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Panting, he dropped to his knees next to her.
Panic seized her like a force field. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I ran from the ambulance when I heard Paul was shot.” His ragged breaths puffed little white clouds into the darkness as he yanked off his backpack.
“Go back to the damn ambulance. There’s a sniper behind me.”
“Not anymore.” He set a pistol on the ground between them.
“You shot the sniper?” She tore her gaze from the gun and stared at the hard set of his jaw. “Oh my God. Are you insane? You could have been killed.”
He rummaged through his backpack with calm efficiency. “He was about to kill you, and Paul will die if I don’t stop this bleeding, so save your lecture for later.”
She opened her mouth to give him way more than a lecture, then quickly shut it as flashing lights from the ambulance illuminated the old diner and flooded the tree line.
Cannon yelled to the paramedics racing toward them. Within seconds, gloved hands replaced her bloody ones. She stood and stumbled back. As she wiped her fingers on her vest, the present swam in her vision and meshed with the past.
The paramedics on their knees as they worked on her father.
On Paul.
Blood on her hands.
Please, Cannon, save him. I can’t lose him too.
Someone pressed a bottle into her hands. “Drink.”
She took a long swig of water. The thanks on her tongue dried up as she met Jimmy’s pinched face. “Is Aidan okay?”
“He’s hypothermic and so scared he can’t speak, but he’s alive.”
The news should have loosened the knot in her chest, but knowing that Aidan suffered tightened it like a noose. She clamped her hand over her mouth. The water she’d drunk erupted up her throat. She jerked away from Jimmy and ran tothe edge of the tree line. The lava boiling in her mouth spewed through her lips and melted the snow.
This kidnapping wasn’t about a ransom. It was about torturing a little boy and his father, and for what? For Malgor to remind her of what he’d done to her and to prove he could do it again?
Pulling out her flashlight, she peered into the pines. “Show yourself, you coward.”
She stepped farther into the forest and hissed the order again. The heel of her boot caught on something. As she landed on her backside, the flashlight rolled. She tracked its path a few feet down a short incline, where it landed next to a single long-stemmed red rose.
TWENTY-FOUR
Cannon hurried down the hall toward the private area where Rosalie and her colleagues waited for word about Paul. As he rounded the corner, she stepped out of the room. Before she could ask, he answered the question in her anxious, bloodshot eyes. “Paul is stable.”
“He’s going to make it?”
“We were able to stop the bleeding and save his leg. We expect a complete recovery.”
She threw herself at him. Holding her tight, he stroked her unbound hair and thanked God for the hundredth time that she was alive and well and in his arms.
The FBI agents from the operation spilled out of the waiting room. Rosalie shifted to his side. As he explained Paul’s condition, he held her and savored everything strong and soft, brave and damaged, and sweet and maddening about his Snow Angel.
Jimmy caught his eye. “How’s Aidan?”
“He’s sedated and resting.”
Rosalie looked up at Cannon. “When can we talk to Paul?”
“When he wakes, but it might be a day or two before he’s up to conversation.”
