Page 30 of Sniper's Pride

Jonas sat next to Blue, giving Mariah his usual dark, grave stare. He didn’t say much. He stroked his beard—his favorite fake-out because he was not a man who succumbed to nervous energy unless he was trying to draw attention to his own movements, so that someone failed to notice how little he moved otherwise—and kept his gaze trained on Mariah.

He was looking for tells. Calculating lies and diversions. Running potential scenarios in his head, looking for weaknesses, tallying up probabilities.

“Why does he want to go into politics?” he asked at one point. It was the only question he’d asked in the last forty-five minutes.

“No reasonable man would,” Blue replied with a laugh.

“Power,” Mariah replied quietly.

Griffin had been proud of the way she’d held up under the intensity of this first, exploratory session with men who had been trained in interrogation techniques suitable for use in some of the nastiest places imaginable. And then he’d been pissed at himself for having pride in this woman when she had nothing to do with him.

Just. A. Client,he reminded himself.You idiot.

Still, she sat like a queen in the chair beside him, her blond hair wavier than it had been the day before and all of it loose and inviting around her face. It made her look younger. More approachable. He didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing—he only knew that he had more trouble than he should have had looking away.

Especially when she didn’t wilt beneath the full force of all their considerable attention.

“I’m not surprised you don’t understand,” she continued, a thread of steel beneath all that honey. “Y’all are obviously powerful in other ways. David can’t perform daring physical feats. He would never put his body on the line for his country or anyone else. The power he has comes from his pedigree. His bank account. For someone like that, a political career makes all kinds of sense. It’s a path to celebrity for people who recoil at the very idea of actual Hollywood celebrities.”

“Is he running for a particular office now?” Griffin asked.

“He plans to start in city government and work hisway up. He has a very high opinion of himself. White House high, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Do you think he can win?”

Mariah considered that for a moment, and Griffin was suddenly aware of how she held herself motionless, like everyone else at the table.She learned how to conceal herself from the enemy, too,a voice in him insisted, and something in him lurched at the notion. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap, and her legs were crossed at the ankles beneath her chair. And she sat very, very still, as if the slightest hint of a gesture would give her away.

Which told him things about her life as a rich man’s trophy wife that he really didn’t want to know.

“What I think,” she said slowly, weighing each word carefully, “is that he chose me deliberately. Because it makes a good story, doesn’t it? A man like him, respectable bloodlines and old money, taking up with a dirt-poor nobody from way out yonder in the back of beyond? A waitress with no prospects he basically found by the side of the road? I think it was all part of the plan.”

“He married you ten years ago,” Blue pointed out. “Why did he wait so long to start his political career if that’s what he wanted all along?”

“I didn’t cooperate as expected.” Mariah smiled again as they all stared at her, and this time Griffin could see how controlled it was. “I believe the plan was to produce a few towheaded, photogenic babies first. Some adorable tykes for the Christmas card, who he could trot out behind him on stage while he made his acceptance speeches.”

“You said it was your job to keep him happy,” Blue said. And Griffin couldn’t possibly have explained why he wanted to punch his friend at that moment. Only thatit was a challenge to repress that urge. “If that’s what it took to make him happy, why are you here without the Christmas-card kids in tow?”

Mariah’s smile widened, but Griffin felt her get more distant.

“David would tell you that I tricked him. A good old-fashioned bait and switch, he called it once.” She laughed, but it was a hollow sound that bore no resemblance to those deep, problematic belly laughs from the night before. “He expected that one of the benefits of marrying a white trash girl who was more or less straight from the trailer park is that I would shoot out babies like a gumball machine. Instead, I never got pregnant. I never even had a late period, if you’re wondering.”

His brothers maintained stone faces, but Griffin was pretty sure neither one of them had wondered anything of the kind. He certainly hadn’t.

And he suspected Mariah knew that, since her tone got lighter as she kept going.

“He never liked me much, now that I look back on it. I was a project. I was good optics. He and that nasty best friend of his—who I’m sure has aspirations of becoming his campaign manager and chief of staff down the line—plotted it all out. Everybody loves a Cinderella story, after all. And I’m sure he’ll even use our infertility to keep climbing on up that ladder. It’s amazing how many voters find him sympathetic, especially when he pretends he’s in pain.” Her nose wrinkled slightly, as if she were holding back more of that laughter. Or something else. “I’ve always heard tell that the camera adds ten pounds, but in David’s case, it adds a soul.”

There were a few more probing background questions, all to give them as much insight as possible intoMariah’s take on her current dilemma. Then, as things were winding down, Jonas took a call from Templeton.

“Things are ramping up with the preacher,” he said curtly when he hung up, his gaze shifting between Blue and Griffin. “I’m on it.”

He nodded at Mariah, then took his leave, disappearing out the back door of the café. Blue and Griffin checked their phones and clearly both sent Templeton the same text, offering immediate assistance if necessary, because the same response came back to both of them.

Not there yet.

“Spiritual concerns?” Mariah asked lightly.

“Something like that,” Griffin replied.

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