Page 28 of Avenging Jessie (Black Swan Division Thrillers #3)
Twenty-Eight
Spence
The hospital room was quiet, save for the soft blip of Jessie’s monitors and the distant hush of a cart rolling past in the hallway.
Spence sat in the corner chair, one ankle hooked over his knee.
He’d tucked a blanket around Jessie’s shoulders and now watched as she slept deeply, her face slack and peaceful for the first time in days.
But he was wide awake.
He’d had his wrist looked at and now sported an ugly brace. A bottle of pain meds sat nearby, but he didn’t need them. He just needed her.
He kept one hand on the armrest, the other curled around the Queen Victoria shilling that had traveled with him since the night he’d stopped being a kid. Its edges were worn smooth, its inscription faded, but it had always tethered him to something...even if he never quite knew what.
Tonight, it felt like more than a memory.
He reached for his laptop, careful not to wake Jessie, and flipped it open. With a few keystrokes, he decrypted the file he’d stored back at the safe house. Staring at the strange string of letters and numbers, he knew he had to find the connection.
Vic609-bellcov-97firewatch
He ran it through everything. Search engines, archived intelligence reports, off-grid black ops archives. Nothing useful came up.
Until he added one word: London.
Suddenly, something pinged.
“Holy queen and country,” he murmured. Bellcov wasn’t a place—it was shorthand for Bell Covenant, a disused church turned shelter near Camden Market, where displaced children had sometimes ended up in the early nineties.
He’d slept behind its crumbling steps a few times and still remembered its black bell tower, the fire-scorched bricks.
And Firewatch97? One of his databanks pinged again when he added the same term. London.
He gobbled up the info, mentally doing a palm slap when he found the details. It was an off-the-books security program created by MI5 for the protection of sensitive civilian witnesses. Used only in the most politically damning cases, ones that would unravel entire networks if exposed.
His pulse kicked up. He traced the memo trail until he found a declassified fragment buried in a corrupted directory.
Asset Name: Victoria Marsh
Age: 6
Status: Relocated under Firewatch97 protocol
Reason for Custody: Witness to Operation Dunestone breach
Custodian: [REDACTED]
Location: [REDACTED]
Status: Active, low profile recommended.
He exhaled, his whole body shaking.
She was alive.
Victoria was fucking alive.
Hidden, but someone—maybe even Victoria herself—had found a way to send him this breadcrumb. To tell him, I’m still here.
Jessie’s voice shook him from his thoughts. “Spence?”
He snapped the laptop shut and turned to her. “Hey. Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.”
She blinked at him sleepily, but the edges of her mouth turned up. “Is it morning?”
“Close,” he said. “Hospital coffee’s terrible. Nurses confirmed it. How about more water?”
She gave a soft groan and adjusted her position. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
He hesitated, then said it aloud, reverent and shaken. “I found her.”
“Found her…?” Jessie sat up suddenly as it sank in, grimacing through the pain. “Your sister?”
Everything in him was flush with adrenaline.
“She was taken into protective custody. I don’t know why, but they buried her so deep, she vanished.
I got a message with a code, Vic609-bellcov.
It’s a clue. I traced it back to a failed MI5 shelter op tied to a black site relocation program. She’s still under their protection.”
Jessie’s eyes filled with tears and something fiercer than hope. “You did it. Thank God.”
Spence’s throat closed. He wasn’t the kind of man who cried. He’d locked that part of himself away too long ago to count.
But she reached out and wiggled her fingers, wanting his hand. He gave it to her, and she squeezed it tight. “You once told me I needed to believe in something bigger than revenge,” she said softly. “Now it’s your turn to believe in something bigger than failure.”
He looked at her, at this woman who had once betrayed him and then rebuilt everything between them with grit and truth.
“I love you, J,” he told her, because he needed to say it. Her lips parted, but he leaned forward, pressing his forehead gently to hers. “And I trust you with everything. Even her.”
Her breath hitched. “I won’t let you down again. I swear.”
He chuckled. “I know that, and I’m ready for us to be partners in every sense of the word if you are.” He motioned at the bed and the room. “Once you’re back on your feet, that is.”
She smiled through her tears, gently shoving him away and flipping the covers back. “Then let’s go find your sister.”
He stopped her, kissed her forehead, and grinned. “Not until the doctor okays it.”
“But I’m ready now.”
She wasn’t even close, but he appreciated her tough, brave demeanor. He stroked her cheek. “Soon, luv.” The only way to get her to rest was an obvious one. He lifted his arm in the sling. “When we’re both in better shape.”
She narrowed one eye at him. “Tomorrow, then?”
He laughed. “Tomorrow, I guess. Together.”
She tugged him into the bed with her, holding him close and laying her head on his chest. Just outside the window, the sky began to lighten. “I’m happy.”
The words came out sounding surprised. “Me, too,” he said, and realized it was true.
For the first time in years, the silver coin in his pocket didn’t feel like a goodbye.
It felt like a beginning.
He kissed the top of her head, reveling in the feel of her. “Me, too,” he repeated.