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

Forever. He could lose his griffin forever.

He would lose his griffin forever.

It was even possible that he already had.

No wonder he couldn’t concentrate on the paperback western he was trying to read. It didn’t help that it was about the exact kind of brave US Marshal that he’d never be again.

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.