Cooper’s first reaction had been a flash of delight and disbelief—all this time, it had torn him up inside to think about Phil being gone and his murder being unavenged. Phil was alive? That was great.
But it only took another second for everything else to sink in. Gretchen was right. There was no way for Phil to be alive and uninvolved in everything that had happened. If he was living in the mountains above Ambergris, then he had cooperated with every step in Cooper’s doom. He had helped the team fake his death, probably offering Monroe tips on how to create the best illusion of his corpse, with all the right birthmarks in all the right places. He had used his access to their files to sell away the info about their witnesses’ new lives.
And while Cooper had sat behind bars, his griffin locked away inside him, his reputation ruined, his life destroyed—Phil had retired to the mountains.
And if he’d left them a few days ago, it had almost certainly been to wipe Cooper off the board once and for all.
“You’re quiet,” Gretchen said.
They were driving up into the mountains now, following a winding, steep road that was only barely wide enough to accommodate their car. They’d left Isabelle down in Ambergris, because—as she’d loftily said—she could fly herself home easily enough.
She had given him and Gretchen quick, fierce hugs, wishing them luck before adding, almost shyly, “And I go by Iz now... with my friends.”
Kid though she was, she was a friend worth having. It was funny to think that he owed her a lot for helping them and yet he might not ever see her again.
He might not ever even come down this mountain again.
“Of course,” Gretchen said, uncannily following his thinking, “you’ve got a lot to be quiet about.”
“I just can’t believe I missed who he really was. Who they all really were.” He was glad she was driving, because it let him briefly bury his head in his hands. He scrubbed his fingers up through his hair.
Bizarrely, that gesture was what reminded him that he had a lot to be thankful for. A few days ago, his hair would have been stiff and spiky from using nothing more than the lousy prison soap for shampoo. Now he finally felt clean again, and his hair was soft to the touch.
But that didn’t change the gut-level feeling of betrayal. Just because he’d gotten lucky now didn’t mean he hadn’t gotten spectacularly unlucky before—and he hadn’t even noticed at the time.
“They must have been laughing at me behind my back the whole time. I feel like such an idiot.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you for wanting to believe the best about people. No one walks into their office and wonders if everyone there is in on some criminal conspiracy, Coop. That wasn’t a problem you should have ever had to worry about.”
“I should have seen the signs.”
“You did see the signs. You knew you didn’t fit in. You knew Phil could be a dick and the other two could be strange. You saw everything that was there for you to see—these are sharp guys, and they know how criminals get caught. They were careful, and you still picked up on something being wrong.”
He opened his mouth to tear into himself again, but then his griffin pushed forward into his consciousness and said, She’s right.
Was she?
She was Gretchen, his mate, so that was definitely a point in favor of him trusting her argument.
Besides, he’d spent so long waiting to get his griffin back that he hated to think of ignoring it now.
When she first picked you up, you knew how good she was. And you thought that if you escaped, it wouldn’t be fair for anyone to blame her for it or think she was careless. You were a Marshal too, and you knew all the tricks, so you had one-up on all the other prisoners she had to escort. If it wouldn’t have been fair to blame Gretchen for letting you escape, even though she was on her guard, how is it fair to blame yourself for missing the truth about your team when you didn’t even have any reason to suspect them?
It was like his guilt had been a hand on his throat, choking him, and with this thought, it had finally eased off.
For the first time in months, he not only knew he was innocent, he felt like he was innocent. He hadn’t done anything to bring this