Page 7 of Sniper's Pride

But that wouldn’t necessarily mean that she was being pursued and persecuted, of course. Griffin shouldn’t have been surprised by the things people lied about, but he was. He always was.

“Are we marriage counselors now?” he’d asked gruffly. He’d stood straight and quiet with his back to the far wall. The way he always did. Because they were highly trained operatives, not a bunch of drunken fraternity brothers.

Templeton Cross, six feet and four inches of an ex–Delta Force, ex–Army Ranger hurricane, was kicked back in a chair with only two legs on the wood floor. He let out one of his loud guffaws. “By the time we get them, the counseling is done. It’s all bullets, revenge plots, and regret.”

The other men laughed. Griffin didn’t. Not only because he didn’t like the haughty look of the blond woman on Oz’s screen but because it took a lot more than Templeton’s usual nonsense to make him laugh.

“Sounds like a love song to me,” Jonas Crow had said, his version of laughter another man’s threat. Griffin still didn’t know exactly what he had done in his years in theservice—it was too highly classified even now—but he knew Jonas was a ghost when he felt like it. Also absolutely deadly.

The only thing Griffin liked less than snooty rich ladies—who were probably fine, if way too much work—was love songs.

And princesses,he thought now, staring down at the one before him like his glare could make her turn around and get back on the ferry.

The sleek, manicured blonde wasn’t wearing a crown. But she was a princess all the same. And she clearly didn’t get the message he was sending, because she stayed where she was, a cool smile on her lips like she was the one in charge of this. Of everything.

Even of him.

Not in this life.

Griffin took another moment to confirm what he already knew: Mrs. Lanier was too high maintenance. And high maintenance, in his experience, always went hand in hand with high drama. Her smile kicked at him, like she was trying to get beneath his skin. No one did that. Ever. Her hair was twisted up into a neat, sophisticated knot at the back of her head, suggesting that crown she wasn’t actually wearing. Everything about her was a pointed contrast to all the other passengers disembarking onto this remote island in Southeast Alaska on a spring morning laced with fog and the threat of rain. There were the locals in fleece and camo. The tourists in parkas, laden down with overstuffed backpacks and stamping around in hiking boots so new they squeaked.

But this one was wearing the kind of soft designer jeans that were made to fall apart, not stand up to anykind of utility work. A pair of knee-high boots in a visibly buttery leather that would be about as useful in the unforgiving Alaskan weather as a pair of flip-flops.

And she was draped in wool. Literally draped. And not the functional microwool hikers wore as base layers, which could retain heat, dry quickly, and be of use in the relentless bush. This was the sort of fancy wool she could fling around and make into a kind of cape.

Acape. In Grizzly Harbor.

He wanted to order her to turn around, get back on the ferry, and sort her messy life out somewhere else.

But that wasn’t the mission. Not today.

“Are you Oz?” she asked, and if she was unsettled by the way Griffin stared at her like he was trying to freeze her solid, she gave no sign. “The person who emailed me?”

Since most people were terrified of Griffin—a reasonable response to a man who’d made himself into a machine a long time ago, and therefore a response he heartily encouraged—he found Mariah’s polite, unbothered response... unsettling.

And Griffin didn’t dounsettling.

“Do I look like a computer geek?”

That cool smile chilled further. “I’ll take that as a no.”

Griffin didn’t bother telling her that Oz didn’t look any more like a stereotypical computer geek than the rest of them. He didn’t see how that was her business when hopefully she wouldn’t be here long enough to find out on her own. And he could then go back to the kind of missions he preferred. Dangerous extractions. Kidnap resolutions. Missions that mattered, not petty end-of-marriage skirmishes like this one, which struck him as only slightly more interesting than a corporate security detail.

“I’m Griffin Cisneros,” he told her stiffly.

More of that smile. And a cool sweep from her entirely too-blue gaze. “Am I expected to salute?”

“Don’t salute.” That came out gruffer than intended. And a whole lot harsher. “I’m handling your case.”

“All by yourself?” Her eyebrows rose, and it was all so haughty it made his teeth ache. He ordered himself to stop clenching his jaw. When had he startedreactingto things like this? To civilians like her? Or to civilians at all. “That’s impressive.”

He knew how people like her operated. He could hear it in that silky, feminine voice no matter the drawl. And he could certainly see it all over her smooth, pretty, made-up face. People like Mariah made sure they were never impressed with a thing because they already possessed everything.

But then, Griffin wasn’t easily impressed, either. He’d kept his cool in too many war zones, and he’d done it by making himself into a series of locked compartments, shut up tight and polished to gleam. He never opened those compartments. He never entertained the faintest notion to do something so foolish, because he knew too well what was in them. The same way he knew what the real world was like out there—and there were precious few crowns or capes in the places he’d been and the crap he’d seen.

He was impressed by utter stillness. By men who could disappear while you were staring straight at them. By a single, perfect shot that could save his friends, alter history, change the world.

What Griffin was not impressed by was some society princess in a broken-down marriage, wasting his time.

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