“I’m going to be so glad to watch the cell doors close on you,” Gretchen said.
They had wanted him dead. He’d known that. They hadn’t wanted to risk him putting the pieces together—though he didn’t think he would have, not without Gretchen’s help.
He was more okay with them paying the ferret-faced guy with the shiv than he was with this. They had tried to drive him to a horrible kind of despair, tried to push him into a black and bottomless pit that he could never get out of again.
But they didn’t, his griffin said.
Like Gretchen had said, he’d stayed good, and he’d stayed whole. He had held on to the core of himself, and he hadn’t broken no matter how much pressure they’d put on him. He hadn’t lost his griffin, and he hadn’t lost his will to live.
He had held on, and in the end, he had found Gretchen, who had been like the sun burning through all the dark clouds around him.
He hadn’t lost then, and he wasn’t going to lose now.
He said, “You’re still trying to distract us, Phil. And I’m done listening.” He held out his hand, and Gretchen, understanding him at once, slapped her handcuffs into it.
Phil laughed. “You’re such a Boy Scout, Cooper. Always have to do things by the book.”
He went ahead and held out his hands for Cooper to fasten the cuffs on him. The smile on his face was playfully condescending, like an adult pretending to allow a child to win a game. Cooper knew exactly what he was thinking: what chance did handcuffs have against the strength of a dragon? The second Phil transformed, his powerful forelegs would snap ordinary steel like it was nothing but a bunch of toothpicks.
Let him smile all he wanted.
Phil was forgetting that there were other Marshals—particularly other shifter Marshals—who actually cared about doing their jobs. These were Gretchen’s handcuffs, the ones with shiftsilver threaded through them. As long as he had them around his wrists, Phil wasn’t transforming into anything.
It was good to have one opponent thoroughly and definitely restrained. Because even as he looked up from Phil’s cuffs in satisfaction, he could see a car racing up the winding mountain road. The driver was taking the sharp turns and dangerous curves much faster than Gretchen had been willing to, and Cooper had already come to understand that Gretchen was a pretty daring driver. These were people who knew they had a deadline.
He looked at Gretchen, whose gaze was also fixed on the speeding car. Her mouth quirked.
“It’s not black this time,” she said.
He nodded. “And it’s not changing colors, either.” He turned to Phil. “Monroe must be pretty preoccupied if he’s not keeping up the camouflage anymore.”
“Oh, you figured that out.” Phil almost sounded disappointed, but he brightened as he went on. “He’s not preoccupied. He just knows there’s no reason to care what the two of you have seen. You’re not getting off this mountain. You’re going to be victims, not witnesses. Even you.” He spat the last word at Gretchen. “We’re past caring about collateral damage.”
Cooper bristled at the threat to Gretchen. But he was thinking more clearly than Phil: no big rescue was going to happen here. He and Gretchen were going up against a basilisk and a jaguar shifter—dangerous creatures, definitely, but ones that were thoroughly stuck on the ground. Now that Gretchen could fly, she, at least, could get back in the air. A trip dangling from her talons might do Phil some good.
He didn’t know if he could make it down the mountain in his griffin form, not as sore and bloodied as he was, but Gretchen getting away was the important thing. And her new lynx-falcon shape meant she could get away at any time.
Phil was watching the car’s approach with that same hateful arrogance on his face. His eyes flashed a deep, unnatural crimson as he started to shift—
—only to smack into the mystical barrier of the shiftsilver handcuffs.
His reaction was priceless. Gretchen didn’t know that she’d ever seen anyone’s jaw literally drop like that.
“You,” Phil snarled, turning to her. “You’d use these on another shifter?”
It seemed so unreal for Phil Locke, of all people, to be questioning Gretchen’s honor that they both actually laughed. Gretchen was the one who’d flown in the face of all loyalty and duty? Sure, Phil.
It was nice to have a little levity as the car streaked up towards them.
Gretchen said incredulously, “On a shifter who’s a criminal? A shifter like you, who framed his partner for a murder that didn’t even happen? A shifter who sold out the people who were counting on him to protect them? Um, yes. A thousand times yes.”
“You’re not really a shifter at all,” he said, spitting the words at her.
“Oh, she definitely is,” Cooper said.
A smile spread across Gretchen’s face, as beautiful and natural as the sun coming up. She almost glowed with it.
If Cooper never made it down this mountain again, he was going to try to die thinking of that smile.
“I’m a shifter,” Gretchen said simply. “But I’m a Marshal first.”
“Then it’s time we did some Marshaling,” Cooper said, “because they’re almost here. Gretch, it looks like you’re back on prisoner transport after all. Ready for a ride, Phil?”
*
It was almost over. They’d bring Phil back to her home office and explain everything that had happened, and after they all waded through an ocean of red tape...
Cooper would be free. They’d have a life together.
Thinking about that was such a beautiful distraction that Gretchen almost missed the poisonous delight in Phil’s eyes. Almost, but not quite.
A chill shot down her spine. “What?”
Phil spoke only to Cooper, like he’d decided that she wasn’t worth talking to since she didn’t
