Page 40 of Avenging Jessie
It wasn’t the “I have to pee” line—though that had been a nice touch—it was the way her body language had shifted half a second before she said it.
He’d played along and kept scrolling through the camera feeds, buying himself a moment before confirming what he already knew.
She was making a play without him.
His first instinct was the obvious one—call her out, order her to stand down, drag her into the trunk if he had to, like he’d threatened. But the second thought was stronger.This is who she is now.
Jessie was not the same swan who would run a plan into the ground before breaking ranks. Not the same partner who would back your play even when she hated it.
Brewer and Hagar had carved out pieces of her and replaced them with hard edges. He’d seen it in her eyes since they’d rescued her from Brewer—the calculation, the constant weighing of odds. And now here she was, betting it all on herself.
He leaned back in the seat, staring at the empty road.
Meg would read me the riot act.
Declan would tell me not to indulge her.
Flynn… Flynn would pull her off the op without hesitation.
But none of them were here. Just him.
He’d been where she was—hell-bent on a course no one could talk him out of. And when someone had tried, it had almost cost him everything.
In one area of his life, he continued to do it. Victoria. He would never stop searching for her, never stop hunting down the man who’d taken her.
Seconds ticked by. An eternity. Nearly as fast as his code could run a program, he ran through his options. His own personal code of morals and responsibilities.
Then he made the call.
He wasn’t going to pull her back. He wasn’t going to blow her cover by storming in after her.
He was going to make damn sure she got through that door without catching a bullet to the head.
Spence’s fingers flew over the keys, the laptop already patched into the exterior feeds. The building’s security network was airtight inside, but the perimeter? That he could touch.
He pulled up the live stream from the west side service entrance. The camera swept in slow, mechanical arcs, overlapping its field of vision with the one mounted at the corner of the loading dock.
Jessie wasn’t in the frame yet. Good. If he could see her, someone else could, too.
He dove into the control menu and slid the feed into maintenance mode. The camera froze for a second—then resumed, but with a five-second loop of empty asphalt instead of real time. It would buy her the window she needed
She thought she was doing this solo.Fat chance.
He would always have her back. The decision was made right then and there. Even she went against his orders. Even if she went rogue.
He was all in.
He toggled to his secondary screen and powered up the thermal imaging scanner lying on the dash. A wash of heat signatures bled across the monitor in molten oranges and reds.
His pulse spiked. There—cutting low along the tree line, body heat muted by the damp night air. She was fast, fluid, and deliberate. Not reckless in her movements.
He tracked her until she dropped out of range, swallowed by the facility’s blind spot. That was the last time he’d see her until she was inside. By then, if she screwed up, it would be too late to pull her out clean.
Spence swore under his breath, grabbed the thermal gun, and sprinted to the trunk. There, he grabbed a Kevlar vest and loaded it with extra mags, a sidearm, and a knife.
Because if Jessie walked into hell, he was damn well walking in after her.
He slipped the vest over his head, the heavy weight distributing itself across his shoulders. Every mag, every weapon in the pouches, was a reminder of exactly how sideways this could go.
