I hope everyone of you is safe in these times. My sister lost her job last week because she smacked her boss when that woman accused my sister of having had the virus because my sister had the "audacity" to take a two week vacation that had been on the books for six months. Not to mention that the store had been closed anyway because of the virus and the end of my sister's vacation coincided with the loosening of restrictions and the "grand reopening" of the store.
Anyway, chapter begins where last ended.
Hope you enjoy :)
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters that appeared in the show.
Disclaimer2: I'm again using the Penny family members that TerribleWaitress created, simply because I'm used to it :D
"I am home. I mean, my parents. My parents live here. I came home. To them." she stammered, unable to form a longer sentence, partially out of fear.
"I see." Leonard nodded after a few moments of staring into her eyes before getting up and walking over to Steve's unconscious body, taking something out of his pants pocket.
"What is that?" she asked, leaning forward while still on her knees, seeing what looked like a spray bottle.
He didn't answer but sprayed whatever was in that bottle on Steve's crotch wound before taking a lighter and igniting it. A bright flash preceded the smell of burned flesh, making Penny almost hurl but to her surprise, the wound stopped bleeding, having been cauterized by the heat.
"If you throw up, swallow it again. No need to leave DNA evidence of your presence behind." Leonard told her as he pocketed the bottle, his eyes staying on her.
"Jesus." she cursed, swallowing down the bile she felt and noticing his stare.
She followed his gaze and noticed that her position gave him a pretty deep look into her cleavage, given that her shirt was lying ripped a few feet away from her. Somewhat embarrassed, even though dozens of men had seen her like that or with even less clothing, she sat back, crossing her arms in front of her, her hands on her shoulders.
"Here." he said, handing her his jacket, revealing a silk button-up.
"Thanks." she smiled shyly, feeling the high-class material as he collected her ripped shirt. "Wow, this feels nice."
"Lets go before they wake up." he said and led her out of the alley, pausing at the mouth and looking poignantly at her.
"What?" she asked.
"Button up." he chuckled, pointing to her chest where her bra was still visible. "The last thing you need right now is attention."
"Right." she conceded and buttoned up the jacket, leaving only the top button undone. "I look ridiculous."
"Better than walking around just in your bra, don't you think?" Leonard asked and took out his phone.
"You got a point." she had to admit. "Who are you calling?"
"Hey, it's me, I need a favor... Yes, right away... Take my current coordinates, look for any cameras that see the alley mouth I'm standing in front of and make me disappear... Yes, I did... Yes, the usual payment... I will give it to you the next time we meet... Thanks Howard."
"Who did you call?" Penny asked as Leonard put the phone away.
"A friend." Leonard replied cryptically and led her away to what Penny knew to be a very high-brow clothing store that sold suits and dresses.
"Can I help you?" the clerk asked, a very well-dressed man with glasses and hiding a disgusted smirk at her disheveled appearance, while a female store clerk sat at the cashier counter, a bottle of very expensive looking scotch and several empty glasses on there as well. "We can't help her with skinny jeans and tank tops though."
"She needs new clothing." Leonard nodded and held up one of the coins he had given her back in Los Angeles, the ones she had given the cleaner who had taken care of Kurt's body. "And I need to use your... facility."
"I see." the clerk nodded and the woman immediately came to attention, pouring the scotch into two glasses and coming over to hand them to her and Leonard.
"Do you know your measurements?" the female clerk asked.
"The last time I measured, they were thirty-five, twenty-four, thirty-six." Penny told her.
"Come with me." the woman said and led Penny to the changing booths while Leonard walked into the backroom after the man had unlocked the door and handing him the coin as he did so.
"What kind of store is this?" Penny asked.
"Take off the jacket and your pants please." the woman ignored her question but Penny complied, not wanting to create problems for Leonard, and let the woman take her measurements.
"They haven't changed." the woman nodded and wrote something on her notepad. "Do you have a preferred color?"
"I like red." Penny said timidly, feeling completely out of place.
With a last look at her, the woman left Penny alone in the booth. She wondered if she should put her pants on again, since she felt a bit silly standing around in her underwear for that long a time. Just as she was about to do it, she heard footsteps and a few seconds later, the door opened, the woman coming back in and handing Penny a single dress instead of several for Penny to choose from.
She put the dress on and her eyes almost fell out of her sockets when she saw herself in the mirror. The dress fit perfectly, every part hugging her curves and accentuating her body without really showing that much. There was barely any visible cleavage and the butt area also wasn't so tight that it would become an eye magnet.
"Wow." Penny breathed. "This dress is magnificent."
"Will you take it?"
"Hell yeah." Penny giggled. "What's the price tag?"
"The dress is being paid for." the woman told her and picked at her back until Penny heard the sound of scissors, telling her that she had cut off the price tag.
Her eyes went wide when she got a glimpse of it as the woman was crumbling it together, seeing the high four-digit number on the small piece of thin cardboard. She was about to protest when the woman left, leaving Penny dumbstruck in the booth. Penny looked at herself again and felt both guilty and exhilarated, guilty because apparently Leonard would pay for it and exhilarated because of how beautiful the dress was.
"Are you going to pay with cash or credit card?" the male clerk asked when Penny arrived at the counter.
"Cash." Leonard told him and handed him a bunch of bills.
"I pay you back." Penny said as they left.
"No." Leonard simply said and just from the way he said it, Penny knew not to push the issue anymore.
"Why didn't you pay with those coins too?" Penny wanted to know. "I mean, those guys clearly knew what they were."
"Because they run a legitimate business." Leonard replied.
"But you gave him a coin before."
"To use some of his business that is geared to what I do." he said.
"And what exactly do you do?" Penny asked.
"If you haven't figured that out yet, you're not as smart as I thought." he looked at her.
"You kill people." she said quietly.
"Yes, I do." Leonard nodded.
"How can you do that?" she gasped, even though she kinda knew about it. "Do you get some high from that?"
"I don't kill for fun." Leonard told her, his face serious. "I only kill when being hired to."
"And what about Kurt." she challenged his assertion. "You killed him."
"Yes." Leonard nodded. "On your say so."
"What?" she asked shocked.
"I asked you if you wanted him to die." he replied. "And you said yes."
"So, if I had said no, what would you have done?"
"Choked him out." Leonard shrugged. "He'd have woken up about an hour later, the only thing hurt being his ego."
"But he would have come after me."
"He probably would have, yes." Leonard nodded calmly.
"He might have killed me!"
"He might have, yes." Leonard nodded again, still calm.
"And you could have lived with that?" she chuckled sadly.
"Yes." Leonard nodded once more. "Everybody is responsible for his own decisions. If you had told me to let him live and he'd come after you, it wouldn't have been my job to stop him."
"How do you justify taking lives?" she asked quietly, unsure what to talk to him about.
"I don't have to justify anything." he shrugged. "When I get hired to do a job, I'm not the one killing them, I'm just the weapon. Do you hold a gun accountable?"
"A gun doesn't think." Penny argued. "A human does."
"People like me are weapons in the hand of those who hire us." Leonard countered. "The difference is that we can choose the way our targets die to make it as acceptable as possible for their families and friends. I for one choose ways that are the least violent possible."
"That doesn't make sense, dead is dead." Penny scoffed.
"Is it?" Leonard looked at her serious. "Imagine getting a phone call that your father has been stabbed to death. His valuables are still with him so it wasn't a botched robbery. He has no connection to any criminal individuals and the police never finds a lead, much less a suspect. You are left with questions for the rest of your life. Why was he killed? Who did it?
"Now compare that to you getting a call from the police that your father has died in a car crash because his break fluid line had degraded and he couldn't slow his car down to avoid crashing through a guard railing and driving down a cliff. You would still grieve for him but in your eyes, he died from an accident. An unfortunate happening that you wish you could have prevented but in the end, you'd have closure knowing that there wasn't someone still out there who was responsible."
"I hate that this actually makes sense." Penny sighed.
"If it makes you feel better, I don't take jobs taking out ex-wives of rich people who don't want to pay alimony anymore." Leonard added. "Though there are people like me out there who have no problem doing that."
"Then what kind of people do you kill?" she asked, wondering why she wanted to know.
"Corrupt politicians, if their actions caused the deaths of others, rich people who use their wealth and connections to avoid legal trouble, even if they committed heinous acts..."
"Like child rape?" Penny interrupted, remembering the old man she had seen dead after Leonard had gone from the hotel room.
"Like child rape." Leonard nodded. "The people who hire me don't do this because they're bloodthirsty, they do it because they don't have any other recourse to see justice done."
"I have trouble wrapping my head around the fact that there's really an assassin's guild out there." Penny shook her head.
"It's not as conspiratorial as you might think." Leonard chuckled. "There's no shadowy figures sitting around a table somewhere, planning who to kill. It's essentially people like me, sharing manufacturers of the things that we use or information gathering."
"What about the coins?" Penny wanted to know as Leonard sat down on a bench, looking around if there were people close by.
"These are both a way to identify ourselves to people who know about what we do and to pay for things that we need when the money transfer shouldn't be traceable." he explained, holding up two coins, one golden and one silver looking.
"What are they worth?" Penny asked.
"The exchange rate is a thousand dollars per gold coin." he told her. "Silver is a hundred."
"So, removing a body costs three grand?"
"It's one thousand per body." he chuckled. "Plus one coin for them coming in the first place and between one and three coins depending on how far they have to travel."
"They were in my apartment pretty quickly." Penny pointed out.
"The minimum is one coin." he winked at her, an action she had trouble reconciling with the serious man next to her whose job it was to kill people. "There are cleaners in every large city in most countries. If you have bodies in a more remote location, the price goes up not because they have to travel a longer way to you but because they have to take extra care when returning with however many bodies in their vehicle."
"Listen." Penny hesitated after almost a minute of silence. "Earlier you said that you try to do your... thing with the least violence possible."
"Yes?" he looked at her expectantly.
"What was that in the alley?" she asked. "I mean, you cut off Steve's testicles and broke the other guys' bones."
"What happened in the alley was a street fight against multiple opponents with unknown abilities and without any preparation." Leonard explained. "And if you are in such a fight, your first and foremost goal is to incapacitate your opponents. And how do you incapacitate someone? You take away his ability to fight."
"But throwing a knife into his testicles?" Penny shuddered at the memory.
"He was going to rape you." Leonard looked at her seriously. "And someone willing to do that has either done it before or he'll do it again because he got a taste for it."
"What did you do to Steve before we left the alley?" Penny asked to break the next bout of silence. "I mean, what was that stuff?"
"Cauterized his wound." he said, showing her the spray bottle. "This is a powerful coagulant that, when heated, practically explodes to cover a wound of any size like a cap of organic plastic."
"Sounds... painful."
"If the choice is either a short, sharp pain or dying from blood loss, the choice is usually pretty easy." Leonard said. "Though he was unconscious anyway."
"Why are you here anyway?" Penny went to the elephant in the room. "In the city, I mean."
"Why do you think I'm here?" he retorted cryptically.
"You're going to kill someone." she stated.
"Correct." Leonard nodded.
"Is it a bad guy?"
"Of course."
"Who is it?" she wanted to know.
"You're not expecting me to answer that, do you?" he smirked at her.
"You need my help again?"
"No." he shook his head as a black car with tinted windows stopped in front of them, Penny getting nervous as a truly large man exited it, wearing a dark suit. "You go home now."
"Fine, I'll call a cab." she nodded as they both got up.
"This is your cab." Leonard stated, pointing to the car, and handed the driver three silver coins.
"What the...?" she gasped. "Are you for real?"
"Get in." he smiled. "And don't try to chat up the driver, he won't reply to you."
Without a further word, Leonard turned around and walked away, leaving Penny dumbstruck until the driver tapped her on the shoulder and nodded his head towards the car, prompting her to get in. She got into the back seat, sighing at the comfort of the backseat as the driver got into his seat and started the car.
True to Leonard's words, the driver didn't say anything and didn't reply to any inquiry Penny tried. Forty-five minutes later, the car stopped at her parents' house and thankfully, her parents were nowhere to be seen. She thanked the driver, who just nodded, and got out of the car, which drove off immediately and Penny entered her home, seeing her mom in the kitchen.
"There you are." Meryl smiled ant looked at the dress. "Is that what you bought?"
"Yeah." Penny lied, since she couldn't really tell her the real reason. "Got my pants in my bag."
"Not the shirt?"
"I... uh... ripped it." she tried to explain, not really able to tell her mother that she was almost raped.
"That dress really looks amazing on you." Meryl commented. "It's different than what you usually wore in terms of dresses."
"Because it shows less of my tits, right?" Penny chuckled.
"I didn't want to say it that directly, but yeah." Meryl laughed. "You could wear it when you go out."
"Go out where?"
"PENNY!" a shout made her jump a foot high, making her mother laugh, before she was enveloped in a bear hug. "God, you're finally back!"
"Bridget." Penny smiled into her sister's shoulder and winced when Bridget pushed her away and gave her a punch on her own upper arm. "Ow, what was that for?"
"You missed my wedding!" Bridget accused and pulled Penny into her again for another hug. "Mom told me what you went through the last four years."
"Did Bridget become bipolar?" Penny looked at her mom. "First she hugs me, then she punches me and now she hugs me again."
"Very funny." Bridget scoffed. "I also saw the bag of money, so I can expect a conciliatory belated wedding gift, right?"
"Yeah, one that's purchasable with cash." Penny chuckled as Bridget let her go again. "Mom told you about how I got the money too?"
"Yeah, some guy hiring you as arm candy." Bridget nodded.
"Close enough." Penny shrugged. "So, what's his with going out?"
"You and I are going to the Rose club tonight." Bridget stated. "Wear that dress."
"Yes, mam!" Penny giggled, feeling that a night out wouldn't hurt. "You brought a dress too?"
"Of course." Bridget nodded. "Though mine shows a bit more than yours."
"Hey, I like this." Penny argued. "Now people can look at me because me and not just my tits."
"Don't forget our asses, the women in this family always have great asses." Bridget slapped her own ass.
"Speaking of ass, where's your husband?" Penny asked.
"Wait a second, why are you reminded of my husband when you hear ass?" Bridget countered. "Never mind, Josh is back in Kearney, he's at work."
"Mom said he's a restaurant manager?"
"Yeah, a pretty posh place too." Bridget nodded. "He also does a lot of things like company parties and catering. He had to convince the owners to do that and it was so successful that they gave him a big raise. They make more money with catering now than with regular guests and since companies rent the whole place when they do these company picnics or whatever, they make good money from those too."
"When are we going?" Penny asked.
"I'd say we have a nice dinner and go there at around nine." Bridget told her. "The main act usually starts at that time."
"What's the main act?" Penny wondered. "And the last time I was there, there was never something like a main act."
"No idea who's there tonight." Bridget told her. "The club changed hands three years ago and the new owners always bring in some singer or band on the weekends, sometimes famous people but mostly local ones but they're always good."
"That sounds nice." Penny nodded.
"Tell me about it. I visit mom and dad for a weekend every month just so I can go there." Bridget grinned.
"Wow, thanks a lot." Meryl scoffed. "And here I thought it was because you missed us."
"That too." Bridget smiled innocently at her, making Meryl roll her eyes.
"So, I guess you'll want a light dinner then?" Meryl looked at her daughters.
"That'd be great." Bridget nodded. "The last thing we want is be sluggish from too much food."
"Cold cuts it is then." Meryl said and headed to the kitchen to get the butter and cold cuts from the fridge as well as a loaf of already cut bread from the freezer.
"Why do you freeze bread?" Penny wondered.
"When you put it into the microwave and use the second highest thaw setting for seven to eight minutes, it gets soft and warm and tastes like it was fresh." Meryl explained.
"Believe me, they've been doing this for a while now." Bridget added. "Dad loves to put tuna in tomato sauce from a can on it."
"Without butter." an appearing Wyatt said. "The pigs are in the sty again and I gotta shower."
"Yeah, you do." Penny wrinkled her nose at his smell.
"Are you saying I stink?" Wyatt smirked in humor.
"You positively reek." Penny grinned.
"Just for that, I should have dinner with you like I'm now." Wyatt protested.
"Over my dead body." Meryl laughed. "Go shower, you big oaf."
"Yes, dear." Wyatt chuckled and went upstairs.
Penny went upstairs as well, entering her room and taking off the dress to change into some more comfortable clothing for dinner. As she was putting her sweatpants on, the door opened and Bridget entered, sitting down on her bed and just staring.
"What?" Penny asked after a minute of silence.
"I want you to tell me." Bridget stated.
"Tell you what?"
"How this came about." Bridget said and pointed to the bag of cash sitting closed under Penny's desk.
"I thought mom told you." Penny sighed.
"She told me that that asshole Kurt made you a prostitute and that someone hired you who eventually killed him and gave you that."
"Then you know everything." Penny shrugged.
"No, I want to know about him."
"Who, Kurt?" Penny tried to distract her.
"Yeah, right." Bridget scoffed. "No, the guy who killed Kurt. Who was he? How did he kill Kurt? Did Kurt suffer?"
"What's wrong with you?" Penny asked confused.
"If Kurt was still alive, I'd be on my way to Los Angeles right now to put a knife into his heart." Bridget stated, deadly serious. "So, tell me about the guy I have to give a thank you gift whenever I meet him."
"Save your money, you won't ever meet him." Penny chuckled, not wanting to tell Bridget that Leonard was actually in the city right now. "But apparently, he kills people for a living."
"For real?" Bridget gasped.
"Yeah, he gets hired by people who want to see others dead." Penny nodded. "Remember that old guy child rapist that was on trial?"
"The one where the news said he might get either a mild sentence if one at all because of his connections?" Bridget asked.
"Yeah." Penny nodded again. "We spent a week in the honeymoon suite of a hotel, from where he watched the guy. On the first day, he took me to a party where he cased the joint. And almost a week later, the guy was dead."
"So, what was he like?" Bridget asked, accepting Penny's tale. "Was he like Daniel Craig as James Bond, gorgeous while almost oozing danger, or was he like Pierce Brosnan, charming but deadly?"
"Bridget, something changed with you." Penny could only laugh. "His name is John Smith..."
"Sounds fake." Bridget interrupted.
"It is, but it's the one he gave me." Penny nodded, proud of herself at not having given her Leonard's real name by accident. "And the best way I could describe him was average to the point of forgettable."
"Well, that's a let-down." Bridget almost deflated.
"Well, to be honest, I found him kinda cute in a geeky kind of way." Penny giggled. "He wouldn't seem out of place in a university, being the member of a chess club or something like that."
"I guess that helps him." Bridget commented. "If he really does kill people for a living, the last thing you want is people turning their heads to look at you."
After a call from their mother, both went downstairs to the kitchen where Meryl had set the table. Penny sat down and looked around as Bridget and her parents began eating, her dad spreading tuna from the can on the warm bread, the sauce soaking into the slice and making it moist enough to make butter unnecessary.
"Your mom tells me you two are going to that Rose club tonight?" Wyatt spoke up.
"Yeah, Penny never was there and I always go there when I come visit." Bridget nodded. "And I think she needs a night out."
"I heard bad things about that club." Wyatt told them. "Drugs seem to run rampant there."
"I never saw anything when I was there." Bridget shrugged.
"Don't worry dad, I won't start doing drugs now." Penny chuckled.
"Famous last words." Wyatt shook his head. "Just be careful, alright? I just got you back."
"We'll be careful." Penny gave him a kiss on the cheek.
Once dinner was done, Penny jumped in front of the TV and watched a few things, knowing that she really had no idea what she was watching, given that she had barely watched TV at all in the last few years. When the time came, she went upstairs and took a shower before putting on the dress and applying a modest amount of the high-class makeup she still had left from when Leonard had hired her plus an unadorned fake silver ring she had found from her childhood.
"Damn, Penny." Bridget's eyes got wide when she saw her little sister. "You look like you saw a makeup artist."
"Thanks, it was a gift from... you know." Penny did the money sign to indicate who it was from.
"So, he hired you once and already gave you gifts?"
"He gave me a truly stunning dress and the makeup, so I could fit in to the party we went to." Penny nodded.
"So why aren't you wearing that other dress then?"
"It shows a bit too much for what I want tonight." Penny chuckled.
"Wait a second, what is that ring?" Bridget asked, grabbing Penny's left hand to look at it. "Oh, it's fake."
"Yeah, I thought that if the modest dress isn't enough to prevent some guy hitting on me, a wedding ring might." Penny shrugged.
"Normally I'd tell you to find yourself some hot male ass for the night but given what you went through the past years..." Bridget let it trail off.
"Lets not ruin my mood already." Penny rolled her eyes. "You driving?"
"Yeah, lets take dad's old truck."
"Did he install seat belts since I left?" Penny asked.
"Surprisingly, he did." Bridget laughed as she grabbed the keys. "He also added some new shocks and better seats, so it doesn't feel as if you're sitting on a piece of wood."
Penny got into the passenger seat, Bridget starting the truck and driving off. Less than an hour of traffic later, they stopped at the club, walking up to the door and smiling at the bouncers, who nodded and let them in after checking their IDs for age. Inside, Penny was surprised at the rustic look, hardwood walls and floors with a dance floor that looked like a basketball court without the striping. A large panorama window dominated the northern side of the large room, the people behind the bars were well-dressed in button-up shirts with ties and vests and the patrons seemed to be behaving properly, unlike what Penny had expected from hearing the word club.
"Not what you expected, right?" Bridget grinned, seeing Penny's facial expression.
"Not at all." Penny shook her head, looking at the window. "What's up there? VIP area?"
"No, that's where the owner works." Bridget said. "Maybe it has some VIP areas as well but I was never up there and I never saw anyone celebrating up there either."
"Who are they?" Penny pointed at a group of people walking on the stage.
"Tonight's band, I presume." Bridget told her. "Didn't read their name on the posters outside, though."
Then the woman on stage began to sing, a slow but powerful song about regrets and love and Penny began swaying along with the music, most other patrons joining in. Some couples danced slowly while joined together and Penny for once felt nice hearing music in a club since the only time she went to one in the last four years was when a guy who hired her wanted to have a girl with him that he could later brag to his friends about getting her into his bed.
She spent several hours with Bridget having fun and a few drinks when suddenly a body crashed through the large window, shards going everywhere as the music went out with the band stopping to play. Penny watched the trajectory, seeing whoever that was grabbing on to one of the hanging lamps, the thin cable holding it snapping out of its holder at the ceiling and the person falling down on a table which turned over, causing the person to roll and come to a stop right in front of her and Bridget.
"What the..." Penny gasped.
"Hey, Penny." a wincing Leonard tried to smile while a large shard of glass stuck out from his left shoulder. "I'd ask you to introduce us but you should RUN!"
Before Penny could ask why, a loud boom preceded a gust of flame coming out of the window Leonard had just crashed through and the place erupted in pandemonium.
Well, this is the end for this chapter. I hope I can write more in the future but it's really tough these days.
Review please :)
