Page 20 of Knife to the Heart

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah, right.” Devon leaned against the bar. “That’s what Bella says when she’s mad at me.”

Rosalie ignored Bella’s giggle and pulled up her voice mail. The DJ’s call for everyone to get on the floor receded to a faint, tinny sound as she read the transcribed message.

“No.” The shot glass fell from her fingers. Whiskey splattered on the straps of her high-heeled sandals and onto her toes. Before Bella or Devon could ask what had happened, she ran for the exit.

The clockat the bottom of Cannon’s laptop screen ticked off the minutes. He slammed it shut. What would happen if he didn’t pay the ransom within the next couple of hours? Would thedeadpart of the midnight deadline become a reality if the attack stopped a patient’s heart from beating?

“Fucking deadlines.” He’d been twenty-one when time had started sabotaging his life, and it hadn’t relented since.

His mother pointed to Cannon’s framed diploma. “Are you sure you want to be a cop like your father? You just got your undergrad degree. You can do anything.”

“I’m sure, Mom. Weren’t all the toy guns and badges lying around the house when I was a kid a clue?”

His joke didn’t make his mother smile. Instead, she frowned at his father sleeping off the effects of his latest round of chemo on the couch. “I don’t know if I have the strength to worry about another cop in the family, but if you want your father to see you graduate from the academy, do it soon. I’m afraid his deadline is looming.”

Mom hadn’t been wrong. Dad had managed to give the middle finger to cancer several times, but a few days after Cannon’s graduation from the police academy, he hadn’t been able to dodge his deadline. The deathbed promise he’d made to his father to make sure Julia lived the longest and healthiest life possible had pushed him to trade his newly earned gun for a stethoscope. Now, some greedy terrorist who didn’t give a shit about human life had thrown another ticking clock in his face.

Time hadn’t changed the reports from his IT team. Like Karl had said, it would take months to restore it to its preinfiltration point. His only remaining play was paying the ransom and getting the decryption keys to unlock the network.

Hopefully.

Maybe.

He had no choice but to take his chances and pray these criminals held an ounce of honor. But what if they didn’t?

“Shit.” He shot from his chair and stalked to his en suite bathroom, his quiet footfalls a reminder his entire hospital could be silenced by a shutdown if he didn’t act fast.

But act like what? The hero? He stripped off his suit, changed into sweatpants and sneakers, and stepped back into his office. Didn’t heroes act decisively? Paying the ransom had sounded like the wise option until Rosalie had shown up, but was it really a decision if he didn’t have a choice?

He grabbed fingerless sparring gloves from under the sink and tugged them on. Arguing with insurance companies, pleading with doctors to find medications that didn’t make Julia vomit, and researching mental health facilities for his mother when she’d broken down hadn’t been a choice.

He assumed a fighting stance and jabbed at the punching bag in the corner of his office.

Getting his MBA to ensure the cancer center had the resources Julia needed, leaving him only a few precious hoursa week to practice medicine, hadn’t been his plan. Neither was going to local schools and spending his entire career at Red Snow Hospital so he could be close to home. He’d been duty bound by the cancer-free genetics he’d been born with, a fact Annie and his mother reminded him of every time they called him a hero.

He cocked his arm and punched so hard the stand teetered on the carpet. The impact vibrated through muscle and bone. He welcomed the sting as he let his fists fly.

The phone on his desk rang. He wiped the sweat from his brow and tapped his finger on the speaker button. “Dr. Ford.”

“Hi, this is Michael at the ER intake desk.”

“Hey. How’s your first week going?” Annie’s grandson seemed to be catching on quick, but today’s stressful workload could send even the brightest employee packing at any moment.

“Hectic, especially now, but good. I got a floral delivery for one of your discharged patients, a Special Agent?—”

“Zenner?”

“Yeah, that’s it. I left her a message and haven’t heard back, but my grandmother seems to think she’s over at the Mountainview Inn at her cousin’s engagement party or something. She thought you might want to bring the flowers to her.”

“Tell your grandma that she can do it herself. And tell her to stop matchmaking.”

“I feel your pain. She’s been trying to set me up with some phlebotomist since I started.”

Cannon yanked off his gloves as he turned to the window. Lights twinkled inside the Mountainview Inn across the street. Why would someone send Rosalie flowers here?

“Uh, Dr. Ford, the bouquet is taking up half of my desk. Wulf, you know, the new security chief who kind of scares me, offeredto bring it up. He said he’d drop it off right after he stopped in his office for something. Is that okay?”

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