Page 30 of Avenging Jessie
“She wasn’t crying,” Spence added, voice fraying at the edges. “She was holding his hand. Looking up at him like he was…safe.” His breath hitched. “Like maybe she thought he was her new dad or something.”
“What did you do?”
“I ran after them. Tried to stop him. He shoved me into the gutter, Vic screaming my name. He tossed her into the back of his car and drove off. I can still see her in that back window, hands pressed against her as she cried for me.”
Spence blinked hard to fight the sharp sting of tears. God, how he’d failed her.
Jessie’s voice was both compassionate and outraged. “That bastard.” She finally touched him. “You’ve been looking for her ever since.”
Her touch did things to him. Her compassion, too.
He peeled his hands off the steering wheel, wishing he could put them on that guy and choke him to death. Instead, he grabbed the thermos and passed it to her just to focus on something else, ignoring how his hand was shaking.
Their fingers brushed. He won the war on his emotions and slid that solid shield back into place. “I went to the cops, and they laughed at me. An eight-year-old, claiming his mum kicked him out and sold her five-year-old daughter to her ex. I didn’t have his full name. No license plate. You get the picture. No one cared. No one looked. They didn’t take it seriously, and a case was never even opened—I checked later on when I hacked into their database. She was just another missing girl from the wrong side of town.”
Jessie took a swig from the thermos and screwed the cap back on, slowly, deliberately. Once done, she reached for him, gently placing her hand on his.
He held himself still, focusing on the contact. He would not allow himself to move or breathe wrong and break the moment. “After that, I stopped trusting people to do the right thing. Started building systems. Networks. Traps. I thought—if I could build something smart enough…maybe I’d never lose anyone again.”
Her grip tightened.
He didn’t pull away.
The spark that passed between them felt like a live wire.
That single touch did more damage than a bullet. It wrecked him. Undid something deep inside him that he’d welded shut.
“If she’s out there,” Jessie said, “we’ll find her.”
He turned toward her. “We?”
Their eyes locked. And for a moment, neither of them breathed. The space between them was almost nothing.
“Yes, we.” She leaned in even more, determination burning in her eyes. “After this, our mission is Victoria. You and me. You may excel at computers and coding, and you may even be a damn good spy, but I do have certain skills and resources that can help.” Her fingers lifted to stroke the side of his face. “And as you’ve been trying to prove to me, teamwork is crucial to a successful outcome of any mission.”
If she moved even a fraction closer, I’d kiss her—and then everything would unravel.
Her gaze dropped to his lips, and he thought she might kiss him instead. Yet, she held him there, in that suspended moment, and that restraint nearly killed him more than a kiss would have.
He cleared his throat. Forced himself to look away. “We should—uh—swap shifts. You need rest.”
“I’m not tired,” she said, voice just as wrecked as his.
Spence forced himself to pull away from her touch before the gravity of it pulled him straight into something they couldn’t afford.
He traded his laptop for his tablet and focused on the screen, heart still hammering. “I’ll cycle through the feeds again. Make sure we didn’t miss anything.”
Jessie nodded, but her eyes lingered.
They worked in silence for a few minutes. Shadows lengthened. The warehouse remained a black silhouette against a bruised sky, quiet and unassuming—too quiet. Spence hated that. Stillness always meant something was coming.
The burner phone in his jacket vibrated. He stiffened, yanked it out, and checked the screen. “Fuck.”
Jessie leaned over to look. “Who is it?”
Spence answered before the second buzz and hit the speaker button. “Go.”
Declan Reid didn’t waste time. “It’s about our boss.”
