The Griffin Marshal's Heart (U.S. Marshal Shifters Book 4)

by Zoe Chant

  That was halfway across the country. “Just him, or do they have any other prisoners making the trip?”

  “Just him.”

  That made sense. Gretchen could just barely understand the rationale behind moving this particular prisoner over that kind of distance—the powers that be wanted to move Dawes as far away from trouble as possible. But it would be an insane drive to make for any other reason. And now she knew why Martin had pulled her out of the party, even if she still didn’t understand exactly what the big deal was.

  “You want me to drive him,” she said easily. “Sure. I don’t mind long trips. I’m halfway through an audiobook of Moby Dick.”

  She’d been halfway through it for the last six months, but she, like Ahab, had vowed to slay her white whale eventually.

  “There’s something else, too,” Martin said. He took a deep breath. “I worked a job with him once, you know. A few years ago.”

  She was stunned. “I had no idea.”

  “I kept it quiet during his trial because—” He looked sheepish. “Because I played everything too close to the vest back then. And it made me uneasy, seeing him on the stand, looking guilty as sin, with that amount of evidence stacked up against him.”

  It took a moment for the strange uncertainty on his face to sink in. And if she’d thought she was stunned before...

  Gretchen said, “You don’t think he did it.”

  “No, I do. I think. For a while, I tried not to, but I just don’t see any other way it all makes sense.”

  “But?”

  “But it’s hard for me to connect the things he’s done with the man I knew.”

  “You only knew him for a few days,” Gretchen said gently. “And people have been wrong about that kind of thing before.”

  “Sure, all the time. But I even thought about hiring him.”

  That startled her. “He’s a shifter?”

  “No, not as far as I know. But he seemed like the kind of guy who could be trusted to keep someone else’s secrets. That’s what I thought about him, anyway—and I’ve always thought of myself as a good judge of character.”

  She’d always thought so too, which made his opinion of Cooper Dawes interesting to her. The evidence seemed so black-and-white, but on the other hand, she’d rarely known Martin to be wrong.

  Martin continued, “I think he’s guilty because I can’t see another option, but I have to admit I’d like to. I was hoping that you could feel it out for me. Stridmont to Bergen’s a long drive. It’ll give you some time to get a feel for him.”

  She could do that. It would be an interesting challenge. And besides, as improbable as it was, Gretchen had always liked prisoner transport. She was on the smaller side, and men—especially beefy guys with bad, violent habits—tended to underestimate her. There was something kind of satisfying about correcting them on that.

  Plus, she liked to drive. She always had. Few things made her happier than the open road.

  “Consider it done,” she said.

  “Thank you. And you should take Keith with you. He needs the experience.”

  Gretchen groaned.

  “I know how he is,” Martin said gently. “But I think he’s just young. And a little sheltered. You were a rookie once too, Gretchen.”

  “I was. And I never thought I knew the job better than everyone else just because I’d read the website more recently.” She glared at him. “You didn’t want to talk to him tonight either,” she added accusingly.

  “Well, it’s a party,” Martin said. She was pretty sure the twinkle currently in his eyes qualified as mischievous. “Besides, what’s the point of being the chief if you can’t make your Marshals do the pain-in-the-ass stuff you don’t want to do?”

  Gretchen scowled. “Okay, but if you’re making me ride around with Keith, you’re the one who has to watch my dogs while I’m doing it.” It was always a hassle to find someone to look after Frick and Frack, her two enormous wolfhound-looking mutts: the rest of her family got bristly around dogs, who tended to sense something fundamentally catlike about them. Being able to dump them on Martin would be a nice change. “And I’m going to tell Colby to stop nominating you for Chief of the Year.”

  Colby was the only one in the office—and one of the only Marshals in the country—who paid any real attention to the honorary awards given out each December, which meant Martin’s victories had come in every year like clockwork. Colby was always threatening to cost Martin his streak, but they all knew it would never happen. Colby probably already had the nomination forms filled out for next year, even.

  Her joke of a threat let them ease back into the party, but as they went inside, it crossed Gretchen’s mind to wonder what she would do if she did come away from all this thinking Cooper Dawes was innocent.

  A jury of Cooper Dawes’s peers had delivered their verdict, and a judge had passed down his sentence. She couldn’t just overrule them. And she couldn’t torpedo her entire life by engineering a virtual jailbreak.

  But it didn’t matter. Dawes was guilty. Even Martin thought so.

  Her days in a car with him would just confirm that. These were interesting what-if angles to consider, but that was all they were.

  3

  “Wake up.”

  An unfriendly finger prodded Cooper’s chest.

  He opened his eyes, but that didn’t stop the guard from poking him again.

  “I’m awake,” Cooper said. “I’ve been a light sleeper since I was repeatedly stabbed.”

  “Yeah,” the guard said. “That makes sense. We were all trying to figure out how to describe that to people. What do you like better, ‘all stuck up like a pincushion’ or ‘like Caesar on the Ides of March’? You know, because that’s when Julius Caesar got ganged up on and stabbed by all those senators.”

  “The second one’s a little long,” Cooper said.

  The guard considered this piece of constructive criticism for a moment while Cooper struggled to sit up.

  He’d never had to deal with this kind of slow, painful healing before. He guessed he should be grateful he was going through it now, because the usual speed of shifter healing would have attracted way too much attention. It would be disturbingly easy to be funneled from a federal penitentiary to some covert medical research facility.

  But it was hard to be thankful that each stab wound had its own distinctive, nagging pain: half-toothache and half-burn. He was stiff and sore; even breathing hurt.

  He guessed most of his reserves of strength had been spent saving his life. Now he was stuck with a nearly human rate of healing.

  Or my griffin is gone for good. Maybe that eye-flash used up the last of its strength.

  He reached for it again, trying hard to think about the wide open sky, and found nothing but black emptiness.

  He shut his eyes again, trying to peer down into that darkness—

  —only to have the guard shake him by the shoulders.

  “Watch it, Dawes. You’re not going back to sleep again. You think I came in here and woke you up just to give you a get well card? You’re moving to the pen at Bergen.”

  Stridmont to Bergen, damn, that’s a hell of a drive. I’d hate to be stuck with that one.

  Oh, right. He wasn’t the driver, not this time. He was the cargo.

  Not that it mattered: the guard had to be confused about the date.

  “They can’t move me today. The doctor said—”

  The guard shook him again. He didn’t do it as roughly as he probably could have, but he didn’t do it gently either.

  “This isn’t a democracy.” He enunciated each word clearly, like Cooper might miss the point. “You’ve got stitches, so you’re not going to bleed out before you get to Bergen. And your ride’s here. Your stuff is already packed up.” He kicked a cardboard box, barely half full of his few belongings from his cell. “Anything’s missing, speak now or forever hold your peace.”

  Nothing was missing. He just didn’t have a lot.

  He
struggled upright and got dressed, trading the flimsy infirmary gown for the worn khaki jumpsuit with his inmate number. They’d gotten him a new coat—just as khaki and just as obviously numbered, but thicker and with a strip of woolly stuff around the collar. It wasn’t much, but it would keep the worst of the chills off for any time he had to be outside.

  He stood still and let the guard snap on the leg shackles.

  He hated those. He had learned the hard way not to say anything about it, though. There was no real reason for the guards to believe that he wouldn’t try to cause trouble; they had to protect themselves.

  He wasn’t a person to them, and he hadn’t been since he’d arrived. He was an inmate. They didn’t like him, didn’t respect him, and didn’t want to get to know him. The good guards were the ones who still had a baseline level of decency in terms of how they’d treat him; the bad guards were both a lot more numerous and a lot more varied in how they could make his life hell. Some of them were consistently sadistic, bullying everyone within their reach. Others were volatile and unpredictable, nice one minute and brutal the next. Still others chose specific targets and vented all their frustrations on an unlucky few.

  Cooper had been lucky enough to avoid being singled out by the last set of bad guards, but he’d had run-ins with every other kind.

  And even the good ones didn’t like anyone kicking up a fuss about the restraints.

  He tried to still think about it from the point of view of the Marshal who would be transporting him. The only prisoner he’d ever let out of the ankle cuffs for the duration of the trip had been a guy with a bad limp. The restraints had kept tripping him up, and the guy hadn’t complained about it; he’d just soldiered on like this was all he could expect out of life.

  Cooper didn’t have a limp, and he wasn’t going to fake one just to get some extra leg room. No matter how long the car trip was from Stridmont to Bergen.

  We’ll get to see some scenery.

  He’d had the faint hope that that idea would stir his griffin to life again, but there was nothing.

  Whatever scenery they saw would still be behind glass.

  But at least it’s a regular car trip, Cooper said, trying to make himself feel better. If they’d waited to move me with a couple other guys, we’d be in a van with no view.

  Over two or three days of travel, he’d get to see a whole lot of sky. He’d get to see the countryside change, smoothing out into prairie.

  That was something.

  The guard pushed him forward, steering him out into the lot where the Marshal would be waiting for him.

  This is my best chance for freedom.

  The thought startled him, and Cooper stopped so suddenly that the guard ran into him. That resulted in another, harder shove, accompanied by an elbow to his back.

  He’d thought about escape, of course. Even people who’d never been in prison sometimes daydreamed about how they’d pull off a jailbreak.

  And it would be so easy for him, hypothetically.

  Use the cover of shifter invisibility. And take flight as a griffin.

  Get his griffin back.

  He couldn’t do it in handcuffs, let alone handcuffs and leg shackles, but he could have done it anytime he had been in the exercise yard.

  Only two things had been stopping him.

  As a shifter, he had a responsibility to other shifters. He couldn’t do anything that would make it impossible for the world to ignore their existence. He couldn’t bring tons of scrutiny down on everyone’s heads just for his own sake.

  The exercise yard had security cameras. He couldn’t just wink out of existence right in front of them.

  The other thing that had stopped him was that escaping would put an end to any idea of clearing his name. If he escaped, he’d be on the run forever. There would be no more appeals. He’d never be able to count on having anyone’s help, not when anyone might turn him in.

  If he escaped, that was it. He would never be a Marshal again.

  For the rest of his life, in everyone else’s eyes, he would be Cooper Dawes, murderer; Cooper Dawes, the man who’d betrayed everything he’d ever stood for.

  He’d thought he couldn’t stomach that.

  But now, with the cold winter air cutting through his jacket and the guard propelling him forwards towards his destiny, he started wondering if he could.

  His reputation might already be ruined beyond repair. No one was beating the drums to have him let out of prison, after all. No matter how well he behaved within bars, he could easily be there the rest of his life.

  And escaping might save his griffin’s life—if that life was still there to save.

  The Marshal transporting him would surely have to leave him comparatively unguarded at some point, especially since this would be an overnight trip. He could find a way out, and if one person happened to glimpse something seemingly impossible happening, that wasn’t the same thing as concrete security footage.

  You could hurt someone’s career. Losing a prisoner—

  But he didn’t know that he could bring himself to keep caring about that. He didn’t think it was out of line to say that his freedom might be worth it.

  And it isn’t like they’d get fired, he thought. Anybody could guess that I’d have resources and knowledge your average criminal wouldn’t. I’ve seen the transport process from both sides. It might be embarrassing to whatever Marshal has me if I slip the net, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

  There was something else, too.

  Someone had tried to kill him. No one in the yard had had a problem with him themselves; he hadn’t made any of them angry. But the ferret had been armed and ready.

  The deal was too good to pass up, the guy had said.

  Someone had been pulling the strings there. If he hadn’t been woozy from painkillers ever since the infirmary, he would have realized it even sooner.

  Whoever had killed Phil had tried to kill him, too. It wasn’t enough to have framed him; someone wanted him out of the way completely.

  His choice wasn’t between prison with a chance of proving his innocence or freedom on the run.

  His choice was between life with answers or death without. Justice for Phil, and for him, or a murderer walking free.

  And that, to Cooper, was no choice at all.

  As soon as he could get a chance, he would make a break for it.

  *

  “Anything I should know?” Gretchen said.

  Stridmont Penitentiary’s outgoing prisoner transports were overseen by a man who looked like the last time he’d smiled had been twenty years ago, and it had been terrible, and he had no intention of doing it ever again.

  “Is a little girl like you going to be able to handle this guy?” he said wearily.

  If he’d wanted to specifically design a question to irritate her, he couldn’t have done any better than that.

  “Your prison is the one where a bunch of inmates got out of control and nearly killed him,” she said. “Nothing like that has ever happened on my watch. Maybe you should worry a little less about me and a little more about what’s happening in your own house.”

  “Things happen.”

  “Sure, especially if you let them.” She repeated, “Is there anything I need to know about Dawes?”

  The man heaved out a sigh that was so deep it seemed to come up all the way from the soles of his feet. “He’s got a pretty clean history here. He doesn’t make trouble, not that there’s usually much trouble you can make in protective custody.”

  Outside of ganging up on a man and repeatedly stabbing him, apparently.

  As long as Dawes was in her keeping, she was going to handle him better than that.

  Not that she could really handle him worse.

  “The prisoner who stabbed Dawes.” She searched her memory and found the name. “Clarence Reilly. Has he confessed yet?”

  “What’s to confess? His fingerprints are on the shiv that has Dawes’s blood all over it.”
/>   “But did he say why he did it?”

  “Who cares?”

  “I do,” Gretchen said patiently. “I’m going to be moving him cross-country. If someone’s put a target on his back, that’d be good to know.”

  The guard shrugged. “Reilly was high as a kite. It could have been anything. There’s no conspiracy here, sweetie. Just your basic prison yard brawl.”

  Nothing about this sounded basic to her, but she let it go. She didn’t think she was going to get a lot of good intel out of this particular guard.

  Then he frowned, an actual flicker of engagement crossing his beleaguered expression. He even failed to call her sweetie, so it must have been serious.

  He said, “There is something a little funny about him, now that you mention it.”

  It felt like the first actual opinion the guy had had, so Gretchen handled it with care. She made sure she sounded friendly. “Funny how?”

  “Just funny.”

  She was starting to understand how you sighed all the way from the soles of your feet.

  “I don’t care if it makes sense or not,” she said. “I just want to know what you think.”

  She didn’t know what she’d expected, but it wasn’t what she got.

  “He’s... composed,” the guy said finally. “You know, calm. Self-possessed. He looks like—”

  Gretchen remembered. It hadn’t shown up often when he’d been on the stand, unfortunately for him, but there had been times when Cooper Dawes had been sitting quietly by his lawyer, and he had somehow looked—unbreakable. Like there was something buried deep down inside him that none of this could touch.

  He had looked a little like a prince in disguise.

  “You know,” the guy said. “Like somebody on Undercover Boss.”

  Sort of the same thing, Gretchen thought wryly.

  She signed the rest of the transfer documents and then stood there waiting silently while the guard went to fetch Dawes. She was good at that kind of coiled, unmoving attention. If you grew up in a family of lynx shifters, you picked up on the body language, even if you couldn’t shift yourself.