Page 6 of Sniper's Pride

He was tall and dark and the kind of lean that made her think of sharply honed hunting knives, precisely balanced to kill with a single throw. His arms were crossed over his powerful chest, calling attention to the way his biceps threatened the fabric of the henley he wore, while the larger, bearded men all around him wore coats.

But the most noticeable thing about this man was his unflinching gaze. It was much, much colder and harsher than the Alaskan afternoon settling deeper into Mariah’s bones with every step she took.

And he didn’t pretend he was staring at anything but her.

Mariah felt something in her shake. As if a critical part of her had come loose and was rattling around in there now, threatening to take her down to the cold dock at her feet.

But it didn’t. She ignored the bizarre sensation the way she’d learned to ignore just about everything else. She reminded herself she was still recovering from anaphylactic shock, so of course she felt... odd. She felt her smile shift from actual, unconscious delight at the prettytown around her to the familiar baring of her teeth she’d used to hack her way through Atlanta society.

She made herself breathe as she walked over to the terrifying man, because holding her breath could end in embarrassing disaster. He didn’t strike her as the sort who would exert himself to catch her if she fainted.

And as she moved closer to him, she couldn’t help but notice any number of wholly unfair things. He was already too powerful, too lethal. That had been obvious from the ferry. Was it truly necessary that he have the kind of chiseled jaw that belonged in a lovesick poem or two? Or a mouth that another woman—one who still felt anything at all in her heart, and maybe even places lower than her heart—might actually, physically swoon over? Whether she was breathing or not.

His cold gaze was a particularly compelling brown, lit with a deep gold that did nothing at all to warm it, and a few shades lighter than the brown of his skin.

He was the most beautiful man Mariah had ever seen in her life.

And also, clearly, the deadliest.

“Hi,” she said, stopping in front of him.

She was free of Atlanta now. So far away from David he almost seemed like a bad dream, here in all this crisp, cold blue and moody splendor that was making her teeth start to chatter. It had to be thirty degrees, not that anyone else seemed to notice. And still, the man in front of her made her uneasy. He looked exactly the way a lethal special ops “problem solver” ought to look, but it wasn’t that.

Maybe it’s the way he’s already looking at you like he hates you,a sharp voice inside her suggested.

That hurt, and it shouldn’t have. Mariah was used topeople hating her on sight. And, like her in-laws, long after—no matter how her father-in-law smiled and pretended otherwise.

She could have dropped her high-society persona, but she didn’t quite dare, out here in all this wilderness, so far away from everything civilized. Her usual mask firmly in place, she treated the man before her to the sort of smile her mother-in-law had always employed as her go-to weapon of mass destruction. Because for all Mariah knew, this man was more villain than superhero. And she’d yet to meet a single living human that smile couldn’t wither down to nothing.

Mariah aimed it right at him and played up her drawl, too. “You look dangerous enough to belong to that very cloak-and-dagger website. I surely hope that you’re here to save me.”

If possible, his harsh gaze grew chillier. He was like granite encased in a glacier, except much harder and much, much colder. She told herself it was the stiff breeze from the water that was making her shiver.

Most importantly, he didn’t wither.

At all.

“I’m no savior,” he said, his voice dark and deep, and if she wasn’t mistaken, disgusted. “But if you’re Mariah McKenna Lanier, that makes you my problem.”

Three

Griffin Cisneros disliked Alaska Force’s newest client the minute he saw her.

She looked even more expensive than in the photos. Sleek and sophisticated in a way he knew meant nothing but trouble, with a side helping of aloof entitlement, because that was the way that kind of blonde always went.

It was obvious in the way she walked, languid and easy, as if the world had nothing better to do than wait on her. It was clear in the clothes she wore, high maintenance and fussy enough to make it glaringly evident she wasn’t much into the outdoors. Which meant she probably wouldn’t take to life here in Grizzly Harbor, where matter-of-fact feats of endurance and bone-deep stubbornness were required to make it through the next storm.

Most clients came prepared for a blizzard or three. But not this one. She looked as if she’d showed up for aparty. A very elegant party held somewhere a lot less... elemental.

Then there was that voice. It was like sugar and honey, thick and sweet, and it poured all over him whether he liked it or not.

He possibly disliked her voice most of all.

It had been Griffin’s turn in the rotation to take the hit and conduct a thorough intake on a new client to assess whether or not she had the kind of problem Alaska Force wanted to solve. Griffin’s job wasn’t to make the final call, only to gather all the information so the rest of his brothers could vote at tonight’s briefing. Once they did, Isaac Gentry—the founder of Alaska Force and therefore its commanding officer, though this wasn’t the military any longer, only a collection of former special ops soldiers unsuited for civilian life—would either go with the vote or veto it. If he votedgo,they would start plotting out mission parameters.

Oz, their resident computer genius, who claimed his surname was restricted on a need-to-know basis—and who also claimed his military specialty waswinning information wars—had confirmed through his usual internet magic that Mariah McKenna Lanier lived in Atlanta, was recently separated from her filthy rich and well-connected husband, and had suffered two cases of anaphylaxis in the past month for an allergy that had been on her charts since childhood with no other flare-ups. The second attack had happened the night before she’d emailed.

“The IP address matches up. She’s legit,” Oz had told them in their morning briefing, where they discussed the various requests that came in for Alaska Force’sspecialized services overnight. The other men who made up their particularly elite team lounged in their usual careless—or decidedly not careless—positions around the big reception room of the rambling fishing lodge that had once belonged to Isaac’s grandfather. It now doubled as the group’s headquarters, there on the other side of the usually impassable mountain that loomed over Grizzly Harbor in a hidden, deliberately hard-to-reach place known as Fool’s Cove. “If she shows, she’s who she says she is.”

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