Page 57 of Sniper's Pride

“You’re going to put that on,” he told her calmly, and even though he didn’t do anything else, Mariah got the distinct impression he was enjoying himself. “Then we walk out of here and down to the water on the far side of this shit stain of a town. You’re not going to try a thing. You’re not going to signal anyone or make a scene or whatever else you think will save you.” And maybe he was smiling, then, behind the beard. “It won’t. If you do anything, all I’m going to do is send a text, and my buddies down in Georgia will start carving pieces off your mother.”

Mariah began to shake, and couldn’t seem to do anything about the way her eyes watered as all kinds of images cascaded through her head, each more upsetting and awful and nauseating than the last.

“How...” she managed to get out, though she sounded as if this man had already choked her half to death. “How do I know she’s okay?”

He was definitely smiling. “You don’t.”

As her head spun and her calves cramped with the effort of keeping her from crumpling where she stood, only the horror of making herself even more helpless kept her upright. That and Blue’s voice, telling them the same thing over and over in class.Don’t go to the ground.Fight to stay on your feet.

“Get dressed,” he told her, no noticeable change in his voice or in the steady, awful way he watched her. “And bring your ID.”

He made no move to offer her privacy while she foundher clothes, and Mariah didn’t argue. She was picturing all the parts a body could lose before a person bled to death, in far too much detail, and moved around the bed to pick up her jeans from the floor. The jeans that Griffin had removed last night—but she couldn’t let herself think about that. Or him. Or how this man had gotten to her when Griffin should have been downstairs.

Was Griffin—

But her mind shied away from even forming that question.

Her jeans were on the other side of her bed. She pulled them on while hiding herself behind the mattress, concealing not only her private bits but the miracle she discovered when she picked them up.

She’d left her cell phone shoved in one of the front pockets.

Mariah expected the man to notice. To see the outline of the phone as she yanked the jeans on, bending over so her T-shirt covered as much of her as possible. To text his friends before she could do a thing to stop him—

But he only watched her like he was bored. He didn’t lunge for her phone. He didn’t reach for his.

Mariah said a small prayer of thanks that she’d pulled on her loosest T-shirt this morning. She picked up her slender billfold of a wallet from her nightstand and made a show of sticking it in her other front pocket.

Then she pulled on a sweater that was more of a tunic, the hem brushing the middle of her thighs and further concealing the phone in her pocket. She shoved her feet into her hardy flats. Only then did she go about tucking her still-damp hair up under the awful, scratchy wig that made her shudder. Everywhere.

“Remember,” the man told her in that same toneless,disinterested way. “One text and your mother starts losing digits. And if I don’t check in at regular intervals, guess what happens?” He didn’t wait for her answer. “More pieces. Or, hell, they’ll just kill her and pick up another one. I hear you have a lot of family. It could take awhile to cut through all of them.”

It didn’t occur to her to fight him. Or test him.

Because this is who you are,a voice inside her whispered, sounding a lot like her ex. It felt like one more assault to add to her collection.Once a coward, always a coward.

Mariah blinked hard to keep more pointless tears back, because there was no point crying over something that was true. A brave woman wouldn’t have stayed with David as long as she had.

The man marched her out of her room and down the stairs, one hand on her arm in a way that made it obvious he was taking her against her will. And Mariah braced herself as they hit the lobby, because surely Alaska Force would do their thing and handle this—

But there was no one in the lobby. There was only the rearing, ferocious stuffed grizzly bear and Madeleine behind the front desk. Mariah expected Madeleine to notice what was happening, or that the man was a stranger—but the other woman didn’t even look up from her book.

It was okay, Mariah told herself as the man took her outside. It was still okay. What mattered was that Griffin’s body wasn’t on the floor of Blue Bear Inn. He wasn’t there, but he wasn’t dead—and that meant he could be anywhere. She was pretty sure that was the entire point of a sniper. He watched and waited and would handleeverything when the moment was right. She felt herself settle at the thought.

All she had to do was trust that he would take care of this.

She did.

Deep down, she truly did, because that was who he was.

And that belief allowed her to take a deep, steadying breath as the door to the inn slammed shut behind them.

The man’s hand on her arm hurt. He was gripping her too hard as he propelled her down the wooden street, away from the town docks, and Mariah was sure that she would bruise. He was actually going to bruise her. He truly didn’t care if he hurt her, just in case she’d doubted that earlier.

But she couldn’t think about that now.

She focused on walking in time with the man’s long strides because she worried that he would drag her along after him if she didn’t and, worse, would view that as hertrying something.Mariah couldn’t have that. She hurried along with him, waiting for one of the locals they passed to see that she was being marched off right under their noses, but no one looked at her twice.

It wasn’t only the wig, she acknowledged as they walked right past the big window at the Water’s Edge Café and... nothing happened. It was the wig plus the stranger accompanying her. She’d lived in Grizzly Harbor long enough now to know that no one looked too closely at the tourists wandering around unless they made particular spectacles of themselves.

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