Page 96 of Sniper's Pride

She didn’t blame anyone but Walton for the things his minions had done. And would have found a way to do, sooner or later, no matter if Griffin and his Alaska Force buddies had locked her in a cage for her own protection.

The street was clear between the singers and the inn, and Mariah smiled down at her feet as she walked, pleased that she didn’t have to worry about the cold or the possibility of icy patches that could take her down without warning. Grizzly Harbor felt like a different town in all this light and relative warmth.

She’d packed her things before she’d met Everly and Caradine in the Fairweather for a farewell drink, on the off chance she succumbed to tequila again. But she didn’t go into the inn and to her room to sleep through her last hours here. At the last moment she followed an urge, turning to follow the stairs chopped into the side of the hill that led up to a lookout point Caradine had showed her. It was set high above the town, a gorgeous spot with a sweeping view out over the harbor, toward the sea.

Mariah made the steep climb and then sat on the cleared landing at the top, gazing out at this place that still felt to her like a spot of real magic tucked away at the edge of the world.

She tipped her head back. She stared up at the sky, still light at this hour, as if she could see where the stars ought to be if she looked hard enough.

When she lowered her head again, her heart felt lighter.

This was what she’d needed, this quiet moment on the side of a mountain, to leave this place again and finally find her own way in the world.

She picked her way down the stairs again, and as she went she started to feel a prickle on the back of her neck. Mariah told herself it was that stiff breeze, kicking down from the mountains and always colder than the sea air. She went down a few more steps, but it was still there. And stronger.

Finally she stopped. Her head fell forward, and she found her hands on her hips, gripping herself a lot harder than he ever had.

“No,” she said, very distinctly, and she didn’t care that she would look like a crazy person if anyone happened by. Standing there, talking to the trees. “You do not get to follow me around like you’re doing surveillance. Not anymore.”

There was a whisper of sound, though she couldn’t have said where it came from, and then a shadow between two trees turned into a man.

A man she would have recognized even if it was as dark as it should have been at this hour. A man she would know if she were blind.

“If I had you under surveillance,” Griffin said coolly, “you wouldn’t know I was here.”

And Mariah could have blamed the fact that she’d been in the Fairweather, but in reality, she’d had only one drink over the course of the couple of hours she andEverly had sat there watching Caradine beat a group of fishermen at pool. She wasn’t the least bit drunk.

She only felt that way when she looked at him.

As if everything in the world spun around and around, the mountains and the sea and the Alaskan sky, leaving only him. Only Griffin.

“Nothing’s changed,” she told him, as evenly as she could.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said, and it took her a moment to realize that he didn’t sound like himself. He sounded furious. “Everything’s changed.”

She studied his features, hard and beautiful, his dark eyes glinting in the late evening light. And she ignored her traitorous heart and the things it whispered.

“Not for me, sugar,” she drawled. “I’m still in love with you. I still think you’re an idiot. And if you think that this is an opportunity for you to storm around doing your robot impersonation—”

“You’ve ruined me,” he told her, and she’d never heard that particular tone from him before. As if he wasn’t entirely in control of himself. “You might as well have set a charge and detonated it yourself.”

In that moment, she realized it wasn’t temper on his face, or nothing that simple. It was something else. Something pure and raw.

He looked the way she felt.

And deep inside her, all those broken pieces that she would simply have to learn how to live with seemed to hum. While the whispers from her heart grew louder and more insistent.

“Griffin,” she began, as calmly as she could, when she wanted to scream. When she wanted to do all the things she’d promised herself—and him—she wouldn’tever do. Beg. Cry. Bend herself into whatever shape would allow her to touch him again.

But she couldn’t do that. She knew she couldn’t.

“I don’t know what you came here for,” he told her, in that same strange tone of voice that made her shiver. And made her wonder why she’d imagined she’d wanted to see the fury of such a patient man in the first place. There was a whole proverb about how foolish that was. “Was it to torture me? Was it to rub salt in the wound?”

“Of course not.”

“You told me you wouldn’t beg. You wouldn’t chase after me. You told me you knew what you deserved.”

But she hadn’t told him how much it hurt. “I do. I finally do.”

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