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Without needing to be told twice, I moved to the back doors and opened them slowly, hoping not to startle the poor boy after everything he’d just overheard.
He whimpered when the rising sun shone down on his dirtied face and blond hair that fell to his ears. Hell, he couldn’t be more than six. He had to be terrified.
I lowered myself to his height and smiled as I reached for the duct tape over his mouth. “Hi, there. I’m Kinsley. What’s your name?” I asked, trying to distract him a little while I jerked the covering from his face.
He winced, and a single tear formed in his soft blue eyes, but then he tilted his head up like a brave little boy and whispered, “Sammy.”
“Well, Sammy. My friends and I would like to take you back to your family,” I said softly. “Would you be okay if I took the rest of the tape off you and carried you to that car over there?”
He glanced over my shoulder with shiny eyes, then nodded, raising his bound hands. “It hurts.”
I reached for his wrists. “I know, buddy. I’m really sorry this happened to you, but we’re going to get you home soon. I promise.”
Using my new shifter strength, I ripped the tape from his skin as gently yet quickly as I could, and the brave little boy didn’t even shed a tear.
As soon as I had the restraints off his ankles, he shocked me by throwing his arms around my neck, clinging to me so tightly that it was a little hard to breathe.
My arms circled around him, and I rubbed a hand over his spine before turning around.
Lia was grinning. “I’ll drive.” She headed to the jeep.
I glanced at Grayson. “Do you need help?”
He was staring at me oddly. Given he’d just murdered someone, I didn’t expect to see something soft within the depths of dark eyes, but there it was, nonetheless.
“Just keep him safe,” Grayson said gruffly, then he resumed throwing the kidnapper into the back of the van.
Before I could analyze anything else, Sammy shuddered in my arms, and I decided walking away before he could see Grayson not-so-kindly tie up the kidnapper was probably a good idea.
Chapter13
GRAYSON
Kinsley continued to take me by surprise with everything that she did. She hadn’t even blinked an eye when I’d taken a head off the first guy, and she’d been ready to kill the other if I’d wanted. And even though I knew she hadn’t done the things I’d first accused her of, seeing her with that little boy changed something in me.
She was gentle and kind and patient with him, asking for permission to do what needed to be done instead of scaring him more by just removing him from the van without explaining that he was safe now.
It wasn’t as if I was a family man with dreams of settling down one day, but my baby sister had been the brightest light in my life for the ten years that she’d been alive. She’d been everything to me. When she was taken from me, I’d lost a piece of myself that I knew I would never get back.
Yet watching Kinsley walk away with Sammy, as I’d heard her call the boy, reminded me that the world wasn’t always a cesspool of shit. On top of that, the bond was clawing at my chest, begging me to claim the woman I wasn’t sure I wanted.
Well, that was a lie. I knew I wanted her, but I didn’t deserve her.
She was strong, sure, but she was innocent. Being with me would take that away from her, and while I was a selfish bastard at times, I wasn’t sure I could take away the life she could have without me if we didn’t complete our bond.
But now wasn’t the time to think about those things. We needed to get Sammy back to his family, and I needed to get the reeking piece of shit I had tied up in the back away from my sense of smell.
Lia drove the jeep the rest of the way to Fire and Fluorite with Kinsley, who kept Sammy in her lap the whole time. I followed behind in the van, staying right on their ass. I didn’t want to be any farther from them than I already was.
The structures we passed had broken windows, no lights on, and some of them looked like they’d been on fire a time or two. Based on the stories I’d heard, I expected to see people in the streets with weapons, but that wasn’t the case.
Instead, it was eerily quiet this time of morning, which had the muscles in my back tensing as we continued through the streets.
I could see the boy giggling in Kinsley’s arms as she seemed to keep talking to him until he pointed up ahead.
Lia turned down a street and he pointed again.
Houses began popping up, and I saw a few curtains flutter, but nobody came out to see who was creeping through their neighborhood. Interesting.
