left her chest in a whoosh of air as he straddled her with thick thighs and his eyes bore a hole in her face.
But his anger didn’t matter. None of that mattered. What mattered was what she had just discovered.
Jesus Christ, how could this be?
“ Who are you? ” He ground out the demand.
“I—”
“Cormac!” the pretty blonde—Marty—shouted, yanking at his shoulder. “You’re hurting her! Get off!”
Who was this woman and why did she care if he was hurting her? Did they know each other? As she’d tracked Cormac tracking them, that wasn’t the impression she’d had at all.
His head swiveled upward, his eyes blazing hot. “For that matter, who the hell are you two?”
“Three!” the gorgeous brunette, Nina—wrapped up like she was planning a move to Antarctica—wheezed out as she stumbled down the hill, stopping short next to Marty and placing her hands on her knees in order to catch her breath. “Holy shitballs, it’s Lumberjack Bob.”
“Who are you people and what the hell do you want with me?” Cormac looked back down at Teddy, his eyes glowing with suspicion and rage. “Are you with them, too?”
Teddy only managed to shake her head, still in utter disbelief. This was wrong. Everything was all wrong!
Wanda, the one who’d managed to keep the other two from ripping each other’s throats out, gripped Cormac’s shoulder, huffed out a breath, and gave him a good hard shove, sending him tumbling off Teddy and into the snow with his grunt lingering in the air.
“Marty said get off! Now, do not move a muscle until we’re able to explain ourselves,” she ordered from tight lips with a wave of her finger, her chest puffing up and down. “Or so help me, I’ll take you out myself! I’ve had enough of everyone ignoring my wishes. Now hear this! I’ve had it up to my cerebellum with playing peacemaker for four days since we began this journey. You, Cormac Vitali, have the unfortunate circumstance of being my last damn straw. And don’t doubt for a single second I can’t take out a big, burly boy like you either. I’ll knock you clear to Kentucky. So you march your muscled ass on up that hill to your cabin, you do it without complaint, and you do it now , or so help me, as Charles Manson is my witness, I’ll kill you all! Goooo !”
Teddy’s eyes followed the direction of Wanda’s finger. This woman, whoever she was, had clearly had enough.
That was when she jabbed her finger down at Teddy, her eyes narrowed, her nostrils flaring. “That means you, too! I don’t know who you are or what you want, but we’re going to find out. And I’ll take the dart gun, Annie Oakley, thank you very much!” She reached for the backpack and threw it over her shoulder.
Teddy began to protest, but Wanda clamped her fingers together right under her nose. “I said not a word . Not a single word, or you’ll be the first on my list of things to kill while in Colorado. Got it? Get up and wallllk, goddamn it!”
Teddy only briefly looked into Wanda’s pretty blue eyes, acknowledging she had an air of authority that couldn’t be denied, before she crab-walked on her hands to back away from her. Rather than thicken the pot with confrontation, she hopped to her feet and began walking.
Marty followed Teddy closely while Nina, who looked absolutely frozen, fell in behind them.
There was nothing but silence as they made their way to the top of the hill and Cormac’s cabin came into view.
The entire time, Teddy attempted to construct a story in her head to explain why she was in the middle of nowhere, hauling Cormac away like she was some sort of female variation on a Neanderthal—because Wanda would want a story. Oh yes, she would. She didn’t look like the kind of woman who would put up with any shit.
When Teddy finally caught sight of Cormac’s cabin, she wondered how he’d found this place. She’d never, in all her tracking, encountered this section of the forest, and she knew the forest