Page 100 of Crossfire

“I should’ve called my parents. I mean, honestly, what had I been thinking?” I shook my head. “Breaking my parents’ rules the first time they gave me freedom? It was the stupidest thing I could’ve done in terms of having the chance to getmorefreedom. Not to mention what happened next…”

So stupid.

“I guess when you’re thirteen, you don’t think as rationally as an adult would.” I took a sip of water to combat the drying of my throat. “So, I walked home alone, following all the other safety measures. I took the direct, highly public route we’d agreed upon and watched my surroundings. But then…”

I paused, shuddering at the memory.

“I got this bad feeling. At first, I dismissed it, thinking it was probably just from my parents instilling so much fear about the bad guys out there or whatever.”

“But the feeling didn’t subside?” Grayson deduced.

I shook my head.

“By that point, I was a block and a half away, so I thought I could just make a run for it. But…a car came out of nowhere with screeching tires. A guy jumped out and grabbed me.”

At the confirmation someone had laid hands on me, a vein pulsed in Grayson’s temple.

“He slammed me into the pavement so hard, my forehead split open.”

Grayson licked his teeth, his line of sight drifting to the faint scar above my left eyebrow.

“He, uh…started punching me in the head repeatedly.”

“He punched you,” Grayson repeated in angry disbelief, his deep voice pulsing with vengeance.

“My assailant started shoving me toward the vehicle, where there was another guy waiting in the driver’s seat. When I screamed, he covered my mouth. It was a blur, like my eyes were looking in a million places and nowhere at the same time—looking up and down the block, thinking someone will see this, someone will come along and stop this. And at the same time, trying to memorize the red scar on his arm so I could give police a better description.”

My throat swelled at the memory of being so helpless.

“But no one came. And as he dragged me, kicking and screaming, I knew that if he got me into that vehicle, I was dead.”

That was the moment when my entire world changed. You went from thinking about the next school dance or wondering if the boy you have a crush on liked you back to knowing you were about to die. That was too crushing for an adult, let alone a thirteen-year-old.

“It’s weird how so many thoughts can go through your mind in a split second. But I thought about my parents and how devastated they would be. I was their only child, and after all those years of trying to keep me safe, I knew they would blame themselves for something that was completely my fault.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Grayson snarled. “It was the scumbags who were trying to abduct you. They were predators, and you were a child.”

I don’t know why Grayson’s words surprised me; I guess I would’ve thought someone whose job it was to eliminate the worst of humanity would see how dangerous the world actually was and might look at me like I was naive. But he wasn’t treating me like I was naive at all.

If anything, he looked so furious, with his narrowed eyes and bulging veins, that I wondered what he would do if he was sitting in the room with the two men right now.

“Did they get you in that car, Ivy?”

Grayson looked like he wasn’t certain he could handle the answer; after all, two grown men abducting a thirteen-year-old girl wouldn’t fall under the motive of robbery.

“He had me halfway into the back seat when his grip suddenly loosened. I stumbled backward, falling onto the sidewalk. Next thing I knew, I saw both kidnappers fighting with someone who’d come to my rescue. Fists were flying everywhere. The guy with the scar must’ve panicked when this wasn’t the easy target they’d expected, because he bolted for the car and peeled off, abandoning the original driver. That guy curled up on the ground, arms raised to protect his head because my rescuer was relentless with blows until blood streamed from the man’s face.”

Grayson’s lips twitched slightly.

“I remember lying there, frozen, watching the little drops of blood get absorbed into the sidewalk while the sounds of thumps and groans were broken up by a muttering of curse words.”

I shifted.

“That’s when I finally looked up. Turned out, the man beating the absolute shit out of my would-be kidnapper was my dad.”

It looked like it took Grayson a conceited effort to move past the image of a grown man trying to abduct me and move on to my father saving my life.

“Sounds like a good dad.”

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