by Zoe Chant
The trouble was, it was a hell of a lot easier to accuse the mob than to convict them. No one but him had ever even been formally tried for the murder of the witnesses.
He said all that, and Gretchen nodded along, her expression grim.
“That explains why they’ve decided it’s too risky to keep you around. If you filed another appeal, maybe it would never lead to anybody on their side going to prison... but it could make the feds sniff around their business a little more. But if you were dead, the case would stay closed for good.”
That made sense to him—or at least as much sense as anything else. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were bending one or two of the puzzle pieces to make them snap into place. There were a few things still rattling around unresolved.
The fear gas, for one. Was it chemical or was it magical? Before all this, he’d never had any reason to think magic existed, not outside of whatever let shifters be shifters, but they had seen some strange things today. And he guessed if magic were real, the mob would use it as a weapon the same way they used everything else.
It was just that something didn’t feel quite right. But in a situation like this, what answer could feel completely right? No matter who was chasing them, they were being chased. No matter who had framed him, he’d been framed. And like he’d said, the situation was a ticking time bomb.
Especially once the snow started falling.
10
Gretchen had known this snowstorm was coming, but it still managed to surprise her in how fast it showed up. One minute, it was nothing but heavy clouds on the horizon and a reason to crank up the heat. The next, it was a complete whiteout. In between, there had been the faintest sprinkling of snowflakes, exactly the kind of thing she would have loved on Christmas morning—and then, just like that, they were getting buried under them.
There was so much snow and hail in the air, whipped to and fro by vicious winds, that she could barely see a foot in front of her. Even with her headlights on, and even with moving only at a crawl, she couldn’t be sure she wasn’t going to drive them straight off the embankment. She had to pull off to the shoulder.
Cooper squinted through the wintry haze. There was an oddly familiar expression on his face, one Gretchen had seen before but couldn’t exactly place.
“Can you see in this?” Gretchen said, surprised.
“Not much. But I’ve driven this way before, and... I think there’s an old motor court a few miles ahead of us, just off the exit. It’s rundown, but—”
“At this point, I’d happily stay at a motel run by Norman Bates himself. But I don’t think we can make it a few miles. Not in this.”
She didn’t have to say why. He was seeing the same weather she was, and if he knew enough about this road to guess at the location of the nearest motel, he knew as well as she did that there were plenty of treacherous ravines and steep drop-offs along the way. Fumbling around out there would be a good way to wind up in a ditch. And if the crash didn’t kill them, it could easily hurt them enough to keep them from getting back up again—and then the cold would take care of the rest.
“We could try going on foot?” Cooper said.
“We’re not dressed for it. You especially.” The prison had at least given him a reasonably bulky coat, but the snow would soak right through the cloth legs of his jumpsuit.
“I can take it.” He didn’t sound one hundred percent sure about that, though.
“I couldn’t,” Gretchen said. “Even with more padding. The last weather bulletin I saw before my cell signal gave out said something like twenty degrees below zero with the wind chill. That’ll cut straight through my coat, and as slowly as we’d have to be walking in all this...”
She hated to be a downer, but she just couldn’t think of a good way out of this. They’d just have to wait it out and hope the storm dropped soon.
The gas they had should last them a while, and keeping the heat on would keep them warm. But if the storm lasted all night, or if the tailpipe got blocked by the snow...
She couldn’t afford to think about that. They could have Tiffani’s rock-hard cookies for dinner, and—
Suddenly, she dug into her coat pocket. Had she remembered it? When her hand closed around something the right shape and size, she broke into a smile so wide that it made her mouth ache.
“I have a surprise for you,” she said.
“If you want to start playing your Moby Dick audiobook, I’m not opposed to it, but I think it’ll drain your cell battery.”
“It’s not Moby Dick.” She needed to just accept that she was never going to finish that book. “It’s something we talked about earlier today. Given that we’re stuck in a winter wonderland, call it a belated Christmas present.”
She passed him the bar of ultra-dark chocolate.
“Eighty-five percent dark,” Gretchen announced. “It’s practically a black hole.”
Cooper turned the fancy candy bar over in his hands, studying it like it was some priceless work of art. His lips were parted slightly.
Gretchen wanted to kiss him.
It was an almost absurdly reckless impulse. It was so far from correct Marshal protocol that Keith had probably bolted upright in his hospital bed just from sensing she’d imagined it.
But God, she wanted to do it. She wanted to taste the sweetness of his mouth before the bitterness of the chocolate changed it. She wanted to find out how he kissed—if he would put his hands in her hair or on her shoulders, if he’d be gentle or fierce or some bone-melting combination of both.
“Thank you,” Cooper said. His voice sounded a little rough. He slid his thumb along the little cardboard casing of the chocolate, popping it open. “You’ll have to share it with me.”
“I don’t want to share it with you,” Gretchen pointed out. “That’s the whole idea. I’m trying to educate you in relative levels of bittersweetness. No bitterness equals perfectly fine. Some bitterness equals better. Medium bitterness equals perfection. And this just tries to turn your mouth inside out.”
He smiled, but her speech didn’t stop him from snapping the chocolate into little squares and holding one out to her. And, weirder still, her speech didn’t stop her from taking it.
“We can eat it on the count of three,” Coop said.
“Toast first.” She tapped her square of chocolate against his. “Cheers.”
“I think we can do better than cheers. Do you have a favorite toast?”
“They’re mostly jokes.” She frowned, thinking: all that was coming to mind was the slightly ribald one she’d made at her little sister’s bachelorette party. Somehow, she didn’t think it would be the best idea to introduce the toast may all your ups and downs be between the sheets right now, not with the sexual tension between them practically making her skin ache.
“I know a couple in other languages,” Cooper said. “Skål—that’s Norwegian—or sláinte—I think that one’s Irish for ‘to your health.’”
Some of the classic toasts she’d heard were starting to come back to her now. She tilted her chocolate square towards him.
“Here’s champagne for our real friends and real pain for our sham friends.”
Cooper grinned. “To the confusion of our enemies. That’s appropriate.”
She remembered another old family one. “Here’s to those who know us well but love us just the same.”
That didn’t feel like it really fit here, though. The people who hadn’t loved Cooper had been the ones who’d never bothered to get to know him.
He’d thought he was broken, but all he’d really been was unlucky. He hadn’t known the right people.
He hadn’t known her. She was beginning to suspect she could love Cooper Dawes very, very easily.
She hastily moved on before he could get out his next one. “May the best of your past be the worst of your future.”
“That’d be something,” Cooper said softly. “I’d be happy with the worst of my past just being far away from the best of my future.”
“It will be.” She was willing to go head-to-head with the universe to make sure of it.
She wondered if too much of that showed in her eyes, because Cooper cleared his throat and looked away. His eyes seemed brighter than ever.
He said, “Just one more, if that’s okay.” He brushed his square of chocolate against hers. “To you, Gretchen. You believed me when no one else did. You saw me when no one else did. And you bought me chocolate of as-of-yet undetermined quality.”
She shook her head. “I’ve determined the quality. It’s too bitter. And you’ve had too much bitterness already.” She curled her fingers around his hand, knowing her chocolate would start melting from their combined body heat. “I’d toast to you. You served your witnesses and your team faithfully, and you had it all stripped away from you, without even a tenth of the defense and support you should have had. You waited in prison when you didn’t even know if you ever had any hope of getting free. And Coop, you stayed good. You’re still the man you were before you were locked up—someone kind enough and brave enough to try to save a stranger. To you.”
“To us,” Cooper said.
She could live with that. More than live with it, actually: it sent a pleasant shiver up her spine, a shiver that was hot instead of cold.
They ate the chocolate in unison.
As always, Gretchen’s nose wrinkled as her mouth automatically puckered around the ultra-bitter chocolate. She liked dark chocolate, but there was a line.
This was just blech.
Cooper’s expression was more thoughtful. He chewed slowly, his eyes half-closed like he was taking the taste in. Gretchen didn’t see what there was to take in: she’d rather just spit it out.
But maybe he liked it. She could try to be nonjudgmental about his very incorrect taste in chocolate.
“What do you think?”
“It’s definitely bitter. But it’s still chocolate, and I like chocolate.”
“It’s barely chocolate,” Gretchen emphasized. “It’s like pure cocoa held together with wishful thinking. You deserve better chocolate.”
“To be fair,” Cooper said, a spark of humor in his eyes, “you didn’t buy me better chocolate. You bought me this chocolate.”
She couldn’t really argue with that.
“I also bought you a Milky Way Midnight. But that’s not really fancy enough to qualify as better chocolate. I mean, better than this—”
“It’s not that bad,” Cooper said, breaking off another square.
He only thought it wasn’t that bad because he was used to having the bare minimum of sweetness in his life. She wanted him to get back to expectations where the hint of bitterness would add pleasant contrast. Not be the main feature.
But there was nothing she could do about that while they were stuck in a snowstorm. She reluctantly took another piece of chocolate. It wasn’t like they had a big enough picnic here for her to be choosy.
If they’d been in her personal car, they would have had a lot more options. Gretchen kept her trunk stocked with all kinds of emergency goodies just in case she ever got stranded; she was usually loaded up with granola bars, dried fruit, water bottles, flares, and more.
But hey, wait a second. They weren’t in the official government car. They were just in Martin’s personal vehicle, and Martin might be just as careful about that as she was. She’d never known him to run into a situation he was unprepared for.
Even the thought of it made her feel a little better.
Plus, if she was right, it meant she could leave the tongue-twistingly bitter chocolate to the guy who actually seemed to enjoy it.
She tugged her hat down over her ears. “There might be a blanket in the trunk. Maybe even some extra food. I’ll go out and check.”
“I’ll go.”
“I’m more bundled up than you are.”
Cooper’s jaw was stubbornly set in a way that suggested she’d be arguing about this all night. “It’s not going to kill me to be out in the cold for a minute. You’ve done enough.”
She decided to pick her battles. “Okay. But grab everything you can, anything that you think might even be the tiniest bit useful. The last thing we want is to keep having to make supply runs—even if they’re just to the back of the car. It’s too easy to get turned around in this snow. Be careful.”
She didn’t like the idea of the two of them being separated.
“I’ll be quick,” Cooper promised. He seemed to lean just a little closer to her.
She felt that crackling intensity between the two of them again, like her inner compass had just spun around to point straight at him.
She’d never felt anything like this before. Sexual chemistry, sure. But it had always been just... fun. Enticing. It hadn’t made her feel like her whole body was coming undone. She hadn’t been so aware of the guy she was with, to the point where it felt like everything about him—the faint laugh-lines at the corners of his eyes, the sharpness of his cheekbones, the barest sign of stubble beneath his skin—was like a music note coming together to form some incredibly beautiful song.
Then he leaned back and put his hand up, like he was blocking the kiss neither one of them had—exactly—leaned in for. He rubbed at his throat, giving her a rueful look.
“I’m getting a little hoarse. I’ve talked more in the last twelve hours, with you, than I have in the last six months.”
“I like talking to you,” Gretchen said. Her voice sounded strange to her too.
Cooper’s breath ghosted over her, stirring her hair. “I like talking to you too.”
Gretchen felt her eyes drop closed. They would kiss now, she thought, and it was about time. Somehow she felt like she’d been waiting for him forever.
But then there was just a blast of freezing air against her face.
Well, that wasn’t romantic at all. It did a number on the arousal building up in her, too. Not much could survive a faceful of wind and snow.
The passenger side door clunked closed, and she could see the shadow of Cooper going around the car. The windows were so thickly coated with snow that he was nothing but a dark, mysterious blur.
Right now, that was what he felt like to her. She wished she knew what he was thinking.
She knew that what was between them wasn’t just in her head. Maybe she’d been doubting a lot of things today, but there was no way to doubt that. The pull between them felt as strong and natural as gravity, and she knew he felt it too. He’d all but admitted it to her—multiple times, even.
So why had he turned away?
11
Why hadn’t he kissed her?
“What are you,” Cooper said to himself, “an idiot?” The icy wind stole the words right out of his mouth—literally—and whipped them away into nothingness, so he couldn’t even hear his own question. Which was just as well, since he had no idea how to answer it.
Leaning towards her had felt as natural as breathing. Maybe even more natural.
I’d die without air, but I’d fight to stay alive. If I didn’t have her—
If I didn’t have her, I don’t know what I could think of that would be worth fighting for. I don’t know that I could stand to live in this world another second if it didn’t have her in it.
He’d never felt like that before, but as strange and unexpected as it was, feeling like that didn’t scare him. He hadn’t run away from her out of fear.
The real answer slid into place, even colder than the wind around him.
He wanted to kiss her, but he didn’t want to hurt her. And he couldn’t think of a single way he could kiss her without hurting her eventually.
For most of the day, he’d been trying to convince himself that he needed to let go of his feelings for her, that there was no chance that anything could happen between them. Now he knew there was a chance. Gretchen knew he was innocent, and she wanted to help him get his freedom. And she had to be single, because she’d wanted him the same way he’d wanted her, and she wasn’t the kind
of person to mess around.
What was between them was real—or it could be real, if they both gave in to their feelings.
If the only cost of pursuing it had been his own broken heart, Cooper would have done it in a second. It would have been worth it.
But now that he knew that she felt the same way—or at least that she felt some fraction of what he did—he couldn’t do that to her. He couldn’t let himself start something with her when there was no way that it would end well.
He could break his heart, but he couldn’t break hers.
If he ran, if he decided to risk that, then they couldn’t be together. He couldn’t ask her to give up her life, to give up the job that meant so much to her.
If he didn’t run, if he went to Bergen and trusted in the system that had already let him down... then he would probably die with another shiv between his ribs. Even if he lived, the odds were good that he’d never be a free man again, no matter how hard he and Gretchen tried to find the truth.
Did he really want to ask Gretchen to care about him, to tie her life to him, when he was going to be hundreds of miles away, hopeless, and trapped? How good could that possibly be for her?
And even if, through some slow and grinding process, she helped him get acquitted, even if his appeal worked out perfectly—
She would still be a US Marshal, the one who was supposed to step into Martin Powell’s shoes when he retired. But Martin couldn’t appoint her himself; all he could do was recommend her. She would need the approval of someone higher up the food chain... and there was no way she would ever, ever get it if she got involved with him. Even if his conviction was overturned, there would still be plenty of people who remembered him just as a criminal. There would always be the shadow of a doubt. And as Chief, Gretchen would have to be above suspicion.
Cooper felt his way along that painful thought even as he was feeling his way around the car. He couldn’t see it—he couldn’t even see his own hand in front of his face—so he had to keep touching it. If he let go, he’d end up wandering off into the blizzard, no matter how good his usual sense of direction was.
