by Zoe Chant
When he thought about it like that, his chest tightened up so much it was hard to breathe.
Something flitted across his mind: I’d have an easier time giving up the sky.
But he had to ignore that, didn’t he? Indulging his feelings right now would lead to him being trapped in a bottle for the rest of his life.
And then he still wouldn’t have a life that included Gretchen Miller.
“Well, I guess that’s it,” Gretchen said, like she’d heard his thoughts and was agreeing with him.
Cooper looked up reflexively and then realized she was talking to Keith. They were talking about the storm.
I’m much more interesting than Keith, said a voice in his head. It sounded a little like his griffin, but Cooper couldn’t get any more of a response out of it than that.
“I’ll find the nearest town,” Keith said. He started tapping the GPS.
“Make sure you can find a police station listed there,” Gretchen said. “Some of these towns are basically just a wide patch in the road and a handful of houses, with no courthouse or jail until you get to the county seat. We can backtrack if we have to.”
To Cooper’s surprise, her eyes flitted to the rearview mirror and met his.
She said, “Did you ever get hit by a storm on this drive?” Her voice was friendly, conversational: like they were just two coworkers making small talk.
That was what he wanted, wasn’t it? The illusion, at least for a little while, that they were just three Marshals in a car together? That the thick plastic barrier between the front and back seats wasn’t really there? It was a nice fantasy.
But at the same time, something in her tone made him uneasy. It sounded like she was trying too hard.
Like she was doing what he was doing. Big, messy emotions underneath? Ignore them. Plaster over them with a solid plan of action and go from there. He knew that slightly false note that was ringing in her voice—knew it from the inside-out.
He didn’t like how often he’d sounded that way, and he liked it even less with her. She deserved to feel completely self-assured.
Instead, something was still bothering her. Whatever had happened at the gas station had left a mark on her, no matter what she’d said about it or how convincingly she’d said it. She’d been acting off then, and she was acting off now. More to the point, she’d been acting then, and she was acting now.
All he wanted to do was ask her to please tell him what was wrong. Maybe he could fix it somehow.
But that wasn’t supposed to be his business. And what could he do from the back of a car, in handcuffs and leg shackles?
He needed to just answer her question.
“I’ve never made this exact trip before,” he said. “There’s not a lot of traffic between Stridmont and Bergen—not that they ever called any of my offices about, anyway.”
“Ours either. Any idea why you’re getting moved all the way across the country? It seems like a little much.”
“No clue.”
He wished he did know, because it was bugging him. Realistically, why he was getting booted way, way out of the normal prisoner transport range was a moot point. It wasn’t a mystery he needed to bend heaven and earth to solve, not when he had so much else on his plate.
Still, it did make him wonder. It felt like a clue somehow, even though he wasn’t sure yet how it fit in with Phil and everything else—if it even fit at all. He just knew that he was tired of having his life jerked around by someone else’s plans for him.
Of course, for all he knew, this was perfectly innocent. Maybe Roger had pulled some strings for him out of pity, setting him up for a long drive with a lot of scenery just as a break from the gray walls he knew Cooper was climbing. That would make sense.
Plus, he thought cynically, Bergen Penitentiary was so far away from Roger’s office that Roger would have an easy excuse to never see him again, if that was what he wanted—and Cooper figured it probably was. Roger seemed to make his intermittent visits out of a grim sense of duty. Distance would put a stake through the heart of that particular obligation.
And then... then Cooper would be down to having no visitors at all.
All the more reason not to be there in the first place. All the more reason to get out while the getting was good.
Keith took some time out from stabbing the GPS with his finger. “Maybe they did a survey and fewer people in Bergen wanted you dead.”
It surprised Cooper into a short laugh. He wouldn’t have guessed the kid was capable of making even the smallest joke. “I’d love to have seen the questions on that form.”
“Do you want to kill Cooper Dawes?” Gretchen said. “Please check yes or no.”
“Or undecided,” Keith said, in a tone that vaguely implied that that was still where he fell in the whole equation.
“With a fourth option. ‘Who the hell is Cooper Dawes?’”
“On a scale of zero to ten,” Cooper said, “how many shivs have you sharpened in the last week?”
“I hope you’re healing okay,” Gretchen said. Cooper caught sight of her frown: it put an adorable little indentation between her eyebrows. “They didn’t give you too much time to glue yourself back to—”
Cooper was thrown forward against the security barrier, and Gretchen’s words were swallowed up by the grind of metal on metal and the thud of his head against the barrier.
His vision briefly went white from pain. The seatbelt was digging into his neck, choking him, and with his hands cuffed, he couldn’t get it unbuckled...
All the claustrophobia and hatred of confinement he’d spent the last six months repressing suddenly reared up and attacked full-force. He was trapped.
The only sense of his griffin he had was a blind, panicked flailing inside him, like its talons and lion claws were scratching to be let out. As hard as he tried to pull that feeling to the surface, nothing happened.
He couldn’t breathe.
“Cooper. Cooper, it’s okay. We just got rear-ended, that’s all.”
Gretchen.
She was turned around in her seat now, her hand pressed to her side of the barrier. Her gaze kept going back and forth between him and the blotch of blood his head had left on the plastic, and her luminous eyes were full of worry and genuine concern.
No one had ever looked at him like that before. Not just “not in the last six months.” Ever.
I can calm down. He forced himself to breathe evenly. I can calm down for her sake. I can do it for her.
If he just leaned back, obviously the seatbelt wouldn’t be digging into his throat. Panic had made him momentarily stupid, that was all. There was a slicing pain in his side from where the seatbelt had gotten pulled hard and tight against one of his wounds, but he couldn’t feel anything worse than that.
He slumped back in his seat and took a few deep, slow breaths.
“Are you hurt?” he said as soon as he could talk again.
“I bumped my head on the steering wheel, that’s all.”
Now that she mentioned it, he could see a pink mark on her forehead. It didn’t look too bad, but head wounds could be tricky. For the moment, though, he was relieved.
“Are you okay?” Gretchen said.
He didn’t want to give her one more thing to worry about by mentioning the nagging pain in his side. He should still heal up pretty quickly, anyway, and it was just pain. There wasn’t anything she could do about it. He nodded.
“Keith?” Cooper said. “What about you?”
Keith seemed to still be wrestling his airbag down. When he finally got free of it and turned around, he was blinking blood out of his eyes. An ugly cut had opened up near his hairline. All the blinking made him look woozily confused, like he didn’t know what had happened to make Cooper ask after him.
“I’m all right,” Keith said eventually. He pointed ahead of him. “Airbag,” he added as an explanation.
Okay, it wasn’t just the blinking making him look woozily confused, then. He’d gotten
his cage seriously rattled. At least when Cooper had hit the barrier, the barrier hadn’t hit him back.
“That airbag did a number on you, I’m thinking,” Gretchen said. She patted Keith on the shoulder. “Maybe take five. I’m just going to go trade insurance info.”
Anyone who just heard her voice would think she was completely calm and lighthearted, but Cooper could see how her warm golden-brown eyes now had a distinctly predatory gleam. She had noticed everything he’d noticed about Keith, and she would have had the same first aid training Cooper had had. She knew all the stealthy dangers of head injuries, especially ones bad enough to leave the person stunned and confused. They wouldn’t be headed to a small town jail now—they’d be going straight to the closest hospital.
She gave Keith a reassuring pat on the shoulder, and then she lowered her voice and said to Cooper, “I’m going to unlock your door.”
This wasn’t even like his Christmas had come early. It was way more baffling than that, like someone had just walked up to him on the street and handed him a Christmas tree. He didn’t even know what to do with it.
“Um,” Cooper said. “Why?”
Keith was humming softly to himself, not listening to them. It sounded like a weird collage of half the songs the radio had given them before it had turned to nothing but weather reports and static. At least it meant he wouldn’t blow his top at Gretchen halfway freeing him.
Gretchen said, “I know it’s crazy, but if I don’t get out of the car now, they’re going to know something’s wrong. There’s a chance I’ll need backup, and Keith can’t give it to me right now. And he can’t protect you, either. If something goes wrong, I’m not leaving you exposed and helpless.”
It took him a second to understand her.
She didn’t think it was a coincidence that they’d gotten bumped that hard. She thought they were in serious trouble.
Well, if she thought so, he thought so too. He trusted her instincts.
But that didn’t mean he had to like this plan.
He shifted forward, ignoring the pulse of panic as the seatbelt put more pressure on his chest. “Gretchen, if you’re that worried, don’t get out of the car.”
“Who’s worried?” Keith muttered vaguely. He had one hand pressed to his head now. He tacked on a stream of gibberish that might have been him trying to remember the words to “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Gretchen shook her head. “I need intel. And I recognize that car.”
Cooper craned his head to look back over his shoulder. They’d been hit by a heavy, old-model hulk painted an unusual dark teal color. He didn’t think he’d ever seen it before.
“Where did you see it?”
“It’s the black car.” Gretchen unbuckled her seatbelt. “From the gas station.”
“But it’s not black.”
“I know. I’m probably wrong. It’s insane. But I’m not going to take chances with your life, not again.” She put her hand on the door handle. “Keith, call 911. I want this place flooded with sirens.”
She got out of the car, and a second later, Cooper heard the muffled click of her unlocking his door.
She had just set him free. He still had the handcuffs and the leg shackles, but her attention was all on the two men she was approaching, and she was right, Keith wouldn’t be able to intervene to stop him, not right now. If he could reach his griffin, he could break through the chains, and he’d be home free.
And none of it mattered. He couldn’t leave her in danger.
He watched Gretchen warily approach the men from the not-black black car. They looked harmless enough in their brightly colored parkas and thick woolly hats, but the most hardened killer Cooper had ever seen had looked like a sweetly smiling kindergarten teacher. Anyone could look harmless. He had a bad feeling about all of this, and he couldn’t let her face it alone.
7
This was crazy.
Beyond crazy. Welcome to Paranoia Town, population: Gretchen.
It made no sense at all to think that the dark blue-green car she was looking at right now was the black car from the gas station. She knew there was something about the gas station incident that she couldn’t remember, but she really doubted that it involved the black car’s driver telling her about how he’d invented some new kind of chameleon automotive paint.
She wasn’t an expert on cars, but she was pretty sure the make and model of this one was different too.
Smart money said that this was a completely separate car, and the two men standing in front of her—ordinary-looking middle-aged guys in winter gear—were guilty of nothing more than careless driving.
They would have to have been driving pretty damn carelessly to rear-end someone that bad on a road with this little traffic.
Then again, they were probably trying to get home before the storm hit. People had done worse and weirder things when they were in a hurry.
Gretchen felt like she was being torn in two, with all her instincts on one side of the argument and all the logic in the world on the other. Normally, that meant she would go with logic.
Except Cooper’s life was at stake. She couldn’t mess this up.
All the more reason to override her faulty human instincts and go off logic, right?
But she couldn’t. Not now, not with this. Not with him. Everything in her soul revolted against it. It said that this was too important for her to cave in to fear, even if she was calling that fear “logic.” Deep inside her, in a way she didn’t understand, she still trusted her feelings more than she trusted the rules she’d learned about the world.
She still felt, rebelliously, like there was something inside her that was worth listening to.
She didn’t understand any of it. But for the first time in years, she was going to trust herself.
But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to play this as smart as she could.
“Hi,” she said, offering the two men her friendliest smile. If they were innocent, she was going to be the most cheerful person they’d ever rear-ended. Most people would have had steam coming out of their ears right now. “I guess we should trade insurance information. My partner’s going to see if we can get a traffic cop out here to take a report.”
“Oh, I don’t think there’s any need to get the police involved,” one of the men said. He had a weirdly bland face, almost creepily bland, like a bowl of plain vanilla pudding with just a couple dents in it for eyes and a mouth. He looked shapeless somehow. “They probably won’t be able to make it here anyway. We’re in the middle of nowhere, you know, and everyone’s going to be busy prepping for the blizzard.”
“Still. Pretty bad accident. We’re all shaken up, and you guys must be too. Probably best to get an impartial third party involved.”
“She might be right,” the second man said to his friend. His brother? He had the same kind of vague-looking face. He turned back to Gretchen. “Your partner? Like... your life partner?”
His tone was just a little too guileless.
She had the feeling they were closing in on whatever was going to happen. She was hyper-aware of the reassuring weight of her gun at her hip.
She shook her head. “I mean my work partner. I’m a United States Marshal.”
“Oh, gee whiz,” the second man said. “Wow.”
She didn’t buy that kind of aww-shucks act for even a second.
“We’ve never met any Marshals before. And now two at once!”
Her smile felt more forced than ever. “Well, gosh, I guess you never know who you’re going to meet on the highway of life.”
Yeah, jackasses, I can act folksy too. Annoying, isn’t it?
“I know it’s a lot to ask, but could we meet your partner too? I just can’t believe this. Wait until I tell my family.”
“Why don’t we swap info first?” Gretchen suggested. She knew by now that something was off—no matter what color their car really was. She wanted to push this to the breaking point.
She hated to admit it,
but the Marshals weren’t that cool. No one would be that excited to just meet some of them.
“We’re sort of... between insurance companies right now.”
“Just your driver’s licenses, then,” she said. “Because—and golly, I sure don’t mean to be rude—your car really did a number to my bumper. Not to mention my partner’s head.”
The two men traded glances.
Something in the air seemed to change. Gretchen felt her muscles clench up.
“Well, now that I think about it,” the first man said slowly, “I guess we do have a kind of insurance.”
Behind her, a car door swung open, and Cooper’s voice broke the tense silence: “Is everybody saying ‘gee whillikers’ and stuff like that, or am I losing my mind?”
Gretchen couldn’t control the relief that washed over her. She even felt her muscles relax—she was still ready to spring into action, but she was no longer locked-up and rigid with tension. He just sounded so reassuringly normal and familiar, like he was as bemused as she was at the cutesy, corny innocent act these two were putting on and all of this was just a joke that they were sharing.
The eruption of gunfire was almost like the punchline.
Gretchen drew her weapon. “Cooper, take cover!”
She ducked behind the open car door and was already shooting back, but all her return fire seemed to be going wild, way off the mark. Her scores on the range had always been just about perfect, and she’d never had a problem in the field.
She had no idea what was going on. Her vision was fine—until she looked at the two targets she was trying to hit. Then all bets were off, and it was like she was peering through a kaleidoscope. Everything was swimmy, fractured into separate pieces of light, and the view made her feel sick to her stomach.
She couldn’t back away from this. Cooper was counting on her. She squinted hard into the face of the mass of swirling colors and tried to pull them apart into separate shapes. It gave her a headache so bad it was like rusty teeth were sinking into her temples, but she could almost get it—
Then she tumbled forward, dry-heaving onto the ground.
She had a split second’s awareness that the whole top half of her body was now sticking out from behind the cover of the car door, and then Cooper grabbed a double-handful of her coat and pulled her back to safety. His face had gone ashen. He turned around, pressing Gretchen between him and the car, shielding her with his body. They were both crouched and shaking