Page 69 of Sniper's Pride

“Soon, girly,” he crooned.

She fought off the shudder she felt deep in her gut,like everything inside her was on a roller coaster and there was no getting off.

“You can scream your head off,” her original abductor told her, flashing her an impatient sort of look that didn’t take away from the flatness of his gaze. Nothing did. “No one will hear you. No one will come. And the only thing you’ll manage to do is piss us off. So go right ahead.”

And then the men walked out, pulling the barn door shut behind them.

Leaving Mariah in the gloom.

She fought tothink, though she wasn’t sure that in her present condition she would be able to tell if she was being the least bit rational or not... but she didn’t have to be rational to work to free her hands. Twisting and turning her wrists this way and that, she tried her hardest to loosen the grasp of the duct tape. She wanted to call out to her mother in the hopes that she could hear, that she wasn’t unconscious or worse, but Mariah didn’t know where the men had gone or when they might be coming back.

Was this a test? Were they standing right there on the other side of the door, waiting for her to make a noise so they had an excuse to start... doing things to her?

Her breath was a shuddery thing over her lips. She was working up a sweat and no doubt tearing open her wrists as she fought to loosen the duct tape, but she didn’t stop. She couldn’t stop.

If she could get it to go slack, even the slightest bit, surely she could pull her wrists through—

“Mariah.”

She jerked. Then blinked.

She must have died.

Her heart was so painful in her chest that she assumed that was the explanation.

She must have simply... up and keeled over, right here in this chair.

That was the only reason she could think of to explain how Griffin Cisneros was standing in front of her, scowling down at her, as if this were any old afternoon in Grizzly Harbor and he’d appeared to walk her from Blue’s class to her room at the inn.

“You’re hurt.”

She had seen him cold. Grim, even. Rough and still and sometimes mean.

But Mariah had never seen anything like the darkness that moved over Griffin’s face then. He reached out and brushed his fingers over her cheek, and that felt real. Too real. She’d forgotten that she’d fallen until he touched her there, and it was unfair that she could feel a bruise coming in when she was already dead.

Not to mention the sweetness of his hand on her.

“I’m fine,” she said. “My mother...?”

She couldn’t bear to finish the question. But he nodded as if she had.

“She’s upstairs. And as far as I can tell, she’s also fine.”

And he crouched down in front of her, his expression fierce and focused entirely on her. It occurred to Mariah that the last time she’d seen him, he had been in her bed.

She could feel the warmth of the backs of his fingers against her cheekbone. That drugging, comforting warmth of his skin. She felt entirely too warm herself, suddenly.

And it dawned on her that she might not have died after all.

“I knew you would come,” she whispered. “I knew it.”

If he had been another man, she would have called what washed over him then pure anguish. But this was Griffin. And the emotion was gone again so fast she almost thought she’d imagined it.

He looked stern. “We both know how this happened. It was my blunder. But I promise you, I’ll make up for it.”

“I love you,” Mariah said.

She felt delirious, only worse. She’d been sure she was dead two seconds ago. The likelihood was still that she would be dead a few moments from now. There were men with semiautomatic weapons roaming around, and every one of them had looked at her as if they couldn’t wait for the opportunity to tear her apart with their own hands. She had been awake and more or less alert—and scared—for at least twenty-four hours.

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