Page 14 of Sniper's Pride

Griffin’s hard expression didn’t change at all. “Do you have something to feel guilty about? Any lies, omissions? Anything you made up?”

“I don’t know a single grown person who doesn’t feel guilty about something,” Mariah replied, keeping her own voice light and her gaze trained on his. She pretended she couldn’t feel any heat. Or that hollow yearning that reminded her of the way she’d always wanted to please David. “What about you?”

“Guilt is a luxury.” Flat. Certain. “I prefer action.”

That felt a lot like a kick in the stomach.

“Exactly what kind of action are we talking about?” Mariah asked after a moment, when her stomach stopped feeling quite so fragile. “Because I don’t want...” She couldn’t finish that sentence. “I want to divorce David, that’s all. I want to live long enough to be single.”

“Alaska Force is not a contract-killer service. Jesus Christ.”

“What are you, then?”

“We specialize in containment. And solutions.”

“Is that a fancy way of saying—”

“It’s not a fancy way of saying anything. That’s what we do. You’ve had two separate instances of anaphylaxis in the last month, correct?”

That was a dizzying subject change. Or maybe he made her dizzy. “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you contact the police if you thought your ex-husband was involved?”

“David’s family regularly has the police commissioner over for Sunday dinner. I didn’t think that reporting him would do anything except make me more of a target. Because the only thing my in-laws like less than a white trash daughter-in-law who can’t even get herself knocked up is any kind of public embarrassment.”

“But you didn’t test that theory.”

“It’s not a theory. That’s the guiding principle of the family. No public humiliations or scandals upon pain of excommunication.”

“So again, you didn’t report your suspicions to anyone. Not the Atlanta police. Or any of your doctors.”

“I thought the first time could have been an accident. To be honest, I wanted it to be an accident.” She felt too intense, too visible, and looked away. “Because if it was an accident, I wouldn’t have to make myself face the fact that I spent ten years of my life sleeping in the same bed as someone who could turn around and want me dead. And worse, try to make that happen. I’m still holding out hope that I’m paranoid and crazy and you’ll tell me it was an accident after all.”

She remembered glimpsing movement in the shadows here, where no one knew she’d gone, and wondered if that was what Griffin was here to tell her. That she was plain off her rocker like her aunt Annie May—because in her corner of the poor, rural South, mental illness was often considered part of a family’s colorful story.

“What made you decide to seek out Alaska Force?” he asked instead.

Mariah decided not to share any details about conspiracy theorists and her addiction to online how-to videos, because that would give him ammunition she was pretty sure he didn’t need. Not when he was already looking at her like she was wasting his time.

“If I stayed in Atlanta, he was going to kill me,” she said. Simply. “And I wanted to live.”

It was nothing she hadn’t thought before, or typed out to an anonymous email address. But it was different to say it out loud. To say it to another person. Not to hedge or try to pretty it up or contradict herself as she said it. Not to tell herself she was being paranoid in the next breath.

And the fact that Griffin didn’t so much as flinch, that all he did was gaze back at her steadily, made it possible for her to continue. More than possible—easy.

“He must have had someone break into my apartment. I can’t think of how else he could have poisoned me. And if he could do it once, he could do it again. So when I remembered that I’d heard about Alaska Force, I looked you all up. And here I am.”

“Here you are.”

Griffin sat back then, but he was only making way for the food.

Mariah automatically smiled her thanks, but shecould barely look at the plate Caradine thrust before her. She was too busy trying to parse Griffin’s tone when he’d saidhere you are—and then beating herself up for trying to play that game with him the way she always had with David. Forever on edge. Always trying to predict his moods and what he might finddisappointingnext.

It was only when the tantalizing scent of the meal before her got to her that she blinked enough to pay attention. It was a sandwich, but not any old run-of-the-mill sandwich. A BLT, by the looks of it, piled between thick slices of obviously home-baked bread and smelling so good Mariah thought she might cry.

Or maybe she was already on the verge of crying anyway. About anything.

And for a while, she didn’t care that the most dangerous man she’d ever met was watching her. She just ate, because her BLT was better than it looked, and it looked like heaven.

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