Page 11 of Avenging Jessie (Black Swan Division Thrillers #3)

Eleven

Jessie

The meeting point looked like the kind of place people went to vanish.

Under pouring rain, thanks to the storm system moving through the area, a half-collapsed loading dock slouched behind a wall of stacked shipping containers, graffiti bleeding across the rusted steel. A single overhead bulb flickered and buzzed, casting strobe shadows across the cracked asphalt.

Jessie scanned the perimeter from the rental car, every nerve on edge as her nose picked up fumes of oil under the scent of rain. “Too many entry points. Too easy to bottleneck us.”

Spence shifted in the driver’s seat, calm in that unnerving way of his.

He hadn’t spoken much—just drove them out here like a man on rails, locked in his head and scanning the digital map in his mind.

“He won’t bottleneck us,” he said. “If he’s going to screw us, he’ll drive a truck straight through and detonate it. ”

“Comforting.” Her hand went to her waist to check her sidearm before she remembered she wasn’t carrying.

And didn’t that make her feel even more like a sitting duck?

This meetup wasn’t just about buying gear, and it wasn’t a simple dead drop with a street-level asset. This was black market territory. An appointment with someone who didn’t give a damn about CIA credentials or mission parameters.

Jessie held onto the door handle. Her gaze snapped to every movement in the shadows around the hulking warehouse. A dog barked in the distance, and once in a while, she heard engine noises from the highway.

Her fingers drummed on the handle in time with the rain. It wasn’t only this setup that had her skin prickling. It was Washington.

Flynn’s warning replayed in her skull on a loop. If he went down, Black Swan went with him. If the division fell, so did every operation they’d worked on. Every life they’d saved. Every file they’d buried and every enemy they’d arrested.

They’d become fugitives overnight. Not soldiers. Not operatives.

Ghosts.

Ironic, that. Part of their off-the-books description was to be ghosts. To stay in the shadows so the world didn’t know who they were or what they did to protect their country.

The worst part? If the Black Swan Division were terminated, Brewer would win.

She couldn’t—wouldn’t—let that happen. She mentally repeated her promise to Flynn as she checked her watch. It was still early in D.C., but the president and her advisors would call their morning meeting soon, if they hadn’t already. “You think he’s already gone? Flynn?”

Spence didn’t answer immediately. The sound of a diesel engine growled in the distance, growing louder.

“He’ll fight until they drag him out by his badge.

” He glanced at her, voice like cut stone.

“Deputy Director Stone and Director Allen will fight to save him. I want to believe he’ll survive this morning’s meeting and still be standing, but let’s be prepared for the worst-case scenario.

From here on out, until we hear differently, we act like we’re on our own. ”

A van appeared without headlights, its matte black body gliding into view like a predator emerging from the gray mist. No plates. No markings. Just a shadow with wheels.

Jessie gripped the handle tighter. “Tell me again that this guy doesn’t kill his clients after they pay.”

Spence didn’t smile. “He only kills the ones who lie.” He cut the car engine. “And I did betray him once, so stay alert.”

“You what?” She flicked a glance his way and caught his wink. Was he kidding? She wasn’t sure. “Okay, good to know.”

The van stopped twenty feet ahead under an overhang for deliveries that no longer came. “Come on,” Spence said, exiting the car.

Jessie opened her door with care. Stepped out. Her boots crunched on broken glass.

Every instinct screamed ambush, but she walked forward anyway, ignoring the drenching she was getting, only because Spence was at her side.

If Flynn was out, if Langley turned its back on them, if Black Swan collapsed in the fallout—they’d have only each other.

The van’s side door screeched open like the gates of hell.

A man exited. He was late forties, maybe early fifties, and moved with uncanny grace—rigid spine, squared shoulders, every step economical and silent.

She inventoried him from head to toe. Combat boots.

Weathered cargo jacket. Glock holstered at his side, and a KA-BAR strapped to his thigh that told Jessie this guy didn’t rely on bullets.

Beneath his untamed hair and a thick beard, his eyes were stone. No shine. No warmth. Just a cold, calculating void that said he’d been through enough wars—official and otherwise—that nothing surprised him anymore.

This was Bellringer.

He locked eyes with Spence and nodded once. Not a greeting, just… acknowledgement. “Still breathing,” he said flatly.

Spence didn’t blink. “You’re harder to kill than most fungus.”

“Fungi don’t hold grudges.”

“No,” Spence said. “But they do spread.”

Jessie stood motionless at Spence’s flank. Bellringer’s eyes drifted her way—sharp and assessing. She recognized the flicker of calculation: range, reflexes, threat level.

She returned the look with one of her own.

He raised a brow at Spence. “Brought your plus one with you. Cute.”

Jessie tilted her head, all casual like. “I’m the one with the kill shot.”

A twitch of something like amusement curved his mouth, though it never reached his eyes that stayed locked on Spence. “Still going for dangerous women, eh, man?”

Spence didn’t rise to the bait. He stood there, arms loose at his sides, still seemingly as cocky and confident as the Great Conrad Flynn himself.

Jessie felt it, though—the tension beneath the banter. Bellringer wasn’t an ally. He was a weapon they were borrowing. One with its safety off.

Bellringer gestured toward the back of the van. “Let’s get this over with before I start to like you again.”

He yanked open the rear doors. Inside was a black market fantasyland—every inch crammed with gear you couldn’t find in any sanctioned agency locker.

Drones the size of hummingbirds. Disassembled rifles with illegal mods.

Surveillance bugs so small Jessie had to squint.

Military-grade comms. Infrared goggles. EMP patches.

A case containing encrypted burner phones that appeared to have just arrived from a darknet shipment.

Jessie stepped closer, careful not to show the awe that tugged at her. Her face remained neutral, unreadable, but inside, she cataloged it all. The sheer range. The caliber. The fact that Bellringer had the audacity to roll up to a drop site with this kind of firepower and not blink.

Spence moved like he’d done this dance a dozen times. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t posture. He just started checking items off a mental list in his head while speaking in low-code phrases. “Crows nesting by the third rail.” “Flashbangs are too spicy.” “Need eyes that see past dawn.”

Bellringer kept up. No explanations. No translations. It was a language of war, whispered across foreign soil and blood-soaked history. He already had two bags filled with the gear Spence had requested in his text. Now, Spence was shopping.

Jessie crossed her arms and watched, alert. She didn’t like being on the outside of a conversation—especially one this precise—but what could she do? Sure, she’d dipped her toes into the black market world plenty of times on ops, but this was a whole other level. This was their world.

Bellringer’s gaze slid her way again. “You let her carry the payload?”

Jessie smiled. “You worried about me? Now, who’s being cute?”

Spence examined a rifle. “Better watch your balls. She’s tougher than both of us.”

Bellringer chuckled. His dead eyes roamed over her, calculating. “From the looks of things, you’d better watch yours. What your dick wants is poor strategy. She might be worth it, but the fallout”—he made a whistling noise that sounded like a bomb falling to the ground—“…deadly.”

Pig. Jessie wanted to flip him off. Instead, she winked. “I’m always worth it, and I’m his ace in the hole, not the bomb that’s going to blow up in his face.”

She hoped that was true.

A grunt, dismissing her. “Still betting on instincts over strategy?” he said to Spence.

Spence froze in mid-inspection of a scope for the rifle. Looked up slowly. “Still blaming me for what happened in Bucharest?”

Silence fell like a line drawn in the sand.

Jessie didn’t breathe.

Bellringer’s jaw ticked. “Some mistakes don’t bury easily.”

Spence didn’t reply. He finished checking the scope, slid it into a pack, and zipped it shut like the conversation was over.

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.”

“How did you 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.