Page 32 of Sniper's Pride

That was all.

And Griffin felt as if he’d been running again, straight up and all out, when he stood up. He stared down at Mariah like that could make sense of her, or of him—but it didn’t. He couldn’t.

No matter how much his chest ached.

And then, worse, when he walked away, his limbs felt jerky and stiff, like they weren’t his.

Not like a machine at all.

“All good?” Blue asked, his expression mild and his voice scrubbed free of any inflection—as long as Griffin ignored that speculative gleam in his eyes.

“All good,” Griffin replied, trying to sound like his usual, coolly unbothered self. Mostly for the benefit of Caradine and Everly. He eyed Blue when he failed. “Though there are a couple of things I want to check out.”

Blue nodded, his gaze sharpening.

“You look very serious,” Caradine murmured in the voice she liked to use when she was being her most provocative. She was standing with her arms crossed, her usual friendly way of welcoming in any customers. “I guess last night didn’t go the way it looked like it was going when you left the bar.”

“I don’t know what that means.” Griffin went glacial. “I escorted our client back to her hotel after you encouraged her to get drunk. In a strange place where anyone could be her enemy and, for all you know, planned to target her after you made sure she was even more vulnerable.”

And possibly did.

“I’m going to take that as a no,” Caradine replied in the exact same tone she’d used before, as if Griffin hadn’t said a word.

The restaurant’s phone rang and she answered it in her usual surly manner, leaving Griffin with nothing to do but pretend that the kick of temper rolling through him as he imagined what could have happened—if hewasn’t around, if Mariah hadn’t been dreaming—was a purely professional thing.

Because it couldn’t be anything else.

“Ididn’t get her drunk,” Everly said, and Griffin realized he’d slid his glare to her.

Blue laughed, then slapped Griffin on the back. The way all his Alaska Force brothers did, never seeming to get the hint that Griffin didn’t do it in return because he didn’t like it.

Or, now that he considered it, maybe they all did get the hint and did it anywaybecausehe didn’t like it. That was more their style. Jackasses.

“Let me know if you plan to let Caradine get you wasted at the Fairweather,” Blue told Everly.

“Why? So you can try telling me what to do?”

But she grinned, wide and happy, as she said it.

“So I can come watch,” Blue drawled. He leaned in and dropped an easy kiss on Everly’s mouth, the kind of light and simple peck that spoke volumes about their intimacy without having to shout it. “And then make sure I’m the one who takes your drunk ass home.”

Everly laughed against his mouth, but Griffin looked away, his gaze settling on Mariah, there across the restaurant where he’d left her.

She still hadn’t moved. She hadn’t relaxed her ruthlessly straight posture. She hadn’t unlaced her fingers or even changed the angle of her head.

And something about how solitary she was, how alone and yet committed to sitting there so gracefully, made his chest ache more. So much he found himself rubbing at the place where it hurt like it was a tight muscle after a tough workout.

He was nothing short of grateful when Blue clappedhim on the shoulder, waved his phone to indicate there were messages waiting, and then headed toward the door. Griffin could follow and concentrate on things like whatever was happening with that lunatic in Juneau, not the phantom pain in his chest.

“Templeton says Oz received reliable intel this idiot stole a boat and has it outfitted with his personal arsenal,” Blue said as they hit the street outside and the crisp, head-clearing air. “And if he did, you know he’s heading our way.”

“Bring it on,” Griffin replied, and meant it.

He could use the focus of real work. And when the preacher was handled, again, he could try to figure out if someone really had been at Mariah’s door in the middle of the night. It was what she’d hired Alaska Force for, and had nothing to do with how blue her eyes were or that crooked smile she pulled out sometimes when she wasn’t pretending.

God help him, but he needed to concentrate on saving her from whoever was after her, so she would go away again. All the way back across the Lower 48, where she could wield that honeyed drawl however she liked and he wouldn’t feel it inside him.

Because after his first tour had torn him up and wrecked him from the inside out, Griffin had spent the rest of his adult life making sure he couldn’tfeelmuch of anything. He had systematically cut himself off from anyone and anything that threatened his ability to do his job. That was how he liked it.

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