by Zoe Chant
Maybe nothing, the little voice in her head said sternly. You’ve seen good-looking men before—you work with a bunch of them. They’ve never had this kind of effect on you.
“You all right?”
Nothing like being snapped back to reality by Nana Miller’s lookalike.
“Sorry. Just spaced out there for a second.”
“Road trips will do that to you,” the woman said cheerfully. She took Gretchen’s purchases and tallied them up. “Anything else, dear?”
She crouched down and snagged a Milky Way Midnight off the candy rack, adding it to the pile. It gave her an idea.
“And—can I just leave that up here for a sec?”
“Sure,” the cashier said, totally unruffled. “You’re the only customer. Everybody sensible is staying indoors today if they can. Too damn cold. No offense, dear.”
“None taken. It’s work, otherwise I’d be inside too.”
“A woman’s got to make a living,” the cashier agreed.
Damn, Gretchen really hoped they outran the weather. Not that they’d have much of a chance if she kept dallying on this snack run.
But she darted quickly into the back aisles and found what she was looking for. She felt like she was making a purchase so frivolous that she ought to be buying it covertly, in some back alley under cover of darkness.
85% darkness, according to the fancy chocolate wrapper.
If she changed her mind, she didn’t have to give it to him. But she was curious how Cooper would react to the genuinely bitter darkest-of-the-dark chocolate.
“Just this too, please,” she said.
The cashier rang her up and wished her good luck at getting out of range of the blizzard before it hit.
Gretchen headed out, juggling the two paper coffee cups and the bag of snack goodies, and it was right when she heard the bell chime behind her that she saw it.
Black car. Tinted windows. Idling.
Idling where whoever was inside it would have a perfect line of sight to their car.
She replayed her memories, trying to recall whether or not she’d seen the car tailing them from as far back as the prison.
Could be nothing. Could just be somebody trying to keep warm while—
While what? While someone else runs into the store for them? The cashier and I were the only ones in there. She said it herself: it’s been a quiet day.
She couldn’t rush to conclusions. The driver could be checking their GPS. They could even have pulled over for a little shut-eye—for all she knew, this was someone who had been driving all night and was in desperate need of rest before they wrecked. It could be a lot of things. Tinted windows weren’t even that uncommon anymore.
Sure. All of that was true.
But her instincts said otherwise.
But you can’t trust your instincts.
Her family had told her that, time and time again. She wasn’t a shifter. She didn’t have super-senses or an inner animal to warn her when something felt primitively off in a way that humans couldn’t pick up on.
She was weak, vulnerable, and small. Supposedly. Feeling like she was anything else had only ever gotten her in trouble—and if she forgot that, she only had to look at the scar on her shoulder.
But then again, all she was really doing was being confident in her paranoia—and sometimes paranoia was justified. Especially in her line of work. And she had been a Marshal for a long time—and dammit, she was a good one. She had never been able to completely square that with the old warnings.
So she had a choice to make, standing out here shivering in the cold. She could trust all those old lessons and assume that she was just unreliable and weak.
She trusted Martin, who had been the first person to teach her that she was someone worth trusting, who had been the first person to tell her that her instincts were good and that she could handle herself just fine.
Or maybe she could trust herself. And when she thought about that, she knew exactly what to do: her gut, her head, and her heart all agreed.
She made sure the lids of the coffees were firmly shut and then put them in the plastic bag along with everything else, standing them upright so they wouldn’t spill. There. She was being careful.
Then, throwing caution to the wind, she walked over to the black car and rapped her knuckles against the driver’s side window.
Even though the car was still running, there was no answer. She felt the back of her neck prickle, like someone had rested their cold hand there, but she told herself that it was just the wind.
She knocked again.
Mr. Bad Guy, can you come out and play?
She would like nothing more than if some cranky, obviously sleep-deprived driver rolled down the window and chewed her out for waking them up.
A nun or a Buddhist monk might be nice and reassuring.
Anything would have been better than what she was getting, which was still...
Nothing.
She peeled off the padded glove on her right hand, wanting no barrier between her finger and the trigger, just in case. She didn’t know that this would come down to a shootout, but she didn’t want to take any chances. Better safe than sorry.
She knocked a third time, harder and with her bare hand, and finally the dark window rolled down just an inch or so.
That was fine. Nobody was eager to talk to someone with a gun. She just needed to verify that everything here was kosher and that their presence at the gas station had nothing to do with Cooper Dawes.
She tried to channel the pleasant, peaceful voice of the gas station cashier. “Hi. Sorry to bother you folks, but I’m—”
“What?” said a muffled voice from inside the darkness.
Her sense of unease mounted. “I’m a United States Marshal transporting a prisoner. If you don’t mind, I’d just like to ask you a few—”
The window rolled down the rest of the way.
Somehow, her sense of the inside of the car remained the same: dark. Blocked. She couldn’t get a clear fix on what the driver or his passenger looked like, only that they were there. She could see them clearly, she knew she could, but their faces seemed to slide out of her memory the second she looked away.
“There’s no problem, Deputy.” It was the same voice as before: polished, smooth, and slippery as silk. It was like it was wriggling through her ear and into her brain. Gretchen could feel her muscles relax.
But this wasn’t right, this wasn’t right at all—
“You should really just go back to your car. Everything’s fine.”
Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, Gretchen thought.
But her thoughts were melting—all her worries were dissolving away.
Fight it. That was the small voice in her head, the one she had spent her whole life ignoring. Right now it was even smaller than usual, like the stranger’s voice was tightening around it like a boa constrictor and strangling the life out of it.
Fight it. This isn’t right, and you know it. You KNOW it.
“I just want to ask you a few questions.” She was surprised to hear something steely and strong in her voice. “Would you mind telling me—”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” the stranger said impatiently.
He took off his sunglasses.
She still had trouble noticing the details of the rest of his face, but she had no problem seeing his eyes.
They were bright amber, and the pupils were narrow black slits.
All the light in the world seemed to disappear into the shadows at the center of his eyes. Gretchen felt like she was being pulled into them, and it was a horrifying, sickening sensation, like someone was dragging her off the edge of a cliff. All her questions dried up in her mouth.
It was like anesthesia putting her under.
Into that drugged darkness came the scalpel of his voice, slicing into her:
What is it? What do you need to hear? Ah, yes, here it is—
Go away, Gretchen. You’re making a fool of yourself.
Can’t you see how ridiculous you look? Maybe a shifter would have picked up on a real threat, but you’re not a shifter, are you? You’re just imagining things—classic Gretchen! You have to listen to me when I tell you what’s best for you, because you know you can’t trust yourself—you’ve known that since you were twelve, haven’t you? You wouldn’t want to hurt your team the way you hurt your sister. You can’t make your stupid weaknesses their problem. Be cool. Be funny. Laugh it off. And above all else: don’t think about it.
All of that sounded familiar. And, horribly, the fact that it sounded familiar made it sound right.
Gretchen lifted her hand away from her gun.
“I’m sorry,” she said automatically. “My mistake.”
She couldn’t believe she’d just embarrassed herself like that. She had bothered those people for no reason.
She had to get ahold of herself.
She walked back to the car and found, ruefully, that one of the coffees had leaked a little. She shouldn’t have put it in the bag, obviously—none of those cheap plastic lids were ever watertight.
Why had she put it in the bag? She couldn’t entirely remember. She’d been holding the cups, one in each hand, when she’d come out of the gas station—
Oh, well. It probably didn’t matter. Just a brain fart, like when you opened the door to the fridge and then forgot what you’d been looking for.
Besides, she didn’t want to go poking at what had just happened. It was already fuzzy, and that was better, because she had definitely done something... wrong. Something that had made her feel awkward and lesser. Something that had touched on scorched earth inside her mind.
She would just stay away from it. There was no reason to prod at a sore spot.
Gretchen had spent a long time teaching herself that if something hurt you, or bothered you, the best thing you could do—for your sake and for the sake of everyone around you—was to ignore it.
She opened the door to the backseat, inexplicably relieved to see Cooper’s eyes.
Green eyes were much better than amber ones. Although—had she ever seen amber eyes? Probably not.
“One Milky Way Midnight, as requested.” She handed it over.
He reached out his bound hands and took it, but his gaze never left her.
“What was up with the car?” Cooper said.
Gretchen frowned. “What car?”
The little indentation between his eyebrows deepened, and she realized to her surprise that he was worried. “The black car. You talked to the driver.”
“Oh, that.” She waved her hand. “It was nothing. No problem at all.”
“That’s good,” Cooper said slowly, “but—”
“If Gretchen says it’s fine, it’s fine,” Keith said.
Gretchen seized on that agreement, brushing aside the fact that until ten seconds ago, she hadn’t had the highest opinion of Keith’s instincts or opinions. There was something strange about her clinging to Keith’s ideas and disregarding Cooper’s, but whenever she tried to think about it, shame seemed to creep up on her again.
She slid back into the driver’s seat, handing Keith his mini-donuts and coffee. She didn’t feel like drinking hers right now. She had the weird idea that she was going to be sick.
Your body’s trying to reject it, she thought. She didn’t know what the “it” even was. Like it did with Tricia’s bite. Like people’s bodies do sometimes with organ donations. Your soul is trying to spit something back out again.
“Ready to get back on the road?” she said.
“We’ve barely been on the road,” Keith said. “We only made a couple miles before you pulled us over here.”
Always Mr. Accurate.
He had a point, though. They weren’t making great progress at this rate.
“Gretchen. Gretchen, look at me.”
It was Cooper. He was leaning forward so far in his seat that his forehead was almost pressed against the thick plastic divider that separated them.
“Oh no.” It sounded like Keith was objecting about this to the heavens, even if no one else was listening. “No. I’m going to try to be nicer to you, but no, you can’t be on a first-name basis with us.”
She wouldn’t have been surprised if Cooper had snapped at him, but Cooper appealed to him instead.
“Can’t you see that there’s something wrong with her? She’s your partner. Listen to the way she sounds! She’s confused, spacey—”
“I’m fine,” Gretchen insisted.
Did she sound confused and spacey? Did she feel confused and spacey? It was hard to tell.
“I’m trying to give you some latitude,” Keith said to Cooper, “but you’re crossing so many lines here—”
“I’m crossing lines? Forget about me! Pay attention to your partner, dammit! She’s not okay! Does this seem like Gretchen to you?”
Keith did do a little bit of a double-take towards her then, like he was honestly considering whatever Cooper was saying. Then he shook his head and said dismissively, “You don’t even know her.”
“Apparently I know her better than you do!” Cooper said.
She could feel his intensity, so hot it was almost melting the plastic. He was so vivid. It felt like if she let him, he would burn away all the walls she’d built up inside herself. He would set her free.
But she couldn’t let him. People got hurt when she believed that there was something inside her waiting to be unlocked. She couldn’t risk that happening ever again.
If she turned her head, she could still see the black car sitting in its parking space. Only now...
Now it was more blue. Or more green, maybe.
Maybe it wasn’t even the same car at all.
Except whatever car it was, she knew she was afraid of it.
She pulled all her attention back to the men she was with, the ones who were now arguing over her state of mind like they were ready to tear each other apart over it.
She put one hand on Keith’s shoulder, gently pushing him back into his seat, and shook her head at Cooper.
“Guys, I’m fine. I appreciate the concern, but I’m fine.” She tried to find some sort of explanation for whatever had happened to her, and to her relief, she came up with something that seemed to have the ring of truth even to her. “I saw that there was another car idling in the parking lot, and I had a bad feeling about it, which is ridiculous. I went over and asked the driver a few questions, that’s all. And it was completely fine.”
Keith straightened his tie. “Like I said.”
Cooper glared at the back of Keith’s head and then looked at Gretchen, his eyes softer and more searching. “Are you sure?”
She had never been less sure of something in her life.
But all her old insecurities were up and raring now, reminding her—with a throb of the scar on her shoulder—that her feelings weren’t the most reliable things in the world. And lingering on the issue of the black car only made those feelings of fear and embarrassment stronger, which meant she was better off staying away from it. They were all better off.
She said, “I’m sure,” and the lie sounded good even to her.
It ought to. She’d had a lot of practice lying about things being fine.
6
The radio had started picking up a lot of static.
One song ended, and before the next one could start, there was a short burst of white noise. Then the DJ’s voice came in, mid-sentence:
“—to let all our listeners know that that chill that they’re feeling in the air is about to become a whole lot worse. Yep, we’ve got a real blizzard on the way, sweeping in from the northeast, and by nine or so tonight, you’re going to see a thick blanket of snow settling down over this whole area. We’re talking low visibility and high winds, too, so no late nights tonight. Just get home, put your feet up, and light a fire, because—”
Cooper was going to get a snow day, then. He knew the standard procedure whenever prisoner transport had to be interrupted for sev
ere weather. They wouldn’t risk waiting until the storm started. Gretchen and Keith would drop him off at the nearest jail that would have him, and then they’d resume the trip to Bergen once the roads were clear. Since they were currently in the ultra-rural middle of nowhere, Cooper would probably be cooling his heels in a small town drunk tank.
If he was right about that, he was about to have the most relaxed security of the whole trip. He wouldn’t have two US Marshals to contend with, just one officer who was low enough on the totem pole to be stuck babysitting a prisoner through a blizzard. An officer who, for that matter, probably wouldn’t want to be there and wouldn’t be too invested. Guys alone on the job had even been known to doze off before in circumstances like that.
That would be his chance. If he could get his griffin to resurface, he could bust his way out of the cell. Then all that would be left was flying through a blizzard, and he could do that if he had to.
Probably. Admittedly, he’d never actually tried. But if it was down to life or death, he was willing to bet everything on what would probably be his last, best chance.
Give me liberty or give me death, right? Or at least give me answers or give me death. I want to know who painted a target on my back—who killed Phil, who set me up, and who put a shiv in Ferret Face’s hand and sent him after me.
Everything else that he wanted...
He tried to push those thoughts to the back of his mind.
It was one thing to think that Gretchen Miller was gorgeous and incredible, to think that everything could have been different if they’d met under other circumstances.
It was another thing entirely to dwell on that and let it stop him from doing what he needed to do. He couldn’t be with Gretchen. He couldn’t even be a friend to her right now. She was a US Marshal, and he was a prisoner and a convicted murderer. Even if his plan went right, he would still be a convicted murderer—and then he’d also be a fugitive, a man on the run she would be duty-bound to hunt down and bring in. If he wanted to stay free, he would have to spend the rest of his life avoiding her.
For there to be anything between them... it was impossible.