reflexively see him as a colleague instead of a threat or a faceless prisoner.
He would say that Gretchen was a good person, too. He’d stake his life on that, and he hadn’t even known her for a full hour yet.
If he took a deep breath, he could still catch that mountain air scent coming off her skin.
And he shouldn’t. He couldn’t afford to get distracted.
He forced himself to focus just on the conversation, not on the rapidly unwieldy attraction he felt towards her.
“Well, give Martin whatever of my regards you think he’ll accept,” Cooper said. “I’m glad he made chief.”
“Are we really going to have a conversation with him?” Keith said. Apparently he thought that if he kept his voice down, either Cooper wouldn’t hear him or Gretchen wouldn’t get annoyed at him for continuing to poke at her choices.
“It’s a long trip to spend sitting in silence,” Gretchen said. “And you vetoed Moby Dick.”
“He’s a murderer. He’s a traitor.”
There was something strangely antique about Keith’s choice of words, and for some reason, they struck Cooper more deeply than “killer” or “prisoner” would have. It was like Keith was implying that Cooper had lost his honor, and that that loss was somehow contagious—that if Gretchen spoke to him for too long, dishonor and shame would leach into her, like contamination into groundwater, and she would be spoiled forever.
She can’t be. She’s herself, and she’s as true as steel.
It was like a distant echo inside him somewhere. He hadn’t heard the actual words being spoken, only them bouncing off something close to his heart.
That handshake knocked you for a loop, he tried to tell himself, but it was hard to argue with the feeling she gave him. It was like his whole soul had been rung like a bell, and he was still feeling the aftershocks. Still listening to the music of them, the way he had listened to her laugh.
And that music was old and strange, just like Keith’s weighted words.
He couldn’t stand the idea that Gretchen believed that his soul was as ugly as Keith had just painted it.
He said, “I don’t know if it would make a difference or not to hear me say it, but—I’m really not either of those things.”
“What?” Gretchen said. She sounded distracted, like she’d been lost in her own thoughts too.
“And I just didn’t want to come in halfway through Moby Dick,” Keith added belatedly. “I wouldn’t understand what was happening.”
Cooper decided not to get involved in the Moby Dick debate. He said, “I didn’t kill Phil. I didn’t turn over any information about my witnesses.”
“I’m sure you’re not the first prisoner to say he’s innocent,” Keith said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
“He wouldn’t be the first prisoner to actually be innocent, either,” Gretchen said.
Cooper’s heart leapt. She was the first person he’d even heard acknowledge that it was even technically possible for him to have been wrongfully accused, the first person to not act like the system was guaranteed to be flawless.
His mouth was suddenly too dry for him to talk. To have someone even half-believe him, after all this time—
“You can’t be serious,” Keith said.
“I’m just being factually accurate. There’s such a thing as a wrongful conviction.”
“Not in his case. Don’t tell me you believe everyone who says—”
“Of course not,” Gretchen said sharply. “I’m not even saying I believe him. I just said that it’s possible.”
“I don’t think it is.” Keith twisted around in his seat, turning to face Cooper. His eyes were a gray-blue so pale that their edges almost seemed to melt away like snow. “You left conclusive proof of your guilt behind. You weren’t just criminal, you were careless. That anyone could possibly believe you at this point is—”
“Oh, look,” Gretchen said loudly. “We need gas.”
“No, we don’t.”
“I think you’ll find we do,” she said. Even from the backseat, Cooper could see that her jaw was clenched so tightly that she could be in danger of shattering a tooth.
Keith was in trouble.
And Gretchen had just defended Cooper yet again.
If he escaped at the gas station, he would just be throwing that defense back in her face, humiliating her in front of a stickler younger partner who seemed intent on criticizing her at every turn. If he ran now, she would think he was exactly the man he’d just told her he wasn’t.
This probably won’t be my best shot at freedom anyway, he tried to tell himself. It’s still broad daylight. If I can’t shift, and if I can’t