by Megan Crane
It was even worth it when he lifted that moist hand off her face, then hit her.
A sharp pain and a dull, deep ache exploded in her cheek at once. She tasted copper. Her head rocked back, and she might have tipped straight out of her chair if she hadn’t been holding on to it, pretending to be tied down.
When she turned her head back around to face him, there was blood in her mouth and her face felt swollen. She was pretty sure there were tears on her cheeks.
But she smiled anyway.
She’d thought a slap was supposed to sting, but then again, what Walton had done was wind up and clobber her. So maybe it wasn’t surprising that she felt less slapped and more as if he’d tried to cave in her cheekbone.
When her swollen cheek started to feel numb, she decided that was another gift.
“This could have been easy,” Walton told her, all red nose and nothing even remotely kind in those deep-set eyes. “All you had to do was be nice to me. I wouldn’t have hurt you much at all. But now look what you’ve gone and done.”
Mariah went with her gut instinct then, suicidal though it might have been, and laughed at him.
She laughed until he hit her again, harder this time, then she pulled herself woozily back around to stare at him. And laughed some more.
“I want to make sure you live with this one thought, Walton,” she said, and her voice sounded fuzzy. Or maybe it was that her tongue kept snagging on her teeth when he hit her, so it was puffy, too. “You might get a piece of this ass. But you’ll have to take it. And the only way you dared try this was by hiring your own personal army, kidnapping me from an island in Alaska, and tying me down to a chair. That’s the kind of man you are. For the rest of your life, when you look in a mirror, you’ll always know that this gold-digging, no-account, backwoods, trailer trash piece of ass was that much better than you.”
Walton’s face was red again, fleshy and dangerous. But she smiled once more—and maybe this was what bravery was. Doing the thing, saying the thing, because it had to be done and it had to be said, and it didn’t matter at all that inside, she was curled up tight and hiding. What mattered was that Walton couldn’t see it.
What mattered was that she didn’t want to show him how scared she was, so she didn’t.
This time when he reached over, he put his hand around her throat and squeezed.
“You’re going to pay for that,” he said without any particular inflection, the way he used to ask her to pass the salt.
He’d hit her twice on the same side of her face. Her eye felt weird and swollen, as if maybe she had her first black eye. But she forced herself to hold that awful gaze of his, no matter what.
She didn’t want this man to touch her. But if he was dead set on taking his piece, at least that meant she would stay alive that much longer.
Because as far as she was concerned, there was no fate worse than death.
Mariah wanted to live.
She still wanted to live.
Walton squeezed, and she knew she had to get her hands up. She had to duck her head to get some air, fight him off, and try to save herself in the maybe six seconds—if she was lucky—before she was unconscious.
She’d hidden the fact that she knew a couple of moves from her abductor, who was standing over by the barn door, watching the interplay between Walton and her like it was a deeply boring television program. She did a lightning-fast calculation. Griffin had told her she would need to run, so she needed to stay conscious no matter what.
Even if she showed her hand.
Or better yet, her elbow.
She moved her head, dipping her chin to see if she could create some space by pressing her chin into the top of Walton’s fingers where he gripped her. She tugged her hands out of the duct tape first, then brought them up to yank down on the hand at her throat, creating just enough room to get a breath in.
At the same time, she shot to her feet, slamming down on Walton’s wrist with one hand to jerk him toward her, so she could use her other arm to elbow him.
Directly in his fleshy, red face.
It hurt.
That was her first thought. In the next second, she understood that the crunching sound she’d heard was probably his nose. She shoved him back from her, paying no attention to the high-pitched, enraged sounds he made as he fell to the ground with a thud and then writhed there.
Like some kind of insane pig.
“You stupid, stupid bitch,” her abductor said quietly.
Mariah pushed away from the chair, kicking it back from her, and then took a few steps away from Walton in case he decided to grab for her.
“I told you I was going to hurt you,” her abductor said softly. With great relish. “I’m going to break every bone in your arms and legs. Then I’m going to watch him fuck you till you bleed. Then I’ll take a turn, and believe me, bitch, you’ll beg for him to come back and give you some more when you see how I do it.”
She refused to dwell on any of the vile, disgusting things he’d said, because they might actually kill her where she stood.
This was about staying alive. By any means necessary.
Be a weed, not a flower, she ordered herself.
“That sounds great,” she drawled. “I don’t know where you’re from, but this is Georgia. Out here in the country, we take ugly words like that as an invitation. To end you. Is that what you’re looking for?”
“Until you bleed,” her abductor said again, with a kind of fervent delight that Mariah suspected might give her nightmares after she survived this.
But nightmares were a small price to pay for survival. She believed that with every part of her. Every currently intact part of her.
He took a step toward her. Mariah took a step back.
We do what we have to so we can go home, Blue had told them.
She remembered Griffin’s face when she’d told him she loved him. The way his fingers had traced over the bruise on her cheek. The way he’d kissed her in an empty inn above a lonely harbor, then taken her to bed.
And after all this time, and all those years in Atlanta, she hadn’t truly found her home until she’d taken a ferry across the moody Alaskan sea and stepped off into Grizzly Harbor.
Mariah knew that whatever happened here, she would, by God, be going home one day.
And it was as if someone heard her.
Because something outside the barn exploded.
It sent the man before her diving for cover. It blew Mariah back a few feet. She slammed into the stall behind her, but at least she stayed upright. Her head ringing, her body battered and strange, but upright.
And this was it.
Walton was on the floor, and her abductor had thrown himself into one of the old stalls for cover. There was a clear line to the barn door.
She trusted Griffin. And God help her, but she loved him.
And she wanted to stay alive long enough to celebrate both of those things.
Mariah ran.
Eighteen
Griffin was the tree beneath him, the rifle in his hands, the scope at his eye.
He was the slow, steady beat of his heart. He was his own deliberate breath.
He watched. He waited.
Blue and Jonas moved in, sneaking up on the two men outside the barn and taking them down, hard and silent. Then they dragged them around the side of the building, out of sight, while Isaac went for the Mercedes and worked to lay down the charge.
Griffin waited.
Blue headed out for the woods to find Mariah’s mother, while Jonas lured out two more men and took each one down with a certain swiftness that Griffin would remember later, as a clue to the kinds of things he’d done in the service.
Isaac gave the signal, setting the charge and then breaking into a run so he could join Jonas around the side of the barn for cover.
&n
bsp; And still, Griffin stayed where he was.
He allowed sensation to wash over him without giving into it. He felt the faint ache in his muscles that reminded him of the jump he’d made to the barn’s roof. He felt a vague itchy sensation on one forearm, then his cheek, but he knew that was nothing more than his nerves resisting the settling. The focus. He observed each new sensation, then let it go.
He maintained his position as Isaac counted down over their comm channel.
“Three. Two. One.”
The Mercedes went up in flames with a satisfyingly loud boom.
And Griffin still waited.
The world narrowed down to that barn door and the flames dancing in front of it.
Run, he ordered her silently. Run, Mariah. Now.
One breath. Another.
And then Mariah was streaking out from the barn door, pumping her arms as if she were trying to make her legs less wobbly. But the more she ran, the steadier she got.
She didn’t look back, she simply kept her head down and hauled butt. She shot straight out of the barn like she was headed for the other end of the field. For him.
He hadn’t told her where to go, only to run. And he understood how much she trusted him then.
Maybe even loved him the way she’d said she did.
Because right behind her came a big, burly individual, charging like a pissed-off bull. Griffin recognized him instantly as the one they’d seen on the security tapes from the ferry terminal back in Alaska. The one who’d snuck onto the island and stayed there, hidden right under their noses. The one who likely would have taken Mariah a whole lot sooner if she’d ever been alone.
The moment he’d had the opportunity—the moment Griffin had given him that opportunity—this man had taken Mariah from Grizzly Harbor. Put his hands on her and scared her. Locked her in a trunk.
Then brought her here for a whole lot worse.
Griffin felt a whole lot more than mere sensation, then. He felt like he’d exploded right along with the Mercedes, every part of him going up in flames and burning down to ash—
But he didn’t move.
He waited.
Time flattened out. Stretched.
Mariah had a significant head start, but the man behind her was bigger, fitter, and a whole lot taller. It meant his strides were longer. He gained ground quicker.
And there was no discounting the effects of testosterone and rage, both of which were written all over this animal’s snarling face.
Still Griffin waited, because he wanted this gorilla to do exactly what he did next. Reach out his hands, think he had her, shout something Griffin didn’t have to hear to know he wouldn’t appreciate—
The man lunged.
And Griffin took him out.
One perfect shot, crisp and clean.
A split-second later, Mariah stumbled, and he knew she’d heard it.
But she still didn’t look behind her.
She kept right on going, righting herself from her near stumble and running faster—as if she didn’t know or care that there was no longer anyone chasing after her.
Or, possibly, as if she planned to follow the last order he’d given her until he gave her a new one.
Griffin waited until Isaac and Jonas moved into the barn, ready and more than capable of handling any remaining threats. Only then did he abandon his post. It took him seconds to disassemble his rifle, pack it away, and sling it back into place over his shoulder.
He swung himself down from the tree, hitting the ground in an easy crouch.
And when he stepped into the field, Mariah was still running. Straight toward him.
She didn’t stop when she saw him. She was panting, loud and ragged, and he wasn’t sure if she was breathing or crying. Or maybe both.
Then he didn’t care, because in the next second she was hurtling herself forward and into his arms.
Griffin didn’t know why he felt so ragged, so undone, as if he’d been the untrained person running for his life across a wide field.
All he knew was that when he ducked his head to bury it in her hair, the sweet scent of her made that ache in his chest better and worse at the same time. Better and worse, and then more of each, until it was very nearly unbearable—but he didn’t let go of her.
She wrapped her arms tight around him and kept making that same sobbing noise against his chest, and Griffin felt his head spin, as if she were the one holding him up instead of the other way around. He couldn’t seem to tell the difference.
“It’s over,” he told her, and he didn’t recognize his own voice.
Or his own hands when he looked down to see them shaking.
When Griffin was a man who never, ever shook.
Across the field, Isaac was escorting a man with blood all over his face out of the barn. Jonas was briefly visible through a hole in the second-floor wall, moving around the loft, sweeping the building for any surprises. Blue came around the side, Mariah’s mother hobbling beside him and leaning heavily on his arm. Isaac met him and helped Rose Ellen find a seat where she could elevate her leg. Then the two of them escorted the men they’d rounded up—at gunpoint and with their hands zip-tied behind them—out to where the remains of the Mercedes smoldered.
No one bothered with the man left in the field. That was a law enforcement problem.
And no one appeared to look over to where Griffin stood with Mariah still in his arms, but he knew they’d all seen him. The fact that he’d have to answer for that nipped at him—but he didn’t have it in him to care the way he knew he would eventually.
And he still didn’t let her go.
“It’s over,” he told her again.
Mariah tipped her head up then, and he tensed at the sight of her. One whole side of her face was puffed up and bruised. Her eye was almost entirely swollen shut. And he didn’t need her to tell him that someone had hit her. More than once. It made him want to start shooting all over again.
“Griffin,” she whispered, as if his name was one of those long, pretty prayers his grandmother used to murmur. “I didn’t want to die.”
“Good.” He didn’t sound the least bit pretty. He sounded wrecked. Ruined. “You deserve to live a long and happy life. Away from all of this.”
She reached up and fit her palm to his jaw. Her blue eyes were wet, darker than they should have been, but glimmering.
“I love you,” she said again.
This time it felt even more like a blow. And that ache swelled until it took over his chest like some kind of impossible pneumonia, and he was surprised he didn’t keel over where he stood.
It was ridiculous, he told himself. It was the usual transference that happened in situations like this. Completely understandable and not at all true.
And it didn’t matter anyway, because he didn’t do love.
But when he opened his mouth to tell her that, to let her down gently because she was still hopped up on adrenaline and fear and it was his fault she’d ended up in this field in the first place, he set his mouth to hers instead.
And he didn’t like need, but he understood it. He was suspicious of passion, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t drown in it when he chose. He had.
But he had no place to put this.
It was a sweet, easy kiss, and it broke him in two. The world split into before this kiss and after it, and he was too broken to figure out what it meant.
Griffin pulled away and rested his forehead against hers.
“I love you,” Mariah whispered. “I love you, I love you, I love you . . .”
He thought she might keep saying it forever, and he knew he needed to shut this down. Fast. He needed to cut her off, right here and right now—
But he didn’t do it.
It was like her words were sunshine and he’d been lost in the dark for far too lo
ng, and God help him, but he wanted to bask in her.
Just for a little while longer.
But there was no time—there had never been any time—and, anyway, he wasn’t that man. And when Isaac let out a piercing whistle to call them all back in, it was Mariah who pulled away. She wiped her hands over her face, wincing. Then frowned as she turned toward the barn.
“Mama . . .” she whispered.
She went to take a step, then staggered when her knees failed to hold her, her blue eyes fixing to his in surprise.
He caught her before her legs could give way. Without questioning it, he swept her up into his arms, letting her legs dangle, and started across the field.
Because if he was already ruined, he might as well make sure it went all the way down.
“I almost fell on my face,” she told him, and then her wondering tone gave way as her teeth started to chatter.
“It’s the adrenaline. Your body doesn’t know what to do with it. It will pass.”
“Why aren’t you falling over, then?”
“I’m used to it.”
She looped her arm around his neck and rested her head against his shoulder, and he wasn’t prepared for the wave of feelings that cascaded through him. He felt protective. He felt needy and wild for her, but he didn’t know if it was because he wanted her naked, or he simply wanted to tuck her up in a bed and watch her sleep, safe and sound. He felt on edge and he felt soothed, all at the same time. He felt, damn it.
He felt.
He was the one who had made that shot, but it was as if the bullet had slammed into his chest, cracking him wide open.
He had tried to keep Mariah at arm’s length. And he had failed at that, spectacularly. Again and again in that bed of hers in Blue Bear Inn.
And then she was gone.
Griffin hadn’t known if he’d ever see her again.
And now she was snuggling up against him, surrendering herself into his arms as if she hadn’t been assaulted and kidnapped, then treated hideously by a whole bunch of other men. Bruised and battered. Forced to act like bait, take a few hits, then run for her life.
