Page 73 of Sniper's Pride

“Mariah’s mother is safe,” he said into his comm.

“What’s the status on Mariah?” came Isaac’s cool voice, after much too long a pause.

“She stayed behind. As bait.”

There was another long pause.

“Mariah’s mother can’t walk much or fast,” Griffin said tersely. Rose Ellen watched him as he talked, no particular reaction on her face. Because she was tough like her daughter, Griffin thought. Or maybe Mariah wastough like her. Either way, she wasn’t breaking down as he gave his precise coordinates. “I need her picked up.”

“Are you thinking another diversion?” Blue asked.

“I’m thinking it’s high time I did what I do best,” Griffin replied.

He didn’t wait for his brothers to agree, because he knew they would.

He bent down and pulled one of his backup pieces from his ankle. Then offered it to Rose Ellen. “Do you know how to operate a nine-millimeter?”

“Oh, sugar,” Rose Ellen drawled, a fierce glint in her eyes. “With a merry ol’ song in my heart.”

“Okay. Shoot anyone who doesn’t identify himself as a friend.”

“Whose friend?” Rose Ellen asked coolly. She took the gun he offered her, checked the chamber, then held it in a casually firm grip as she pointed the muzzle at the ground. “I don’t know as I have any friends running around these woods today, and if I did, I’d have half a mind to put a couple bullets in them for leaving me in there.”

“My friends,” he clarified, and hated himself for finding this woman charming when Mariah was still stuck in that barn. And he’d put her there. “But I suspect you’ll know them when you see them. For one thing, they’ll call youma’am.”

Rose Ellen almost smiled. “Then I might shoot them first.”

He left her with her back to a tree, the Glock in her hand like she’d been born with it.

And he ran.

Under normal circumstances, Griffin liked to pore over maps. He liked to study geological factors, the wind, any and all weather conditions. Under normalcircumstances, he planned long before he ever maneuvered himself into position.

But there was nothing normal about this.

He ran through the woods, grateful for every nasty vertical mile he’d ever pounded out in Alaska. Because these flat Georgia woods were nothing in comparison. He ran in a wide circle so no one could see him through the trees, and made as little noise as possible as he moved. When he was roughly one hundred and eighty degrees from where he’d started, he headed back toward the field.

And found the tree he’d spied on the way in, with its sturdy trunk and broad, wide limbs. He scaled it easily, flowing from branch to branch until he found the perfect vantage point. He balanced himself, then reached back around for his rifle.

He could assemble it with his eyes closed. In the dark. Behind his back.

It was even easier here, high up in a big old tree. He felt the smoothness of the metal, the lethal barrel, the scope.

In a few economical movements, he assembled one of the most lethal weapons that had ever been crafted.

He settled down with the scope, focusing it on the barn door.

“I’m in position,” he said into his comm.

“Wait for some fireworks,” Isaac ordered him.

Griffin muttered an affirmative.

I love you,Mariah had said.

More than once.

He told himself to breathe. To settle. To blank out his mind and focus in on the target.

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