Chapter Twelve
The window unit might have looked old, but it worked more than fine.
James felt the coolness on his face and his arm that had found its way on top of the quilt.
It was the first thought he had once he had woken.
The second was, despite the obvious chill in the air, parts of his body beneath the sheets were unusually warm.
James opened his eyes and was met with the popcorn ceiling of the Seven Roads Motel staring back at him.
The blackout curtains must have shifted during his cleaning the night before.
A strip of sunlight ran from the window and into a bright line across the ceiling fan that had wobbled too much to be used.
He knew why he was waking up to this and not his room at the house.
He remembered what had happened.
And yet the surprise of what was making him so warm still got him.
James peered down at his chest and saw the reason why he had woken up warm.
Rose was on her side but also on his side.
She had one arm thrown over his chest while the corresponding leg was intertwined with his.
Her head was resting on top of the hollow of his shoulder, a position made easier to achieve thanks to his own accommodation.
James realized his arm was around her, holding her securely against his side.
Had going to sleep in the same bed last night been an issue in his mind? No, simply because he had only been worried about the blank look tugging Rose’s expression down.
He had wanted to make her feel safe, was all. Secure, despite the madness that had been surrounding them.
Maybe he should have worried more, offered to sleep on the floor or one of the chairs. Given her space.
But James hadn’t wanted to be apart from her.
He’d wanted to be close, just within reach if she needed him.
Though he hadn’t thought about it quite like this.
James didn’t know what to rightly do as he stared down at Rose’s sleeping face. She had already become oddly endearing to him over the last week or so—someone he wanted to help protect and get justice for—but there had also been another feeling growing alongside his protectiveness.
Appreciation.
James couldn’t help but mentally applaud so many things about the wildcard. Her smarts, her tenacity, her drive for helping others. But there was another thing he had been overlooking too.
Rose Little wasn’t just cute, she was beautiful.
Asleep, awake, mad or angry. Smiling or annoyed. Sitting in a hospital bed, standing calm next to a bomb, or lying fast asleep against him.
Rose was a sight and a half and James couldn’t help but feel like he had slighted himself by not becoming her friend earlier.
Friend.
Was that what she was to him? Simply a friend?
James was about to try and pin down exactly what he might feel for the deputy when, among the list of things she was, he realized asleep wasn’t one of them anymore.
Rose stretched her arm out over him like a cat might do after waking from a nap. Her leg followed suit before she started to nuzzle her face against his shoulder.
James was almost certain she hadn’t yet realized what she was holding wasn’t a pillow or blankets and decided to wait her out.
He didn’t have to wait long.
Rose’s body tensed comically fast.
James couldn’t help it, he laughed.
“I think I might call you Little Furnace from now on,” he rumbled out. “You generate a surprising amount of heat.”
Maybe it wasn’t the right thing to say. Maybe he should have been more considerate of the situation even though he wasn’t sure what that situation was. Had Rose gotten close to him during the night on purpose or was she just the kind of person who cuddled up to whoever and whatever she was next to?
And if she had done it on purpose, had it been because she needed any sense of comfort, or had he been the specific one she needed comfort from?
James could have spiraled down a rabbit hole of questions—not even touching the subseries of the ones surrounding his own feelings on the matter—but Rose cut him off with a surprising twist of events.
She rocketed up but didn’t move away from him. Instead, she whirled around and looked down at him with wide eyes and a barely contained smile.
Rose went from lying comfortably against him to tearing herself out of the bed like he had bitten her. She tucked and rolled off the edge so fast that James sat up quick to try and see if he needed to help her.
The sudden movement made his head throb. He winced at the pain.
Rose, managing to get to her feet, saw it.
He watched her face go from red to concerned and red. Her brows knitted together, her hands still clutching some of the quilt.
“Why are you doing that? What hurts?” she asked.
James touched his forehead.
“The part of my head I used as a battering ram yesterday.” It was definitely sore. Probably bruising. “It’s not a big deal, though. Just a little uncomfortable.”
Rose didn’t seem to believe him. She crawled back into bed and right over to him. Her eyes were locked on to the spot in question as she got almost close enough to touch it. James kept his mouth shut while she did her silent inspection.
When she was apparently okay with what she was seeing, she pulled back to sitting on her side of the bed and James saw her own set of bruising. It wasn’t as pronounced as he would have thought it would be, but the once-handprint ring around her neck was still visible.
James tapped his own neck.
“How about that?” he asked. “How’s that on the pain scale?”
Rose tentatively felt the area. She didn’t wince.
“Fine as long as I don’t touch it.”
“How about your throat? You don’t sound as raspy as you did last night.”
Rose thought about it a moment.
“It’s better,” was all she came up with.
“Good.”
James gave Rose some space to collect her own thoughts and stretched out wide before scooping up his phone. Rose excused herself to the bathroom. The shower turned on soon after. James couldn’t help but give another little laugh.
Usually when he woke up with a woman, they would talk about what had happened or at least make a comment or two. Rose, though, wasn’t like other women, he was finding.
No one had called or texted James since his last communication with his dad the night before.
Still, he decided to send a few quick texts to his parents.
They were simple messages, just saying good morning and to have a good day, but it was small interactions like those that meant a lot to James.
Especially when his mother replied with a little picture of a kitten half-asleep next to an oversize mug.
That was why he was smiling when Rose reappeared, wrapped in a towel and hair dripping wet. Adrenaline shot through James as he was sure something was wrong, but this time her expression halted any action.
“I think I get it,” she said in a flurry of barely contained excitement.
“Get what?”
“Why Damon has been attacking me like he has, instead of just outright killing me easy.”
James didn’t like the way she phrased it but he was also invested.
A smirk pulled up the corner of her lips.
James was once again bowled over by how beautiful the woman was.
“I think it’s time we paid our friend from last night a visit.”
* * *
AN HOUR LATER, Rose was standing between the bed she had slept in, the man she had slept with in it, and the sheriff of Seven Roads. It was a triangle she hadn’t thought she’d ever be a part of but there she was, not only in it but excited to be there.
Simply because she had finally found a piece to the bizarre puzzle to finally make the last week less bizarre.
Price, settled in the corner, looking half-dead as he clung to his coffee cup, was the opposite of enthused. According to a quick chat with Liam he was ending a shift of helping Darius. When he had heard Rose wanted to talk about a possible lead, he had decided to end his night with the news.
Looking at him now, she wondered how bad she must have looked the night before. Just thinking about it was nothing compared to how she had woken up. She had been more attached to James than a koala to a tree.
What was worse?
James hadn’t at all seemed fazed.
In fact, he had joked.
The situation would have been more mortifying if her shower hadn’t dislodged a memory. One that she was more than excited to share now.
“The big thing that has been bothering me so much about everything that has happened in the last week is how absolutely unnecessary Damon’s attacks have been,” she started, once all their attention was back on her.
“A bomb in and of itself is a big, big thing and usually fits a particular pattern or has some kind of reason behind it. With Damon, though? He has no history of being remotely involved in explosions or using them to act out his anger. And you said that the bomb maker even confirmed he was hired for this one bomb?”
She asked the question to Price, but the sheriff answered for him.
“Yeah, the maker said he accepts small jobs and the FBI agent working the case had a file full of two jobs he’d done before for clients. All he had on Damon was a one-time meeting and two messages found from a burner phone.”
Rose nodded.
“Then there’s the gunmen who showed up at the garage,” she went on. “Four of them hired completely separate from the bomb maker but with the job to follow my car.”
“And, according to their snitch, they were supposed to watch you and only act if something happened to your car,” Liam added. “Then, when they did act, they were told to shoot to kill.”
Rose snapped her fingers.
“Which makes no sense,” she jumped in. “It’s like Damon wants to kill me but make it unnecessarily difficult for himself. Then there was the man last night.”
A shiver tried to run itself down Rose’s back. She suppressed it but knew James was watching her do it. As she spoke he moved to her side to lean against the chest of drawers she was standing in front of.
“Darius said you found out who he is, right?”
It was Price who nodded now.
“Duncan Danvers,” he said. “Last known to live an hour from here and on probation for assault and battery. He’s not…the brightest of the bunch but he also refused to say a word until a lawyer got to him.”
“And as far as we know, none of the gunmen, the bomb maker, or Danvers are connected,” Liam said. “Other than the gunmen and the bomb maker being contacted by Damon at one point.”
Rose hadn’t recognized the attacker in James’s house or his name. Which helped make her point even more.
“So, let’s just say for argument’s sake that this Duncan guy was also hired by Damon to take me out…
He could have done it several times over if he’d simply brought a weapon.
” Out of her peripheral vision Rose saw James tense.
She knew he still felt guilty for her being attacked in his home, but it wasn’t his fault.
None of this was. “Instead, this Duncan guy specifically said he had never drowned someone before, like he had waited patiently for me to get into the bathroom before coming in. Doesn’t all of this sound ridiculous? ”
The men around her agreed.
“Some people are ridiculous,” Price offered. “Maybe Damon likes being flashy in his supposed acts of revenge. It’s not like we haven’t run into other dramatic perps who did a whole lot when doing a little would have gotten the job done.”
“And normally I would agree but this morning I remembered a conversation I had about the video of me going viral after the bus situation.” Rose pictured the reporter at the hospital, cast on his arm and anger in his gaze.
“He said I was acting like some kind of action hero…because that’s what some people called me. An action hero.”
Rose handed her phone over to Liam. She had an article already up on the screen.
“More specifically this one article that went viral along with the video of me.”
Liam started to read the article without being asked to. When he got to the part she wanted him to see, his eyes widened.
“Okay, stop leaving me in suspense,” Price said from the corner. “Don’t leave me hanging. What does it say?”
Rose opened her mouth to respond but Liam was faster. His tone had a new, undeniable hint of excitement.
Not happiness at what was happening but at the idea of having a new lead.
“The article talks about her bravery and breaks down what it means to be an action hero. He goes over his favorite stereotypical problems that the heroes go through during their time in the spotlight. There’s… There’s a list.”
Price was done with sitting. He hurried over and shared in reading.
Rose didn’t need to see it again. After remembering hearing about the article, she’d pulled it up with a quick Google search. She and James had read it several times while waiting for Liam and Price to show up.
James proved how well he had been paying attention too, as he recalled the three situations that had more than caught their eye when reading it earlier.
“The classic group of lackeys that eventually turn on each other. The bomb strapped to someone the hero loves. And then—”
“‘—the drowning scene, bonus points for the hero being trapped in some kind of vehicle while it’s happening,’” Price finished, reading directly from the post.
Whether the coffee had finally hit his system, or the article had, his eyes were wide-open now.
“We don’t have a body of water near here large enough for that, but I imagine a bathtub will do in a pinch,” Rose said.
Liam shook his head. Price mimicked it.
“So, what are we guessing here?” he asked. “That Damon is pretending you’re in some kind of movie where you’re the lead?”
Rose didn’t have any solid proof—she didn’t even know much about the man himself—but as soon as she had read the article, she felt it to be true.
It was a theory but a theory that made sense.
“Because of that viral video, for one moment in time I was praised around the world for being a hero,” Rose said, finally getting to the bottom line. “And I think, now the brother of the one person I didn’t save wants me to die like one too.”