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He’d been shot in the side. Both an entry and exit wound, so that was good. No vital organs hit. That was good, too. Except he’d been hurt, and that was horrible. Unthinkable.
She stood guard by his bed, cross-examining every doctor, nurse, technician, and orderly who came in to check on him. She even tried to go into the X-ray lab with him, but they threatened to call security.
Coop was fully conscious through all this, but he made no attempt to settle her down. Instead, he watched her with a kind of bemusement.
While Coop was in X-ray, Piper began putting it all together. She’d assumed he had only one enemy—Noah Parks. But she’d been wrong. Noah was behind the attempts to sabotage the club, the drone, and the false accusation. But Karah’s pathologically jealous ex-boyfriend was responsible for the rest. Hank believed Coop and Karah were lovers. He was the one who’d attacked Coop the night they’d come back from taking Faiza to Canada. He was the one who’d slashed Coop’s tires. She also suspected he’d known exactly who was behind the wheel of the Audi the night he’d run it off the road. If he couldn’t have Karah for himself, he wanted to make certain no other man could have her.
She told the police all of it and tried not to imagine what would have happened to Karah and Jada if Hank hadn’t gotten the apartments confused. Or what would have happened to all of them if Coop hadn’t shown up.
She waited until eight in the morning to call Heath, who came running into the emergency room barely half an hour later, his face as pale as a hospital sheet. His questions were terse but thorough, and as soon as he understood that Coop was going to be all right, he reverted to his normal manner with a nod toward his client stretched out on the hospital bed. “Nice nightie.”
“Leave him alone,” Piper snarled.
Coop and Heath exchanged looks she ignored. She didn’t want anyone harassing Coop about anything right now.
Later that morning, Piper talked to both Karah and Jada on the phone. Hank was in jail for attempted murder, along with a slew of other charges. Karah blamed herself for everything. “He was really sweet when we started dating, and by the time I realized how sick he was, it was too late. That’s why I left St. Louis. To get away from him. I never thought he’d follow me.”
Piper tried to comfort her and then spoke with Jada. Their conversation was reassuring. “Mom is going to make me see a counselor for a while to make sure I don’t, like, go psycho or anything because of what happened, but I’m pretty sure I won’t. And guess what else? After the police left, Mom said she’d take me out for pancakes, and with everything that happened, I wasn’t paying attention, and Clara shot me. I’m officially dead.”
“Oh, no. I’m really sorry.”
“I know. I thought I’d be more depressed, but it’s kind of okay because it was Clara who shot me, and her and I are kind of getting to be friends.”
“Still, after everything that happened today, that’s rotten timing.”
“Yeah, but I could tell she, like, felt really bad about it, and she needs the money even worse than I do, so I told her it was okay, and we’re going to hang out tomorrow and work on our project about child sex trafficking. The good thing is that I don’t have to carry around those stupid Nerf guns anymore.”
The doctors overrode Coop’s protests and insisted on keeping him overnight. Coop had already kicked Heath out, but he seemed to expect Piper to hang around, not that she would have left.
The orderly assigned to transport Coop from the ER to his private room looked like a nice kid, but Piper stayed by the wheelchair as they traveled up an elevator and down several long corridors. Coop fumed the whole time, not from pain, but because the medical staff wouldn’t let him walk.
There were too many people hanging around outside his room, and Piper wasn’t having it. “If you’re not his doctor or nurse, you shouldn’t be here. Move on.”
Mr. Nice Guy raised his hand from the wheelchair and gave his cocky grin. “Appreciate your concern.”
The adrenaline she’d been riding on had faded, leaving her exhausted and heartsick. All she wanted to do was get away, but she couldn’t leave him in a hospital full of people looking for excuses to come into his room. He needed someone stationed outside his door until he was discharged, and while a nurse took his vitals, she got Jonah on the phone and told him what had happened.
Coop had been given the hospital’s version of the penthouse—a large room with a city view. He had the head of the bed in an upright position as she came back into the room from talking to Jonah. “You should be lying down,” she said.
He looked at her oddly, as if she were a stranger he was trying to identify, but then he reverted back to his normal self. “Get serious. I had worse injuries in high school. I can’t believe they’re not letting me out until tomorrow.”
“It’s for your own good.” She turned her back on him and went to the window.
“Thanks, by the way,” he said. “I appreciate you watching out for me.”
He didn’t sound begrudging, and she pondered what it must have cost him to say those words. How could she have done this to herself? How could she have fallen in love with someone so different? “I’m the one who’s grateful,” she said. “If you hadn’t come back to the apartment . . .” She turned to him from the window. “Why did you?”
He dropped his head back onto the pillow. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“It couldn’t wait until morning?” She wrapped her arms around her chest, hugging herself.
“It was important,” he said.
She regarded him quizzically.
His jaw set in that obstinate way she’d come to know. “I was hoping you’d calmed down enough to realize this whole break
ing-up thing makes no sense. Instead of that, we need to ratchet it up. That’s what I’d been planning to talk to you about at dinner on Wednesday night before you had your freak-out. Moving in together. My place, not yours.”
