by Megan Crane
And she couldn’t lift a hand to soothe herself the way she wanted.
“She’s fine,” the man said. “Or she’s dead. Which do you want it to be?”
That didn’t help. Mariah swallowed, hard.
“You should worry more about yourself, girly,” one of the new men said, and the way he stared at her made her breath stutter to a stop in her chest.
But when she dropped her head as if she were overcome—mostly because she was—all that attention eventually drifted away from her.
Mariah braced for the next slap. For an actual punch. For some of the dread and threat that seemed to be weighing down her bones where she sat to burst, one way or another.
But nothing happened.
She watched the shadows move across the barn, tracking the way the sun fell through the wide-open door. She thought time was passing, though she couldn’t tell for sure. They’d gotten off the plane sometime before eight. The last time she’d looked at the clock on her phone in that stifling trunk, it had been closer to noon.
The longer she waited with nothing awful happening, the easier it was to breathe. It wasn’t that she stopped being afraid, but she was slowly able to make herself focus. She listened to the muttered conversation the man who had brought her here had on his phone, but she couldn’t quite make out the words.
One of the other men carried the most enormous gun Mariah had ever seen in real life, and she’d grown up out in these woods, surrounded by hunters and gun enthusiasts of all shapes and sizes. The gun was worrying enough, but the tweaked-out way the man holding it was walking back and forth was truly disturbing.
Mariah knew a meth user when she saw one.
The third man in the barn, the one who’d shoved her, tied her up, and called her girly, was sitting down. He stared at her. A lot.
And unless she’d panic-hallucinated the whole thing, there were more men outside.
But still they waited.
Mariah kept her head tilted down for a while, then tilted it up for a change of pace.
“What are you looking at?” the staring man asked, a touch of Alabama in his voice and straight evil in his gaze. He followed her line of sight to the ceiling. “If you listen real good, I bet you can hear your mama sniffling up there. She’s a feisty one. I’m wondering if it runs in the family.”
Mariah had to bite down on her tongue to keep from screaming. For her mother, to her mother, or just to scream.
But whatever expression she wore on her face must have satisfied the man, because he let out a creepy giggle, and then resumed that dead-eyed stare.
Like he was already dead. Or she was.
And this time, when Mariah studied the battered old ceiling above her, she could have sworn she saw a shadow move, almost as if Rose Ellen was up there wandering around.
If she was, God help these men.
Mama was the one who had taught Mariah how to shoot when she was seven.
More time dragged past. Mariah had to go to the bathroom, but she refused to ask. She didn’t want to introduce the idea of pulling down her pants.
And she didn’t understand how she could be bored and terrified at the same time, but this was a long day of unpleasant firsts.
She didn’t want to call attention to herself—or no more attention than she was already gathering simply by being the guest of honor, tied up in the middle of the room. She sang herself songs inside her head. She recited every prayer she knew, and came up with quite a few new ones.
The shadows lengthened. She could see a difference in the way the sun hit the field outside and the way it moved through the big trees on the far side.
“It’s time,” growled the man who’d brought her here.
Mariah shifted instantly from a sleepy sort of daze—with nothing to do but contemplate shadows and recite song lyrics in her head—to total alertness. She braced herself again, as if that could help her if they decided it was time to really start hurting her.
The staring man giggled, then rolled himself up into a squat, so close she could smell him. Old fish and motor oil. She didn’t know how she kept from wrinkling her nose in disgust.
“Soon, girly,” he crooned.
She fought off the shudder she felt deep in her gut, like everything inside her was on a roller coaster and there was no getting off.
“You can scream your head off,” her original abductor told her, flashing her an impatient sort of look that didn’t take away from the flatness of his gaze. Nothing did. “No one will hear you. No one will come. And the only thing you’ll manage to do is piss us off. So go right ahead.”
And then the men walked out, pulling the barn door shut behind them.
Leaving Mariah in the gloom.
She fought to think, though she wasn’t sure that in her present condition she would be able to tell if she was being the least bit rational or not . . . but she didn’t have to be rational to work to free her hands. Twisting and turning her wrists this way and that, she tried her hardest to loosen the grasp of the duct tape. She wanted to call out to her mother in the hopes that she could hear, that she wasn’t unconscious or worse, but Mariah didn’t know where the men had gone or when they might be coming back.
Was this a test? Were they standing right there on the other side of the door, waiting for her to make a noise so they had an excuse to start . . . doing things to her?
Her breath was a shuddery thing over her lips. She was working up a sweat and no doubt tearing open her wrists as she fought to loosen the duct tape, but she didn’t stop. She couldn’t stop.
If she could get it to go slack, even the slightest bit, surely she could pull her wrists through—
“Mariah.”
She jerked. Then blinked.
She must have died.
Her heart was so painful in her chest that she assumed that was the explanation.
She must have simply . . . up and keeled over, right here in this chair.
That was the only reason she could think of to explain how Griffin Cisneros was standing in front of her, scowling down at her, as if this were any old afternoon in Grizzly Harbor and he’d appeared to walk her from Blue’s class to her room at the inn.
“You’re hurt.”
She had seen him cold. Grim, even. Rough and still and sometimes mean.
But Mariah had never seen anything like the darkness that moved over Griffin’s face then. He reached out and brushed his fingers over her cheek, and that felt real. Too real. She’d forgotten that she’d fallen until he touched her there, and it was unfair that she could feel a bruise coming in when she was already dead.
Not to mention the sweetness of his hand on her.
“I’m fine,” she said. “My mother . . . ?”
She couldn’t bear to finish the question. But he nodded as if she had.
“She’s upstairs. And as far as I can tell, she’s also fine.”
And he crouched down in front of her, his expression fierce and focused entirely on her. It occurred to Mariah that the last time she’d seen him, he had been in her bed.
She could feel the warmth of the backs of his fingers against her cheekbone. That drugging, comforting warmth of his skin. She felt entirely too warm herself, suddenly.
And it dawned on her that she might not have died after all.
“I knew you would come,” she whispered. “I knew it.”
If he had been another man, she would have called what washed over him then pure anguish. But this was Griffin. And the emotion was gone again so fast she almost thought she’d imagined it.
He looked stern. “We both know how this happened. It was my blunder. But I promise you, I’ll make up for it.”
“I love you,” Mariah said.
She felt delirious, only worse. She’d been sure she was dead two seconds ago. The likelihood was still that she
would be dead a few moments from now. There were men with semiautomatic weapons roaming around, and every one of them had looked at her as if they couldn’t wait for the opportunity to tear her apart with their own hands. She had been awake and more or less alert—and scared—for at least twenty-four hours.
There was almost no possibility that she was in her right mind. Mariah accepted that.
And still, the minute she said those words, she knew they were true. She loved him.
She said it again, just to be sure.
Griffin dropped his fingers from her face. But he didn’t rise from where he was crouched down before her, looking dark and furious and emanating all that leashed brutality. He rested his elbows on his powerful thighs and regarded her sternly.
She might have said he had no expression on his face, but she had made a study of him. She could see that what burned in his eyes when he looked at her wasn’t impassive at all.
“That’s the abduction talking.”
“It’s really not.”
“I’m still in love with every man who ever delivered me safely from a war zone,” he told her, his voice clipped—but his eyes gleaming. “It goes with the territory.”
“Did you have sex with all those men?” When he scowled at her, Mariah smiled. She didn’t realize until that moment that she hadn’t expected she would ever get the chance to smile again. It made it that much sweeter. Or bittersweet, maybe. “Because I’m betting that sex changes the equation. I’m pretty good at math. You should trust me on this.”
“We don’t have time for this.” His hands moved to test the duct tape at her wrists. Her calves. “As far as I can tell, our friends have headed out there to have a discussion about payment with whoever just drove up in that Mercedes with tinted windows. But sooner or later they’re going to come back in. We need to be gone by then.”
“Get my mother out first.”
Griffin’s hands were already working, pulling apart the duct tape that held her to the chair, and then inspecting the damage she’d done to her wrists when she pulled free. But Mariah hardly noticed a few more abrasions.
“You have to get my mother out,” she said again, fiercely. “It’s my fault she’s here in the first place.”
“It’s not your fault I went out to greet a stranger on my land without a rifle in my hand,” a familiar voice said.
So familiar that Mariah’s whole body jerked in recognition almost before she’d processed it herself. She twisted in her chair, only dimly aware that Griffin was muttering curses in a language she didn’t understand. She felt tugging at her calves as he handled the duct tape there, too, but she was already standing, then stumbling across the barn floor.
Her legs felt useless, thick and sound asleep, as if she’d never learned how to walk. But that didn’t stop her from tilting herself toward the woman who stood there at the bottom of the ladder Mariah hadn’t seen behind her.
She fell into her mother’s arms like she was starved for it. Like she was a child again, with a skinned knee that only her mama could cure.
And just like when Mariah was a child, Rose Ellen held her tight, rocked her, then set her back on her heels.
“No time for that now,” Mama said in her matter-of-fact way, though her eyes were suspiciously bright. “I don’t intend to spend one more minute in this barn than I have to.”
Griffin was standing by the chair, his head angled slightly to one side, a faraway look in his dark eyes. When he focused on them again, Mariah realized that he’d been listening to voices in his ear.
“Let’s go,” he said, all business now.
It made her love him all the more.
He started toward the back of the barn and a dark corner where a big chunk of the wall was kicked in. Leaving a big old hole in the side.
Escape, an urgent voice whispered in Mariah.
She’d started following Griffin automatically, but something had her twisting around to look behind her.
Where her mother was following her, or trying to, but was moving much too slowly.
Because she was limping. Badly.
Mariah opened her mouth to get Griffin’s attention, but he was already brushing past her and heading toward her mother.
“You told me you weren’t hurt,” he said in a low voice, with an undercurrent that might have been temper if he’d been a different kind of man. One less capable and lethal.
“Didn’t know I was until I tried to walk.” Mama shrugged. “The skinny blond one has steel-toed boots. I don’t regret kicking him, mind, but it hurt like hell when he kicked me back. Now I know why.”
Mariah watched, filled with a mute dread, as Griffin dropped down in front of Rose Ellen, then smoothed his hands down her leg. He tugged the leg of her jeans up to look beneath. Mariah couldn’t see past his broad shoulders and back. But she knew when she heard a tiny hiss of indrawn breath that it wasn’t good.
“I don’t think the bone is shattered,” Griffin said after a moment. Gruffly. “But I don’t think you can run anywhere on this.”
Mama was looking straight at Mariah as he spoke. Mariah watched the way her chin lifted. She saw the familiar light of battle gleaming in her mother’s eyes.
“I’ll run if I have to,” Mama said, like it was a prophecy she had every intention of fulfilling.
Mariah knew she meant it. And that she’d do it, even if she injured herself more in the process. That was what being a McKenna was all about.
But Griffin was talking. And not to them.
He relayed the injury into his earpiece, then waited, his gaze shrewd and intense as he looked from the opening in the wall in the back of the barn, then toward the chair and the front again.
He did that a few times, and then he stiffened, his expression going sharp.
“ETA?” he barked.
And Mariah didn’t need him to translate what ETA meant while he scowled at the door all those men had gone through.
They were coming back. With reinforcements from the Mercedes, if Mariah had to guess.
They’d been waiting for hours. Mariah didn’t want to stick around to see what was in store for her now that the waiting was done.
She wanted to throw herself out of that hole in the wall and run for it, more than she’d ever wanted anything else in her life. She could taste it.
But Mama couldn’t run.
Mariah was closest to the opening in the wall, and she could see out of it. The barn sat in the middle of a field that stretched off toward the woods. But the woods weren’t right there on the other side of the barn wall. The tree line—and safety—had to be a good two hundred yards away.
And she had always been such a coward. Hadn’t she proved it time and again?
This, here, was her chance to be brave.
She was going to take it.
“Mama can’t run,” Mariah said, a kind of peace coming over her as she spoke. A lot like when she’d told him she loved him. “You’re going to have to carry her.”
“We need to move,” Griffin said, rising to his feet with a smoothness that made her breath hitch. “We just ran out of time.”
“You need to carry her,” Mariah said more calmly. “And if you’re carrying her, I have to think that’s going to slow even you down. What’s going to happen when they walk in here and I’m not sitting there in that chair?”
“Over my dead body,” Griffin seethed at her, like he knew where she was going with this.
“They’re going to chase you. Us. It’s not like any of your friends are going to start shooting if they might hit us. But these men will. And they’ll enjoy it, trust me.”
“I said no.”
She smiled at him, this beautiful man who was looking at her like he wanted to sling her over his shoulder and end the conversation that way. He probably would have if he hadn’t had to carry her mother,
too.
“I can occupy them, Griffin. You’ll have plenty of time to get Mama out of the line of fire.”
She saw his jaw work. She saw his dark eyes burn. And she told herself she would hold on to that, whatever happened next.
“Mariah.”
It was a whisper. A surrender from this man who never, ever gave in. And she knew what it cost him.
“I’m a princess,” she reminded him, and it was funny how her voice thickened. How it scratched. “I do what I want, remember?”
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 think brave was 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.
