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An hour after they’d learned of Aidan’s abduction, Rosalie stepped off the elevator into the executive suite and rubbed her throbbing temples.
Irene rose from her desk. “How is Aidan’s dad?”
“Not good.” By the time Rosalie had finished her questioning, the poor father had been sobbing so hard he couldn’t talk. “Cannon is trying to calm him down.” She pushed open the door to the conference room. “None of this makes sense,” she mumbled as she slipped inside.
Why Aidan?
Why this hospital?
Just why the hell why?
Beyond the windows, the heavy storm clouds gathering above the Rockies seemed cheerful compared to the tense faces of Paul and Jimmy and the local PD that greeted her.
They’d discovered that an hour before Aidan’s abduction, an ambulance had been hijacked in Grand Pines. The driver and his partner had been run off the road, shot, and kicked into a snowy ditch. They were recovering, but they didn’t remember anything useful about the masked men.
She looked at Officer Barnett. “Any word on the ambulance?”
He shook his head. The sweat visible under his thinning hair shone under the fluorescent lights. “No. Someone remotely disabled its tracking device minutes before it was hijacked. All the cameras in the area, including traffic and private security, were disabled.”
She leaned over Jimmy’s shoulder. “Any sign of Aidan on the dark web?” Malgor had ties to plenty of terrorists who were major players in huma trafficking.
“No sign of him yet.”
Hopefully never. “Keep looking, but I don’t think Aidan was snatched for that purpose. I think Malgor plans to ransom the boy since he wasn’t paid after the attack. It makes sense that he’d keep him somewhere close. Bring up satellite imagery of the?—”
The door banged against the wall. Cannon stalked in, followed by Grady. “Someone tell me you found him.”
Rosalie quickly explained her conversation with Jimmy.
“The dark web? Kidnapped for ransom? Holy Christ.” Cannon braced his hands on the table and leaned forward. “I just had to convince an angry, terrified father that I did not authorize the transfer that got his son kidnapped. I need something more than my word to assure him that his son will be okay.”
“We’re doing everything we can.” Her colleagues were working with Grand Pines to identify the impostor EMTs, and state and local PD were interviewing hospital employees and setting up checkpoints in the area. She’d managed, for the first time in her history with Malgor, to get the IP address of where the superhero email originated. An investigative team was on its way now to a location in Denver. She didn’t hold much hope Malgor would be there, but maybe he’d left a clue behind for them to follow.
Grady clapped a hand on Cannon’s shoulder. “We’ll find him.”
Cannon stepped away. His large frame seemed to expand as every muscle in his body tensed—including his fists.
“Hey.” Grady gripped him more firmly. “Stuff those hands back in your pockets and don’t go punching any walls. We’ll find this asshole.”
Bunching his upper body,Cannon tore into the punching bag. When he exorcised his demons this way, he envisioned each grain of sand inside the black leather as cancer cells. With each strike of his fists, he walloped the life-snatching fuckers one at a time. Since he’d heard of Malgor, the tear-drop-shaped bag had taken on a disfigured face with sunken eyes and fangs. Knowing that ending the terrorist was actually feasible, unlike eradicating cancer, spurred him to punch even harder.
He grunted as he delivered two more punishing blows, then rested his head on the wobbly stand and breathed deeply. When the door opened a few breaths later, he didn’t look back. “Give me a minute.”
“You’ve had fifteen of them since you left the conference room.”
He jerked his head up at Rosalie’s voice. “I need another.” Just a few more to calm down and then he’d…
He’d what? Help? Rosalie was right. He didn’t have a badge. Saying he’d help to find Aidan was like trying to beat cancer cells to death.
Fucking futile.
“Back off, Snow Angel.”
Everyone in the hospital knew to leave him alone when he put the gloves on. Not that he’d bothered with gloves right now. He’d barely pulled off his shirt before his fists had hit the bag.But this woman didn’t know enough to leave him alone. This woman…
He grabbed a towel and wiped his sweaty brow. Since Rosalie had stepped into his ER, everything had gone to shit. Well, shittier than before she’d arrived. The rational part of him knew it wasn’t her fault Malgor had chosen Red Snow to make a move, but he hadn’t hit the bag long enough to think rationally.
Rosalie swiped the towel from his hands. “I’m not backing off or backing down.”
