Sniper's Pride

by Megan Crane

  “Where is your key?” Griffin asked her in a low voice when they stopped in front of a door. Mariah blinked, squinted, and only belatedly realized they were standing in front of her hotel room door. “The key, Mariah.”

  She smiled up at him, tipping her head back. “You used my name. My actual name.”

  He muttered a word that sounded like a curse, but she didn’t care about that because his hands were on her suddenly.

  And she couldn’t say she minded that, either.

  Though it was profoundly disappointing to realize, when he pulled the old-fashioned key from her vest pocket, that he’d been patting her down to find it. And not for any other, far more thrilling reason.

  “Stay where you are,” he ordered her as he unlocked the door, then moved into the room ahead of her.

  Mariah trailed after him, watching as he looked swiftly around the room. He opened up the closet door, checked under the bed and behind the curtains, and then ducked into the bathroom. Presumably to do the same.

  She was half sitting, half leaning on the quilt at the end of her sleigh bed when he came out again, and for some reason, the cold stare he aimed at her made her giggle.

  A lot.

  “I told you to stay where you were. You’re drunk, I get it. But if you don’t follow directions, this isn’t going to work.”

  “Okay.” She smiled at him again, her own giggles fading away. “Did I tell you that you’re beautiful?”

  “You’re not going to remember any of this, are you?” he asked, but it didn’t sound like a question.

  That gave Mariah another fantastic idea. “Really? Are you sure?”

  “You probably shouldn’t sound so excited about the possibility of an alcoholic blackout.”

  She waved a hand, but noticing it was in front of her instead of beside her where she’d expected it added an extra second or two. “Tonight is all about making bad decisions.”

  He stayed where he was, still scowling, so Mariah shifted. She launched herself off the end of the bed and moved toward him, aware as she did that she was swaying on her own feet. She was dancing on those tables after all.

  She unzipped her vest, then tossed it aside, laughing at her own boldness. Because she would never have dared make a mess like that in David’s house, where there was a place for everything, including her. Especially her.

  She tried to take her fleece off, too, but got tangled in it. She was laughing even more when she heard Griffin curse again, then felt his hands on her, setting her free.

  She went with it, falling against him when he pulled the fleece off and tossed it.

  Mariah could feel his perfectly sculpted chest beneath her hands, and if she leaned closer, she could crush her body against his.

  That was even better.

  “I’m already drunk,” she told him, tilting her head up because being this close to that gorgeous mouth made her head spin. More than it already was. “Drinking too much in that bar was step one. Everybody knows that step two is a drunken hookup. What’s that saying? The best way to get over a man is to get under another one?”

  And she watched, fascinated, as a storm chased itself across Griffin’s proud, beautiful face. Thunder, there and gone, until there was nothing but that burning flame that she knew—she just knew—was all for her.

  “I’m not a bottle of cheap tequila.” His voice was like frigid cold water, slapping her into a different sort of alertness. He’d placed both his hands on her arms, setting her back from him. Decisively. “You can’t tie me on, drink yourself under the table, and forget about it in the morning. I’m not a bad mistake you get to make.”

  And there was danger all around him. It wasn’t simply that leashed power she’d sensed in him from the start. This was different. This was more specific, more personal.

  This was a darkness she wanted to taste.

  “One-night stands are supposed to be fun.”

  “I don’t do one-night stands.” Griffin’s tone was as dark as he was. “I don’t do any of the things that would lead to one.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “I don’t drink. I don’t hang around in bars, picking up vulnerable women. And I certainly don’t take anyone home with me.”

  “I’ve never had a one-night stand,” Mariah confessed, like that might help. Like what he needed while he was seething at her was an argument. “I tried once. Everyone told me he wasn’t the kind of man who stuck around. And that part was true, but he ended up taking me with him when he left.”

  “I’m not a substitute for your husband.”

  “This I know. For one thing, you’ve already been much nicer to me than David ever was.”

  She had the confused sense that this admission startled him, though whatever she’d seen on his face was gone in an instant. And everything was so blurred around the edges. She could hear the sound of her own voice, carrying on as if of its own accord, but she didn’t have the slightest idea what she was saying.

  “Enough.”

  She certainly heard that. Griffin’s voice, cool and in total command. And hotter than anything had a right to be.

  Mariah stopped . . . whatever she was doing. She couldn’t really focus, but it was easy enough to let him lead her back to the bed and then slide herself onto it when he patted the mattress. She watched as if from a great distance when he bent in front of her to slide her boots off. One and then the next.

  “Lie down,” he told her brusquely.

  She did that, too, letting out a deep sigh when her head hit the pillows. Everything shifted again, sloshing around a bit and then settling hard, as if she’d been much heavier than she’d imagined all this time.

  Griffin moved away, and she forgot to watch him. Or her eyelids were too heavy to allow it. But he returned again, surprising her enough to open her eyes when he set down a glass of water next to the bed. He also set down two tablets.

  “Take those when you wake up in the middle of the night. And drink the entire glass of water. Then sleep as long as you can.”

  “Griffin.”

  He stared down at her, forbidding and imposing at the side of her bed, carved not from marble but her own secret fantasies. “What?”

  “Nothing. I just really like your name.”

  She was sure she actually heard him laugh, but her eyes were already drifting closed, and that was impossible anyway. Griffin Cisneros didn’t laugh. She didn’t think he could. He might break something.

  When he sighed again, she suspected she might have said that out loud.

  “I’m locking your door behind me. When you want to leave tomorrow, you can get your key from the front desk.”

  Mariah meant to reply to that. She really did. But she couldn’t get her mouth to obey.

  She had the vague impression of him standing there for another moment. She felt the quilt when he pulled it up over her from the foot of the bed. She was already half asleep when she heard the door close, and then the deadbolt as he locked it behind him as promised.

  And as sleep spun in to claim her, she didn’t fight it.

  Hours later, she woke up again in a sickening rush.

  Mariah panicked, because she had no idea where she was.

  She scrambled to sit up, confused when she realized she was still dressed in a T-shirt, jeans, even her socks. Her hair was down, hanging all around her like a wavy curtain, and her stomach lurched threateningly when she moved.

  At almost the same instant a terrible pounding in her temples set in.

  She looked around wildly until she saw the vague shape of her bag on the chair next to the bed. Then, on the bedside table, a glass of water, two red tablets, and the cell phone Griffin had taken from her in the café.

  It all came back at once. This was another hotel room. No different from any of the other hotel rooms she’d found her
self in over the last few days. She’d woken up like this—if less ill—every night, never knowing where she was. Or what was happening. Or why she was halfway into a panic attack, like her throat was closing up again.

  You’re in Grizzly Harbor, she told herself. In a bright blue inn set up in a pretty postcard of a nearly inaccessible Alaskan island town.

  Mariah lay her hand against her throat and breathed. Because she could. Because she was alive.

  She was in Alaska, not Atlanta, and she was still alive.

  Eventually, the flush of panic dimmed. She shoved the weight of her hair away from her face, not sure why she could feel every single strand like straight torture against her scalp. That was new. And unpleasant.

  Her mouth felt like a truck had backfired into it repeatedly, then run her over a few times for good measure. As her panic faded away she felt sicker, and half crawled, half pulled herself over to the side of her bed so she could pick up the tablets and wash them down.

  She could remember Griffin, standing there beside the bed with a hint of thunder on his face and his surprisingly kind hands, ordering her to drink the glass down. She followed his orders, but the more water she drank, the more she remembered.

  And for a ghastly moment she was afraid that she might actually throw up.

  It could have been what was left of all the alcohol careening around inside her. Or it could have been the thick heat of shame. She had the impression of her own voice, too bright and too loud, and her brain helpfully supplied images of her relatives’ drunken shenanigans all those years ago, in case she was in any doubt as to how she must have appeared.

  Sloppy and embarrassing. Trash straight through, as David had always hissed at her at parties.

  This was what you wanted, she reminded herself sternly. You climbed up on that trash can, set it on fire, and settled in for the night.

  There was no use crying over spilled tequila now.

  Even if she had made a pass at her freezing cold, completely unamused, brand-new bodyguard. Or whatever the hell he was to her.

  Mariah’s stomach lurched again at that unfortunate memory, but there was nothing to be done about it now. She squinted at the clock and saw that it was nearly three thirty in the morning. Everything felt worse at three thirty in the morning. It was an hour of shame and regret, and in all likelihood, things would seem a lot rosier in the daylight.

  She slipped from the bed, feeling the room spin around her unpleasantly as her feet hit the ground. Her stomach was iffy and her head kept pounding, but she hobbled into the bathroom anyway, thinking that her usual nightly routine might make her feel better.

  And maybe it was that, or maybe it was the tablets Griffin had left her. But by the time she crawled into bed again, this time without all her clothes on, it seemed possible she might actually live.

  Shame didn’t actually kill a person. It only felt like it would. She’d learned that lesson again and again in her years of never being good enough in her marriage. She supposed this was one more golden opportunity to learn that same lesson.

  She shut her eyes, congratulated herself on living through another evening, and tried to celebrate with some deep breaths.

  And that was when she heard it.

  A faint rattling noise. Soft at first, but insistent.

  Her eyes flew open and she stared up at the ceiling, holding her breath. Because if she wasn’t mistaken—and of course she was mistaken, she had to be mistaken—it sounded like there was someone at her door.

  She sat up in a rush, staring across the dark room. She heard the noise again, that faint rattle of metal against metal—a lot like a doorknob sounded when it was turned by an impatient hand.

  Mariah slid out of the bed again, wishing she hadn’t changed out of her jeans and socks, because she felt chilled straight through as she tiptoed across the floor.

  “You’re dreaming,” she whispered to herself. “You’ve had this same bad dream all week.”

  She reached down and pinched her thigh, viciously, until tears blurred her vision. And even in the dark, she could see a bruise begin to form. She stood as still as possible, one hand on the thigh she’d just abused, then held her breath and stared at the door.

  For a moment everything was silent. Relief flooded her, because she was clearly dreaming—

  But then she heard it. Again. And the tiny creaking sound of old floorboards bowing beneath somebody’s feet, right outside her door.

  The headache in her temples pounded to match her pulse. She was frozen into place, watching with sick, mute horror as her doorknob began to turn. All the way to the right, then the left. Then again.

  There was another faint, almost silent creak of the floorboards, and then the door moved inward.

  Only a tiny half inch, until the deadbolt caught it.

  Mariah found her hands in front of her, palms out, as if she intended to catch the door when it swung inward. As if she could fight whoever was coming for her.

  For a second, there was nothing. No sound. No movement.

  He’s listening, a voice said with utter certainty from deep inside her.

  But she was listening, too.

  Was that his breath she heard? That sharp intake, quickly exhaled? Or was that her?

  She couldn’t have said how long she stood there, unable to move and barely able to breathe, staring at her hotel room door until her eyes crossed. But eventually the door moved again, that same scant half inch. She heard the floorboard in the hall protest, such a soft sound that if she hadn’t been standing right there, if she’d been across the room in her bed, she wouldn’t have heard it at all.

  She waited. Was he still right there? Standing on the other side of the door? Waiting for her to reveal herself?

  Mariah counted to a hundred. Her skin was so cold, goose bumps shivered up and down her calves, her thighs, and all along her arms. But she didn’t move. No matter how much she wanted to.

  She counted to a hundred again.

  Only then, still holding her breath, her pulse like a maddening drum and shaking so hard it made her bones hurt, did she ease her way over to the spy hole in her door and look out.

  But there was no one there. And she didn’t dare open the door to look out into the hallway in case he’d done nothing more than step to the side and wait for her to do something that stupid.

  Just as slowly, just as carefully, she backed up. She kept going until she put the bed between her and the door. She pulled the quilt off her sleigh bed and wrapped it around her chilled body. Then sank down on the narrow strip of floor between the bed and her window with her cell phone clenched in her hand so she could call for help if necessary.

  When Mariah woke up the following morning, her mouth too dry, her head still much too thick, and still in a heap on the floor, she was safe and warm and in one piece.

  And she told herself it had been nothing but a bad dream.

  Eight

  Griffin started the following day the way he always did when he was home, with a five- or six-mile trail run to blow out all the cobwebs from sleep—and today from Mariah’s adventures in tequila, too. Which definitely hadn’t disrupted his sleep, because he’d wanted to do a blistering set of five hundred push-ups on his knuckles at three in the morning. The steeper and more dangerous the trail, the faster he ran. Then he made his way over to Isaac’s torture chamber of a gym in a cabin on the beach for the daily community sweat session at 0700, where all the Alaska Force members not away on active missions engaged in a nasty workout involving wall balls, burpees, and killer sprints along the tide line.

  “I hear your Georgia peach enjoyed herself at the Fairweather last night,” Templeton drawled, with that uproarious laugh that made all the insinuations his words hadn’t.

  “Keep it up,” Griffin suggested, his tone rivaling the glaciers out in the bay. “And I’ll use your face for target p
ractice.”

  Templeton tsked. “That hurts my feelings, brother.” His grin told a different story. Especially when it widened. “I’m much too pretty to shoot in the face.”

  Griffin responded the only way he could—with a burst of speed on the last, uphill sprint, leaving all his brothers in the dust.

  Though it didn’t get them to stop laughing.

  All except Isaac, who Griffin figured wasn’t abstaining because he was so much holier than the rest, but because he didn’t want to give Griffin the opportunity to comment on Isaac’s ongoing Caradine situation.

  “What’s going on with that idiot in Juneau?” Isaac asked Templeton as they all stood around getting their wind back and stretching out their ravaged hamstrings. “Still ramping up the threats?”

  Templeton shoved his hair back from his face. “Probably all talk.”

  “All talk, but all over some pretty questionable sites,” Blue countered. “Sites that generally lead to a whole lot of bad decision-making.”

  Griffin had taken part in the mission Templeton had led last fall that had liberated a handful of women and their children from the control of an unhinged doomsday preacher—though maybe that was redundant—out in the Alaskan bush who claimed the end was nigh. But the only end that had been nigh for him was Alaska Force, who had relieved him of his power and his unwilling followers in one fell swoop. Now the self-styled preacher was back, shooting off his mouth all over Juneau and, worse, in the darker corners of the internet. The kinds of places people gravitated toward when they wanted to see if their ominous mutterings could render a real-life body count.

  Not on Alaska Force’s watch.

  “Keep me apprised,” Isaac said with a frown at his watch, which signaled he needed to get back to the lodge. “I want to know five minutes before it stops being talk.”

  It was a solid vertical mile back from the beach to Griffin’s cabin, and he took it fast despite his body’s protests. He took a cold shower to test his resolve and settle himself, put in a call to the Blue Bear Inn to make sure Mariah was up and waiting for him, then took a boat into town again. With Jonas and Blue this time, because they were part of Mariah’s designated team. Everly came, too, since she wanted to go into town instead of working like she usually did in the cabin she shared with Blue.