Page 2 of Tempting Tessa

Meg, Dec, and Spence were like her Sig—they formed a cohesive and deadly weapon. Jessie had been part of that, and with her gone, they were looking at Tessa to replace her.

Hiding Tommy from them was a dangerous game, but she owed him more than she cared to. Jessie had been one of her closest friends. Tessa had taken her under her wing when Jessie and Meg showed up at The Farm seven years ago, seeing the potential each brought to the table.

Tessa and Meg had both been close to Jessie, but Meg’s guilt over Jessie’s death was as much about responsibility as it was about friendship. Tessa didn't carry that guilt, but she wanted revenge for Jessie's death equally as much.

Which was why she was tempting fate by helping Tommy while lying to Meg. “Why did Hagar pick Jessie to execute first? He knew you were the team leader—why wouldn't he put you on camera for his public execution?”

Meg sighed, and Tessa imagined her leaning against her kitchen counter. “I've asked myself that a thousand times. I don't know. He kept us in these tiny cages, like dog kennels. He tortured us and sent a video of the torture sessions to the CIA. He treated me as horrifically as he did her. Maybe something she said to him that day pushed him over the edge. She was constantly taunting him, angering him.”

The bastard had made swift work of the execution, using his machete on Jessie with the cameras rolling live to several social media sites before it could be shut down.

Although the CIA had managed to remove any recorded section within minutes of the live broadcast, plenty of copies were still out there. Tessa had watched one multiple times, barely able to distinguish that it was even Jessie that Hagar killed with one mighty swing. She and Meg had only been with him and his death squad a week, but the damage he’d done to them physically had left them nearly unrecognizable.

She hated to imagine what Meg still wrestled with mentally and emotionally, even now that the bastard was dead.

“He was too calculating for that,” Tessa mused, more to herself than to Meg. “And you were already under his control. More torture would have been a normal response to her provocations.”

“Killing operatives was personal. Revenge for the US taking out his family during one of the raids in Iraq. I don’t think strategy won against his rage that day.”

He’d been the lone survivor. “Why would Jessie taunt him?”

“Because she wouldn’t be cowed. Ever.”

True. “Did she not hope for rescue?”

Meg’s pause was long and weighted. “No.”

“But you did?”

“I worked on an escape plan. I failed.”

Tessa understood the burden of that. She’d failed plenty in her lifetime, too. Never with a teammate’s life, though.

Her fingers moved with ease as she finished putting the Sig to rights. “You’re sure Jessie had no prior connection to Hagar?”

Another pause, this one more inquisitive. “What are you suggesting?”

Tessa sipped coffee. What she was about to say might cause Meg to hate her. “I’m suggesting that Jessie knew Hagar before the kidnapping. She potentially leaked your whereabouts to him for reasons we may never know, but she had information on him that he didn’t want to get out. Something or someone alerted him that Declan and Spence were about to swoop in and rescue the two of you, so he killed her first because he needed to silence her.”

And then he’d escaped.

Tessa heard the bedroom door open.

“You can’t be serious,” Meg hissed in her ears.

She was.

Glancing toward the bedroom, she found Tommy staring at her with his dark, damaged eyes.

All of it led back to him.

The man wanted by so many and who’d been sleeping in her bed.

Two

Tired, sore, and battling a fissure of suspicion spreading in his gut, Tommy propped himself against the door frame, eyes locked on Tessa. She’d been cleaning her gun, the parts now reassembled. Seeing his gaze burning a hole in her, she picked up her cup of coffee, all casual-like, and sipped.

The hand holding the cup trembled slightly, though. That’s what made the fissure of suspicion deepen. Her expression stayed smooth, giving nothing away, and her eyes slid over him with a warm appraisal. The corner of her mouth quirked as she met his gaze. She could disarm people like that—distracting them with nothing more than a careful assessment or interested yet neutral expression. Appearing so in control that most never noticed the cracks underneath.

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