Page 54 of Sniper's Pride

“You know I’ve been thinking we need to reconsider our approach,” Isaac said after a moment. “Why don’t you take the rest of this ridiculously early morning to get your head on straight.”

Griffin started to protest, but stopped when Isaac’s gaze hit his.

“Clean your gun a few times,” Isaac suggested. Except it was less a suggestion and more an order. “Run up that mountain and sweat out some of this crap you’re not feeling. Then come to the briefing with a few suggestions and we’ll figure out the next step.”

Griffin wanted to fight. He wanted to throw down and get in Isaac’s face. And the very fact that he wanted such things was a warning sign. Hell, it was a whole five-alarm fire and then some. Griffin wasn’t a fighter—because he didn’t have to be. His fight was always and ever with himself. He was the one who had to stay in position, still and ready, until the right time. He fought a thousand wars against his own impatience, his own demons, and his own distressingly human body long before he took a shot.

He didn’t need Mariah making his blood too hot. He didn’t need her kicking through him, making him over into some kind of hothead, and making him question... everything.

But thank God he had the presence of mind to nod, turn, and take himself off into the dark before he did something seriously stupid, like try to take Isaac down.

Instead, he took Isaac’s advice. He ran.

He ran as he was, in combat boots with his rifle slung over his back, hauling ass up the side of that steep,unforgiving mountain. He ran past his own cabin and kept right on going, farther into the dense bush like he was trying to make it over Hard-Ass Pass—and only stopped when he hit the snow line.

The downhill was worse, punishing and dangerous at any speed, but he only made himself go faster.

What little sun there was finally got around to appearing by the time he got back down to his cabin, with only a few grazes and bruises for his trouble. He showered, keeping the water icy cold to test the resolve he seemed to have left behind in Mariah’s bed.

But no matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to get images of Mariah out of his head. Much less the sensations. It was like she’d burrowed under his skin, making herself a part of him whether he liked it or not. Like he’d been starved for touch and was hoarding it now, no matter how he tried to sweat or freeze it out.

He made himself his usual breakfast—the optimal combination of protein, carbs, and good fats—ate it too quickly to enjoy the taste, and then calmed himself down even further by assembling and disassembling his favorite three rifles in rapid succession.

Again and again, eyes closed, then open, then closed again, the way he’d learned to do when he’d been a too-intense teenager who’d wanted more than a life in the Tucson suburbs—not least because he knew he didn’t have it in him to follow in his father’s footsteps all the way through medical school.

This was who he was. The deceptively delicate barrel, the perfect scope. A rifle so high-tech it always returned to zero no matter what.

A beautiful, lethal machine, good for only one thing.

Griffin was significantly more calm when he went tothe morning torture session down on the beach. The day’s workout had a name, which assured it would be brutal. It was.

You’re talking to the only person around who wears more masks than you do. Do you really think I don’t know what that costs?Mariah had asked.

And maybe that was the problem, Griffin thought grimly as he fought his way through the grueling movements toward the blessed end of the workout. Today the only thing he could seem to feel at all was the weight of his own mask smothering him, even when he was done killing himself in Isaac’s box of pain.

But he shoved all that aside, too, and concentrated on his second shower of the day. This one colder than before. And when everyone was assembled in the lodge for the briefing, he took pride in delivering his assessment of Mariah’s situation without a single trace of emotion in his voice.

Like he was still glacial straight through. The way he should have been.

“We’ve got no hits on her phone or on the trail she laid out toward Greece,” he pointed out while everyone else looked at their tablets and files. “The only interest we’ve seen on her apartment in Atlanta has been the ex-husband performing drive-bys at night, consistent with relationship drama, not attempted murder.”

He congratulated himself on extricating himself and Alaska Force from this mess. The mess he hadn’t wanted to take on in the first place.

“Assuming we’re cutting her loose, the question I have is what happens when she gets back to Atlanta,” Blue said.

“We can sweep the apartment. Make sure it’s cleanand also increase security,” Griffin said. Sounding far more unassailable and sure than he felt. “There were already two attempts made on her life. A third shellfish contamination in this short period of time is going to bring in more interest from authorities, and I’m guessing that’s not what the husband wants.”

“That doesn’t prevent other attempts,” Jonas pointed out in his usual gruff, irritated way. “More overt attempts.”

“Talk to the client,” Isaac suggested, and Griffin notedheseemed to have no trouble sounding exactly as he should. “She’s the one who has to agree to walk back into the situation she left behind, and she might not want to do that. Find out if she’s willing to put herself up as bait before we start planning around it.”

Griffin nodded an affirmative, and deeply disliked the part of him that clenched tight at the very idea of Mariah being bait for any kind of trap.

Or Mariah at risk. Or Mariah scared in any way.

But he refused to feel this. He refused tofeel.

And it was going on two in the afternoon when he caught another boat into town to pull Rory and tell her exactly that. What happened last night was a mistake. Every minute that passed made that more clear to him, especially when he was alarming himself with his incapacity to stop. Freaking. Thinking. About. It.

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