phone call, and whatever you tell them, I don’t think it should be the truth.”
She heard a staticky silence on the other end of the line, and then Martin said gently, “Tell me.”
“Cooper’s innocent. You already knew I thought that.”
“I think that too. I trust your instincts.”
“I can’t take him to Bergen. Or any other prison.”
“Gretchen—”
“Prison is killing him, Martin. His griffin was wasting away—”
“Wait, his what? Dawes is a shifter?”
“Yeah. A griffin.”
Martin sighed. “Long-term confinement is hard on anybody, but especially when you know in your heart that you’re supposed to be off somewhere flying. Tell him I understand that much. I couldn’t get along without the sky either.”
“So prison is bad for him,” Gretchen said. “And even if it wasn’t, being cooped up there just makes him an easy target. I think the people who are after us now are the same ones who framed him.”
“Law of conservation of suspects,” Martin agreed. “Why have two different groups of bad guys when you could just have one?”
She nodded, forgetting that he couldn’t see her, and then slowly worked her way back through it, thinking out loud. “They framed him, and once everyone blamed him and it was all in the past, they tried to have him killed. We think it’s the mob trying to tie off loose ends. They hacked the records and framed him, but they screwed up by leaving him alive to maybe poke around in their business, and now they’re trying to correct that little mistake.”
It didn’t sound wrong, but it didn’t sound entirely right, either, and she didn’t know if Martin was completely convinced.
He sounded a little skeptical as he said, “Maybe. Or maybe Cooper knows something he doesn’t know he knows.”
“I’ll check,” Gretchen said dryly. She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “Coop, do you know something you don’t know you know?”
“I don’t know,” Cooper said.
He was smiling, his face briefly relaxed despite the awfulness of the circumstances, and his simple pleasure in a silly little joke made her think again about just how much he deserved a team like hers. He was a good guy—smart, kind, funny, and brave. He’d always deserved people who appreciated that, not partners who would fly off the handle about him prioritizing a witness...
“Well, if Cooper can shift, go ahead and put me on speakerphone. That’ll make the rest of this conversation easier. Keith’s awake and coherent now, and between the two of us, we had an idea about—”
There was a knock at their door.
Gretchen looked at Cooper and then said in an undertone, “Bad guys don’t usually knock.”
“I’m still getting used to hearing anyone knock at all,” Cooper said.
Right. They wouldn’t knock in prison, even if there were real doors to knock on. She hated that he’d gotten to the point where even a knock at the door was an unexpected luxury. Even if it could be a knock from someone coming to kill them.
She let her hand drift towards her sidearm as she called out, “Yes?”
“I was just wondering if you two wanted breakfast,” Ford called through the door.
They both relaxed.
“That would be great, sir,” Gretchen said, now with real warmth. “We need to be hitting the road soon.”
“I figured. Figured the two of you might have worked an appetite, too.”
Well, they hadn’t exactly been subtle; they probably deserved taking a little bit of ribbing from the world’s most laidback motel owner.
“It’s not exactly a fancy continental breakfast like you’d get at the Holiday Inn,” Ford continued, “but it’ll stick to your ribs. I’ll let you know when it’s ready so you can go on and get yourselves decent. I’ll leave some clothes out here for your fellow to try on.”
Gretchen knew she’d turned a little pink, but she just said, “Thanks, Ford. We really appreciate it.”
“None of my business what people do in their own motel room,” Ford muttered, barely audible through the door, and Cooper heard him shuffle off.
“Sorry,” Cooper said in the direction of the phone as Gretchen switched it so they could both hear. “That was our host.”
“I couldn’t hear all of that,” Martin said, amused, “but from what I could pick up on, I’d almost think this guy has some idea that the two of you... got up to something.”
There was an awkward silence while Gretchen frantically tried to think of something to say.
It might have lasted a little too long.
“Ah,” Martin said. He cleared his throat. “Oh.”
“He’s my mate, Chief,” Gretchen said. She might have been embarrassed about being basically