Page 73 of Crossfire

“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.

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