Sniper's Pride

by Megan Crane

  She was smiling to herself as she walked off the ferry, swept up with the rest of the passengers getting off here. The whole town had come out to meet the boat and were applying themselves to helping unload supplies or greeting returning locals. Maybe everyone was as charmed as she was, she thought, as a bearded man in made-to-order Alaskan flannel jostled her slightly as they disembarked, as if he were rushing to get out into all that goodness.

  Mariah couldn’t blame him. It was like walking into a postcard.

  A postcard that highlighted the adorable wooden boardwalks that made up some of the streets climbing up the hill—as well as what had to be the most lethal man she’d ever laid eyes on in her life.

  She could have sworn he hadn’t been there a moment earlier. He stood apart from the rest of the crowd gathered at the dock, his back to a weathered shack Mariah assumed belonged to the ferry company. Or maybe it was for fishermen, given the number of fishing boats she could see in the harbor.

  But she was only looking at the shack because he was in front of it. And he was . . . too much to take in.

  Too much of too many things Mariah didn’t know how to feel.

  He was tall and dark and the kind of lean that made her think of sharply honed hunting knives, precisely balanced to kill with a single throw. His arms were crossed over his powerful chest, calling attention to the way his biceps threatened the fabric of the henley he wore, while the larger, bearded men all around him wore coats.

  But the most noticeable thing about this man was his unflinching gaze. It was much, much colder and harsher than the Alaskan afternoon settling deeper into Mariah’s bones with every step she took.

  And he didn’t pretend he was staring at anything but her.

  Mariah felt something in her shake. As if a critical part of her had come loose and was rattling around in there now, threatening to take her down to the cold dock at her feet.

  But it didn’t. She ignored the bizarre sensation the way she’d learned to ignore just about everything else. She reminded herself she was still recovering from anaphylactic shock, so of course she felt . . . odd. She felt her smile shift from actual, unconscious delight at the pretty town around her to the familiar baring of her teeth she’d used to hack her way through Atlanta society.

  She made herself breathe as she walked over to the terrifying man, because holding her breath could end in embarrassing disaster. He didn’t strike her as the sort who would exert himself to catch her if she fainted.

  And as she moved closer to him, she couldn’t help but notice any number of wholly unfair things. He was already too powerful, too lethal. That had been obvious from the ferry. Was it truly necessary that he have the kind of chiseled jaw that belonged in a lovesick poem or two? Or a mouth that another woman—one who still felt anything at all in her heart, and maybe even places lower than her heart—might actually, physically swoon over? Whether she was breathing or not.

  His cold gaze was a particularly compelling brown, lit with a deep gold that did nothing at all to warm it, and a few shades lighter than the brown of his skin.

  He was the most beautiful man Mariah had ever seen in her life.

  And also, clearly, the deadliest.

  “Hi,” she said, stopping in front of him.

  She was free of Atlanta now. So far away from David he almost seemed like a bad dream, here in all this crisp, cold blue and moody splendor that was making her teeth start to chatter. It had to be thirty degrees, not that anyone else seemed to notice. And still, the man in front of her made her uneasy. He looked exactly the way a lethal special ops “problem solver” ought to look, but it wasn’t that.

  Maybe it’s the way he’s already looking at you like he hates you, a sharp voice inside her suggested.

  That hurt, and it shouldn’t have. Mariah was used to people hating her on sight. And, like her in-laws, long after—no matter how her father-in-law smiled and pretended otherwise.

  She could have dropped her high-society persona, but she didn’t quite dare, out here in all this wilderness, so far away from everything civilized. Her usual mask firmly in place, she treated the man before her to the sort of smile her mother-in-law had always employed as her go-to weapon of mass destruction. Because for all Mariah knew, this man was more villain than superhero. And she’d yet to meet a single living human that smile couldn’t wither down to nothing.

  Mariah aimed it right at him and played up her drawl, too. “You look dangerous enough to belong to that very cloak-and-dagger website. I surely hope that you’re here to save me.”

  If possible, his harsh gaze grew chillier. He was like granite encased in a glacier, except much harder and much, much colder. She told herself it was the stiff breeze from the water that was making her shiver.

  Most importantly, he didn’t wither.

  At all.

  “I’m no savior,” he said, his voice dark and deep, and if she wasn’t mistaken, disgusted. “But if you’re Mariah McKenna Lanier, that makes you my problem.”

  Three

  Griffin Cisneros disliked Alaska Force’s newest client the minute he saw her.

  She looked even more expensive than in the photos. Sleek and sophisticated in a way he knew meant nothing but trouble, with a side helping of aloof entitlement, because that was the way that kind of blonde always went.

  It was obvious in the way she walked, languid and easy, as if the world had nothing better to do than wait on her. It was clear in the clothes she wore, high maintenance and fussy enough to make it glaringly evident she wasn’t much into the outdoors. Which meant she probably wouldn’t take to life here in Grizzly Harbor, where matter-of-fact feats of endurance and bone-deep stubbornness were required to make it through the next storm.

  Most clients came prepared for a blizzard or three. But not this one. She looked as if she’d showed up for a party. A very elegant party held somewhere a lot less . . . elemental.

  Then there was that voice. It was like sugar and honey, thick and sweet, and it poured all over him whether he liked it or not.

  He possibly disliked her voice most of all.

  It had been Griffin’s turn in the rotation to take the hit and conduct a thorough intake on a new client to assess whether or not she had the kind of problem Alaska Force wanted to solve. Griffin’s job wasn’t to make the final call, only to gather all the information so the rest of his brothers could vote at tonight’s briefing. Once they did, Isaac Gentry—the founder of Alaska Force and therefore its commanding officer, though this wasn’t the military any longer, only a collection of former special ops soldiers unsuited for civilian life—would either go with the vote or veto it. If he voted go, they would start plotting out mission parameters.

  Oz, their resident computer genius, who claimed his surname was restricted on a need-to-know basis—and who also claimed his military specialty was winning information wars—had confirmed through his usual internet magic that Mariah McKenna Lanier lived in Atlanta, was recently separated from her filthy rich and well-connected husband, and had suffered two cases of anaphylaxis in the past month for an allergy that had been on her charts since childhood with no other flare-ups. The second attack had happened the night before she’d emailed.

  “The IP address matches up. She’s legit,” Oz had told them in their morning briefing, where they discussed the various requests that came in for Alaska Force’s specialized services overnight. The other men who made up their particularly elite team lounged in their usual careless—or decidedly not careless—positions around the big reception room of the rambling fishing lodge that had once belonged to Isaac’s grandfather. It now doubled as the group’s headquarters, there on the other side of the usually impassable mountain that loomed over Grizzly Harbor in a hidden, deliberately hard-to-reach place known as Fool’s Cove. “If she shows, she’s who she says she is.”

  But that wouldn’t necessarily mean that she was
being pursued and persecuted, of course. Griffin shouldn’t have been surprised by the things people lied about, but he was. He always was.

  “Are we marriage counselors now?” he’d asked gruffly. He’d stood straight and quiet with his back to the far wall. The way he always did. Because they were highly trained operatives, not a bunch of drunken fraternity brothers.

  Templeton Cross, six feet and four inches of an ex–Delta Force, ex–Army Ranger hurricane, was kicked back in a chair with only two legs on the wood floor. He let out one of his loud guffaws. “By the time we get them, the counseling is done. It’s all bullets, revenge plots, and regret.”

  The other men laughed. Griffin didn’t. Not only because he didn’t like the haughty look of the blond woman on Oz’s screen but because it took a lot more than Templeton’s usual nonsense to make him laugh.

  “Sounds like a love song to me,” Jonas Crow had said, his version of laughter another man’s threat. Griffin still didn’t know exactly what he had done in his years in the service—it was too highly classified even now—but he knew Jonas was a ghost when he felt like it. Also absolutely deadly.

  The only thing Griffin liked less than snooty rich ladies—who were probably fine, if way too much work—was love songs.

  And princesses, he thought now, staring down at the one before him like his glare could make her turn around and get back on the ferry.

  The sleek, manicured blonde wasn’t wearing a crown. But she was a princess all the same. And she clearly didn’t get the message he was sending, because she stayed where she was, a cool smile on her lips like she was the one in charge of this. Of everything.

  Even of him.

  Not in this life.

  Griffin took another moment to confirm what he already knew: Mrs. Lanier was too high maintenance. And high maintenance, in his experience, always went hand in hand with high drama. Her smile kicked at him, like she was trying to get beneath his skin. No one did that. Ever. Her hair was twisted up into a neat, sophisticated knot at the back of her head, suggesting that crown she wasn’t actually wearing. Everything about her was a pointed contrast to all the other passengers disembarking onto this remote island in Southeast Alaska on a spring morning laced with fog and the threat of rain. There were the locals in fleece and camo. The tourists in parkas, laden down with overstuffed backpacks and stamping around in hiking boots so new they squeaked.

  But this one was wearing the kind of soft designer jeans that were made to fall apart, not stand up to any kind of utility work. A pair of knee-high boots in a visibly buttery leather that would be about as useful in the unforgiving Alaskan weather as a pair of flip-flops.

  And she was draped in wool. Literally draped. And not the functional microwool hikers wore as base layers, which could retain heat, dry quickly, and be of use in the relentless bush. This was the sort of fancy wool she could fling around and make into a kind of cape.

  A cape. In Grizzly Harbor.

  He wanted to order her to turn around, get back on the ferry, and sort her messy life out somewhere else.

  But that wasn’t the mission. Not today.

  “Are you Oz?” she asked, and if she was unsettled by the way Griffin stared at her like he was trying to freeze her solid, she gave no sign. “The person who emailed me?”

  Since most people were terrified of Griffin—a reasonable response to a man who’d made himself into a machine a long time ago, and therefore a response he heartily encouraged—he found Mariah’s polite, unbothered response . . . unsettling.

  And Griffin didn’t do unsettling.

  “Do I look like a computer geek?”

  That cool smile chilled further. “I’ll take that as a no.”

  Griffin didn’t bother telling her that Oz didn’t look any more like a stereotypical computer geek than the rest of them. He didn’t see how that was her business when hopefully she wouldn’t be here long enough to find out on her own. And he could then go back to the kind of missions he preferred. Dangerous extractions. Kidnap resolutions. Missions that mattered, not petty end-of-marriage skirmishes like this one, which struck him as only slightly more interesting than a corporate security detail.

  “I’m Griffin Cisneros,” he told her stiffly.

  More of that smile. And a cool sweep from her entirely too-blue gaze. “Am I expected to salute?”

  “Don’t salute.” That came out gruffer than intended. And a whole lot harsher. “I’m handling your case.”

  “All by yourself?” Her eyebrows rose, and it was all so haughty it made his teeth ache. He ordered himself to stop clenching his jaw. When had he started reacting to things like this? To civilians like her? Or to civilians at all. “That’s impressive.”

  He knew how people like her operated. He could hear it in that silky, feminine voice no matter the drawl. And he could certainly see it all over her smooth, pretty, made-up face. People like Mariah made sure they were never impressed with a thing because they already possessed everything.

  But then, Griffin wasn’t easily impressed, either. He’d kept his cool in too many war zones, and he’d done it by making himself into a series of locked compartments, shut up tight and polished to gleam. He never opened those compartments. He never entertained the faintest notion to do something so foolish, because he knew too well what was in them. The same way he knew what the real world was like out there—and there were precious few crowns or capes in the places he’d been and the crap he’d seen.

  He was impressed by utter stillness. By men who could disappear while you were staring straight at them. By a single, perfect shot that could save his friends, alter history, change the world.

  What Griffin was not impressed by was some society princess in a broken-down marriage, wasting his time.

  He jerked his head in a silent order for her to follow him as he turned. He didn’t share his thoughts because he figured his nonverbal communication was doing the job for him. And he didn’t offer to take her bag, even though he knew it would horrify his own mother, because he believed in packing only what was necessary and what he could carry himself. Lessons a princess should learn. He set off into what passed for the streets of Grizzly Harbor at a brisk pace, down a winding dirt path, then up onto one of the planked boardwalks over the rocks, and didn’t look over his shoulder to see if Princess Mariah was following him.

  She was—he didn’t have to look to know.

  And she kept up with surprisingly little effort. He could admit that annoyed him. He’d expected her to huff and puff and complain with every step, especially since Grizzly Harbor was built on a steep hill between the unforgiving ocean and the encroaching forest.

  But when he stopped in front of Blue Bear Inn, a building in the central cluster of the village painted a vivid blue that would give any actual bears a headache, she was right there with him. Looking none the worse for wear.

  “I’ll show you to your room,” he said, and he didn’t like the way the hike up from the docks—or maybe just the sea air sweeping in from the sound—made her cheeks look rosy. Or that her eyes seemed about as blue as the freaking inn’s lunatic paint job. “How long do you think it will take you to get ready?”

  “That depends on what I’m getting ready for, sugar.”

  How did she make that sound so suggestive? He would have stood straighter if it was physically possible. It wasn’t.

  “Exactly what do you think is going on here?” Griffin asked.

  It wasn’t a friendly tone. Grown men had been known to recoil when Griffin hit them with all that controlled fury.

  But the princess in front of him did nothing of the kind. She peered at him, her gaze sparkling. He noticed a darker navy ring around her disconcerting blue irises. Her lips curved in a new form of that chilly smile he could really only call pitying. And the way she stood there, her bag looped over one languid arm, that cape of hers tossed effortlessly over her s
houlders, struck him as impossibly, dangerously regal.

  Griffin didn’t enjoy being struck by anything.

  “I have no idea what’s going on here,” she said, almost merrily. As if it were all part of an amusing adventure they were on together. Then she made it worse and leaned in. “This might come as a surprise to you, but I haven’t spent a whole lot of my time hunting down mysterious superheroes to help me keep my husband from murdering me. If there’s a protocol involved, you’re going to have to tell me what it is.”

  “The protocol is simple. Follow orders. Stay alive.”

  “That sounds a lot more like the army than I was prepared for, I’ll admit.”

  If she had been someone else, Griffin might have made a crack about the paid vacation the army called basic training, as opposed to his own stint in boot camp as a Marine recruit in San Diego. But he only stared at her until the flush high on those cheekbones of hers was less about the sea air and more about him. He told himself the reasons he liked that had nothing to do with any heat kicking around inside him. He was all ice, no fire. Always.

  “If you’re going to give me orders, you’re going to have to use your words. Not that glare.” Her voice was so silky it took him a minute to understand what she’d said. “As remarkable as it is.”

  Griffin felt his jaw tense again and couldn’t understand what was happening. He was not the kind of man who let a woman get under his skin. He wasn’t the kind of man who let anything get under his skin. He was unflappable all the way through. He had made an entire career out of it.