convicted murderer. Even if his plan went right, he would still be a convicted murderer—and then he’d also be a fugitive, a man on the run she would be duty-bound to hunt down and bring in. If he wanted to stay free, he would have to spend the rest of his life avoiding her.
For there to be anything between them... it was impossible.
When he thought about it like that, his chest tightened up so much it was hard to breathe.
Something flitted across his mind: I’d have an easier time giving up the sky.
But he had to ignore that, didn’t he? Indulging his feelings right now would lead to him being trapped in a bottle for the rest of his life.
And then he still wouldn’t have a life that included Gretchen Miller.
“Well, I guess that’s it,” Gretchen said, like she’d heard his thoughts and was agreeing with him.
Cooper looked up reflexively and then realized she was talking to Keith. They were talking about the storm.
I’m much more interesting than Keith, said a voice in his head. It sounded a little like his griffin, but Cooper couldn’t get any more of a response out of it than that.
“I’ll find the nearest town,” Keith said. He started tapping the GPS.
“Make sure you can find a police station listed there,” Gretchen said. “Some of these towns are basically just a wide patch in the road and a handful of houses, with no courthouse or jail until you get to the county seat. We can backtrack if we have to.”
To Cooper’s surprise, her eyes flitted to the rearview mirror and met his.
She said, “Did you ever get hit by a storm on this drive?” Her voice was friendly, conversational: like they were just two coworkers making small talk.
That was what he wanted, wasn’t it? The illusion, at least for a little while, that they were just three Marshals in a car together? That the thick plastic barrier between the front and back seats wasn’t really there? It was a nice fantasy.
But at the same time, something in her tone made him uneasy. It sounded like she was trying too hard.
Like she was doing what he was doing. Big, messy emotions underneath? Ignore them. Plaster over them with a solid plan of action and go from there. He knew that slightly false note that was ringing in her voice—knew it from the inside-out.
He didn’t like how often he’d sounded that way, and he liked it even less with her. She deserved to feel completely self-assured.
Instead, something was still bothering her. Whatever had happened at the gas station had left a mark on her, no matter what she’d said about it or how convincingly she’d said it. She’d been acting off then, and she was acting off now. More to the point, she’d been acting then, and she was acting now.
All he wanted to do was ask her to please tell him what was wrong. Maybe he could fix it somehow.
But that wasn’t supposed to be his business. And what could he do from the back of a car, in handcuffs and leg shackles?
He needed to just answer her question.
“I’ve never made this exact trip before,” he said. “There’s not a lot of traffic between Stridmont and Bergen—not that they ever called any of my offices about, anyway.”
“Ours either. Any idea why you’re getting moved all the way across the country? It seems like a little much.”
“No clue.”
He wished he did know, because it was bugging him. Realistically, why he was getting booted way, way out of the normal prisoner transport range was a moot point. It wasn’t a mystery he needed to bend heaven and earth to solve, not when he had so much else on his plate.
Still, it did make him wonder. It felt like a clue somehow, even though he wasn’t sure yet how it fit in with Phil and everything else—if it even fit at all. He just knew that he was tired of having his life jerked around by someone else’s plans for him.
Of course, for all he knew, this was perfectly innocent. Maybe Roger had pulled some strings for him out of pity, setting him up for a long drive with a lot of scenery just as a break from the gray walls he knew Cooper was climbing. That would make sense.
Plus, he thought cynically, Bergen Penitentiary was so far away from Roger’s office that Roger would have an easy excuse to never see him again, if that was what he