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.
Chapter 29
IT HAD taken until Sunday afternoon for me to be discharged from the hospital. I couldn’t prove that they were dragging their feet to make me pay for checking myself out early before. But after repeated reminders that I was injured, and should not be left on my own because I was likely to just re-injure myself, I got the hint.
Myra strolled into the lobby just as I was finally holding my release papers and trying to decide who I was going to call for a ride.
“Home?” she asked.
“I want a shower and a change of clothes.”
She was quiet as we walked out to the cruiser. After we were both inside her car, I asked, “What’s wrong?”
She started the engine and maneuvered out into traffic. “We can’t find Cooper.”
A chill ran through me as the power twisted. “What?”
“Jean told me you thought Cooper would be the right fit for Heimdall’s power. So I went to find him. He’s gone.”
“What do you mean, gone? How gone?”
“We think he left town yesterday. The last person who saw him said he had his backpack over his shoulder and was walking north.”
“Hell,” I breathed.
“We’ll figure it out,” she said. “I put out an APB. If he’s hitching, we’ll find him once he hits a town.”
