatever that light was.

  Hey, she wanted to say, help me.

  “You’re seeing this, right?” the woman asked.

  “I am.”

  “Do you think—”

  “Reflexes, maybe. It’s been a month. While her reconstructed valves in her heart have taken well, and the ventilator has allowed her body to rest after the trauma of the heart surgeries... this coma wasn’t induced, Trin. Studies have shown time and time again that some activity is just ... activity. Nerves that are awake, or brain waves running on autopilot. Like an electronic—”

  “Dr. Morrisey, I know how this works.”

  Well, then.

  But at least Penny had figured out part of the mystery.

  Heart surgery.

  Surgery.

  On her heart.

  And not one—but surgeries.

  She was in a hospital. One with a name she didn’t know being treated by doctors and nurses that didn’t know her ... if their earlier discussion meant what she thought it did. The news also explained the constant beep-beep-beep in the background coming from various corners of a room she couldn’t properly see.

  “Her lips are quite dry—would you grab a cup and one of the stick sponges for me?”

  “You’re going to moisten her—”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” the man asked. “She’s a patient—I’m already here.”

  While Penny was interested in trying to decipher the dynamic between the doctor and the nurse, she was also starting to see shapes. And color. Not clearly—the edges were still quite fuzzy, she wasn’t able to blink, but things were ... better.

  The shadowy figure that moved away from the bed was a giant, pale green blob while the white one leaning in closer to Penny murmured, “I’ve tapped your lids open for the moment. If you are capable of hearing me at the moment because your pupils are reacting beyond the usual dilation, then you should know you’ve been in the hospital for a month. And you will be here for months more yet. The tube in your throat supplying the air to your lungs will be removed this week—should you wake up sooner, try to remember its there. It makes our job far easier when we aren’t trying to fight with a patient attempting to rip it out.”

  Huh.

  The doctor continued on, saying, “That bullet you took to your heart did some serious damage, and it is only because we have the best heart surgeon in the country that you are alive. Because you certainly were not when you first arrived, Miss Doe.”

  Miss Doe—

  Oh.

  Right.

  Penny wasn’t surprised that her identity was unknown—which probably explained talk of the officers who were making the job of her doctors and nurses more difficult than it needed to be.

  The white blob of the doctor had started to clear in Penny’s vision, but not enough that she was capable of discerning the features of his face beyond a smile that curved his fuzzy mouth. For some reason, that smile felt kind.

  Something she should trust.

  “What were you doing there anyway, hmm?” he asked. “Why were you on the other side of a cemetery where a murder had just happened only a hundred yards away?”

  A hum followed the question.

  And then, softer, he asked, “Or was it all coincidence?”

  She didn’t think he expected an answer. Not that she could give him one. A click, and the squeak of shoes had the doctor moving away from Penny. She realized then that she was starting to feel something, too. The graze of soft, careful fingers on her face as a sticky sound pulled away from her skin.

  Then, the room was dark again.

  And the nurse was
back. “Your water and stick sponge.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Have you told them, yet?”

  “Told them what?” the doctor asked.

  “The cops,” the woman replied. “They asked to be notified if there was any change in her appearance. Not that I expect men to notice when it’s only a month’s worth of growth, but her roots ... they’re a different color. It’s not black, but it might not be what it was supposed to be, either. A black, chemical dye can sometimes affect the color of the first few inches of new growth. Especially if the hair was quite light, to begin with.”

  Silence answered the nurse.

  But then, the doctor replied, “They’ll notice eventually. I doubt her natural hair color is in any way related to the fact she was shot in the heart at a close range.”

  The beeps became louder soon after, and Penny drifted away from the voices. Toward the rhythmic pump of her heartbeats. A steady sound, but different, she knew.

  It sounded different.

  But hell ... at least it was beating.

  “I’VE BEEN TOLD YOU’VE made remarkable progress in the last month, Miss Doe. Brain function is returning, and you’re even showing some communication at times. So, today we’re going to try answering a few questions, and then maybe I can finally put together the pieces of this puzzle you seem to be. Blink once for yes, and twice for no. Do you understand?”

  Penny, propped up in the hospital bed so that she had a clear vision of the end of the bed and the detective standing there with his notepad in hand, did nothing. She didn’t blink, grunt, or otherwise. If they brought the right doctor or nurse in, then she might consider it.

  But not while a cop was there.

  Two months in a constate state of helplessness being fed through a tube was not what Penny had wanted, but she also hadn’t been given a choice. And since her identity was still a mystery to the hospital workers and the police, they had begun working more and more towards a recovery where she was capable of decent communication.

  She understood.

  She didn’t always comply.

  “Do you understand?” the man asked again.

  He’d introduced himself when he first came into the room, but she didn’t care to remember his name when there was a revolving door of officers who came to speak to her, or about her, for that matter. He was just one of many, and not that important. The man was only doing his job, and in a way, help her, but that wasn’t how this would work.

  It couldn’t.

  Penny was a ghost.

  She would always be, now.

  God.

  She wasn’t even supposed to be—she shouldn’t exist. The agreement to forfeit her life for the ability to kill her mother without interference had been final. Yet, there she was ... very much alive.

  Penny couldn’t waste the chance. Not when it might mean keeping a promise she never should have made in the first place. Not when it might mean turning a lie she had told someone else into a truth that she–

  “Excuse me a moment,” the cop said, stopping Penny’s thoughts from going any further. She almost wanted to laugh at his politeness in the fact of her—well, her complete lack of response—but she couldn’t. The only thing she could do now was blink, breathe, think, and lay in a damn bed.

  And she wasn’t answering questions.

  Not a single one.

  FOOTSTEPS PULLED PENNY from a restless sleep. Still propped up in the bed, she watched the doctor—the one everyone simply called Carter—approach the side of Penny’s bed. The papers in his hands shuffled a bit before he placed them out of her line of sight. He’d had the nurses remove her feeding tube earlier, explaining it away with the promise of soft food soon to test her swallowing. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience, she had more nerve sensitivity than she’d realized, when they pulled the tube out.

  She hoped he wasn’t there to tell her they would be putting it back in.

  Other than an occasional check, the nurses and doctors didn’t visit her at night. Especially not after she had been moved from Intensive Care. The police came around less often, but now it was dedicated officers tasked to her case.

  Despite weeks upon weeks of drugs that kept her mind hazy and clouded with chemicals, after she had started to come out of the coma, her sleep came and went in strange bursts that never seemed to be enough.

  No matter how hard she tried.

  It helped once the nurses started opening the shades in the room to allow the natural light of the day to come and go. At least then, Penny actually had a concept of time and night and day.

  “Evening,” the man murmured, leaning over her bed to fidget with things she couldn’t see. Not that it mattered—he told her what he was doing. “I’m removing your oxygen and pulse sensors, and then I’m going to turn off the machines. You’re not going to need them shortly, for one thing. But also, because we don’t want anyone running in here and making a scene as you come to.”

  Her mind tried to catch up, but being unable to speak and only a blink or two for yes and no ... well, she didn’t have much to work with.

  “I suppose you’re wondering why I’m doing this, but that’s not really important. Fact is, he found you ... and things worked to my favor.”

  He?

  How was this he?

  God, she wished she could talk.

  “I’m shutting off the IV now,” Carter explained, “and in a few minutes, you’re already going to notice a difference. There was more to your concoction of medications than the nurses realized, but they eventually stopped questioning why I was the one who wanted to ready all your vials.”

  A beep sounded before the background noise of the machine stopped altogether.

  Then, Carter leaned down and smiled in Penny’s line of vision as he explained, “The paralytic in your IV is going to wear off, and you will be walking in twenty minutes. Not well, mind you, but walking all the same. It’ll be completely out of your system within the hour. However, you don’t have that much time to leave before someone realizes the living Jane Doe in room two-oh-four is miraculously walking, talking, and capable of being questioned by police.”

  Penny’s gaze flicked lower to where the doctor played with an item that he flipped between two fingers.

  A penny.

  The coin danced around his fingers as her stare went back to his face. The doctor sat the penny down in the same general direction that he had put the papers.

  “Take everything when you go—you might need it someday,” he told her. “You’ll need extensive and intensive care outside of this hospital, but I can’t help you beyond what I already have. I was told you wouldn’t need much help beyond this, anyway. Apparently, you’re capable of finding your way back to the people who love and need you. Good luck.”

  Penny watched the doctor walk away at the same time she was finally able to start feeling the muscles in her throat. She swallowed back the words she wouldn’t be able to say even if she tried, and instead fixed her attention on the clock. She watched every single minute pass. Until the tips of her fingers prickled with what reminded her of bee stings, and she was finally able to flex her toes again.

  Twenty minutes wasn’t enough. She stumbled out of the bed. Busted her mouth on the way down, too. She wiped at the blood with a shaky, weak hand as she used her other to grasp on the side of the bed and pull her weight up. Her attempt to be as quiet as possible was pointless when every action was followed by a grunt or a groan.

  Eventually, she found what the good doctor had left on the bedside table with the penny. Papers. A contract, actually.

  The League, it read at the top. She recognized the seal of the organization, and underneath, her name had been written in her own handwriting on a line just for her.

  Except across the white paper was a red stamp—VOID.

  She took the contract and the penny. The flaring, agonizing pain in the middle of her chest had Penny clutching at her own body to ease the sharp stabs that came with every step. Stil
l, somehow, she made it out of the room.

  And even the hallway.

  She followed the signs, found a stairwell, and eventually an exit. Darkness met her on the outside, and cold, fresh air that she pulled into her burning lungs.

  She was alive.

  Free.

  And going home.

  23.

  Luca

  WHEN it was so early in the morning that there was still dew on the grass, Luca didn’t feel so guilty about wishing he wasn’t so fast to say yes about babysitting his nephew while Roz headed to her first prenatal appointment. Pretty soon, he was going to have another niece or nephew and he hadn’t been expecting the news.

  Neither was his sister or her husband, apparently.

  Life had a funny way of working, though. He’d learned that especially in the past months as his life seemed to ground to a halt yet it was impossible to ignore the way everyone else kept going on around him. The thing about Luca ...

  Well, he was drawn to life.

  Always had been.

  It was why he lived fast, chased impossible things, and felt most alive next to a woman who the rest of the world said didn’t exist. All of those things gave him a sense of life—of realness. He couldn’t hide away and wallow in a pit of his own misery and hell when life kept drawing him back out into the daylight and fresh air.

  Life like his family.

  “Thanks again,” Roz said on the back deck where she stood with Luca. “I know it was late notice and—”

  “It’s fine,” he was quick to interject, though he didn’t take his eyes off little Cross. His godson kicked the soccer ball from their side of the property to the middle never breaking stride or stumbling over his feet. It was a new thing he seemed to like—Luca had volunteered to coach a team, if needed. “No place I’d rather be.”

  The lie came out easy.

  There were arms he would rather be wrapped in. A smile he would love to see teasing him again. Blue eyes—cerulean clear—that he could still see when he closed his own haunted his every peaceful moment.