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.
It was too long of a trip to make in one day, so they would have to stop midway and book him into a local jail cell for the night. If it was a small enough town, that could mean a rickety cell with no security cameras and only a single, sleepy deputy on duty. Definite opportunity.
“You shook his hand,” Keith said accusingly.
Cooper’s head jerked up.
“I’m aware of that,” Gretchen said.
“Do you realize what could have happened?”
“Yes.” Her voice was even colder than the wind outside. “It was a momentary lapse of sanity.”
“He could have pulled you towards him and gotten his cuffed hands around your neck,” Keith went on ruthlessly. “He could have broken your wrist. He could have—”
“I didn’t, though,” Cooper said.
“No one’s talking to you,” Keith said.
“You’re talking about me. And you’re a foot away, so it’s not like I can’t hear you.”
Keith huffed.
Gretchen said, “Keith, there’s no woman in law enforcement, anywhere, who needs you to spell out for her all the different ways she can get killed doing her job. I promise you, I know. I agree I shouldn’t have done it, and I only did it because I wasn’t thinking.”
“Then you should have been thinking.”
“Martin worked with him once,” Gretchen said to Cooper’s surprise. Whatever response he’d expected, it hadn’t been that. “He told me about it. It made him feel more familiar.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“We could have been colleagues in another world, that’s all. I let my guard down.”
“It’s a good thing you weren’t his colleague,” Keith said. “Then you could have wound up in the ground just like Phil Locke.”
Cooper closed his eyes.
Phil.
He didn’t want to think about Phil. They’d had their differences, but even if they would never have been friends outside of the office, they had still been partners. And now Phil was gone, and they would never have a chance to be anything more than that—and one of the last times they’d talked, they’d argued. Cooper had ticked Phil off, and Phil had blown up about it, and they’d never really had a chance to make things right.
He grabbed on to the nearest available distraction and said, “Martin?”