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“Rosalie.” His voice strained with warning.
She stepped close and wiped the sweat off his chest. “Feel better after beating up that bag?”
He made a fist and examined his reddened knuckles. They weren’t sore enough to feel better. “I can’t punch walls when I get pissed off anymore, and I’d get arrested if I punched people.”
Her shiny lips tilted down at his flippant comment. “I know you don’t hit that bag out of anger. You’re afraid. Talk to me, Cannon.”
He stared at the door. How could this woman, who should still be a stranger based on how little time they’d known each other, understand him so well? He took a deep breath and looked back at her. “I knew telling you not to back down would come back and bite me in the ass.”
“I never relent, so don’t take it personally.”
But he did. His issues weren’t part of the case. If she didn’t care about him, she wouldn’t push. That made her actions very personal. “I started punching walls when I was a teenager. Up until then, I’d kept my fists inside my pockets, knowing my mother would take away my video games if I hit something. But one afternoon, while waiting for my father to get out of surgery, I couldn’t contain myself anymore.”
He squeezed his fingers into his palms. “Hitting the wall was the only tangible thing I could do to stop feeling…”
“Helpless.” She stroked his knuckles with her thumb. “You were terrified and helpless.”
“Yeah, and so goddamn guilty I was born without the cancer-causing gene and Julia wasn’t.” He waited for Rosalie to say what most did. That he was the lucky sibling. That he should be grateful he’d been born healthy. She didn’t. Her silence told him she understood that surviving and thriving, while someone you loved couldn’t, came with a mess of burdens.
He tapped the bag behind him with his fist. “All I did was wait. For test results. For my dad to get sick again. For Julia to get diagnosed with cancer. And I couldn’t just sit around. Hitting walls not only gave me physical pain to focus on, but it gave me something to do. Afterward, I’d go find Annie, and she’d clean my scrapes. Then I’d apologize to Bob, the head of maintenance, and he’d let me help repair the damage.”
Tears brimmed in Rosalie’s eyes.
He blinked back his own. “Not the healthiest coping mechanism, but it got me through.”
She flattened both palms on his chest. “I’m proud of you for not hitting walls anymore.”
“When I find who took Aidan, I’m going to hit more than walls.”
“You’re going to have to fight me for the first punch.” She curled her fingers into a fist and grazed her knuckles against his abs. His feelings for her swelled along with the heat she radiated into his slick skin. “Tell me what to do to help find the boy.”
“I know exactly what you can do.” She ran to his desk and sat in his chair like she’d done this morning—like she belonged there—and pushed a pad and pen toward him. “Make a list of all the places in town you would hide Aidan if you’d kidnapped him. Get Easton and Julia to help. We can use all the hometown intel we can get.”
“I have plenty of that.” He sat on the edge of the desk.
“We’re looking for a place where an ambulance can pull up to and unload a child on a gurney without being seen. A place secluded, but not too far away, with heat and electricity. Close to a store for medical supplies and food. If he’s using Aidan as a pawn, he needs to keep him alive so he can serve his purpose.”
Cannon gripped the pen so hard it snapped. “What is his purpose?”
Her skin paled. “I think it’s the same motive as threatening Annie. To torment us.”
“Why?”
“Well, he lives to torment me, and…” She dropped her gaze.
“And what?”
She lifted her chin. “This is like two years ago, but the opposite. Malgor sent me a dead roseafterhe stabbed me and killed the person I cared about most in this world. This time, he sent me a dead rosebeforewhatever it is he’s planning to do to me and…” She took a deep breath. “To another person I’ve come to care about.”
He leaned across the desk and caught her chin in his hand. “Am I that person? The one you care about?”
“Yes. And Malgor knows it, which makes you and everyone you care for just as vulnerable as I am.”
TWENTY-ONE
Cannon yanked Julia’s laptop cord out of the wall. Unplugging technology did nothing to unplug his brain from the conversation he’d just had with Rosalie. Their feelings for each other could get them killed. How screwed up was that?
Julia threw a magazine at him.
