Page 71 of Sniper's Pride

Mariah watched, filled with a mute dread, as Griffin dropped down in front of Rose Ellen, then smoothed his hands down her leg. He tugged the leg of her jeans up to look beneath. Mariah couldn’t see past his broad shoulders and back. But she knew when she heard a tiny hiss of indrawn breath that it wasn’t good.

“I don’t think the bone is shattered,” Griffin said after a moment. Gruffly. “But I don’t think you can run anywhere on this.”

Mama was looking straight at Mariah as he spoke. Mariah watched the way her chin lifted. She saw the familiar light of battle gleaming in her mother’s eyes.

“I’ll run if I have to,” Mama said, like it was a prophecy she had every intention of fulfilling.

Mariah knew she meant it. And that she’d do it, even if she injured herself more in the process. That was what being a McKenna was all about.

But Griffin was talking. And not to them.

He relayed the injury into his earpiece, then waited, his gaze shrewd and intense as he looked from the opening in the wall in the back of the barn, then toward the chair and the front again.

He did that a few times, and then he stiffened, his expression going sharp.

“ETA?” he barked.

And Mariah didn’t need him to translate whatETAmeant while he scowled at the door all those men had gone through.

They were coming back. With reinforcements from the Mercedes, if Mariah had to guess.

They’d been waiting for hours. Mariah didn’t want to stick around to see what was in store for her now that the waiting was done.

She wanted to throw herself out of that hole in the wall and run for it, more than she’d ever wanted anything else in her life. She couldtasteit.

But Mama couldn’t run.

Mariah was closest to the opening in the wall, and she could see out of it. The barn sat in the middle of a field that stretched off toward the woods. But the woods weren’t right there on the other side of the barn wall. The tree line—and safety—had to be a good two hundred yards away.

And she had always been such a coward. Hadn’t she proved it time and again?

This, here, was her chance to be brave.

She was going to take it.

“Mama can’t run,” Mariah said, a kind of peace coming over her as she spoke. A lot like when she’d told him she loved him. “You’re going to have to carry her.”

“We need to move,” Griffin said, rising to his feet with a smoothness that made her breath hitch. “We just ran out of time.”

“You need to carry her,” Mariah said more calmly. “And if you’re carrying her, I have to think that’s going to slow even you down. What’s going to happen when they walk in here and I’m not sitting there in that chair?”

“Over my dead body,” Griffin seethed at her, like he knew where she was going with this.

“They’re going to chase you. Us. It’s not like any of your friends are going to start shooting if they might hit us. But these men will. And they’ll enjoy it, trust me.”

“I said no.”

She smiled at him, this beautiful man who was looking at her like he wanted to sling her over his shoulder and end the conversation that way. He probably would have if he hadn’t had to carry her mother, too.

“I can occupy them, Griffin. You’ll have plenty of time to get Mama out of the line of fire.”

She saw his jaw work. She saw his dark eyes burn. And she told herself she would hold on to that, whatever happened next.

“Mariah.”

It was a whisper. A surrender from this man who never, ever gave in. And she knew what it cost him.

“I’m a princess,” she reminded him, and it was funny how her voice thickened. How it scratched. “I do what I want, remember?”

---