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

/> “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.

She was standing just outside of the prison itself, outdoors but still inside the main walls. It was freezing. Funny how there could be so much sun without it making her even a little bit warmer.

At least Keith had stayed in the car to keep the heat on. It was good that having him along was at least a little bit useful, since he was already driving her crazy: within ten minutes, he’d reminded her to keep her hands at ten and two while she drove.

She kept doing the necessary travel math in her head: how many miles they could travel today if the traffic was good (it never was), how long she could probably drive without getting tired, where to stop along the way.

This kind of long-distance trip was a hassle, and she wondered who had authorized it in Dawes’s case. It was normal enough to move a prisoner who’d been attacked, but it was rare to move them this far.

Honestly, it was rare for the response to be this prompt, too. Usually any kind of bureaucracy was managed by guys exactly like the one she’d just been talking to. It wasn’t that they were necessarily stupid or uncaring, but they were sluggish and uninvolved, and all the paperwork slowed them down even further. It took a lot to jar them out of complacency.

Well, Dawes was probably still something of a high-profile prisoner. Maybe they’d just decided they’d rather have him be officially someone else’s problem.

Then the door swung open, and there he was.

Dawes had changed since the days of his trial footage. He had lost weight behind bars, and his already striking features were now even more sharply defined. He looked like he’d been chiseled out of ice. His dark brown hair, once neatly trimmed, had grown just a little bit shaggy. He had been graceful in the courtroom, obviously athletic, but now he was painfully stiff. And the leg shackles were making him shuffle.

But he still had that lost prince vibe. There was a dignity and intensity to him, even in prison khakis and steel restraints.

She stepped forward to meet him.

“Cooper Dawes? I’m Deputy US Marshal Gretchen Miller. I’ll be driving you to Bergen, along with Deputy Keith Ridley, who’s keeping the car warm for us. I know you know how this works, so we shouldn’t have any problems.”

“We won’t,” he said. He had a low, clear voice.