Page 72 of Sniper's Pride

She didn’t want to say good-bye to him. She couldn’t. She forced herself to move past him and stopped when her mother reached out to grab her arm. Or maybe they grabbed each other, holding on tight for a moment that couldn’t have been more than a few seconds but felt like a lifetime.

They didn’t say good-bye, either.

Mariah threw herself toward the chair again, her gaze blurry but her heart clear.

“Mariah.” This time it was a command. She stopped moving, though she didn’t turn back to face him. She knew that if she did, she wouldn’t go through with this. “You’re going to have the opportunity to run. When you do, take it. Promise me.”

“I will,” she whispered. “I promise.”

“Run when you can,” he said again, his tone like a caress and a demand at once. Beautiful and harsh. Just like him. “As fast as you can.”

Mariah nodded once, jerkily, and then she kept going. She made it to the chair and wrapped herself back up in the duct tape he’d loosened, hoping it looked as if she were still secured.

Then she tried to make herself breathe.

She heard voices on the other side of the barn door. She heard a car door slam.

And she didn’t thinkbravewas supposed to feel like this. Like she might be sick. Or faint. Or sob.

She snuck a look over her shoulder, but Griffin and her mother were already gone.

And then the barn door was scraping open and there were cold-eyed men everywhere again, and she didn’t have time to worry about how brave felt.

She just had to do it.

Especially when the man in the center of the ugly scrum stepped forward and smiled, big and wide, because she knew him.

Dear God, she knew him.

And it wasn’t David.

Seventeen

Griffin gritted out a request for cover and potential cover fire into his comm and barely heard the terse affirmatives in reply. Then he ducked down and swept Rose Ellen up and into his arms, shifting her over one shoulder into a fireman’s carry with the ease of long practice involving much heavier soldiers.

“Hold on,” he told her, when her breath left her in a rush.

He didn’t look back.

Not because he trusted Mariah to execute her role like she was an acting member of Alaska Force today, but because he couldn’t. He’d never felt thatthingin his chest before, like a balloon with an ache that kept getting bigger and bigger....

Everything Mariah had said made sense. He couldn’t abandon her mother. A decoy was a solid plan.

And he wanted to tear this barn down with his hands instead of leaving her in it.

Griffin knew that if he looked back at her, he wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t leave her for even one second more.

He moved to the wall instead, then eased his way out between the rotted old planks, taking care not to slam Rose Ellen’s head into the jagged wood. He trusted his brothers to handle any enemy eyes, so he didn’t waste time looking around. He took off for the tree line, running as fast as he could while carrying the weight of another human.

He was aware of his heart and the way it beat, strong and true. He was aware of his breath, in and out of his lungs as he moved. He was aware of every inch of the body he’d made into a machine, and how every part worked exactly as it should.

There was nothing but his breath. The weight of Rose Ellen.

And the trees ahead of him, beckoning him to safety.

It felt like it took him an hour to sprint some two hundred yards, but it was likely a handful of seconds.

When he penetrated the forest, he kept going until he was sure there was enough cover. Only then did he stop, shifting to let Rose Ellen down. He helped her stand on that bad leg. And then he checked in.

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