Page 38 of Avenging Jessie
How?
She leaned back in her seat, staring at the shadowed outline of the data center. Hastings inside. Was Brewer’s code already worming its way into whatever servers they had hidden in there, or was it spidering out to locations all over the world? Every minute they waited was a minute he could be rewriting the rules of the game.
Spence wanted plans. Backup. Contingencies.
But what she saw—what shefelt—was the narrowing window.
Brewer had already taken so much. Betraying his country and Tessa. Hurting her and threatening Tommy. Abusing and manipulating Jessie in order to turn her into a traitor…
More of his actions ticked off in her head: six months of the swans chasing him, along with multiple other agencies. Flynn, now missing. A summit in Berlin on the horizon, with a target painted on it the size of the Brandenburg Gate.
And if he succeeded—if those drones launched—it wouldn’t matter how many contingencies they’d drawn up. In her mind, she saw a drone dropping a deadly virus on a crowd, a city skyline going dark, military installations being destroyed.
The fallout wouldn’t be limited to Berlin or Munich. It would ripple through every city, every nation, every place she’d ever sworn to protect. Affect every person, from Tommy, whom she’d die to save, to the millions of people she’d never even met.
It wasn’t impatience driving her. It wasnecessity. She had to act before the moment passed, before this chance was gone forever, altering her whole world. Didn’t Spence understand that?
Brewer was a ghost. Hastings, too. If they were in range, she had to take the shot. It might be the only one she ever got.
Her logical self—what was left of it—stepped in and handed her the justification on a silver platter. If she could get inside, even for a few minutes, she might get proof. Enough for Flynn. Enough to stop the summit. Enough to end this and nail Brewer to the wall.
And if Spence hated her for going off-script, she could live with that. Would live with it. He and the team could hate her all over again.
Her heart pinched. She shoved the hurt into the deep hole she’d dug for such things. There was no emotion that should stop her from doing the right thing.
Because the alternative was living with the deaths of millions of innocents on her conscience. Living with Tommy’s, Tessa’s, Meg and Dec’s, and yes, even Spencer’s.
No way in hell.
She would die to defend her country. To save Tommy and the others. All of the.
Die to protect Spence from ever going through what she had at the hands of manipulative bastards like Hastings and Brewer.
Because if they caught Spence, they’d force him to do unspeakable things. She knew firsthand just how they’d exploit his skills, use his weaknesses against him.
Spence turned the laptop and shifted toward her to show her the screen. “All right. Let’s talk breach.”
Jessie blinked, not expecting him to flip the switch so fast. “Breach?”
“It’s just the two of us.” He flicked his gaze to her before returning to the screen. “And yes, we’re going in.”
Her heart rate spiked at the fact that he was willing to take action, but she kept herself from getting too excited. She heard a ‘but’ coming in his tone.
“But we do it right.”Yep, there it is. He pointed at the data center’s internal layout, a blueprint, complete with ventilation runs, stairwells, and service corridors. “I hacked into the county building permits database. These are the schematics for the last structural upgrade they did.”
She leaned in to scrutinize it. He smelled faintly of coffee and rain. And Spence. That tantalizing scent that was all his. It was steadiness mixed with adventure.
He slid the cursor to a spot on the west side of the building. “Security is tight. Lots of cameras, but not that many human guards. There’s a service entrance here, with only two of them—one at the door, one on roving patrol. This hallway is our entry corridor. We avoid the main lobby—there’s no employee on duty at this time of night, but there’s a guard plus full camera coverage.”
The cursor slid again, this time to an area that showed a narrow hallway cutting deep into the above-ground structure. There was a whole floor underground, too. “Hastings will most likely be somewhere in this block. That’s where the offices are. If he’s not there, he’s below deck.” He pointed to the underground level. “Here we have multiple hub partitions—he could be in any of them.”
Every tidbit went into her mental copy of the blueprint, along with other things that might help her own plan if and when she had a chance to execute it. “Do we split up, then? I take the offices and you take the hub?”
“We do what we each do best. Once we’re inside, I take control of the security cameras to keep them off you while you hunt for the proof we need. Photos. Audio, if possible. You know the drill. Once we have our proof, we extract here.” He pointed to a loading bay on the opposite side of the building. “We slip out into the side street and use the tree line for cover. Ten minutes inside, max. No cowboy shit.”
His eyes held hers when he said it, and for once, she didn’t argue. She even nodded. It was a good plan. A safe one. Relatively safe. Things could go wrong. Probably would. If they did, she and Spence would have to improvise. “Sounds solid. What’s our contingency if we get caught?”
“I create a distraction by setting off the fire alarms and coolant systems. If I can hack into their security system, I can also manipulate which areas get locked down, trapping the guards in certain locations. Resorting to violence is our last resort, but we go in locked and loaded in case these other options fail.”
