Crossfire (Cross Duet #1)

9. GRAYSON

9

GRAYSON

Maybe today will be my first official kidnapping—if you don’t include the shit that I did with my brother a few weeks ago…

In fairness, while I did stuff that man into the trunk of my car, killed him, and dumped his body into Lake Michigan, I would argue that was different because that had nothing to do with my CIA job. That fell more under the category of a…favor. After all, the guy had shot a family member of Hunter’s girlfriend.

But I digress.

This woman was unequivocally related to my job, and I had to gather information as quickly as possible.

I maintained a safe distance behind her, who remained engrossed in her cell phone until a city bus pulled up and came to a stop with a hiss. As the door opened, I waited briefly before boarding, securing the last available seat. It was close enough to keep the woman in view, but unfortunately, not close enough to see what she was looking at on her screen.

The bus was packed with people sitting shoulder to shoulder on the long bench-like seats around the perimeter. The cramped space heightened the smell of sweat, mixed with fried food, making the atmosphere even more uncomfortable. As I settled into my seat, my mind raced with questions about the mysterious woman.

Who are you, and who are you going to meet? I wondered silently. What is your name, and what the hell were you doing in a parking garage with one of the most violent criminals in the world?

This woman had shown up there with a purpose, and I needed to know what that was. And while my gut told me she was an innocent civilian, my training told me to be cautious; even a seemingly innocent, beautiful woman was capable of also being extremely dangerous.

And she beat the ever-living crap out of Vosch’s driver , I reminded myself.

I evaluated her visually for any clues I may have missed before—an easier task now that she’d cleaned off the faint dust left from the explosion.

Wearing the barest touch of makeup that only accentuated her hazel eyes and thick lips, she exuded an effortless elegance, a stunning beauty that didn’t just turn heads around her—it lingered in the mind, unforgettable and mesmerizing.

Not that she seemed to notice men’s eyes on her; her focus was too fixated on her little screen as her slender fingers feverishly typed words too far away for me to read while her leg bounced nervously and she wiped tears from her cheeks.

See? More evidence that I was correct; trained agents don’t cry and shake like this. Our job required an icy detachment, and to me, this woman appeared to be crumbling under the gravity of what had just happened.

I could hear Daniel’s voice in my head, though. Maybe she knew I was watching her or had expected to be under surveillance after the incident, and this was all an act to make us think she wasn’t an accomplice.

But again…

Going to the police and inviting them to ask questions, not to mention admitting to some level of involvement, went against every covert and criminal code of conduct that I had ever come across.

The bus stopped with another hiss, and this time, an old woman hobbled on with a cane, looking nervous that all the seats were occupied. I was about to get up and offer her mine, but my mysterious young woman beat me to the punch and stood up, motioning for the woman to take her spot.

Everyone around her, who wasn’t crying and appearing to have the worst day of their lives, stayed seated, but she didn’t hesitate to help this old lady. Equally intriguing was that the young woman, who’d been too lost in her own world to notice a stalker following her, immediately noticed an elder in need.

I’d offer my mystery woman my seat, but doing that would mean having an interaction with her, and I wasn’t ready for that yet.

Holding the bus bar in one hand, she went back to looking at her phone in the other as we traveled further from the scene that tied our fates together.

When the bus veered to the right to negotiate a sharp turn, the sudden motion sent the mystery woman off-balance. She stumbled, bumping into a man seated in a suit and tie, whose cell phone dropped to the ground. He picked it up and glared at her.

“Watch it!” he snapped.

The woman’s frame tightened.

And oddly, so did my back.

“It was an accident,” she snapped in a tone that implied, Get over yourself.

My lips twitched up on one side at her attempt to look like a lion; the woman looked more like a kitten, fluffing its fur to look intimidating.

But I’d seen her in action, and this douchebag didn’t realize this kitten was capable of ripping his skin off.

I have to admit, when he stood up to get in her face, I leaned forward slightly, hoping I might get to see a replay of what she’d done to Vosch’s guy. With his overly styled hair and inflated ego, this guy was clearly one of those alpha types who welcomed confrontations. Overcompensating for the fact that he wasn’t, in fact, as successful as he tried to look. The guy was taking a city bus, not driving some cliché sports car.

“Maybe you should pay more attention,” the guy sneered.

I could see in the clenching of her jaw that she was fighting the urge to respond.

I’d hoped—anticipated, even—that she’d break his nose for that. But I swore I caught the faintest tremble of her lip.

What a fascinating contradiction.

“I was about to apologize until you decided to be a jerk about it,” she fired back, her voice heated. “Accidents happen. It’s called being human. Something you might want to learn a thing or two about.”

My lips twitched higher.

He glared at her, his face a mask of irritation, but his cell phone chimed with something that must have been more pressing than arguing with a stranger.

“Whatever.” The guy plopped into his seat with a huff. “Just keep your distance, you stupid bitch.”

The curl to my lips vanished, and I had to remind myself to monitor the woman. Because right now, I was glowering at the douchebag who needed to learn some manners.

Say, from a lethal specialist who knew all the places in a human body that would kill and, of more importance at the moment, which ones wouldn’t—thus merely causing human suffering.

Before I could give it much thought, though, the bus stopped, the door opened, and the young woman wandered toward the exit.

I waited one second to stand up and follow her, pausing at the asshole who sat staring at his phone. My fist clenched, itching to knock his teeth on the floor, but I couldn’t afford to take my eye off the target.

I needed to follow this contradiction of a woman and find out:

Where does she go after nearly being killed?