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

She was either careless or someone who had a good intuitive sense of the people she was dealing with, and people who were careless didn’t stay Marshals for long.

So Cooper decided to push his luck. If he got his hand slapped for it, he could live with that.

“Just Cooper’s fine,” he said, trying to keep the hope out of his voice. “Or Coop, if you want. I always liked the sound of that.”

People had stopped calling him by his first name around the time they’d stopped shaking his hand. He missed it. It would be nice to hear someone sounding friendly for a change, even if they actually weren’t.

“We’ll call you what we choose to call you,” Keith Ridley said. The words had a razor-sharp edge.

“It’s a long trip,” Gretchen said in an undertone. “Let’s make this as painless as we can.”

She shifted into drive and began taking them off the penitentiary grounds. Cooper lost his interest in the tension between his escorts and instead turned his rapt attention to his window. He watched as their car passed smoothly through the different checkpoints, the gates and fences falling away under the force of Gretchen’s authority. They were moving out of the sweep of the searchlights and the sight of the barbed wire, out and out—

Then, just like that, they were on the open road, and he was looking at things he hadn’t seen

in over six months.

Traffic. Speed limit signs. Exit ramps.

Graffiti penises.

He could safely say that he’d never been so grateful in all his life to see a spray-painted picture of a dick. It was like a marker welcoming him back to society.

Although, actually, prison got more than its fair share of cartoon penises. It was really the spray paint that was welcoming him back.

And, more than anything else, it was the endless expanse of sky above him. It was a glowering, wintery gray, but Cooper was as happy to see it as he had ever been to see any bright shade of blue.

He wasn’t going back to prison. He couldn’t lose this freedom again. He couldn’t go on watching his griffin slip away from him.

He just had to watch for the right opportunity. He needed to be sharp and quick—he couldn’t miss his chance, and he couldn’t hesitate, especially since he was working with a severe limitation: he refused to hurt the people he was escaping.

Especially Gretchen.

Luckily, he had no reason to think that moral stance would mean giving up his chance to escape. He might have had more scruples than most prisoners, but he also had more insider information: he knew the transport process from the other side. He knew the exact location of all the little weaknesses no US Marshal could ever finesse out of the system. No process could be made one hundred percent flawless, and Cooper was willing to take advantage of that. He just had to think about it from the other side. What had he always been worried a prisoner would do? He’d do that. Well, he’d do the non-violent version of that.

“Anyone have any strong opinions on what I do with the radio?” Gretchen said, breaking the silence.

“Driver controls the radio,” Cooper said automatically.

“I don’t listen to music,” Keith said.

Of course he didn’t. Cooper was irritated by this guy already.

“Does that mean you hate it?” Gretchen said. “If I turn on the radio, will you physically recoil and throw yourself out of the car, screaming? Or do you just mean you don’t have a station preference?”

It seemed like Keith had to think about it. “The second one.”

“Great.” She switched on the radio and scanned through the FM band before settling on classic rock. It was exactly what Cooper would have picked for this kind of long drive—something loud and energetic to keep his energy from flagging. No one could drift off or get fuzzy-headed with “You Shook Me All Night Long” rattling their car windows.

Cooper nodded his head along to the music as he watched the snowy scenery pass by. His mind hadn’t done anything as useful or rigorous as hatching a plan in months; he felt like he was mentally out of shape. That was what happened when you spent most of your time deliberately trying not to think.

Not “this is your brain on drugs” but “this is your brain on prison.” Just as ugly.

He used to be better at making the right mental leaps when he’d had something to do with his hands. He used to play computer solitaire or sudoku to get himself to lapse into a kind of meditative state, and then solutions to fugitive hunts would just seem to bob out of the fog and present themselves. Unfortunately, handcuffs basically existed to get in the way of their wearers doing anything with their hands, so he was out of luck.

He tapped his fingers against his knees, instead, trying to follow the beat of the music.

They would have to stop for gas at some point. Opportunity.