Page 50 of Sniper's Pride

There was some kind of cut in the video, and then they were right outside the farmhouse, moving around the side to peek in the kitchen windows.

The kitchen was also the same as she remembered it, with clutter on the counters and pots and pans piled high in the sink. Mariah knew every nook and cranny. She’d cooked there, eaten there, yelled at her siblings and ordered her cousins around on that same old cracked linoleum. She and Rose Ellen had fought there, cried there, and sorted themselves out again as best they could at the ancient kitchen table.

It wasn’t until water splashed down on her hands, clenched in place over her keyboard again, that she realized she was crying.

The video cut again. It was darker now, and the filming was more confused. It took Mariah a moment to realize that they were back in the front yard, out in the kind of Georgia twilight that she knew would be loud with the usual backwoods symphony. There were lightson in the house, and then, worst of all, a figure at the screen door.

Then the screen opened and Mariah’s mother walked out.

Mariah sat frozen, tears making her cheeks slick, not sure if she was capable of breathing.

She watched Rose Ellen walk toward the camera, a quizzical look on her face, even a hint of her rare company smile that she usually only pulled out in town—never in her own yard.

Mariah hadn’t seen her mother in nearly five years, and she hadn’t talked to her for months now. And she accepted that she had no one to blame for that but herself.

She had no one to blame for any of this but herself.

She stared at the screen. She watched her mother come closer. The almost-smile turned more confused, then tipped over into a frown.

“Mama...” Mariah whispered.

On screen, her mother recoiled.

Then everything went blank.

And for a moment, Mariah felt just as blank.

But when her heart kicked at her again, she leaped into action.

She shot off the bed, clutching her laptop to her chest, and hurtled toward her door. She flung it open, and almost slammed into the chest of the man standing there.

“Griffin—” she began.

But it wasn’t Griffin.

It was a stranger. A man with a black beard, a dark green flannel shirt, and merciless eyes.

Mariah had a flash, suddenly, of walking off the ferry and getting jostled.

By a man who looked exactly like this.

“Can I help you?” she managed to get out, but the man didn’t answer her.

His hand shot out, catching her just below her jugular and shoving her.

Hard.

Mariah staggered back, somehow keeping her feet beneath her and her laptop from flying out of her grip.

And then watched in horror as the man stepped inside her room and closed the door behind him.

Thirteen

Griffin’s phone chimed once with the alert he knew meant trouble, now, and he was already moving before the sound of it faded away in Mariah’s quiet hotel room.

He was swift, dressed in seconds and heading for the door, and if there was a part of him that was relieved that there was some action—if he wasgratefulthat he was being called in the middle of the night so he couldn’t betray himself further with a woman he’d never meant to touch—well.

That was between him and those parts of him that should have stayed in their own damn compartments.

---