Page 32 of Tempting Tessa

“I think you know.” She rewound the feed a second time and hit play.

His stomach bottomed out. What she’d said about Jessie…

Sure enough, this time, when he scanned the crowd, he saw a hooded figure that made his breath catch. The woman did her best to stay behind a group of taller individuals, but several times, as she made her way down the hall, at least part of her face was visible.

“It can’t be,” he whispered.

“I can’t confirm it’s her without running this through facial recognition,” Tessa said. Her voice sounded distant, overly detached. “But if thisisJessie, she’s been alive this whole time.”

His mind raced, memories of his sister’s death replaying like a broken film reel. Mosai Hagar. The swing of the machete. The blood.

But he’d found circumstantial evidence that suggested Jessie might’ve been tied to Hager and the Russian investors. Evidence he couldn’t allow himself to believe.

And hadn’t shared with anyone. Not even Tessa.

He closed his eyes and bowed his head. “There’s no way. We saw her die.” His voice broke on the last word.

“We sawsomeonedie,” Tessa corrected. He heard the snap of the laptop closing. “It smells like an elaborate cover-up.”

He couldn’t stay still, opening his eyes and turning away from her. Jessie was alive. She’d faked her death. Why? “Ihavebeen seeing her.”

“Looks that way.” She leaned a hip on the desk, her face still remote. “You said she knew about the superconductors and went to MediSune to speak to the developer. Maybe it wasn’t because she was trying to stop the EMP attacks but because she was a co-conspirator in them. The question is, if she’s betrayed her country and has been working with Hagar and the Russians, why has she been following you? My best guess is that she fears you’re about to reveal her deception and expose the truth. I think she shot at us to scare us off.”

He rubbed his hands over his face, trying to piece together a puzzle that refused to make sense. Tessa watched him as if she still wasn’t sure she trusted him. It made him feel like an alien in his own skin.

“She’s working with the Russians,” Tessa said, as if driving the point home to keep him from further argument with himself. “That’s the only explanation.”

“No.” His denial was automatic. He shook his head adamantly, even though he’d been worried about this exact thing. “She’s no traitor. There has to be another explanation.”

But even as the words hung in the air, doubt crept in, cold and unwelcome.

Tessa blew out a long, slow breath, her detachment melting away. A bleak sadness filled her eyes. “I want to believe that, too.”

Hands on hips, he continued to pace the elegant room, feeling completely out of place. “The first thing we have to do is confirm it’s her.”

“Any idea how?”

He went to the desk, gesturing for her to move so he could sit at the laptop. “She was hunting that Viktor fellow. Hagar was a lead, just like MediSune.”

She shifted to stare over his shoulder as he began logging into his personal, encrypted files in the cloud. “If she wasn’t a traitor, do you think Hagar knew she was on his trail?”

Flipping between theories—was Jessie a traitor working with Hagar and the Russians, or was she trying to expose them—made his head spin. “Yes, and if he was part of the larger coup to set up the swans for the attacks, that’s why he singled her and Meg out that night. He wanted to expose the swans to the world.”

When she saw him open a software program and drop a snapshot of Jessie’s face from the station into it, she made a sound of appreciation. “You have your own version of facial recognition?”

“I borrowed some of the basic programming from our friends at the Agency, tweaked it, and created a bare bones version that I can run without them, or any other law enforcement service, knowing.”

“I’m impressed.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “I still can’t believe you thought I was behind all this.”

“I’m jaded. You know that.”

Not an apology. His chest, already caving in, tweaked. She was right—he did know it. He shouldn’t be surprised.

“Why has she been following you?” Tessa paced the rug. “She’s too sloppy to let herself be seen, and yet, you detected her three times. And how did she follow us to the train station?”

He didn’t have answers to those questions. Again, her analysis was correct—if Jessie didn’t want to be seen, she wouldn’t be. It was sloppy for her to have gotten close enough that he could make her out in a crowd. Had she been counting on him not to believe his own eyes?

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