Page 58 of Sniper's Pride

She had Alaska Force, she reminded herself. She had Griffin.

She expected to hear a shot at any moment. Or something less dramatic, like Griffin appearing from behind a tree and the other men falling in behind him, prepared to take this man out. She was ready for it with every step, every breath.

But instead, her abductor marched her onto a private dock on the other end of town, then into a battered old seaplane headed toward Anchorage, piloted by the old man Mariah saw every day at Caradine’s. She waited for him to recognize her, to help her—but his gaze grazed right over her as if he’d never laid eyes on her before in his life.

It was a loud, uncomfortable, very long flight, with refueling stops along the way. There was nothing to do but hold on and hope the moody weather didn’t swat them down into a bad landing out there in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

And wonder how Griffin and his friends had allowed this to happen.

The only positive about the experience was when the grizzled old pilot gave her thick, faintly musty blankets to huddle beneath, allowing her to surreptitiously sneak her hand into her pocket and access her phone. She wondered if she could manage a text—but she didn’t like the way the man was watching her. She was afraid that too much movement beneath the blanket or peering beneath it would lead him to do the same. When she could manage it without moving much, she switched her phone off. Before it rang and the man made her—and her mother—pay.

Once they got to Anchorage, he took her to the airport and bought flights to Atlanta with cash. They flew from Anchorage into Seattle, where Mariah was sure she’dhave a chance to make her move. Make a call, at the very least, with the phone she’d managed to get through security and back into her pocket without him seeing it when she’daccidentallygotten into a different line from him. Get away from him in a crowd, maybe. But she quickly thought better of it when they got off the plane, because who knew what his friends would do to her mother while she was running around, trying to convince someone in authority to listen to her?

And despite her crisis of faith on that rickety plane earlier, she still believed that Griffin was coming for her. He had to be. All she needed to do was make sure she was ready.

“I have to use the bathroom,” she told her abductor.

The look he gave her chilled her straight through. Especially when they were this close to so many TSA agents. Because it told her—once again—that this man didn’t care about consequences. He only cared about hurting her.

“Too bad. You went on the last plane. You can wait and go on the next plane, or piss all over yourself. I don’t care.”

“But—”

“This isn’t a negotiation, bitch. I said no.”

She didn’t argue further. She didn’t dare. Mariah followed him meekly to their gate, sat down in the chair he pointed at, and kept her mouth shut.

And tried her best tothinkthis through.

If he didn’t want her going in a public restroom, she assumed that was because he was afraid of what she could get up to in there. She would have too much time to convince another woman to help her, for example. Or pass on a message, or any number of other possibilities.She could even barricade herself in a stall and refuse to come out, forcing him to cause a scene when he tried to come get her.

The fact that he was worried about any of those possibilities—even though he’d warned her what would happen to her mother if she tried anything at all—told her he wasn’t just some muscle-bound idiot.

That didn’t bode well for her.

Mariah’s best option was still Alaska Force. She didn’t know why no one had been keeping watch in the lobby of Blue Bear Inn. She didn’t know why her abductor had been able to take her out of Grizzly Harbor. On that long, low flight to Anchorage, she’d had a lot of time to think it over while she was rattled around in the noisy little plane. And what she’d kept coming back to was the simple fact that even if, for some reason—and she could think of a pretty big reason that had taken up most of the night—Alaska Force had decided to drop her as a client, they wouldn’t do it without telling her.

No one had told her. That meant someone was coming.

She believed it with a wild fervor that bordered on religious zeal, and she was perfectly okay with that.

In the meantime, she had no good choices when it came to rescuing herself. Her mother’s life and limbs were hanging in the balance. She still had her phone shoved in her front pocket, and that was the only bit of hope she had to cling to just now. But it was of no use to her if she couldn’t access it.

Just wait,she told herself, again and again.Just wait for the right time.

When they boarded the red-eye flight to Atlanta, the man took the middle seat and trapped her against the window. Mariah made sure not one part of her body was touching his, pressing herself against the cold, smooth side of the plane as it took off.

She wrapped herself in the flimsy blanket that had been on her seat, happy that it let her secretly touch the phone stuffed in her pocket like it was some kind of talisman. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and let her mind spin from last night, and all its impossible wonder, to the grisly future that waited for her in a few hours.

If Griffin didn’t show up and handle this, she was going to die.

Mariah had understood that fact the moment the man had stepped through her hotel room door and stared her down. He was taking her back home, no doubt so David could enjoy the spectacle of her death. That was the point of this. And it probably wouldn’t be a quick spectacle, either.

Though her mind shied away from all the ways a violent death could go slow.

All she could hope for was that she could get to her mother. And in the meantime, she would have to be glad that at least when she went to meet her maker it would be with the full carnal knowledge of Griffin Cisneros to sustain her through her premature afterlife.

She would have shouted down heaven itself if she’d died without knowing what it was like to kiss him. Or what it was like to take her time exploring that sculpted warrior’s body of his. Or better still, what it was like to feel the sheer joy and exquisite pleasure of him surging inside her, driving them both gloriously mad as he took his sweet time.

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