Page 37 of Sniper's Pride

“I want to sit down and talk to you,” David panted, because he’d worked himself up into such a state. The way he always did. “You can’t run from me forever. You owe me a conversation, at the very least.”

“Do I?” Mariah asked, and the funny thing was that he’d taught her how to sound bored and unmoved. But he’d never taught her what to do when she used the tools he’d given her while being watched so closely by a man whose eyes gleamed brown and gold and made her want things she didn’t know how to name. “You just spent a good chunk of time and what sounds like all your energy calling me every name in the book. Why would I want to sit down with you somewhere and hear more of it?”

“I understand that you think you have some power here,” David barked at her. “You seem to have forgotten how things work. You have two hours to get your butt back to the house. Two hours, Mariah.”

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll cut you off,” David snapped. “We’ll see how mouthy and independent you are when you’re not running around spending my money.”

And the line went dead. If she knew David—and she did—he’d likely hurled his phone across whatever room he was in.

Mariah clicked her screen off, then tucked her phone into her pocket again, aware of the great Alaskan silence all around her. The immensity of it.

And when she looked back, Griffin only stared down at her, his lips set in a firm line.

“You don’t seem particularly worried.”

“He always threatens to cut me off,” Mariah said coolly. “It’s one of his favorite party tricks, as a matter of fact. One time he didn’t like the color of my shoes. Another time I didn’t hear him calling my name from across the house. And, of course, he didn’t always need a reason.”

“Is this your version of being upset?”

Mariah waved a hand. “The women David knows would faint if their weekly allowance was taken away from them. But I know how to make a dollar last, believe me. I’ve had to choose between a tank of gas to get to work and food to eat, more than once. And after the first time David cut me off, then made me jump through hoops to get back the allowance I hadn’t spent in the first place, I decided to treat it the way my great-grandmother did when she ushered her entire extended family through the Great Depression. I set it aside.”

“You set it aside,” Griffin repeated, as if he didn’t understand when she was certain he did. Because very little escaped this man’s understanding.

“One of my chores was to create an itemized list of everything I spent my weekly allowance on so David could tell me how useless and wrong I was, which, as you’ve now heard in grand and glorious detail, is one of his favorite topics. After church on Sundays he liked to sit me down and spend a few hours discussing the error of my ways.”

She could tell from the way Griffin’s face froze that he didn’t much like the sound of that. And it was clear to her why she’d never told anyone else the real, hard truth about her marriage.

“I made lists of spa treatments,” she told him,carrying on in the same, almost offhanded tone, because that made it almost easy. Almost funny, surely. “Hair appointments. Lots and lots of shopping. Sometimes I even did those things, but mostly, I took the amount from the account he set up for me and hid it away in mine. The one he doesn’t know about.” She smiled. “In case you were worried about how I plan to pay for your services.”

“I wasn’t.” He studied her face. “You looked spooked when you first saw his name. Then you got less and less scared as the call went on. Why?”

“I don’t know,” she said, startled. How had he known what she looked like when she’d taken the call? Then she remembered what Everly had told her earlier, and laughed to cover the odd thrill of heat that worked through her at the idea that Griffin had been out there watching her. “I mean, I think David is under the impression I’m in Atlanta.”

Griffin nodded slowly. “That’s what it sounded like to me.”

“So I really must have been imagining that there was someone at my door last night.” Mariah shook her head, still seeing that doorknob turn in her head. Still feeling the ache in her thigh from the pinch she’d delivered to wake herself up. “That will teach me to drink so much tequila. By which I mean any.”

“How good of an actor is your husband?” Griffin asked.

“An actor? He’s not an actor. Of course he can put on a good show when he goes out in public. But I wouldn’t call thatacting, really...” Her voice trailed off. “Why?”

“Because the lock on your door was tampered with,” Griffin told her matter of factly. Something pitiless in his dark gaze. “The deadbolt kept them out, but the lock isscratched. A lot like someone spent some time attempting to jimmy it.”

“Oh. Well.” Mariah had no idea what to say next.

And the look on Griffin’s face was stern and maybe a bit ruthless, which should have made it worse. But instead, it made her feel safer than she had a moment before.

“So here’s the question I have to ask you,” Griffin said, as the wind picked up and a cloud rolled over the sun. Mariah told herself that was why she shivered. The sudden gloom, not the implacable intelligence in Griffin’s gaze. And certainly not the shuddery way her body reacted to him. “If your ex doesn’t know where you are, and he’s not putting on an act, we have to ask ourselves: Who else hates you enough to want you dead?”

Ten

A week passed.

Griffin joined Templeton and Jonas as they scoured Juneau for their missing doomsday preacher—surreptitiously, of course, to stay off any kind of local radar despite Isaac’s well-known talent for charming any and all officials—but found nothing but rumors. Blue took a team to follow the lead on the stolen boat, searching the waterways between Juneau and Grizzly Harbor but turning up no sign of the boat in question. Or the arsenal that supposedly went along with it.

Another week raced by. Griffin flew out to handle a diplomatic extraction in the face of a burgeoning civil war and was back, problem solved with minimal impact, in a smooth seventy-two hours.

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