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 caught out having sex, but she wasn’t embarrassed about this. She could hear the ringing confidence in her voice, and she hoped Coop could hear it too. “It’s a long story, but he’s my mate, I might have a secret shifter form, and I know what I’m doing. I promise.”
To his credit, Martin took this string of revelations as well as anyone could have. “If I know anything about you at all, Gretchen, it’s that you know what you’re doing. And if I know anything else about you, it’s that there’s no way the perfect match for you would be anything other than a good guy. Cooper, I believed you before, but I believe you even more now.”
Lately, Gretchen had been hit by a lot of epiphanies. She might be a shifter after all. She had a mate. Keith was mildly likable.
But one of the biggest realizations was that the people in her life really did—or should—trust her judgment, so she was certainly right to trust it herself. She’d let one mistake in her childhood overshadow all her other choices. She’d trusted her family’s love for her so much that she’d overlooked the fact that the way they’d protected her had left her with scars that she was only just now starting to deal with.
It wasn’t their fault, but she had to let go of some of the ideas they’d given her. Maybe she could risk her life. Not because it was less valuable if she wasn’t a shifter... but because she was smart enough to know if she’d really found something or someone worth risking it for.
“Thanks, Chief,” she said quietly.
“Thank you, sir,” Cooper echoed.