duration of the trip had been a guy with a bad limp. The restraints had kept tripping him up, and the guy hadn’t complained about it; he’d just soldiered on like this was all he could expect out of life.
Cooper didn’t have a limp, and he wasn’t going to fake one just to get some extra leg room. No matter how long the car trip was from Stridmont to Bergen.
We’ll get to see some scenery.
He’d had the faint hope that that idea would stir his griffin to life again, but there was nothing.
Whatever scenery they saw would still be behind glass.
But at least it’s a regular car trip, Cooper said, trying to make himself feel better. If they’d waited to move me with a couple other guys, we’d be in a van with no view.
Over two or three days of travel, he’d get to see a whole lot of sky. He’d get to see the countryside change, smoothing out into prairie.
That was something.
The guard pushed him forward, steering him out into the lot where the Marshal would be waiting for him.
This is my best chance for freedom.
The thought startled him, and Cooper stopped so suddenly that the guard ran into him. That resulted in another, harder shove, accompanied by an elbow to his back.
He’d thought about escape, of course. Even people who’d never been in prison sometimes daydreamed about how they’d pull off a jailbreak.
And it would be so easy for him, hypothetically.
Use the cover of shifter invisibility. And take flight as a griffin.
Get his griffin back.
He couldn’t do it in handcuffs, let alone handcuffs and leg shackles, but he could have done it anytime he had been in the exercise yard.
Only two things had been stopping him.
As a shifter, he had a responsibility to other shifters. He couldn’t do anything that would make it impossible for the world to ignore their existence. He couldn’t bring tons of scrutiny down on everyone’s heads just for his own sake.
The exercise yard had security cameras. He couldn’t just wink out of existence right in front of them.
The other thing that had stopped him was that escaping would put an end to any idea of clearing his name. If he escaped, he’d be on the run forever. There would be no more appeals. He’d never be able to count on having anyone’s help, not when anyone might turn him in.
If he escaped, that was it. He would never be a Marshal again.
For the rest of his life, in everyone else’s eyes, he would be Cooper Dawes, murderer; Cooper Dawes, the man who’d betrayed everything he’d ever stood for.
He’d thought he couldn’t stomach that.
But now, with the cold winter air cutting through his jacket and the guard propelling him forwards towards his destiny, he started wondering if he could.
His reputation might already be ruined beyond repair. No one was beating the drums to have him let out of prison, after all. No matter how well he behaved within bars, he could easily be there the rest of his life.
And escaping might save his griffin’s life—if that life was still there to save.
The Marshal transporting him would surely have to leave him comparatively unguarded at some point, especially since this would be an overnight trip. He could find a way out, and if one person happened to glimpse something seemingly impossible happening, that wasn’t the same thing as concrete security footage.
You could hurt someone’s career. Losing a prisoner—
But he didn’t know that he could bring himself to keep caring about that. He didn’t think it was out of line to say that his freedom might be worth it.
And it isn’t like they’d get fired, he thought. Anybody could guess that I’d have resources and knowledge your average criminal wouldn’t. I’ve seen the transport process from both sides. It might be embarrassing to whatever Marshal has me if I slip the net, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
There was something else, too.
Someone had tried to kill him. No one in the yard had had a problem with him themselves; he hadn’t made any of them angry. But the ferret had been armed and ready.
The deal was too good to pass up, the guy had said.
Someone had been pulling the strings there. If he hadn’t been woozy from painkillers ever since the infirmary, he would have realized it even sooner.
Whoever had killed Phil had tried to kill him, too. It wasn’t enough to have framed him; someone wanted him out of the way completely.