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Crossfire (Cross Duet #1) 32. GRAYSON 49%
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32. GRAYSON

32

GRAYSON

“I don’t hurt women,” Hunter declared, his voice steely and tense.

“Neither do I.”

“I think the woman you tied up would disagree with that statement,” Hunter shot back.

Goddammit, he was going to make this painful, wasn’t he?

“I can’t help you unless you give me answers,” my brother decided.

I took a step closer to him.

“I can’t tell you what’s going on. You need to trust me.”

Hunter clenched his fists, glaring at Ivy’s frail figure.

“I need reassurance that you’re not going to harm her,” he demanded through gritted teeth.

I curled my lips. I couldn’t promise him that. “You know after everything I did for you, it’s offensive that you’re putting up this much of a fight to help me out.”

The tension between us was palpable as we glared at each other, our sins threatening to tear us apart.

“You helped me out during a dark time, but I afforded you with partial information. You at least owe me that.”

When I said nothing, he looked even more irritated.

“If you had a man tied up,” Hunter pressed, “maybe this would be a different situation, but not a woman.” Hunter looked at the bed again. “Who the hell is she?”

“I have never asked you for a favor like this before,” I reminded him. “And I need you to help me.”

Hunter began pacing. “I won’t do this unless you give me some information, Grayson.”

“I will,” I conceded. “But I can’t do it yet.” Not until I talked to Daniel, not until I understood what was going on. And not until I understood what fate awaited Ivy. “For right now, you’re just going to have to trust me. Can you do that?”

Hunter tilted his head slightly as he stared at me for two long seconds before staring at Ivy again.

“If you don’t help me contain her while I get some answers, she’ll be dead, no matter what I do.” The CIA would send someone else to kill her if I failed. “This is her only chance of survival.”

Hunter jerked his chin in Ivy’s direction. “So, this is you helping her?”

“Did you not hold L—” I almost said Luna’s name out loud. “Against her will?” I pressed. “For her own protection? Her only hope of staying alive is if I get answers,” I said, my voice tinged with desperation. “But if you won’t help me, her fate is sealed.”

Hunter scrutinized her while a storm of emotions played across his body. His fists clenched and unclenched, a physical manifestation of his inner turmoil, and I could see the burden of Ivy’s life settle onto his shoulders.

As he wrestled with the decision, the silence between us stretched on, growing heavier with each passing second.

Finally, after what felt like an eon, I saw something shift in his gaze. His resolve began to chip away, the hardened exterior cracking under the pressure of the situation, I guess. A frustrated sigh escaped his lips.

“Fine,” he said, the word coming out as a begrudging mumble. It was clear that he was still torn, but the urgency of Ivy’s situation had tipped the scales in my favor.

My brother shook his head like he couldn’t believe that only an hour ago, he had been sleeping peacefully next to the love of his life. Now, here he was, entrenched in my nightmare.

“What do you need me to do?”

“We need to get her loaded into the car without anyone seeing,” I said. “Give me your keys.”

When Hunter hesitated, I cocked my head, silently warning him not to start pushing back on me again. After a deep sigh, he walked up and slammed his key fob into my hand.

Keeping my steps quiet, I grabbed the bag I’d packed for Ivy, walked back to the kitchen, and slowly opened the back door, scanning the alley three times before emerging outside.

Just my luck, a damn storm had hit, and sheets of rain washed over me—each drop a cold, sharp reminder of the night’s chilling turn of events. At least the rumbles of thunder and pelting of water against windows would drown out some of the noise from this abduction.

I pulled Hunter’s sedan as close to the back door as possible before going back into the townhouse.

“Okay.” I tossed the key fob back to my brother. “When I get her outside, open the sedan door for me.”

Hunter’s stare snapped to Ivy’s bound wrists and ankles.

“We need to put her in the trunk,” Hunter declared. “If we were to get pulled over, she can’t be lying in the back seat, tied up.”

Why the hell did my chest pang at the thought of Ivy being in the trunk? She lied to me, at least by partial omission, about her name, and she failed to mention that whatever she was into was bad enough that the CIA would want to kill her.

Worse than all of that, she had made me feel something for her.

I hadn’t felt anything for a woman in, well, really ever. I wouldn’t count high school crushes. This was…something different.

Something that I had blocked out my entire adult life.

Until I met her.

How dare she fool me with her innocence act. I was smarter than this. I was a CIA operative, for God’s sake, and I had met the woman under suspicious circumstances.

I walked over to the side of the bed, and with a careful yet firm grip, I scooped Ivy up, one arm supporting her knees, the other cradling her shoulders. The moment my hands made contact with her body, memories flooded back of her soft lips surrendering to mine, causing something to pulse between us. Yet now, that current battled with uncertainty, screaming at me not to feel this…heat between us.

Her body, a mixture of defiance and desperation, thrashed against the inevitable.

“Hold still,” I commanded.

Ivy screamed beneath the duct tape. “Muck you!”

She jerked so hard that I lost my grip on her and dropped her to the ground with a thump.

“Happy now?” I snapped. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Which one do you want it to be?”

“Mucckk yoooo,” she screamed.

“Are you going to make me knock you out?” I warned.

She instantly stilled and looked up at me with those fiery, angry eyes.

Surely a woman as smart as Ivy would know that remaining conscious was her best chance of survival, and her only hope to remain conscious was if she shut up and held still while I loaded her into the trunk.

“Your choice, sweetheart. Nice and easy or unconscious?” I repeated.

Her chest heaved up and down.

“All right then. Shall we try this again?”

This time, when I picked her up and brought her against my chest, Ivy remained still. She kept her eyes down, perhaps too furious to look at either of her captors as I walked her to the back door.

Cradling her against my chest, a storm of conflicting emotions swirled within me. My arms tightened around her, fueled by the fury over her possible betrayal. Yet, in the same breath, a part of me yearned to soften my hold, to provide a semblance of warmth in what might be her final moments of tenderness.

The feelings I harbored for her felt both distant and close, but all I wanted was to push them away forever.

If the CIA was after her, then that meant she was the enemy.

The kind of vile, repulsive trash who I had spent my life hunting and destroying. It was disgusting that part of my heart chose to stay behind its veil of deceit, because all ration was telling me that my feelings for her needed to die. Instantly.

Dammit, Grayson, you need to focus on pulling off this kidnapping without getting Hunter busted.

As soon as I reached the back door, Hunter opened it ahead of me and popped the trunk.

I should’ve tossed her ass inside, made her feel the pain of landing on her wrists bound behind her back. But, despite everything, I couldn’t bring myself to hurt her like that. Instead, I placed her down gently, and as I turned her onto her side so she would be more comfortable during the drive, her eyes met mine.

I hated the blinding fear in them, hated that I was the one that caused them to redden and blur with terrified tears. And I hated that I hated it—a better CIA operative would be ambivalent, at best.

Yet…there it was. The clenching in my chest that encouraged me to brush a stray lock of hair from her face, my fingers lingering on her soft skin for a moment longer than necessary.

“I’m sorry it has to be this way,” I whispered.

She didn’t respond, but for a fleeting instant, the world fell away, and it was just the two of us, connected by something deeper than the circumstances that brought us here.

I ground my teeth, searching for my anger before I shut the trunk and joined my brother in the vehicle.

Within a minute, Hunter and I were on the road—his face now free of the mask.

Outside, the storm raged with renewed vigor, its howling wind shaking the car. Rain hammered relentlessly against the windshield while the wipers struggled to keep up with the downpour—their rhythmic swish-swish nearly drowned out every time a roar of thunder rumbled through the sky. Lightning flashed, briefly illuminating Hunter’s white knuckles as he gripped the steering wheel, his gaze alternating between his rearview mirror, his side mirrors, and the speedometer.

I knew exactly what he was thinking.

At any moment, a crisis could hit. We could get pulled over, we could spin out on the rainy roads, or we could be in a car accident. All with a hostage bound in the trunk, waiting to be discovered. Destruction was but a heartbeat away, and now that I was sitting here, with my thoughts calming down, I wondered if I had done the right thing, dragging Hunter into this.

He was an ADA. A high-profile one at that. If he was found with a woman tied up in his trunk, what would happen to him?

How could I have been so selfish and reckless, pressuring him to help me, using the times I’d helped him as leverage?

“Thank you,” I said, pulling at the wet fabric of my shirt, which clung to my body.

Hunter pivoted his head slightly before returning his focus to the road.

“How long are you going to hold her?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“I have to be at work in the morning,” Hunter warned. “And it would be in our best interest if I made it home before Luna wakes up and starts wondering what could have made me leave the house in the middle of the night.”

It was already three thirty in the morning. That didn’t give me a lot of time.

Or should I say, give Ivy a lot of time?

After one more loud crack of thunder, Hunter cleared his throat.

“Let me ask you this.” He shifted in his seat. “You said her only chance of survival is if you get some answers.” He paused. “Do you think any of those answers will save her life?”

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