Page 53 of Avenging Jessie
That earned another questioning look from Meg. “This time?”
“Not important,” Spence said. His mail beeped. “This is my guy. I’ve secured us transport back to the States for a healthy sum of money and some very expensive rum. We leave Munich in an hour.”
“Question,” Tommy said, already grabbing his bag. “If Brewer’s target is Langley, and the summit is just a smokescreen, then why is Hastings here? Why isn’t he in D.C. already?”
Spence answered without hesitation. “Because Hastings doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Brewer. He’s here to hedge his bets. That means he’s holding something back. Something we can use.”
“Or he’s setting us up,” Tessa said flatly.
“That too,” Spence admitted. “Which is why we plan for every angle. No rushing in blind.” He didn’t look at Jessie, but knew she was taking that as a personal dig.
Dec’s phone buzzed. He checked the message, then looked around the room. “We’ve got a three-hour window before the Berlin summit officially starts. Whatever we’re going to do, we need to move now.”
“Langley’s got no idea what’s coming. But we do,” Spence said. “Let’s make it count. We find Hastings, we find Brewer. And then, we end this.”
Twenty-One
Jessie
The jet wasthe kind of ride politicians and CEOs used to cross oceans in comfort—cream leather seats wide enough to curl up in, brass trim on the fold-out tables, and a bar stocked with bottles that probably cost more than her monthly rent.
Soft lighting glowed from overhead, bathing the cabin in a gold warmth that didn’t match the tight undercurrent of tension in her body. Spence, the mission, what they were heading into—they were all pushing her system into overdrive.
Their brief time on the couch replayed in her head over and over again. How it had felt to give in and act on their attraction. How it had gotten her out of her head for the first time in, what? A year?
Even now, she could feel his breath on her ear, his skin on hers. The way his fingers probed, his lips lingered, his mouth tasted her…
The plane bounced on a wind current, and she snapped back to the moment. When Spence had said he had a pirate friend with a plane, she had assumed that they would be riding in a cargo plane filled with contraband. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined such luxury. Even when she’d flown with Brewer in his private jet during her time with him, she hadn’t experienced this level of glam. His jet had been impressive, but more calculated than comfortable. Apparently, the pirate business was lucrative.
And Spence had a very interesting past. Her mind ticked off all the things she now knew about him. About his mother and sister. His adopted father. His hunt for Victoria.
Her eyes tracked to him across the aisle, where he slept sprawled in one of the cushy chairs that tipped back. His six-foot-plus frame was just a bit too big for it, his injured hand cradled on his belly, while the other hung off the side. His feet dipped off the end of the padded leather footrest.
Exhausted. He was flat-out exhausted.
He’d fought sleep, just like he’d fought taking meds to relieve his wrist pain, but had finally given in when Tessa produced Percocet and insisted he take some. He wouldn’t be any good to them once they landed if he was nursing his dominant hand, and something about the way she’d glared at him like a strict nurse in a hospital had stopped his argument before it passed his lips. Jessie had hidden her smile.
He’d reluctantly accepted the medication and, shortly afterward, fell asleep. Since he hadn’t done so in at least two nights—even after what they’d shared on the apartment’s couch—she was relieved to hear his light snores.
She tried not to think about the sex. The adrenaline letdown after the data center encounter, the close proximity while doctoring his hand, and their argument…
She scrubbed a hand over her face, losing the battle once more. The memories of his body, the rasp of his voice, the moment their walls cracked, and the fight between them burned into something else entirely, were on a repeating loop in her brain..
It was the source of her own insomnia at the moment, and why she was looking for a distraction, instead of watching his chest rise and fall, wanting to curl up next to him. All she wanted to do was keep a hand there, reassuring herself he was okay—safe for the moment in this plane high above a world under imminent threat.
A brutal shiver worked through her at that thought, also on replay. She forced her focus back to the laptop on the table in front of her, while outside the oval window, the Atlantic was an inky void, the thin line of the horizon barely visible against the night sky. They’d left Germany as the first rays of sunrise were lighting the sky and were now deep in darkness again as they winged home to D.C.
She should have been running down leads on Brewer, tracking his known aliases and allies within the Maryland-Virginia area. If he’d partnered up with Hastings, there might be others with vendettas against the Agency whom he’d coaxed into his ranks.
Instead, her searches had drifted—Brewer’s name still in the search bar, but the tabs multiplying with intel on Spence before she could stop herself.
His files were filled with info as well. Past missions, false IDs, operations with his name redacted so thoroughly she’d have better luck hacking the Vatican archives.
It was wrong to read his personal files. Unscrupulous and deceitful.
She did it anyway.
Because that frightened part of her that had been betrayed and manipulated too many times wouldn’t stop.
