But now, with the cold winter air cutting through his jacket and the guard propelling him forwards towards his destiny, he started wondering if he could.
His reputation might already be ruined beyond repair. No one was beating the drums to have him let out of prison, after all. No matter how well he behaved within bars, he could easily be there the rest of his life.
And escaping might save his griffin’s life—if that life was still there to save.
The Marshal transporting him would surely have to leave him comparatively unguarded at some point, especially since this would be an overnight trip. He could find a way out, and if one person happened to glimpse something seemingly impossible happening, that wasn’t the same thing as concrete security footage.
You could hurt someone’s career. Losing a prisoner—
But he didn’t know that he could bring himself to keep caring about that. He didn’t think it was out of line to say that his freedom might be worth it.
And it isn’t like they’d get fired, he thought. Anybody could guess that I’d have resources and knowledge your average criminal wouldn’t. I’ve seen the transport process from both sides. It might be embarrassing to whatever Marshal has me if I slip the net, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
There was something else, too.
Someone had tried to kill him. No one in the yard had had a problem with him themselves; he hadn’t made any of them angry. But the ferret had been armed and ready.
The deal was too good to pass up, the guy had said.
Someone had been pulling the strings there. If he hadn’t been woozy from painkillers ever since the infirmary, he would have realized it even sooner.
Whoever had killed Phil had tried to kill him, too. It wasn’t enough to have framed him; someone wanted him out of the way completely.
His choice wasn’t between prison with a chance of proving his innocence or freedom on the run.
His choice was between life with answers or death without. Justice for Phil, and for him, or a murderer walking free.
And that, to Cooper, was no choice at all.
As soon as he could get a chance, he would make a break for it.
*
“Anything I should know?” Gretchen said.
Stridmont Penitentiary’s outgoing prisoner transports were overseen by a man who looked like the last time he’d smiled had been twenty years ago, and it had been terrible, and he had no intention of doing it ever again.
“Is a little girl like you going to be able to handle this guy?” he said wearily.
If he’d wanted to specifically design a question to irritate her, he couldn’t have done any better than that.
“Your prison is the one where a bunch of inmates got out of control and nearly killed him,” she said. “Nothing like that has ever happened on my watch. Maybe you should worry a little less about me and a little more about what’s happening in your own house.”
“Things happen.”
“Sure, especially if you let them.” She repeated, “Is there anything I need to know about Dawes?”
The man heaved out a sigh that was so deep it seemed to come up all the way from the soles of his feet. “He’s got a pretty clean history here. He doesn’t make trouble, not that there’s usually much trouble you can make in protective custody.”
Outside of ganging up on a man and repeatedly stabbing him, apparently.
As long as Dawes was in her keeping, she was going to handle him better than that.
Not that she could really handle him worse.
“The prisoner who stabbed Dawes.” She searched her memory and found the name. “Clarence Reilly. Has he confessed yet?”
“What’s to confess? His fingerprints are on the shiv that has Dawes’s blood all over it.”