Page 70 of Sniper's Pride

There was almost no possibility that she was in her right mind. Mariah accepted that.

And still, the minute she said those words, she knew they were true. She loved him.

She said it again, just to be sure.

Griffin dropped his fingers from her face. But he didn’t rise from where he was crouched down before her, looking dark and furious and emanating all that leashed brutality. He rested his elbows on his powerful thighs and regarded her sternly.

She might have said he had no expression on his face, but she had made a study of him. She could see that what burned in his eyes when he looked at her wasn’t impassive at all.

“That’s the abduction talking.”

“It’s really not.”

“I’m still in love with every man who ever deliveredme safely from a war zone,” he told her, his voice clipped—but his eyes gleaming. “It goes with the territory.”

“Did you have sex with all those men?” When he scowled at her, Mariah smiled. She didn’t realize until that moment that she hadn’t expected she would ever get the chance to smile again. It made it that much sweeter. Or bittersweet, maybe. “Because I’m betting that sex changes the equation. I’m pretty good at math. You should trust me on this.”

“We don’t have time for this.” His hands moved to test the duct tape at her wrists. Her calves. “As far as I can tell, our friends have headed out there to have a discussion about payment with whoever just drove up in that Mercedes with tinted windows. But sooner or later they’re going to come back in. We need to be gone by then.”

“Get my mother out first.”

Griffin’s hands were already working, pulling apart the duct tape that held her to the chair, and then inspecting the damage she’d done to her wrists when she pulled free. But Mariah hardly noticed a few more abrasions.

“You have to get my mother out,” she said again, fiercely. “It’s my fault she’s here in the first place.”

“It’s not your fault I went out to greet a stranger on my land without a rifle in my hand,” a familiar voice said.

So familiar that Mariah’s whole body jerked in recognition almost before she’d processed it herself. She twisted in her chair, only dimly aware that Griffin was muttering curses in a language she didn’t understand. She felt tugging at her calves as he handled the duct tape there, too, but she was already standing, then stumbling across the barn floor.

Her legs felt useless, thick and sound asleep, as if she’d never learned how to walk. But that didn’t stop her from tilting herself toward the woman who stood there at the bottom of the ladder Mariah hadn’t seen behind her.

She fell into her mother’s arms like she was starved for it. Like she was a child again, with a skinned knee that only her mama could cure.

And just like when Mariah was a child, Rose Ellen held her tight, rocked her, then set her back on her heels.

“No time for that now,” Mama said in her matter-of-fact way, though her eyes were suspiciously bright. “I don’t intend to spend one more minute in this barn than I have to.”

Griffin was standing by the chair, his head angled slightly to one side, a faraway look in his dark eyes. When he focused on them again, Mariah realized that he’d been listening to voices in his ear.

“Let’s go,” he said, all business now.

It made her love him all the more.

He started toward the back of the barn and a dark corner where a big chunk of the wall was kicked in. Leaving a big old hole in the side.

Escape,an urgent voice whispered in Mariah.

She’d started following Griffin automatically, but something had her twisting around to look behind her.

Where her mother was following her, or trying to, but was moving much too slowly.

Because she was limping. Badly.

Mariah opened her mouth to get Griffin’s attention, but he was already brushing past her and heading toward her mother.

“You told me you weren’t hurt,” he said in a low voice,with an undercurrent that might have been temper if he’d been a different kind of man. One less capable and lethal.

“Didn’t know I was until I tried to walk.” Mama shrugged. “The skinny blond one has steel-toed boots. I don’t regret kicking him, mind, but it hurt like hell when he kicked me back. Now I know why.”

---