Page 41 of Avenging Jessie
The logical move was to stay in the car, keep eyes on her through thermal, and be her safety net from a distance, just like she’d suggested. That’s what Meg might do if she’d okay’d this, what Declan would demand if it had been his idea. Hell, it’s what Flynn would have ordered if he were still around to give orders.
But again, this wasn’t their call.It’s mine.
And Jessie—bloody Jessie—was already inside, rushing toward a target who’d gutted her life once and still had the proverbial knife in his hand.
Spence racked the slide on his Glock, holstered it, and grabbed a suppressed SMG. A rifle would be better for long distance, but if they ended up in the server rooms, he’d need something compact.
He checked the thermal one last time—no sign of her now. She’d cleared the perimeter.
His gut twisted. This was where good leaders trusted their people. He slammed the trunk shut and stalked into the shadows.
The treeline swallowed him whole, the damp earth muffling his boots as he moved. He kept low, letting the black of his vest and jacket blend with the tree trunks. Even in the near-silence, his senses went razor-sharp—the faint hum of the facility’s backup generators, the metallic tang of rain on steel, the distant hiss of tires on wet asphalt from the main road.
He skirted the arc of the parking lot lights, using the natural slope of the land to stay invisible. Ahead, the west side service entrance glowed faintly under a single halogen bulb, just enough illumination to silhouette anyone standing there.
Jessie was nowhere in sight. That meant she’d gotten past the guard post, and he didn’t have to watch her try to improvise with a bullet in the mix.
He cut toward a cluster of utility sheds at the edge of the property. Maintenance outbuildings, they were likely filled with electrical panels, spare equipment, and maybe a way into the building that didn’t require walking through a security checkpoint.
Every step, his mind ran through contingencies. The breach points, fallback routes, and how long it would take before his looped camera feed was noticed.
The west wall loomed closer. Spence pressed himself into the narrow strip of shadow beneath it, one hand on his Glock, the other fishing out a micro-drone from his vest. The object was the size of a matchbox, but its live feed might allow him to track Jessie without triggering the internal sensors.
He launched it low, letting it skim just above the grass. The tiny motor was a whisper under the rain.
The service door’s keypad was a sterile blue rectangle in the dark. A few feeet away lay an unconscious guard. Jessie’s work, no doubt.
Spence crouched low, rain dripping from the edge of his hood, and slid a thin bypass tool from his pocket.
Four seconds to pop the cover. Another three to clip into the wiring. His laptop, slung across his chest on its strap, was already running a brute-force overlay. Numbers cycled in rapid succession on the screen.
Click.
The light shifted from blue to green.
Spence eased the door open an inch and stopped.
No movement. No sound but the hum of a vending machine somewhere down the hall and the distant vibration of HVAC units pumping climate-controlled air through the building.
He slipped inside, tugging the door shut behind him, and immediately hugged the wall. His eyes adjusted to the gloom—fluorescent strips buzzing overhead, their light patchy from bulbs that hadn’t been changed in years.
The micro-drone’s feed popped into the lower corner of his laptop screen. Grainy thermal imaging painted the interior in shades of white and gray. It caught a heat signature. Jessie’s moving in a slow, calculated pattern. She was avoiding open spaces, keeping to the walls, checking corners before crossing. She was headed to the row of offices.
He moved in the opposite direction toward the doors to the basement server hub. If Hastings was here for data, that’s where he’d be.
Stopping at one of the unattended guard stations, he stuck a USB into its computer. A special little code on it would have the place under Spence’s control shortly, from the security cams to the fire alarms and suppressants.
Leaving it to do its job, he conducted another camera sweep on his scanner, froze the feed, and looped it just as before, buying himself a few more minutes before security noticed the blind spots. If they were even paying attention.
Somewhere ahead, a door clicked shut, the sound echoing down the corridor.
Spence’s jaw tightened. That hadn’t been Jessie.
Hastings? Possibly. Or a guard.
Either way, it was time to find out what exactly this data center had to do with Brewer’s plan for the drones.
Jessie’s thermal outline on Spence’s scanner paused, then shifted toward a branching corridor—the same one his map said would loop her within thirty feet of the west stairwell.
