Page 4 of Avenging Jessie (Black Swan Division Thrillers #3)

Four

Spence

He wrestled with pulling the plug on the gala visit all night, pacing and listening to what went on beyond the other side of their connecting doors.

He expected her to sneak out. To go off on her own.

She didn’t.

Which surprised the hell out of him.

The next morning, he was still debating. Not only the gala, but the op itself. He could track down Brewer on his own, but he didn’t want to. Brewer was Jessie’s Achilles’ heel. She needed to be the one to capture the man and send him to prison if she was ever going to find closure.

Nursing bad coffee from the room’s coffee pot, he nearly had a heart attack when the door banged open. She didn’t knock—just barged in through the connecting door between their suites like she owned both rooms and the air in between.

Coffee spilled over the rim of the heavy white mug, burning through his shirt. He sat up too fast and blinked up from his laptop. “Jessie—?”

“We’re going to the damn gala.” She did a heel turn, already halfway back out. “Get ready.”

The door slammed before he could ask what had changed her mind.

He stared at the space she’d just filled, her voice echoing in his skull. He’d expected more verbal sparring. Another wall. Not this about-face. Had she changed her mind because of what he’d said—or was she just angry enough to prove she wasn’t afraid?

Either way, she was walking straight into danger—and he wasn’t sure he could watch her do it.

He swore under his breath, launched himself out of the desk chair, and tapped into a secure server to hack the gala’s guest list. The Bundestag Initiative maintained a tight list of tech donors and political figures.

Posing as cybersecurity consultants from a high-level firm took finesse, but he could spoof credentials in his sleep.

He cracked the guest registry through a shell proxy, splicing in some fake credentials while pretending not to notice that his hands were shaking.

His cover alias: Spencer Worth, CTO of Sentinel Defense.

Hers: Jayla Worth, his brilliant and beautiful wife.

He paused long enough to wince at that. Jessie would hate it. Hate him.

What’s new? He uploaded the forged invitation and fired off a rush order with the hotel’s concierge for a tailored tuxedo to be delivered within the hour. It wouldn’t be designer, but with his build, he knew how to make it look like it.

He was just finishing when a soft knock echoed from the connecting door.

When he opened it, a dangerous hallucination was standing there.

The gown was black satin, cut sharp and sleek, slit to the thigh, and sleeveless. It fit her like it had been molded to her curves. Her heels made her several inches taller, bringing her up to his own height.

Her eyes—no, not her eyes—contacts, he realized. They were a deep emerald, disguising her hazel color, and rimmed in charcoal. Her lashes were already thick, but she’d added a layer of falsies to call even more attention to them.

He hadn’t seen her wear makeup since Vienna. What she’d done with concealer and blush had sculpted her features just enough to soften the angles—contour over her cheekbones, shadow to recede her jaw. But it was still her. Fierce. Battle-forged.

And drop-dead gorgeous. He tried to say something. Failed.

“I stole it off the rack of dry-cleaned clothes a maid was delivering to various rooms.” She held up a dark auburn wig.

“I need help with this. I can’t get it to stay put.

I don’t want to color my hair, so a wig is the answer.

The shop downstairs had a slim selection.

Above all else, I cannot let Keller recognize me. ”

He tried to speak again. His tongue tripped over itself.

“Spence?”

Swallowing hard and turning away so she didn’t notice what was going on down below in his pants—hello, instant erection—he gestured for her to enter. “Yeah, yeah. Come in.”

She stepped across the threshold, hesitant this time. The scent of lemon and eucalyptus followed. She didn’t look around, didn’t comment on his frantic effort to make the room presentable. Just walked straight to the bathroom with the wig, a hairbrush, and a handful of pins.

He followed, heart thudding like a live grenade in his chest. This was why emotional entanglements were off-mission. They scrambled the brain. Danger assessment: fucking off the charts.

When he joined her in the luxurious bathroom, the open space suddenly felt like close quarters.

He fidgeted with his hands, not knowing what to do with them.

His attention kept straying from the deep V of the dress that exposed her vulnerable spine to her tight shoulders.

And then there was the delicate curve of her neck…

“Spence?” She frowned at him in the mirror. “Are you okay?”

Snap out of it, he ordered himself. He returned to the main room and grabbed a barstool from the breakfast nook. “Here,” he told her, setting it next to her. “You sit. I’ll fix it.”

He wasn’t sure how. While he’d had training in using disguises, he’d never made over a female accomplice before, and he sure as hell wasn’t sure what to do with a wig.

She eased onto the stool, back straight, eyes locked on her reflection.

He grabbed the brush and started smoothing down her dark hair.

It was shorter than when he’d first met her, back when they’d both been younger, more at ease with their jobs, and eager to do them.

Not younger in years, but in their perspectives.

All that had changed when Mosai Hagar had kidnapped her and Meg. Before Jessie had been killed on camera during a live stream to the entire world.

Except, it had been a deep fake. Not the kind where AI was used to mimic her death, but one where another woman who had an uncanny resemblance to her had been beaten to the point she wasn’t recognizable and put in Jessie’s place.

Not that Jessie hadn’t been beaten to a pulp, too, but she’d been saved from death by Harris Brewer and forced to work for him by threatening to kill Tommy.

Spencer had always known Jessie was loyal to the CIA and America. But those loyalties could be broken. The one to her brother could not. She’d endured everything Brewer had thrown at her in order to keep Tommy safe.

Not only did Jessie live with those terrible memories and the ongoing aches and pains from bones and soft tissue injuries that had never healed properly, she also wrestled with the fact that they had used an innocent woman to take her place.

It was truly no wonder that she had so many hang-ups.

That she was always on a knife’s edge, and in constant fight mode.

He couldn’t begin to imagine what went on in her head most of the time, and he was grateful that she hadn’t taken a razor to her wrist or downed a bunch of pills, no longer able to handle the demons that haunted her day and night.

Her hair was soft under his fingers. While she used to keep its natural wave flattened, these days, she used the waves to hide behind. Surgical scarring at her temples peeked through the strands when he brushed too deeply.

She didn’t flinch. He did.

“What’s the plan for tonight?” she asked, her voice level.

He cleared his throat, using several of the pins to tame her thick locks.

“Whatever circles Keller is running in, Brewer is, too. Tonight is about putting eyes on Keller to see who he interacts with, who he buddies up to. The gala is the perfect place for him to recruit backers and secure other resources to put Brewer’s plan in motion.

I’ll handle gathering the identities of those whom Keller seems particularly interested in tonight.

You’re only job is to keep an eye on the security team the gala has hired and make sure no one gets suspicious of us. ”

“So I’m just the lookout? Babysitting you while you chase the bad guys?”

“I’m telling you not to bleed for Brewer.

Not again.” He didn’t say what he really meant—that watching her bleed the first time nearly gutted him.

That every time he noticed her scars—which was less and less these days, but still—it gutted him all over again.

“You got away from him once. There’s no way in hell I’m letting you end up under his thumb again. ”

She stilled. He met her eyes in the mirror, and something hot twisted in his gut.

“I’m not incompetent. The last thing I’ll ever do is let that happen.”

He held her accusatory gaze. “Keeping an eye on security and keeping our asses out of jail, or dead in some back alley, it’s just as important as gathering intel on Keller and Brewer.

I need you to watch my backside. There’s no one else I’d rather have doing it, either.

You know Brewer. You know Keller. Which sucks and all of that, but it’s a bonus for us.

Do you understand that? You are the key to taking down two major traitors to the CIA.

You can stop a global war that will cripple the United States.

You, Jessie. In this partnership, on this mission, you’re the most valuable asset we have. You’re the key to everything.”

He saw her throat bob as she swallowed. Her gaze fell to the sink. “Yes, I am, and yes, I know how important it is to make sure security doesn’t get a whiff of what we’re doing.”

He couldn’t help it, as he resumed his work, his fingers brushed the curve of her neck. She didn’t move, but her gaze returned to watch him. He didn’t meet her gaze directly, fooling with securing the wig with multiple bobby pins, and judging whether or not it looked real enough.

It did. It was a high-quality product, and its color brought out her eyes even more.

He messed with a couple of tendrils, admiring his work.

Admiring her. She rose, leaning toward the mirror to examine his handiwork as well.

Her spine was totally exposed to him, the fabric of the dress molding over her ass.

He needed to take a step back.

He didn’t.

She turned to face him. Too close. She was way too close, those enormous eyes and her delicious scent sucking him in. He could see the pulse fluttering in her throat.

Her lips parted, then closed like she didn’t trust the words forming on her tongue. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

“You look...”

She lifted a brow. “Don’t.”

“Right.” He could hear his own pulse pounding in his ears. Could see the moment where she almost said something else. Nearly leaned into him.

A knock shattered the moment, and they both shifted.

She was instantly on alert, on edge again. “Who’s that?”

Of all the terrible timing. His gaze went to the clock on the wall. “Room service. They’re delivering my suit.”

Jessie blinked, stepped away from him, and headed for her room. “Hurry. We don’t want to be late.”

He didn’t stop her, but he wanted to. Wished he could ask her to stay—even if it was only to breathe the same air a minute longer.

When the adjoining door clicked shut, he could’ve sworn he heard her pause on the other side with a whoosh of relieved breath.

He smiled to himself. Maybe he wasn’t the only one coming apart at the seams.

His hand drifted to his pocket, fingers closing around the worn edge of the coin. Don’t lose it, mucker. Don’t lose her.