Page 61 of Sniper's Pride

The car started up again, and that was worse. She could feel every bump of the old dirt road as herabductor turned the car around, then every pothole and jarring bump when he started down the road again.

She felt like she was in a coffin.

But you aren’t,she reminded herself.Not just yet.

She tugged the awful, sweltering wig off of her head. That was marginally better. She felt around the trunk, but it was empty. And she saw the dim glow of the emergency release lever Blue had told them about but she’d never had occasion to see with her own eyes before.

Mariah ran through her options quickly, but they all came back to the same place. Her mother. There would be no flinging herself out of the trunk and hoping she didn’t break her leg, because she had no doubt at all that the man would keep right on driving so he could hurt her mother himself.

She wanted to live. She wanted out of this trunk.

But she couldn’t do either of those things at her mother’s expense.

And then she remembered her phone.Her phone.

She wrestled it out of her pocket, biting her lips to keep from sobbing out her joy. The car rocked her around as she swiped at the screen to power it on, then waited for the phone to find service.

Mariah wanted to make a call more than she wanted to breathe, but she didn’t dare. It would comfort her to hear a friendly voice, or really any voice at all, but it was too risky when she didn’t know if the man could hear her.

And besides, she wasn’t sure her throat worked at the moment, all thick and tight with fear.

She scrolled to Griffin’s number, which he’d given her—reluctantly—in one of their situation meetings at Caradine’s restaurant.

And something in Mariah hardened as she remembered that first meeting with Griffin. Or shifted, anyway.

She refused to believe that she would never see Grizzly Harbor again.

Or him.

She refused to accept that this was the end, no matter how maudlin she was tempted to get.

And she refused—she absolutely refused—to believe that Griffin wasn’t on his way to save her, even now.

In the trunk of a gray Honda Accord heading south of Atlanta, she texted him, fighting to keep from dropping the phone as the car bumped along.Stopped outside of Brooks, then drove on dirt for a while. Now sounds like a highway.

The car sped up, and that was better for Mariah. Smoother.

He hasn’t hurt me yet. They have my mother.

She stopped her frantic typing then, panting in the close confines of the trunk. And she believed he was coming. She believed.

But just in case, she added,If you don’t make it in time, I would do it all over again.

Then she hit send.

Fifteen

They left Alaska after delivering Rory to the hospital in Juneau and briefing the rest of the team, and were wheels down in Atlanta by six o’clock the next morning, local time. Meaning it was two in the morning in their bodies. But they were all used to handling time zone changes. There was nothing for Griffin to do but suck up the situation he’d caused.

The situation he wasn’t sure he could fix.

Isaac had been in communication with their people in Atlanta throughout the flight, so they were good to go when they hit the ground. Oz reported that Rory was mostly thirsty and pissed, which was a good thing. But it was a grim, tight rollout from the plane to the SUV in Atlanta, because everyone involved was fully aware of what was at stake for Mariah—who hadn’t been left behind, shoved carelessly into a shed.

And they still hadn’t found her.

Mariah’s apartment was empty. There was no sign thatanyone had been there in weeks. The rooms were shut up tight, the air was stale, and, as the Atlanta satellite team had assured them, there had been no security breaches since they’d started monitoring the place weeks ago.

Griffin hadn’t expected to find her there. Someone had taken her from Alaska. And there was no reason he could think of that anyone would abduct her only to head to an Atlanta apartment building, with its high concentration of potentially nosy neighbors.

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