Page 103 of Crossfire

I clenched and unclenched my fists, imagining that man before me, bloodied and beaten and begging for mercy. How dare he lay his hands on her and poison her life. It was almost impossible, putting a pin in my raging thoughts about what I would do to this man in the future so I could focus on the present, here with Ivy.

Who wanted to know why I killed people for a living. I suppose it was a fair question, being that she was trapped in a remote cabin alone with said killer, but still. I hesitated. I had never talked about this with anyone—anyone by choice, that was. My mother had forced a therapist on me, but as an unwilling participant, I shared very little, and that was before I’d chosen my profession.

But Ivy had just shared the most profound moment of her life. She had bared her soul, so was it too much to ask of me to do the same?

Strangely, as I drown in her hazel eyes, I didn’t feel the usual resistance fighting to silence me. Rather, I wanted her to know.

“It happened when I was eleven,” I began.

46

IVY

“They say you can never take back what you have done,” he continued, his eyes unfocused, as if lost in his own hellish memory. “But you also can never take back what you didn’t do.”

It took him a few moments to compose himself while I tried to remain patient, yet I was silently leaning forward, hanging on the words that were about to drift from his mouth.

“It was just an ordinary night,” Grayson said. “When we were getting ready to leave to go shopping and grab dinner, everything seemed normal. Nothing suggested our lives were about to be destroyed.”

Silence poisoned the air with trepidation.

“Our family home was on an expansive stretch of property, surrounded by trees on three sides.” Grayson cleared his throat. “That night, we all piled into my mom’s car. Well, all of us except for Hunter, who was sick. My dad had to work, so he stayed behind in his home office while the rest of us went out shopping with my mom. But as she drove down a long driveway, I saw this man in the woods. That struck me as really strange because we lived on private property, so no one was supposed to be on our land. And as we drove past him, I noticed he was facing our house. Just…staring at it.”

Grayson held the back of his neck, his expression growing distant, as if he were reliving each painful moment.

“I thought maybe the guy was lost. Or maybe he was admiring our house because it was so beautiful. So, I said nothing.”

Oh god.

“Later, I did tell someone. I told the police who were investigating my father’s homicide. He had been murdered not long after we left, right there in his home office.” He paused, his jaw clenching. “The police asked me why I hadn’t said anything. I don’t think they meant anything by their question, but those words became a grenade in my chest, and at any time, without warning, it would detonate.”

He shifted his posture.

“After that, I started to have some…problems, I guess you could say. I was getting into all sorts of fights, struggling to control my anger. I kept thinking about that man in the woods and wondering,What if someone had taken him out before he could have ever killed my dad?If he was dead, my dad would be alive.”

Grayson’s features grew even darker, haunted by the ghosts of his past.

“I remember almost every night, I’d go back to that moment and imagine myself confronting the man in the woods. I imagined doing all sorts of terrible things to him.” He bit his lower lip. “Unhealthy fantasies for a teenager, but I couldn’t stop the anger or the hatred for that man. But mostly, the hatred for myself, for not saying something.”

He took a deep breath, staring at the table.

“All my rage crystallized itself into one desperate wish—that the guy had died long before he could ever hurt my father. I started to think about all the other innocent people who might lose their lives just like my dad did, and I wanted to dosomething about it. Needed to.” Grayson shook his head. “But I had no idea how to go about it. In high school, I drowned my agony in fistfights.”

He fidgeted with his silverware.

“One day, after school, I got into a particularly brutal fistfight. This time, I was losing, but just before this guy was about to knock me out, someone jerked him off me.” Grayson’s brow furrowed as he recalled the memory. “It took me a few seconds to place him because I hadn’t seen him in years, not since his son and I had stopped hanging out in elementary school. He took pity on me, not calling the police to break up the fight, opting instead to take me out to dinner.”

A wry smile tugged at his lips.

“I remember sort of rolling my eyes, assuming he was about to try and be some hero by talking me into a life without violence. But it was the opposite.”

The opposite?

“He had heard about what happened to my father, of course, but once he recognized just how deep my anger was, once he heard me repeatedly state how much I wished I could have ended that man long before he ever took my father’s life, Daniel stopped talking. I thought I had offended him or maybe freaked him out or something, but after a couple of minutes, he shifted in his seat and leaned forward. That’s when he told me he worked for a branch of the government whose mission it was to do just that—to eliminate bad guys before they could hurt innocent people.”

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“I thought he was messing with me, but after that night, Daniel sort of took me under his wing. He never pressured me. In fact, it was the opposite. As a mentor, he tried to convince me to go to college and go into business or law or become a doctor. But as the years passed, my desire never went away. Itjust continued to grow. Then, one day, Daniel—who is now my boss—gave me a call and invited me to join his team. The rest is history.”