Page 64 of Crossfire
Fuck?
I froze, the knife nearly slipping from my fingers. It couldn’t be. The room spun as my mind reeled, struggling to process the unfathomable truth before me.
Ivy?
30
GRAYSON
“Just take what you want and go.” Her words spilled out in a shaky tumble.
“Ivy?” I repeated, out loud this time.
The sound of my voice made her still. We stood frozen in the shadows, blades pressed to each other’s throats, while our vision attempted to sift through the darkness and cast a light on what in God’s name was going on here.
“Grayson?” she gasped with shock in her tone.
In my stunned silence, she yanked off my mask and used her unarmed hand to flip a switch, illuminating the small foyer and, more importantly, our faces.
When her gaze met mine, her eyes widened with recognition and betrayal. She took four long, shuddering breaths as her throat bobbed, trying to process the situation.
As was I…
“What the fuck?” she stuttered. “What…what’s going on?”
My mind raced, trying to reassemble the puzzle pieces of everything I thought I knew as they flew through the air in absolute chaos. The CIA had a termination order out for the woman in this house—a woman by the name of Samantha Jackson.
“The coffee shop…” Her eyes darted around like a compass trying to dial in due north. “Was that the first time we actually met?”
“You said your name was Ivy.” I scrutinized her.
If that guy at the medical facility had gotten back to me by now with the grandmother’slastname, maybe I would have questioned her first.
“Or were you stalking me this whole time?” Her face was a mosaic of emotions—the starting lineup of which were fear and confusion. “Who the hell are you, really?”
“But it’s Samantha,” I snarled, not answering her semi-accurate claim.
Ihadbeen stalking her at first—when I saw her flee from that parking garage with Vosch, when I’d presumed her appearance had been a calculated countermove to stop the operation.
Yet in the time I’d spent with her, I’d gone from presuming she was guilty to firmly believing she was an innocent civilian. I’d even started to have damn feelings for her, if I were being honest. Had my feelings clouded my logic?
Speaking of feelings, her thickened breathing and tightened jaw told me she’d let another emotion into the lineup—anger. I had to give her credit; I’d argue most people wouldn’t narrow their eyes at a man who held a knife to their jugular. Maybe the blade she continued to hold against my neck was giving her too much damn confidence.
“You’re some psycho who’s been toying with me, just waiting for the right moment to attack!” she accused.
Had that whole sob story she’d told me been an act? Was she, in fact, a cunning operative? She had to be. She’d lied about her name and about the real reasons she was at that parking garage.
I mean, look at her. If you wanted to create the perfect woman to disarm me, she was it.
Her angelic face with those big, captivating hazel eyes and dark hair that somehow looked even more alluring in its disheveled state. And then there was her body, the kind that belonged in the fantasies of men. With nothing but a T-shirt on, her bare legs seemed to go on forever, their lean lines an invitation to trace their length.
“You put on quite the act, didn’t you?” I retorted, trying to keep my focus on the situation at hand.
Look at her eyelashes bat in feigned fear, hurt even, as I pressed my blade hard enough to prick her seemingly delicate skin. But there was nothing delicate about her.
Why was I even hesitating? If the CIA sent me here, they knew Ivy to be a national security threat. One so dangerous, the only way to save lives was to kill her.
Maybe I hadn’t stopped her heart yet because of the shock, but mostly, I think it was because other puzzle pieces—Vosch’s man attacking her, her behavior after, her grandmother’s situation—wedged themselves into the logic that she was a criminal mastermind.