good if she wasn’t going to be awake to drink it. He needed to get her body temperature back up, and his options were limited.
Seeing her so cold, pale, and still, like some kind of white marble statue, scared the hell out of him. She was supposed to be vibrant, thrumming with life and energy, crackling with intensity. This was almost like she was dead.
The thought made his chest tighten up.
He kicked off his shoes and slid behind her on the sofa, bracing her in the V of his open legs and cradling her back against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, willing as much of his body heat as possible to flow into her. Willing his life to flow into her, if necessary.
“Come on, Gretchen,” he said under his breath. “Come on, sweetheart. Come back to me.”
The motel owner returned, this time with a tray attached to his walker. Two bowls of soup rested on it, with steamed-up plastic lids keeping their contents from spilling as the movement jostled them around. Cooper would have admired the efficiency of it all a whole lot more if he hadn’t been so worried about Gretchen.
The old man took in the sight of this federal prisoner cuddling a US Marshal and pursed his lips slightly. “She still not warming up?”
Cooper shook his head. “I don’t know what to do. You must have called 911, did they say—”
“Why would I have called 911?”
Of all the questions he might have expected, that wouldn’t have been one of them.
“Because a guy in a prison jumpsuit just demanded to come into your motel?”
“Son, it would take a lot more than that for me to pry into something that’s none of my business. If you tried to take the girl back out into the cold with you, then I’d call 911. But I don’t think you’re going to do that, do you?” He didn’t even wait for an answer. “Besides, the phone lines have been down for over an hour now. No cell signal right here, and the phone wires are so damned delicate half the time they go down if a bird shits on them wrong. You don’t need to worry about cops swarming down on you.”
“I’m not worried. I just need paramedics to swarm down on me. I’m not a doctor. I don’t know what she needs.”
“You’re awfully concerned about a woman taking you to prison.”
Cooper was too tired to come up with anything but the truth. “I love her.”
The old man just nodded. “I was thinking it had to be something like that. You knew her before?”
He shook his head. “Just met her earlier today.”
“It was like that with me and my wife, God rest her.” He cleared his throat, and Cooper looked up just enough to notice that the man’s red-rimmed eyes were shimmering with tears. He still wore a wedding ring, one tarnished with age. It looked at home on him. “If she’s still so cold she can’t even shake to get herself warm again, you’re going to need more than just that one blanket. Come on and I’ll get you a room. You can use the blankets and the comforter in there.”
Cooper lifted Gretchen up, tucking the blanket snugly around her so it wouldn’t fall. He followed along after the old man.
“What’s your name?”
“Clifford Meeks. You can call me Ford.”
“I’m—”
“I don’t want to know who you are, son,” Ford said, cutting him off. “If your girl doesn’t wake up by the time the phones come back, then I’ll call for an ambulance for you. If she does, and she’s doing all right, then I don’t see any reason to get anyone else involved. What I don’t know, I can’t tell the police.”
Cooper stared at the man’s hunched back. “Sir, if I actually were on the run, you could be arrested for harboring—”
“But you’re not on the run. You’re saving a lady’s life when you could have just left her out in the cold. And I’m eighty-three years old; anybody who wants to put me in prison is a damn fool. I’d almost welcome the change of scenery.”
“It’s not that great,” Cooper said. “Everything’s either beige or green, and the food’s terrible.”
“I like beige,” Ford said. “It’s soothing.” He unlocked one of the pale wooden doors. “This is one of just two that opens up from the actual inside. Everything else, you have to go out into the court to get to it. So it’s kind of like giving you the