by Megan Crane
“That’s really nice of you. Are you this nice to all of Alaska Force’s clients?”
Everly grinned. “Only the ones who go shot for shot with Caradine and walk away. Allegedly.”
Mariah felt her own smile thaw. “That’s fair.”
And after that she allowed herself to get swept along in this odd day that felt stolen. She should have died twice now, by her count. The fact that she was alive and kicking and tucked away in pretty Grizzly Harbor was a gift.
Mariah had spent so many years trying so hard to be more, better, different. It felt like some kind of liberation to simply . . . let herself be there. No more and no less. Nowhere to go and nothing to do.
Everly and Caradine bickered good-naturedly for a while longer, giving Mariah the impression that they did it all the time. Then Everly had set out into the village, so Mariah went with her, soaking it all in as Everly consulted with Blue via text, then decided to rouse up local interest in the self-defense class she wanted to put together. She made flyers, then posted them in the bathhouse and the general store, chatting with people she ran into along the way.
But Mariah didn’t have to charm anyone. She didn’t have to pretend that charming them was possible when she knew full well it wasn’t, the way she always had in Atlanta. Nothing was expected of her on these twisting streets, some muddy in the spring afternoon and others made of wood that creaked satisfyingly beneath her feet. All she had to do was act like Everly’s shadow, maybe throwing in an affirmative comment or two when pressed.
This is what a safe, comfortable life feels like, she told herself. And if she was a touch too wistful, no one had to know. This is what happy looks like.
And while Everly lived out a random happy day, Mariah could simply tag along as if she were on a holiday in the other woman’s life. She didn’t have to make decisions. She didn’t have to worry, either. There was no one to impress, no one to disappoint.
And besides, every time she looked up, she saw one of Griffin’s friends. Alaska Force in action, she assumed. Impressive muscles everywhere and a matching stern, uncompromising expression.
“That’s Rory, and he wants you to see him,” Everly told her when she caught Mariah staring up at the watchful, sculpted man on the next street, higher up the hill. He’d been tailing them all over the village without ever venturing close enough for Mariah to tell if he was actually as attractive as he appeared. A requirement to join Alaska Force, apparently. “He’s brand-new, but even if he wasn’t, if any of them were really tracking us, you’d never know it.”
When Everly ducked into the post office, open for the first time since Mariah had arrived, Mariah stayed out on the street. She wanted to stare at the harbor and the sea beyond. She wanted to gather it all inside her and hold it there. The sturdy green of the forest clinging to the hills, the mountains capped with snow above and wreathed in fog lower down. The rocky shore and the houses and shops that clung to it, stretching from the docks in a semicircle studded with bright colors against the gray. The moody afternoon that seemed about to clear at any moment but never did.
The only constant was the ocean in the distance, a symphony of blues with whitecapped waves, and the mountains keeping watch all around.
This. She leaned into the unfamiliar feeling that washed over her like another gust of salt-edged wind. This is what it’s like to feel content.
When her cell phone buzzed in her pocket, she almost didn’t recognize the sound. It seemed out of place here, as if she hadn’t only run across the country but had gone back in time, too.
She fished her phone out and frowned down at the screen.
David.
Mariah stared at the cell phone in her hand like it was suddenly a snake. A spider. Something repulsive that could bite—and would if she moved a single muscle.
She didn’t decline the call. She didn’t toss the phone aside. Or even shove it back into her pocket. She was as frozen in place as she’d been in her hotel room last night.
It kept buzzing.
This time she didn’t pinch herself.
And she felt out of time and place here, standing outside on a breezy, chilly afternoon, with mountains looming everywhere and the constant murmur of the sea in the background. Alaska didn’t feel real. She was so far away from everything she had ever known. She wouldn’t say she felt truly happy or content so much as adjacent to both, but she was reasonably sure that she was about as safe as it was possible to get, and that felt like a blessing. It felt new.
Seeing David’s name on her phone made her feel like Alaska was the dream and this phone call was waking her up, whether she wanted it or not.
Maybe you’re hung over, a caustic voice inside her suggested.
It was possible it was all of the above.
But she picked up the call.
“Hello, David,” she said, as calm and composed as always.
He’d taught her well.
“Where the hell are you?”
“I can’t imagine how that’s any of your business,” Mariah said. Pleasantly. Because the nastier David got, the more perfectly ladylike she became in response.
Mostly because it drove him crazy, she could admit.
“You haven’t been back to that stupid apartment in days,” David snarled at her. “Chandler Stanhope said you’d been to the emergency room. I’ve been looking for you, expecting to hear you’d been found dead in a ditch.”
No such luck, Mariah thought.
“Chandler Stanhope is a powerful attorney, as he likes to be the first to remind you, and he should know better than to talk to you about someone else’s medical issues when he’s supposed to be representing the hospital. There are laws.”
“It’s time to stop playing games, Mariah. This has gone on long enough and it’s starting to get embarrassing.”
“Then I can’t possibly be doing it right. Or surely the embarrassment would have set in some time ago.”
“Let me guess. Did you run back home?”
David’s voice took on that nasty tone that always, always boded ill. It was the tone he used when he made her sit, posture perfect, an impenetrable smile on her face, in a rigid-backed chair in his formal dining room. For hours.
It was the tone he used as he’d whispered those nasty things to her, breaking down all the ways she’d shamed him and all the ways she would never, ever be worth the time and effort he’d put into dragging her out of the backwoods.
It was the tone he used to cut her down to size, chop her into pieces, and remind her of her place.
And she wasn’t immune. Even here, a continent away from him, she froze. She stood straighter, automatically, and her free hand went to smooth down the waves in her hair, because the sight of her so unruly would send him into apoplexy.
It was a pleasure to remind herself that he couldn’t see her.
“I should have known,” David was saying in that ugly way of his, his drawl getting clipped right on cue. “You can pick up white trash and polish it, but it’s always going to be white trash, isn’t it?”
And Mariah’s body might have had an automatic, built-in response to him, but that didn’t mean she had to surrender to it. Or him.
Not anymore.
Alaska was real.
“Sometimes white trash comes in a big old mansion smack in the middle of Buckhead, David,” Mariah replied. Sweetly. “You never can tell.”
“You can’t hide from me forever.” And she could see the look she knew he had on his face then. Eyes bulging, teeth bared. “I’m going to find you. And when I do, you’re going to regret all of this, big time. People are talking. And you know how I feel about being the center of gossip around here.”
“I left you, David,” Mariah reminded him. “I understand that you’re used to getting your way. But not this time. You can threaten me in parking lots all you want—”
“That was no threat. That was a promise. You don’t get to run the show, Mariah. I picked you. I made you. If it weren’t for me, you’d be living in filth in that same crappy town, broke and desperate like every other member of your pathetic family.”
“David.” She said his name almost sorrowfully. “Don’t you understand? I’m not afraid of you anymore.”
She wasn’t sure that was true. Or it wouldn’t be true, anyway, if he’d been standing in front of her. But he wasn’t. He was thousands of miles away, and no matter what he said to her, he couldn’t touch her.
Mariah had felt similarly when she’d moved out of the house in Buckhead. She’d packed her two suitcases, that was all. That was the sum of her ten years under David’s thumb. Two modest suitcases. But she could carry them herself, and she had. She’d walked out, gotten in her car, and driven herself away.
Such a simple thing. The only difference from any other time she’d driven out of that driveway was that she’d known she wasn’t coming back.
And once she’d made the decision, she couldn’t believe that it had taken her so long.
She’d spent the first night in her apartment lying spread-eagled in a bed she didn’t have to share with a man who had never treated her gently, or kindly, or with any respect—a state of affairs she’d taken to heart and believed she’d deserved. She’d hardly slept, because she’d been sure the cheerful apartment, the bedroom all to herself, was a dream. She kept expecting David to break down the door and drag her back to Buckhead, by her hair if necessary.
He’d convinced her that she couldn’t live without him. Not because she didn’t want to or because she wasn’t capable, but because he would do something to prevent it.
But that first night had passed. Then the following day and the one after that.
A week. A month.
And Mariah had discovered that if she didn’t give David the power, it turned out he couldn’t do a blessed thing.
She stayed where she was now, staring out at the brooding Alaskan sea and the clouds while David grew more and more abusive in her ear.
Maybe she was perverse. But the nastier he got, the uglier the things he called her, the more at peace she felt.
And when a shadow fell over her, she looked up and was unsurprised to find Griffin standing there before her, a hard look on his objectively beautiful face. Very much as if he knew exactly who she was talking to and wanted to kill David himself.
It made her feel even more . . . settled. Peaceful. Safe, maybe.
She wished, with her whole heart, that she could excise the sound of her own drunken, besotted voice from her memories, but she couldn’t. And she was certain he hadn’t forgotten a single moment of what had gone on last night.
But really, it was the least of the things she had to find a way to live with.
Wordlessly, she took her cell phone away from her ear, hit the speaker button, and held it there between them. At that moment she realized that she trusted this man. She’d told him every last detail of her life with David, and if he judged her for it, he hadn’t shown it. He’d treated her with a grumpy sort of kindness when she’d been hopped up on tequila. More, she’d been sloppy drunk and he hadn’t taken advantage of her. He hadn’t used anything she’d said—or any propositions she pretended not to remember—as a weapon against her today. Griffin had seen her when she was anything but at her best, he’d listened to her story anyway, and he’d taken her concerns seriously. Even though she was fairly sure he didn’t like her that much.
Maybe that was a low bar.
But to Mariah, it was a whole new world.
David kept right on going. He was spiteful. Creative and mean. Ugly straight through, the way he always was when he hit his stride.
But what Mariah felt then had nothing to do with the names David called her. If she felt flushed, or uneven, it was because of the man who stood in front of her, listening to this same old, familiar song.
It was one thing to listen to David spew his usual insults at her. She was used to it. But it was raw and horrifying to watch Griffin listen to this same tired routine. To know that he was paying attention not only to what David was saying but to how used to it Mariah really was.
She might trust him, but she still felt ashamed. Deeply ashamed, as if she’d been marked all this time by the things David called her and she hadn’t realized that everyone else could see it. All over her.
“I want to sit down and talk to you,” David panted, because he’d worked himself up into such a state. The way he always did. “You can’t run from me forever. You owe me a conversation, at the very least.”
“Do I?” Mariah asked, and the funny thing was that he’d taught her how to sound bored and unmoved. But he’d never taught her what to do when she used the tools he’d given her while being watched so closely by a man whose eyes gleamed brown and gold and made her want things she didn’t know how to name. “You just spent a good chunk of time and what sounds like all your energy calling me every name in the book. Why would I want to sit down with you somewhere and hear more of it?”
“I understand that you think you have some power here,” David barked at her. “You seem to have forgotten how things work. You have two hours to get your butt back to the house. Two hours, Mariah.”
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll cut you off,” David snapped. “We’ll see how mouthy and independent you are when you’re not running around spending my money.”
And the line went dead. If she knew David—and she did—he’d likely hurled his phone across whatever room he was in.
Mariah clicked her screen off, then tucked her phone into her pocket again, aware of the great Alaskan silence all around her. The immensity of it.
And when she looked back, Griffin only stared down at her, his lips set in a firm line.
“You don’t seem particularly worried.”
“He always threatens to cut me off,” Mariah said coolly. “It’s one of his favorite party tricks, as a matter of fact. One time he didn’t like the color of my shoes. Another time I didn’t hear him calling my name from across the house. And, of course, he didn’t always need a reason.”
“Is this your version of being upset?”
Mariah waved a hand. “The women David knows would faint if their weekly allowance was taken away from them. But I know how to make a dollar last, believe me. I’ve had to choose between a tank of gas to get to work and food to eat, more than once. And after the first time David cut me off, then made me jump through hoops to get back the allowance I hadn’t spent in the first place, I decided to treat it the way my great-grandmother did when she ushered her entire extended family through the Great Depression. I set it aside.”
“You set it aside,” Griffin repeated, as if he didn’t understand when she was certain he did. Because very little escaped this man’s understanding.
“One of my chores was to create an itemized list of everything I spent my weekly allowance on so David could tell me how useless and wrong I was, which, as you’ve now heard in grand and glorious detail, is one of his favorite topics. After church on Sundays he liked to sit me down and spend a few hours discussing the error of my ways.”
She could tell from the way Griffin’s face froze that he didn’t much like the sound of that. And it was clear to her why she’d never told anyone else the real, hard truth about her marriage.
“I made lists of spa treatments,” she told him, carrying on in the same, almost offhanded tone, because that made it almost easy. Almost funny, surely. “Hair appointments. Lots and lots of shopping. Sometimes I even did those things, but mostly, I took the amount from the account he set up for me and hid it away in mine. The one he doesn’t know about.” She smiled. “In case you were worried about how I plan to pay for your services.”
“I wasn’t.” He studied her face. “You looked spooked
when you first saw his name. Then you got less and less scared as the call went on. Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said, startled. How had he known what she looked like when she’d taken the call? Then she remembered what Everly had told her earlier, and laughed to cover the odd thrill of heat that worked through her at the idea that Griffin had been out there watching her. “I mean, I think David is under the impression I’m in Atlanta.”
Griffin nodded slowly. “That’s what it sounded like to me.”
“So I really must have been imagining that there was someone at my door last night.” Mariah shook her head, still seeing that doorknob turn in her head. Still feeling the ache in her thigh from the pinch she’d delivered to wake herself up. “That will teach me to drink so much tequila. By which I mean any.”
“How good of an actor is your husband?” Griffin asked.
“An actor? He’s not an actor. Of course he can put on a good show when he goes out in public. But I wouldn’t call that acting, really . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Why?”
“Because the lock on your door was tampered with,” Griffin told her matter of factly. Something pitiless in his dark gaze. “The deadbolt kept them out, but the lock is scratched. A lot like someone spent some time attempting to jimmy it.”
“Oh. Well.” Mariah had no idea what to say next.
And the look on Griffin’s face was stern and maybe a bit ruthless, which should have made it worse. But instead, it made her feel safer than she had a moment before.
“So here’s the question I have to ask you,” Griffin said, as the wind picked up and a cloud rolled over the sun. Mariah told herself that was why she shivered. The sudden gloom, not the implacable intelligence in Griffin’s gaze. And certainly not the shuddery way her body reacted to him. “If your ex doesn’t know where you are, and he’s not putting on an act, we have to ask ourselves: Who else hates you enough to want you dead?”
Ten
A week passed.