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

“Well, it’s a party,” Martin said. She was pretty sure the twinkle currently in his eyes qualified as mischievous. “Besides, what’s the point of being the chief if you can’t make your Marshals do the pain-in-the-ass stuff you don’t want to do?”

Gretchen scowled. “Okay, but if you’re making me ride around with Keith, you’re the one who has to watch my dogs while I’m doing it.” It was always a hassle to find someone to look after Frick and Frack, her two enormous wolfhound-looking mutts: the rest of her family got bristly around dogs, who tended to sense something fundamentally catlike about them. Being able to dump them on Martin would be a nice change. “And I’m going to tell Colby to stop nominating you for Chief of the Year.”

Colby was the only one in the office—and one of the only Marshals in the country—who paid any real attention to the honorary awards given out each December, which meant Martin’s victories had come in every year like clockwork. Colby was always threatening to cost Martin his streak, but they all knew it would never happen. Colby probably already had the nomination forms filled out for next year, even.

Her joke of a threat let them ease back into the party, but as they went inside, it crossed Gretchen’s mind to wonder what she would do if she did come away from all this thinking Cooper Dawes was innocent.

A jury of Cooper Dawes’s peers had delivered their verdict, and a judge had passed down his sentence. She couldn’t just overrule them. And she couldn’t torpedo her entire life by engineering a virtual jailbreak.

But it didn’t matter. Dawes was guilty. Even Martin thought so.

Her days in a car with him would just confirm that. These were interesting what-if angles to consider, but that was all they were.

3

“Wake up.”

An unfriendly finger prodded Cooper’s chest.

He opened his eyes, but that didn’t stop the guard from poking him again.

“I’m awake,” Cooper said. “I’ve been a light sleeper since I was repeatedly stabbed.”

“Yeah,” the guard said. “That makes sense. We were all trying to figure out how to describe that to people. What do you like better, ‘all stuck up like a pincushion’ or ‘like Caesar on the Ides of March’? You know, because that’s when Julius Caesar got ganged up on and stabbed by all those senators.”

“The second one’s a little long,” Cooper said.

The guard considered this piece of constructive criticism for a moment while Cooper struggled to sit up.

He’d never had to deal with this kind of slow, painful healing before. He guessed he should be grateful he was going through it now, because the usual speed of shifter healing would have attracted way too much attention. It would be disturbingly easy to be funneled from a federal penitentiary to some covert medical research facility.

But it was hard to be thankful that each stab wound had its own distinctive, nagging pain: half-toothache and half-burn. He was stiff and sore; even breathing hurt.

He guessed most of his reserves of strength had been spent saving his life. Now he was stuck with a nearly human rate of healing.

Or my griffin is gone for good. Maybe that eye-flash used up the last of its strength.

He reached for it again, trying hard to think about the wide open sky, and found nothing but black emptiness.

He shut his eyes again, trying to peer down into that darkness—

—only to have the guard shake him by the shoulders.

“Watch it, Dawes. You’re not going back to sleep again. You think I came in here and woke you up just to give you a get well card? You’re moving to the pen at Bergen.”

Stridmont to Bergen, damn, that’s a hell of a drive. I’d hate to be stuck with that one.

Oh, right. He wasn’t the driver, not this time. He was the cargo.

Not that it mattered: the guard had to be confused about the date.

“They can’t move me today. The doctor said—”

The guard shook him again. He didn’t do it as roughly as he probably could have, but he didn’t do it gently either.

“This isn’t a democracy.” He enunciated each word clearly, like Cooper might miss the point. “You’ve got stitches, so you’re not going to bleed out before you get to Bergen. And your ride’s here. Your stuff is already packed up.” He kicked a cardboard box, barely half full of his few belongings from his cell. “Anything’s missing, speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Nothing was missing. He just didn’t have a lot.