Chapter 28
TURNED OUT both Myra and Jean rode to my rescue.
Also turned out I couldn’t argue my way out of going to the hospital when my sisters double-teamed me and I was blackout dizzy from blood loss.
I plucked at the thin blanket that covered me, ignoring the tubes taped down to my arm. It was past dinnertime and I was an odd mix of restless and exhausted. Jean lounged in the recliner chair thing on one side of my room, doing something on her phone.
My sisters refused to let me out of their sight, even though that meant we’d had to call up to Tillamook and borrow a couple of their officers to help out with the rally. Which meant I owed the police chief up there a favor.
Again.
I shifted my feet and scooted up a bit, trying to get comfortable.
“Need anything?” Jean asked distractedly.
“No, I’m good.” I picked up the tablet Myra had given me after I’d begged her to leave me something to do. I pulled up the report I’d been writing.
Margot had confessed to shooting me, which cleared Dan of some of his charges. I thought he might be able to get his remaining charges lowered if he listened to his lawyer’s advice.
Margot had also confessed to bribing Walt to let her stow away on the boat and to hitting Heim on the back of the head. She said him falling overboard was an accident. I wasn’t sure the jury would see it that way. Once Margot started talking, she hadn’t stopped, droning through all her plans, all her hurt and anger, like she was in a trance.
They found Walt working a ship down in Bandon. He was en route and should hit town in a couple hours to corroborate her story. Then their fate would be up to the judge.
Myra was off finding Lila to let her know her sister was in holding. I was stuck in a hospital bed.
Again.
I sighed and closed the report. There was nothing more to add.
“Are you sure you don’t need anything?” Jean asked again.
“A new brain?”
“You haven’t hardly used your old one yet.”
I glanced over at her. Her fingers moved across her screen as she concentrated on a game.
“It’s almost Sunday,” I said.
“Yep.”
“If I don’t find someone to give Heim’s power to by Monday night, things…will get interesting.”
She chewed on the inside of her cheek then stabbed at the screen a few times.
“Jean. Are you okay?”
She finally looked over at me. “I can’t believe what he did.”
“Dan?”
“Ryder. I can’t believe he did that to you.” It was hard to see the betrayal in her eyes. She’d always thought Ryder and I were a match made in heaven. That he was some kind of quiet hero who would one day realize the love of his life had been in his life, forever. Real life didn’t work that way. Not even in Ordinary.
“I couldn’t believe it either,” I said with a smile I didn’t feel. All I wanted to do was have a good cry, but all the tears in the world wouldn’t change a single word that he’d said.
“Can we forget about Ryder right now?” I asked. “I really need to figure out who I should give this power to.”
She took a drink out of her travel mug, which was probably full of Mountain Dew and Red Bull. “Have you narrowed it down at all?”
“Not you and not Myra. That’s about it.”
She made a face at me, then crossed her legs and leaned sideways in the chair. “The power calls to its own, right?”
“I don’t know.”
“You hear the power, right? Dad used to see them, but you hear them?”
I nodded.
“Does the sound of it ever change?”
I thought about it. “It shifts. It gets louder sometimes.”
Hurts more sometimes.
“Does it get louder every time you’ve been around one person in particular?”
I shrugged and wished I hadn’t. My shoulder ached. Everything ached. “I haven’t been paying attention to that.”
“Wow, you really suck at this.” She smiled to soften her words.
“It’s not like I haven’t had other things on my mind this week. Bullets, blood. Rhubarb.”
“And don’t forget a fistfight in a bar with Cooper. Seriously, what were you thinking?”
“That he was a jerk and annoying the crap out of me.”
“Funny how you used to date that.”
“He didn’t used to be that annoying.”
She took another drink and made a so-so motion with her hand. “He did sort of roll into town out of the blue and mess up your life.”
“Apparently men like to do that to me.”
She was quiet for a minute. “Do you still love him?”
“Cooper?”
She just shook her head, her eyes holding mine.
“Ryder?” I asked.
Yes. I shoved that faint thought firmly away. “No. That’s done.”
Liar, my heart whispered.
“What about Cooper?”
“Cooper is different. He’s…” Not Ryder. “Different.”
“Okay,” she said after a long moment of silence. “So let’s narrow it down. Cooper came back right before Heim died. If the power calls to its own, maybe it was calling him.”
“Lots of people come and go in town…” My voice faded as I remembered a conversation I’d had with Cooper. “Cooper said he thought he’d left something here. Left something in Ordinary even though he doesn’t like this town. He came back looking for it. I thought he meant me, us, what we had…”
“But what if it was the power?” Jean sounded excited. “The power inside you, calling him.”
Everything in me went cold and still. Even my brain. Even the song of power in my head.
Yes.
“Delaney?” Jean uncrossed her legs and pushed up out of the chair. “Are you hurting? Are you breathing?” She cupped my cheek, her dark blue eyes wide and worried. “Breathe.”
“Cooper.” I exhaled.
“Keep breathing,” she said.
“What if it is Cooper? What if he is the mortal I’m looking for?”
“I just asked you that.” She paused, studying my face. “Do you think he is?”
“Check me out of the hospital. We’ll find Cooper and I’ll talk to him about it. See if he wants it. God power has to be accepted. You can’t force anyone to take up that kind of burden. Things go really wrong really fast if you try to.”
“Has someone tried to force it on someone in the past?”
“Didn’t you ever listen to anything Dad told us?”
She crinkled her nose. “You were going to take over his job, and Myra’s serious enough about this stuff for all three of us. I figured if there was something I should know, you’d fill me in on it.”
“Yes. Someone tried forcing a god power on a mortal who had refused it, and it went very, very bad, very, very fast.”
“How bad?”
“Bubonic plague bad. As in, it started the plague.”
She sucked air in through her teeth. “Well, let’s not do that. So you need to talk to Cooper, right?”
“First I need out of the hospital. Then I need to talk to Cooper.”
“You’re staying here overnight.”
I whined.
“Delaney,” she said sternly. “You were shot. Then you got in a bar fight. Then you wrestled a suspect who ripped your stitches and added bruises to your bruises. You’re staying in the hospital until tomorrow morning. And it will only be Sunday. Plenty of time to find Cooper and give him the god power.”
“Unless it’s not his.”
“It will be a good place to start, and you’ll still have two days left if it isn’t.”
“Or maybe it is his and he’ll turn it down anyway.”
“You really think Cooper Clark, a man with an ego the size of Jupiter, would turn down the chance to be a god?”
“It’s not just a power. It’s a commitment. Heimdall was the god who was supposed to sound the alarm on Ragnarok. He is the ever-vigilant, eyes-on-the-horizon, doing-good-for-his-brethren kind of god. His power is about waiting patiently, and being there when someone needs him. Cooper’s more of a cut-and-run kind of guy.”
She frowned. I wasn’t wrong.
“If anyone could talk him into it, it would be you.”
“I’m not so sure about that. I did hit him in the face.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself. Not calling me first so I could watch.”
I shook my head and smiled. “Did anyone tell Chris about Margot?”
Her smile slipped and she glanced at the floor then back at me. “You don’t need to worry about that right now, Delaney.”
“I’ll take that as a ‘no,’ then? You should tell him, or have Myra do it. He needs to know. Heim was his friend and he was dating Margot, or really, she was using him to get access to Heim. He’ll need someone to tell him it’s not his fault.”
“We’ll make sure he knows.” She patted my arm. “Stop working, would you? Get some sleep.”
I didn’t want to. But it had been a long day and I’d used up my reserves. “You don’t have to stay.”
She chuckled. “We tried that once, remember? You’re a flight risk.” She arranged my blanket to cover my feet more evenly then patted my leg. “I’ll be over here if you need anything.”
I lowered the bed and shifted around until I got comfortable.
Jean picked up her phone and grinned at the screen before she tapped at it with her thumbs.
I knew what had put that look on her face. “Say hi to Hogan for me.”
She just snorted and curled up around her phone, her back toward me as if I were going to spy on her texts.
I watched her for a minute, a wash of melancholy filling me. I loved seeing her happy and excited in the beginning stages of a relationship. But seeing her so happy and relaxed just made me wonder how it had all gone wrong with Ryder.
The sex had been good.
No, it had been great. Fun and easy. My fantasy of what it might be like to be with Ryder had been thoroughly exceeded.
It was the after-sex part where things had fallen apart.
Old Rossi had warned me he was trouble. Old Rossi had been right.
I closed my watery eyes.
I’d been hoping for more. For a chance to explore…him, explore us. Explore what we could be together.
But that wasn’t in the cards. That wasn’t what he wanted. Ryder Bailey wasn’t the man I thought he was.
The image of him busting into the station, armed and ready to throw down, was hot, yes. Undeniably hot. And the worry in his eyes when I’d been bleeding. The anger that had quickly looked like regret until he stowed it away. All that added up to…what?
Confusion. Ryder Bailey confused me.
Ryder Bailey didn’t want me.
And I didn’t want him.
Liar.
I ignored my heart and let the painkillers take me gently into sleep.