Herri worked the bar, her long hair striped with red catching fire as she moved and laughed and hassled the clients and employees alike beneath the spotlights hanging above her. She looked natural here. Comfortable.
She had six wait staff on tonight, an even mix of men and women who all wore red T-shirts with the Mom’s logo across the chest.
I knew she’d seen me come in, but she hadn’t made eye contact since I’d taken the table and ordered a ginger ale.
Walking out of the hospital had seemed like a good idea at the time. I wanted to leave my pain—body and heart—behind me. The cold night air only served to remind me that I was not exactly in top form. Still, I wanted to keep my mind off things.
Ryder.
The way I saw it, I had three important things to deal with: Heim’s murder, Dan shooting me, and finding someone to take on the god power. First things first. I nursed the soda while scanning through files on my phone—notes about Heim’s murder I had pulled together what felt like weeks ago, but was only days ago. I scrolled through the list of suspects.
It was still a small list: Dan Perkin, Chris, Margot Lapointe, and Lila Carson. Herri, Walt the deck hand.
Jean and I had already talked to everyone on that list except for Heim’s missing deck hand, Walt. I didn’t know if Myra had gotten any hits on his location and I wasn’t going to go into the station to check up on that now.
I read through Myra’s report. She had searched the boat, talked to the harbor master. There was nothing there to indicate if anyone unusual had been aboard. No murder weapon, not even a drop of blood to mark the crime.
Coroner was convinced someone had hit Heim on the back of the head. Pushed him overboard. He could narrow the time of death down by a variety of factors, including the state of the corpse and the turn of the tides. Heim had been murdered Sunday evening and everyone we’d spoken with had an alibi.
Someone was lying.
“Where’s your boyfriend, Delaney?”
I glanced up. Cooper looked like he’d had plenty to drink. He stood with his feet wide, a beer in one hand. He had on a tight white T-shirt that was thin and snug across his lean muscles and showed just how trim he was at the waist and hips, faded jeans, and boots. His brown eyes were storm-dark as he stared at my lips then snapped up to my eyes.
My stomach flipped and blood rushed hard across my chest and face, and the song, the noise, the clamoring of the power in my head rose like someone had just cranked the volume to one hundred.
Cooper looked like sex. Even shot and bruised and tired and on meds, I could remember what sex with him had been like.
Ryder didn’t want me. Cooper did. But did I want Cooper?
No. I knew the answer to that a year ago. Cooper and I were done.
I shook my head at myself and tried to lean back in my chair in a way that didn’t make half my body throb.
“You’re drunk, Cooper.”
“I’m in a bar, Del,” he said a little too loudly, drawing the attention of the people nearest us. “Why the hell else would I be here?”
I stared at him, trying to decide how to defuse this situation. “You done yelling? Or do I have to sit through the whole show?”
“You think you’re fooling me? Acting calm. Acting…” He waved his beer at me like it was a brush he could paint me with.
“All right. Get it out.”
“Don’t tell me what to do. You think you can just tell everyone what to do in this town? I know you, Delaney. Standing in your daddy’s shoes and acting like you know something. You’re just a scared little girl who wants someone to hold her hand, and when someone comes back to offer you that, you slap it away. You got a badge, you got a reputation, but you don’t have anything under control.”
“Done?” I asked, low, calm.
He scowled. Pretty much everyone in the place was watching. These sorts of shows were big news on the gossip circuit in a small town.
I didn’t care. I’d known Cooper for a long time. I knew he struck out at other people when he was in pain, even if they had nothing to do with his pain. He was hurting and drunk and I was a handy target.
“You want to know why I came back to this piss hole, Delaney?” he shouted. “I came back for you!”
And there it was, right on cue: our unfinished business.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Herri walking our way.
