Page 27 of Avenging Jessie
Jessie said nothing, but her pulse quickened. She filed it away. Bucharest. Something there had gone wrong. The betrayal Bellringer hadn’t forgiven.
Spence is more dangerous than I thought.
A glance at his profile reassured her. He’d already shaken off Bellringer’s unspoken threat, his demeanor sliding back to the calm, confident partner he always conveyed. It wasn’t just an act—not like hers was. He’d survived shit that had given him that edge. He’d broken rules and made impossible choices that he carried around with him every day, masking them under humor and snark. Sure, she had, too, but in much different ways.
Bellringer tossed her a collapsible rifle. “For you, sweetheart. On the house.”
She caught it and saw Spence’s eyes harden.Interesting.
She grabbed one of the packs. It had to weigh as much as she did. Her ankle barked, and she shifted her stance, trying to act stronger than she was. “We done here?”
Bellringer’s smile finally reached his eyes, but it was menacing. He saw right through her act. “If you say so, sweetheart.”
Spence paid, and they loaded the gear in silence, both of them moving with purpose. Spence slammed the trunk shut, gave the alley a last sweep, then climbed behind the wheel. Bellringer pulled out without looking back.
Jessie dropped into the passenger seat, situating a new Ruger into an equally new holster around her waist.
The rain had slowed—soft, steady, tapping the windshield like a metronome counting down something neither of them wanted to face.
They pulled away from the meeting point, the car’s tires slick against the damp pavement. Jessie kept her eyes on the blurred city lights as they slid past the window. But after a minute, she had to ask. “Bucharest?”
Spence’s knuckles tightened on the wheel. “Botched extraction,” he said finally. “My intel got his asset killed, and then I had to give him up, or my asset was going to die.” Between the lines, with Bellringer’s accusation and interest in her being Spence’s ‘plus one’, she knew it had been a woman. A woman Spence must have cared about. Jealousy surged in her chest. “We didn’t exactly toast champagne afterward.”
Jessie turned to look at him. “That was before Langley?”
“Yep. Still working for the Queen, then, luv.”
“Howdidyou end up at Langley?”
A muscle twitched in his jaw. “MI6 gave me my walking papers after that incident. They trusted the code I wrote, but they no longer trusted me. The Agency came sniffing around.”
They trusted the code I wrote, but they no longer trusted me.The words bothered her. She understood that kind of separation, but Spence’s loyalty had always seemed part of his internal code, and doing what he had to do to keep an asset safe was mission-critical for most operatives.
“MI5 was stupid.”
He shrugged it off. “The CIA would have done the same thing. They need our skills, but that doesn’t mean they give a damn about the person behind them.”
Another bomb that didn’t sit well with her. It was true, though, wasn’t it? The only reason she’d been cleared by those in the hallowed halls of Langley was because she was the ace in the hole for finding Brewer.
They drove another few blocks before she spoke again. This time, her voice was quieter. “So how’d you end up a Swan?”
Spence’s fingers drummed the steering wheel. He gave a quirky smile that did nothing to convince her he wasn’t still thinking about Bucharest. The asset. MI6. “That’s classified.”
Jessie snorted, playing along. All that was water under the bridge. She needed him to believe it made no difference to her. “Of course it is.”
He glanced at her, the barest flicker of something behind his eyes. Regret? Warning?
She waited for him to speak again, but he didn’t. She leaned her head back against the seat, the rain still whispering against the glass. The space between them—not the physical, but the emotional—wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t cold either.
It was shifting. Into what, she wasn’t sure.
She rubbed her eyes. Perhaps it was simply the fluidity that came with working closely with a partner. She’d forgotten what that felt like. Had thought she didn’t want or need it anymore. That she was better off on her own, doing things her way.
Now, she wasn’t so sure.
Twelve
Spence
