Page 19

As he veered into the maze of roses, the scent of the blooms hung thick in the air. Thorns snagged at his sleeves, and his boots crunched on the gravel path. Ahead, Jessie’s silhouette ducked behind a trellis. He surged forward, his breath steaming in the misty morning air.

Why is she running?

Stupid question.

A better one was, why the hell hadn’t Tessa woken him up?

He’d deal with her later.

Ahead, Jessie slipped through a hedgerow. “Jessie!”

he shouted.

From his left, two figures emerged from the shadows of a tree—Meg Carson and Declan Reid. Their weapons were drawn. They moved in tandem, joining him in the race to catch his sister.

“Where the hell did you come from?”

he yelled at them.

“Finally decided to join the party, cub?”

Declan teased.

He would’ve punched Dec in the face if they hadn’t been in a race. “She’s getting away!”

Meg’s voice rang out. “Not for long.”

The sound of her gun going off made his insides drop.

Jessie tripped and went down. A sharp cry escaped her lips as she tried to scramble away from them, blood leaking from her calf. “You shot me!”

she yelled at Meg.

“You shot her,”

Tommy echoed in distress. Now, he wanted to punch Meg.

He skidded to a stop, breathing heavily and staring down at Jessie. As she met his eyes, he saw a plea for forgiveness in them mixed with irritation over his pursuit. “Why couldn’t you leave this alone?”

she lamented.

“You’re my sister!”

He gripped her arm, firm but not brutal, and hauled her to her feet.

She couldn’t put weight on the injured leg, hopping in place and leaning on him to steady herself. “Oh, Tommy. You have to let me go.”

He couldn’t help it. He hugged her, crushing her against his chest. Holding her again, smelling her hair, feeling her in his arms…it brought a tidal wave of emotions. “How could you leave me?”

She sobbed against his chest, her hands gripping the layers of his shirt. “You dummy. It wasn’t about leaving you. It was about keeping you safe.”

“Take her to the house.”

Tessa stood a few feet away, watching the reunion with a cold, distant expression. The shotgun remained steady in her hands, though she didn’t aim it at Jessie. Tommy felt her anger and disappointment over Jessie’s actions boiling up with his, yet she kept hers contained. No matter Jessie’s motivation, what she’d done had put all of them through hell.

Declan supported Jessie’s weight on one side while Tommy did the same on the other. They marched her back to the castle, the sun peeking over the horizon and casting a pale orange hue on the gardens and rear door.

Inside the dining hall, Spence lounged in a high back chair, a porcelain teacup in hand. Steam rose in lazy spirals as he observed their entrance. “Well,”

he drawled, setting his cup down. His gaze roamed over Jessie like she was the best thing he’d seen in ages. “Our prodigal swan has returned.”

Jessie glared at him and said nothing as they lowered her into a chair. Blood ran down her leg and onto the floor.

Tessa remained standing, the shotgun resting casually against her shoulder. Tommy inspected Jessie’s wound while Meg paced and Declan leaned on the door frame.

Moda appeared, and Tessa sent her to retrieve first aid supplies.

“It’s just a flesh wound,”

Tommy told them. He patted his sister’s thigh. “You’ll live.”

Jessie sneered at Meg. “You always were the most accurate shot.”

Declan cleared his throat. “Excuse me? Everybody knows I’m the sharpshooter on the team.”

Meg and Spence exchanged a look. Spence tapped the screen of his phone and resumed sipping tea. “Recording now. Let’s start from the beginning.”

With her hood off, the deformity of her left side was more evident. Tommy tried not to stare.

“I’m injured,”

Jessie said.

“You’re lucky it wasn’t me who shot you,”

Tessa replied. “You’d be in far worse shape. Now, start talking, or I’ll make you wish Meg had aimed higher.”

Tommy shot her a warning glare. Tessa stayed neutral.

Jessie shifted uncomfortably and grimaced, hiking up her leg and putting pressure on her bleeding injury. “You don’t understand. If Viktor finds out I’ve been here, he’ll kill all of us. He’ll set off the attacks and blame you for them.”

“Blame us, how?”

Meg asked. “What’s his motivation for all of this?”

Tommy knew they needed the full details, but dammit, he was in Spencer’s corner. He wanted Jessie to start from the beginning and explain what the hell was going on. He’d heard what she’d told Tessa in the garden, but he needed to have more facts rather than speculation.

Jessie’s gaze swung to Tessa. “Did you pick up the USB I threw at you?”

Tessa withdrew the stick from her pocket and held it up. “What’s on it?”

Before Jessie could answer, Tommy loomed over her. “Is it infected with a virus? Will it alert Harris?”

“No. Of course not,”

Jessie said. “Just look at what’s on it. Everything you need to know is on there.”

Reluctantly, Tommy accepted the drive from Tessa. By the time he returned with the laptop, Moda, the maid, had arrived with the bandages. While Tommy proceeded to take a few precautions before opening the drive, Spence appointed himself as medic and began to care for Jessie’s wound.

As Tommy checked the background encoding, he was relieved there were no viruses. He began rooting through the files stored on it. “What is this?”

Tessa moved to peer over his shoulder. Jessie said, “It’s Viktor’s manifesto. His master plan. The proof he’ll plant to frame the swans. Everything.”

Meg joined them, standing on Tommy’s other side as she read the screen. “We need to send this to Flynn ASAP.”

“What’s he going to do about it?”

Jessie challenged, flinching as Spence used an alcohol wipe on her wound. “The moment Viktor gets wind of this, he can type in a code and set off those EMPs. Flynn won’t even have time to blink. That’s why you must let me go. We can’t take the chance that he’ll figure out I’m here or that I stole that information.”

Tommy rubbed his eyes and returned to the document directory. “And this?”

He clicked on a file labeled SWAN.

A series of files appeared, each bearing a team member’s name. “What the hell?”

Meg said as he selected the one with her name on it, and they scanned its contents. “This is… Everything about you,”

he said. “Your history, your skills, your missions. And it looks like details about your missions for Black Swan.”

She scanned the material. “Fabricated details.”

She pointed at one of the entries. “That’s not how the mission went down. We didn’t have any contact with a Horace du Fossen.”

Dec crowded in, also reading the screen. “I don’t get it. What is this?”

“He wants to prove that the swans were never heroes,”

Jessie said. “That you’ve been the villains all along. He’s setting you up to take the fall for the EMP attacks, and this evidence”—she emphasized the word—“is to prove that the swans have been creating the chaos that the CIA claims they’re needed for. That they want to terrorize people so they can swoop in and save the day.”

Dec grunted. “But we’re ghosts. The public doesn’t know we exist.”

“Until Viktor broadcasts your identity to the whole world,”

Jessie countered, wincing again as Spencer wrapped her leg with gauze.

Tommy glanced at her. “Why would he do that?”

She looked tired, the kind of tired that sleep couldn’t fix. “When I was first recruited for the team, I saw a memo written twenty years ago by a consultant for the Agency. It predicted a bunch of black swan events. The consultant’s name had been redacted, and that memo was ignored. It mentioned the fact that the CIA should create a team like yours to handle such things, but apparently, no one took it seriously.”

Spence finished and began packing up the first aid materials. He leaned a hip on the table. “What’s that got to do with this, luv?”

“It was after Vienna.”

She glanced up at Spence, then addressed Meg and Declan. “There were too many coincidences about that mission. About the previous one, as well. It kept tickling my brain. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I felt like I’d seen, heard, or read about similar events. That’s when I remembered that memo. I went digging for it, but it was gone. I had no way to figure out who the consultant was. I was out of luck.”

Tessa un-cocked the shotgun, removing the shells and setting all of it on the table before slumping into a chair. “It was Harris. Or as you know him, Viktor.”

“After he rescued me and forced me to work for him,”

Jessie said, “I found that manifesto in his files. He was so angry at being dismissed by the Agency that he decided to prove his point by creating the events himself.”

Meg shook her head. “That’s not possible. You can’t create a black swan event.”

“You can take advantage of a gray swan, though,”

Jessie argued, “and turn it into something far worse.”

“Gray swan,”

Tommy murmured in thought.

“An event that can have severe repercussions on the economy but is unlikely to occur,”

Tessa said. “Like Brexit.”

“I know what it is,”

he replied. He tapped his fingers on the table. “A cyberattack on critical infrastructure must be his goal.”

“Exactly,”

Jessie said. “He plans to make it look like you’re all behind it.”

She spoke to him again. “He was so angry when he discovered you were onto him and the Russian investors. I tried to scare you off, but you?—”

“Wouldn’t quit,”

Tommy said. “And I’m not about to now.”

“Why didn’t you come to us?”

Meg said. “Why didn’t you tell me? Flynn? Someone?”

Her chin came up, defiant. “I was protecting my brother, and I couldn’t risk Viktor—Harris— setting off those EMPs. I’m… I’m sorry.”

It was an apology for more than not sharing this intel sooner—it was for everything. “Please.”

She inched to the edge of the chair, pleading with them. “I have to go. He’s probably already noticed I’m missing.”

Tessa snatched up Spence’s cup and downed the last of the tea. “You expect us to let you go back?”

She snorted. “Fat chance.”

“You don’t have a choice,”

Jessie said, resolute.

Tommy admired his sister’s confidence when she sat in a room full of people who would not give her any quarter.

“Maybe we do,”

Tessa said. “Sending you back to him might actually be the answer.”

Tommy didn’t like the calculating look on her face. “Where are you going with this?”

Tessa sized Jessie up. “You said he used you as a surrogate for me. A stand-in. If he wants the real thing, I think we should give it to him.”

Comprehension hit him at the same time it did Meg and the others. Meg nodded. Dec shook his head. Spence seemed to be considering the complications of such a plan but neither accepting nor discarding it outright.

“No,”

Tommy said. “Absolutely not.”

“Hear me out.”

Tessa paced the length of the room. “Jessie will bring me to him. I’ll let him think I’m willing to negotiate. We’ll use it to get close and take him down.”

Spence looked at his empty cup. “A Trojan horse. We send you in and strike from the inside.”

Jessie shook her head. “It won’t work. He’s too paranoid.”

“He called me and told me to come to him,”

Tessa countered. “He wants me to see how brilliant he is.”

“It might work,” Meg said.

“You can plant a virus to infect his computers with,”

Spence added. “I can send it with you. We can disrupt the attacks before he can set them off.”

“No,”

Tommy said again, more insistent this time. He shook his head at Spence, Dec, and Meg. “He’s a murderer. An egomaniac. A tyrant. You’re not letting her walk in there.”

“Letting me?”

Tessa’s voice had a brittle edge to it. “I’m doing it. This is our best bet. End of discussion.”

Tommy stared her down. “Not without me, then. I’m going with you.”

Jessie used the table to help her stand. “None of you are listening. It won’t work.”

Tessa faced her. “Let’s get something straight, Jessie. You’re in no position to hand out orders. While you may have critical intel, you don’t get a vote in how we proceed.”

Jessie glanced at each of them.

“You owe us,”

Meg said. “Stop this madness. Help us bring him down.”

Jessie was quiet for a long moment, seeming to search for another argument. Tommy held his breath until she whispered, “Fine. What do you want me to do?”

“The swans ride again,”

Spence said, a bit too cheerily for Tommy’s liking.

“I’m not a swan,”

Tessa reminded him.

“Screw that,”

Meg said. “You are, too.”

She glanced at the open doorway. “Now, how do we get some breakfast around here? We have a full day ahead of us.”