Page 19 of Sniper's Pride

They walked along the village’s winding main street, past the Fairweather, which was doing its usual brisk Friday night trade—or what passed for such a thing in Grizzly Harbor when summer was still a long way off. Griffin could hear loud music from the jukebox and voices to match, but he and Isaac kept on, up the hill past the Water’s Edge Café, the peeling yellow post office, and the community center, until they reached Blue Bear Inn.

“She’s not here,” Madeleine said from behind the desk, not bothering to look up after the first glance she’d thrown their way.

Madeleine Yazzie was a Grizzly Harbor native. She liked to wear her hair in that beehive, the better tocontrast with her cat-eye glasses, so that people would mistake her for a very old woman. Griffin figured her to be in her early forties. She married, divorced, remarried, and redivorced her husband, Jaco, in tune with the seasons, so no one could say with any certainty if they were on or off at any given time. She had never been known to suffer a fool, she told better fishing tales than old Ernie Tatlelik, and she’d been a fixture behind the desk at the inn for at least as long as Griffin had lived here.

What she wasn’t, usually, was an unreliable narrator. But what she’d said didn’t make any sense.

Griffin stared at her. “What do you mean she’s not here?”

“I’m surprised you didn’t hear the racket on your way over. Last I heard, she and Caradine were going shot for shot down at the Fairweather and causing a ruckus.”

“Are we talking about the same person?” Griffin asked, tempted to laugh at the absurdity. “Blond, snooty? The least likely person alive to walk into a dive bar like the Fairweather, much less drink anything there?”

“All I know is that Caradine closed early and headed over to get her drink on with an outsider. Pretty sure she’s yours. But it wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong, and I imagine it won’t be the last, either.”

“I didn’t think you were ever wrong, Madeleine,” Isaac said, flashing the smile that made unsuspecting people think he was safe. Charming, even.

“Neither did I,” Madeleine replied, grinning over the top of one of the fat paperbacks she got in crates from her sister in Anchorage. “But who knows? This could be the night it happens.”

As they pushed back outside and retraced their steps through town, it took every bit of self-control Griffin hadnot to ask Isaac his opinion on Caradine Scott, the most prickly café owner in Alaska. And therefore in the rest of the world, too. Because everybody knew that Isaac and Caradine didn’t get along. Theydidn’t get alongto such an extent that there were bets among the Alaska Force brothers as to when and how the tension between them would finally snap.

Every woman in the known universe got silly at the sight of Isaac’s patented smile.

Except Caradine. Caradine got mad.

Blue had all of his money riding on there being a solution involving a locked room and a bed. But Griffin figured it would be bloodshed. And as dangerous as Isaac was, Griffin’s money was on Caradine winning the inevitable fight.

Like everyone else, however, he didn’t push Isaac on the subject.

Not only because it was an unhealthy choice, but because he was certain he didn’t want Isaac pushing back.

Either way, the moment they stepped inside the Fairweather, Isaac’s gaze went directly to the dark-haired woman leaning back against the bar like she owned it. Caradine was egging on one of the burly locals at the pool table, looking slightly more relaxed than usual—yet no less fierce.

Griffin studied the much softer blonde by her side instead.

It was like Mariah had turned into a different person over the past few hours, and he didn’t like it. The princess who’d glided off the ferry like she’d been walking into her own coronation was gone. In her place was a pretty woman packed into well-fitting jeans and a snug, expensive-looking T-shirt. She was also leaning backagainst the bar, propping herself against it on her elbows so that she looked out at the assorted Friday night shenanigans as if she’d never seen such a show before. The position drew Griffin’s attention to the way that T-shirt clung to her sculpted, lean curves.

And if he was drawn to that view, he assumed every other man in the bar was, too.

But far worse than that was her laughter.

She wasn’t laughing like she was made of ice. On the contrary. Her laugh was loud, warm, and rich, and it affected him the way her drawl did. Poured honey, sweet and golden. It washed over him, and Griffin was seized with a totally unreasonable urge to bundle her up and carry her out, so no one else could hear. It struck him as entirely too intimate for a dive bar in the middle of nowhere filled with rough, hard men who were always, always looking for a warm body on a cold night.

Settle down.

Griffin checked out the room automatically, letting his gaze move from the pool tables to the jukebox. All the dark, intimate booths along the walls and the more accessible seats in the center where Nellie, who prided herself on being a battle-ax, waited tables with her usual brisk impatience. There was no threat. There were only locals blowing off steam on a balmy spring night between storms.

His attention tracked back to Mariah and stayed there.

Isaac was already moving, forcing Griffin to do the same when he would have stayed right where he was in the doorway. He told himself he wanted to take a minute to fully control his temper, but the truth was that he wanted to keep looking at this version of Mariah, with her head tipped back and a wide-open expression—not a care in the world.

“So you’re running for your life,” Griffin said in a dark undertone as he and Isaac headed toward the bar and the two merry women who hadn’t appeared to see them walk in. “You think your husband is trying to kill you and you think he’s probably chasing you, too, so you lay down a little misdirection on your way out of town. It takes you the better part of a week, then you jump on a plane and end up in Grizzly Harbor. You meet someone who isn’t all that sympathetic, you pour out your story, and then what do you do? Do you lock yourself in your hotel room, waiting to see if anyone’s chasing you? Or even if the men you came to hire will take your case? Or do you go out drinking with a random stranger you met in a café?”

“You have a very specific idea of how this woman ought to behave,” Isaac said, mildly enough, and the look he shot Griffin was too amused for Griffin’s peace of mind. “Maybe she’s happy that there’s a continent between her and her ex. He sounds like the kind of guy any woman would want to keep away from if she could. Maybe she thinks she earned a party because she didn’t die as planned. Twice.”

Griffin bit his tongue. With prejudice.

“Oh goody,” said Caradine in her usual dry way as he and Isaac approached. “Someone invited Gentry Company to ruin the party.”

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