by Zoe Chant
I thought it was about cowboys, Cooper thought plaintively. The cover looked like it was just cowboys. Nobody was wearing a Marshal star, or I wouldn’t have picked it up in the first place. I’m a victim of false advertising.
He stood up off the short rack of bleachers and stretched, trying to breathe in as much of the freezing, clear winter air as possible, like that would be enough to rouse his griffin.
It wasn’t.
He poked at it. Buddy?
Silence.
His eyes burned, and he told himself that it was just from the wind in his face.
He needed a distraction. Something, anything. Anything that would get him out of his own head. He opened his book again—
And then a skinny, ferret-faced guy popped up in his face.
“Hey, hey, hey,” the ferret-faced guy said. “You want to step out on the court? You want to shoot some hoops?”
He was so keyed-up that he was gnashing his teeth between words, and Cooper realized immediately that he had to be high. No surprise there: drugs filtered into the prison all the time. Protective custody only protected you from the other prisoners; it couldn’t protect you from yourself.
Cooper started to turn him down gently, cautiously—he didn’t want to get the guy even more stirred up than he was already—but his loneliness got the better of him. If the game got tense, or if more of the guys were high, it could be trouble... but maybe trouble was better than nothing. He just wanted to be around people for a change, since it wasn’t like keeping to himself had made these months more bearable.
His griffin was still dying. His hope was still dying. Maybe a little game of pickup basketball was exactly what he needed.
“Sure.” He slid the book into his coat, in a hole in the lining that worked as an improvised pocket, and then he started following the guy out onto the blacktop. There wasn’t much yard time left, but maybe he could still shoot a few baskets.
But something was wrong. It was just a twinge of his instinct for danger, but it was more than he’d felt from his shifter side in a long time.
Stay calm.
“Looks like you’ve already got an even number,” Cooper said. “Someone dropping out?”
“Oh, yeah,” the ferret-faced guy said, wheeling around to give him an enormous, panicked-looking grin. The high, late morning sunlight flashed off his eyes, making him look more jittery than ever. “Someone’s dropping out, oh yeah, you’d better believe it.”
This was trouble.
Cooper took a half-step back. “I don’t want to be a problem,” he said easily, trying to make it sound like no big deal at all. “I’ll just go sit back down. I can play next time.”
“No, no, no. Nope, nope, nope.”
The ferret was crowding him suddenly, and the other prisoners were coming over too, closing in around them in a tight knot of bodies.
From the guard tower, it could have looked like the start of a game or an argument over who was going to play on what team. Only no one was talking.
Cooper had that feeling he’d gotten sometimes back on the job, when everything just slid slowly, sickly sideways, like a car skidding out.
He knew this was wrong, but it was too late to do anything but steer into the skid.
The ferret smacked him on the shoulder like they were best buds. That was with his left hand. His right held a shiv, a sharpened toothbrush handle.
He slipped it in between Cooper’s ribs in a single, practiced movement.
“Sorry.” The ferret twisted the blade around, spreading the damage. “Nothing personal, you know. Had to do it. The deal was too good to pass up, you know, too good to pass up.”
The other men tightened in around them, screening them from the guards and holding Cooper in place.
The shiv stabbed forward again, into Cooper’s side this time. He felt hot blood immediately soak through his jumpsuit.
The third stab was right to his heart—except it hit the paperback western in his coat lining. The ferret cursed, pulling at the shiv where it had gotten stuck in the pages.
He’d just been saved by a story of bold US Marshals and dastardly outlaws.
And suddenly all Cooper’s months of turmoil and desperation cleared away. It was like he was getting to fly again after all, and he had just lifted up through the last of the clouds. Light and color exploded around him.
For the first time since his cell door had closed behind him, Cooper knew beyond a doubt that he wanted to live.
He refused to die like this. He refused to die without knowing why.
Shifting or going invisible would have saved his life, but only at the cost of revealing his kind to the world, and it was a chance he couldn’t take—if he could even have done it at all. But even with the most obvious shifter tricks off the table, and even with his griffin mostly AWOL, he still had a few cards up his sleeve. He was strong and well-trained.
And that, at least, he didn’t need to hide.
He slammed one elbow back into the solar plexus of one of the men holding him, then slipped neatly out of the second one’s grasp. He was still surrounded, but he wasn’t letting anyone grab him again. He lashed out hard at anyone who tried, and he heard the crunch of someone’s nose breaking under the heel of his hand. He knew he was grinning—the adrenaline junkie reunited with his drug of choice—and he kept it up, hoping it would scare them off. Nobody wanted to mess with crazy.
And he had one more surefire way of scaring them off, even though he didn’t realize it until it had happened. He only felt it: for a second, his eyes had flashed griffin gold.
Later, they could all tell themselves it was just a trick of the light, but in that second, every man in the circle knew he’d just seen something impossible. They backed way off him. The ferret dropped his shiv, and Cooper heard it clatter against the asphalt.
He was bleeding from multiple stab wounds, but he’d taken out six other guys, and he was the only one to come out of it smiling. Not too bad. Not too bad at all.
Thank God for books.
He made it halfway to the guards’ station before he collapsed.
2
Gretchen had a lot of nieces and nephews, and that meant her weekends were usually whirlwinds of birthday parties, recitals, and paintball games; anything to make the kids happy and give their harried parents a night off. But she had completely blocked off this Saturday night, and she didn’t feel even a trace of guilt about it.
Theo and Jillian were going to have a baby, and she was going to help them celebrate.
They were going to be spectacular parents. Jillian worked with troubled teens at the community center, and she already had a wealth of experience in dealing with every possible problem a kid could throw at her. And Theo? Theo not only had all the skills of a US Marshal and a dragon, he also had so much sweetness and genuine courtesy that his fugitives usually wound up apologizing to him for having ever run away in the first place. Any kid raised by Theo and Jillian was bound to grow up to be incredible: tough, kind, brilliant, and adorable.
She wondered if their child would be a dragon shifter.
Probably. Almost certainly. If not, though, she knew Theo would make sure the child still felt important and special.
It’ll help that the kid wouldn’t be growing up surrounded by dragons.
Theo had grown up in an all-dragon enclave, a secret, hidden village that few outsiders ever even knew existed. He had a few cousins he kept in touch with, but otherwise, he’d made it clear that he wanted his past to stay his past: a lot of his hometown consisted of snobby, arrogant people who thought that if you weren’t a dragon, you were nothing at all. Theo wouldn’t bring a non-shifter kid within a hundred miles of the village of Riell, not unless a lot of things changed.
Besides, either way, the kid would have a human mom—and a kickass one, at that.
There was no reason to think that this child would grow up feeling the way she had.
Once. A long time ago. I grew out of it, anyway.
<
br /> She hugged Theo as he came up to her.
“People keep doing that,” Theo said, smiling.
“Any excuse to touch Gucci,” Gretchen said. All of Theo’s clothes were either designer or beautifully tailored, and he always looked like he’d just walked out of a cologne ad; Gretchen could never get over how soft all his jackets felt. “I was just thinking about how you’re going to be a great dad.”
“I hope so. I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
“You’re a dragon, and you’re scared of babies?”
“I’m not scared of them in general,” Theo said, with just a trace of draconian haughtiness. “I want this one, obviously. I just don’t ever want to be a disappointment.”
He was so sincere that it broke her heart a little. Gretchen decided to give his worries plenty of cushioning for right now and not remind him that all kids inevitably found their parents disappointing sometimes—terminally uncool and unbelievably unfair. Even a devoted idealist and a princely dragon shifter US Marshal couldn’t escape that trap.
“You’ll be great,” Gretchen said. “I’ll teach you everything I know about diapers, baby bottles, and crying kids.”
“Jillian’s been pumping Aria for advice for the last half hour,” Theo said. Aria was their teammate Colby’s mate, a vibrant, funny photographer with a nine-year-old daughter whose cuteness challenged Gretchen’s allegiance to her own nieces and nephews.
“Then between me and Aria, you two will have this down. And Tiffani will always be around to help out. She’s the best step-grandmother anybody could hope for.”
Then she noticed Theo had stopped listening to her. A look of barely-controlled horror had taken over his face.
“What is it? I’ve never seen you look like that before. You got the spider infestation out of the filing cabinet without looking like that. It’s not Tiffani, is it?”
“It’s Keith,” Theo said under his breath. “And don’t remind me of that filing cabinet. I saw things there I can never unsee.”
“You invited Keith?”
“He’s a member of our team now. It would have been rude not to include him.”
Being rude was Theo’s worst nightmare. Usually, Gretchen appreciated that about him. This one time, though, she wished he’d just said to hell with it and left Keith Ridley off the guest list.
Keith had just joined their team a few weeks ago. He was a new Marshal, and he hadn’t been in law enforcement before this job. It showed.
More accurately, he hadn’t been in any jobs before this job, and it showed. Even a high school job scooping ice cream would have taught him more about the world than he seemed to know. The guy just didn’t know how to deal with people.
Like Theo, Keith had been raised in a removed little society that had had very little do with the outside world. But unlike Theo, he hadn’t broken away from it because its sense of superiority had rankled his own ideas of right and wrong. He had been sent out into the world as a kind of tribute, a present from the unicorns to the rest of them.
Gretchen kind of wondered if they could regift him.
He was stiff, rude, and self-righteous. No witness felt like they could trust him, and no friend or family member of a fugitive would ever decide to help him out.
Also, he was kind of a pill. He was absolutely the last person you’d want at your party, and no one but Theo would have ever invited him.
“You know he reported Colby for running a March Madness bracket,” Gretchen said. “A measly five-dollars-per-person, just-for-fun office pool, and Keith went over Martin’s head to turn Colby in for gambling. And my bracket totally would have won, too.”
“And now he’s headed straight for us,” Theo said. “Brace yourself.”
But before Gretchen needed to, a hand fell on her shoulder. She turned around and saw Martin, who looked unmistakably grim.
Gretchen started to make a joke about how he looked like he’d already had to talk to Keith, but then she shut up: Martin’s expression had her genuinely worried. His mate, Tiffani, was Jillian’s beloved stepmother. Martin should have been ecstatic at having a grandkid on the way, and instead he looked like he needed to face a firing squad.
“What’s up, chief?”
Martin shook his head. “Not here—let’s go outside. I don’t want to spoil the celebration. Sorry about this, Theo. You and Jillian deserve better than having work crash your party.”
“It can’t be helped,” Theo said magnanimously. “Do you just need Gretchen? I can intercept Keith.”
“Keith’s here?” Martin said. “Why?”
“That’s what I was saying,” Gretchen said.
“Intercept away,” Martin said to Theo. “And thanks.”
Theo made a beeline for Keith, ready to fall on his sword in the name of being a good host, and Gretchen silently wished him good luck before she turned back to Martin.
“Outside?”
Martin nodded. “Take a coat,” he said, which was so reflexively parental that it made her have to suppress a laugh.
Once they were outside, Gretchen had to admit she was glad Martin had advised her to bundle up. It was freezing. Temperatures had plummeted lately, and all the weather reports were warning of big snowstorms up ahead. Her nieces and nephews were already eagerly planning all the sledding they’d do once school was inevitably cancelled.
She could almost smell the snow in the clear, dark air.
That was something she’d never told anyone. She’d always felt like she had some kind of sixth sense for how the weather was going to turn—a hyper-awareness of the sky above her and the way the wind felt against her skin. A yearning to be up there. She’d taken piloting lessons a few times in her early twenties, but while she’d gotten a kick out of taking a little plane up in the air, it hadn’t scratched whatever itch was deep down inside her.
By now, she was pretty good at ignoring it. She wrapped her arms around herself, hugging the wool fabric of her coat closer to her, and said, “So—what’s up?”
“I have a special assignment for you,” Martin said.
Gretchen relaxed.
“You look relieved,” Martin said, his mouth quirking. “I haven’t even told you what it is yet.”
“You had me worried! If it’s really just work, why the long face?”
“Because—wait, is that a horse joke? Horse walks into a bar, the bartender says, ‘Why the long face?’”
“Since it’s you,” Gretchen said, “it’s a pegasus joke.”
He shook his head in what she was guessing was supposed to be world-weary resignation, but she could see the deepened laugh-lines at the corners of his eyes; his solemnity had lifted at least a little. Good. It was strange seeing him so solemn. Once, she’d taken it for granted that he was just a naturally somber kind of guy. It was only after knowing him for years that she had been able to see that he hadn’t really been grave, he’s just still been grieving. The loss of his wife had hit him hard. Only time—and meeting his mate, the effervescent Tiffani—had helped heal him.
He smiled a lot more now, and Gretchen had gotten used to it. And she liked that she’d gotten used to it. She wanted to do whatever she could to make sure he stayed happy.
So whatever the special assignment was, in her mind, she had already agreed.
Besides, she was curious.
“You did look all doom and gloom,” Gretchen said. “Whatever I can do to keep that look off your face, I’m for it. Just tell me.”
Martin sighed. “Two days ago, someone tried to kill Cooper Dawes.”
It took a second before the name rang a bell. Then a whole host of memories came flooding in.
Gretchen had never met Cooper Dawes. But he had been a US Marshal, just like them, and his deliberate, malicious betrayal of all the principles they were supposed to stand for had hurt. It was a black eye on every Marshal everywhere. And it had led to a sharp drop in the number of witnesses willing to testify and trust the Marshals for their protection—and Gretch
en couldn’t blame them for it at all. Why would anyone want to put their lives in the hands of someone who might sell them out to the highest bidder?
Organized crime had a long reach and even longer memory; Dawes had taken advantage of the fact that it had deep pockets, too. They still hadn’t traced all the money he had raked in, but it was most likely in the millions.
Two witnesses had died because of it, and after the second, people had started getting suspicious. There had been questions. At least some of them had been asked by Phil Locke, Dawes’s partner—and then Locke had turned up dead. The bullet in him had been a perfect match for a gun found in Dawes’s house, and all the leaked information had been traced to computers Dawes had access to.
The trial had been a cakewalk for the prosecution. They had an easy story to tell.
Cooper Dawes, on the other hand, had nothing.
I don’t know anything about that. I would never do that. Phil was my partner, and this job is everything to me. I believe in the work we’re doing.
Gretchen had watched parts of the trial live, and that last sentence of his had struck a strange chord in her, mostly because of the way Dawes had straightened up when he’d said it. He’d had trouble not slumping when he was on the stand, and it had made everything he was saying come off as somehow half-hearted. But there was nothing half-hearted about him right then. He had looked straight at the prosecutor, his green eyes burning almost feverishly bright.
I believe in the work we’re doing.
And for a second, she had believed in him.
Which was ridiculous.
But even now, remembering Dawes’s intensity in that moment got to her. It was strange to think that someone had come close to wiping that intensity out completely.
“I have as much against the guy as anyone else,” Gretchen said, “but if we put people away, they’re supposed to stay there, not wind up in a graveyard.”
“I know he’s everyone’s public enemy number one right now,” Martin said quietly, “but since he managed to get shish-kabobbed half-a-dozen ways while in protective custody, it’s safe to say the penitentiary at Stridmont’s not a good fit for him. He’s being moved all the way to Bergen, and as soon as possible.”
