That had gone south fast. And she sure as shit did have secrets. Still, the hell she was laying all her cards on the table before she knew if these women were bad guys, too.
“So the pajama party is off?” she joked, knowing full well it would get under Nina’s skin.
“Yep. And so is braiding your hair and doing your fucking nails. Got it?”
Rising from her chair, Teddy held her head high and reached for her vest. “Loud and clear. Now, if you ladies don’t mind, I have to make a phone call. I have family waiting to hear from me and I can’t seem to get a signal inside the cabin. Is that all right, or do you want to babysit me outside, too?”
“Fuck that. It’s a million below out there in the tundra,” Nina groused, rubbing her long arms with her hands.
She looked to Marty, who’d also risen, for permission to leave the premises.
Marty gave her a short nod and a no-nonsense gaze. “Stay within sight and keep in mind, I’m a werewolf. We’re slicker n’ snot. I imagine we’re much faster than a bear. I can and will outrun you, Teddy. Also note: I have big, ugly, drooly teeth. I’ll use them. Don’t go far.”
Without a word, Teddy made her way out of the kitchen and toward the purple door, swinging it open while trying to keep her cool.
Once outside, she stomped through the snow toward the clothesline, right in Marty’s line of vision, where she could watch Teddy from the window by the door, but she hoped far enough away to go unheard. Digging her cell phone from the back pocket of her jeans, she held it up, hoping to get a signal.
If she’d lied about most everything else, she hadn’t lied about not being able to get a single bar on her phone.
With shaking fingers, she scrolled her screen and almost cheered when she saw the bars light up. Hitting autodial, she called Vadim, praying he wasn’t off somewhere on the ranch.
Just as the line began to ring, she caught movement from the left side of the cabin. A rustle of fallen leaves, the very slight crunch of snow.
Instantly, Teddy crouched, tucking her body so she managed to stay out of sight. The scent of cigarette smoke whispered under her nose. Smoke and sweat.
How strange. No one in the cabin smelled of smoke…
She decided to investigate. Turning her phone to silent, she slipped it back in her pocket and dove for a path Cormac must have dug from the side of the cabin to the front pathway. He’d piled the sides high enough with snow that she’d be able to observe without being seen. Rolling to her side, she scrambled to her haunches, shook off the snow and crouched down to assess.
Her heart began to throb in her chest for no apparent reason. Something wasn’t right. She felt it. Smelled it. Knew it deep in her gut.
Poking her head over the snowbank, Teddy narrowed her gaze, sniffing the air to recapture the scent of the cigarette and focusing in on the location it came from.
A hunter maybe? Who hunted at night…and wasn’t this part of the forest preserved? A poacher? The son of a bitch. Was he a poacher looking for illegal pelts?
And that was when she finally located him. A dark, bulky figure, hunched over by a pile of freshly cut wood, holding a sniper rifle.
Hold the phone. A sniper rifle? What kind of hunter used a sniper rifle? Or was this guy here for the women? Or worse, Cormac?
Was he out here for someone else? Another inhabitant of the cabin maybe? Maybe they were looking for this Toni they were all talking about?
Craning her neck, Teddy slid silently down along the bank of snow until she had a better view of the guy. That was when she saw the laser site, gleaming and red.
She had to keep herself from scoffing at how amateur a laser site on a sniper rifle was.
Sissy.
And then she saw whom, not what, he was aiming for. The red beam flashed at the window of the cabin as he lined up his mark.
Her eyes flew open and her hands broke out into a clammy sweat. His mark was Cormac.
Dread filled the pit of her stomach, her heart crashed so hard, it was likely to fall out of her chest. What kind of shit was her life mate into?
Tall and strong, Cormac stood right in front of the streaked glass pane, talking to Wanda, who was over his shoulder as he sipped a beer with the light from the site aimed right at his heart.
Holy hell, he was aiming for Cormac.
Without thinking of anything other than stopping whoever it was with their finger on the trigger from killing Cormac, she launched over the snow bank, head down, mouth wide open.
“Cormac, duuuuuuck!” Teddy hollered as she landed by the front door with a grunt before tucking and rolling. Scrambling to her feet, she heard the gun go off just above her head, pinging what sounded like metal.
There was no time to think as she made a break to the left side of the cabin, crawling her way toward the pile of wood where the shooter was located.
Shots fired, zigzagging and pinging off every area of the cabin, becoming more erratic with each bullet. Someone wanted him dead, and they wanted him dead bad.
She had nothing to defend herself with, no weapon to speak of, but clearly she had to do something because this moron wasn’t leaving without Cormac.
There was all manner of yelling and carrying on coming from inside the cabin as chaos ensued. Someone yelled her name, but she ignored it in favor of catching this son of a bitch who’d dared to take a shot at the man she was destined to spend the rest of her life with—despite the fact that they knew absolutely nothing about one another, and Cormac was an alleged bad guy.
He continued to shoot wildly at the cabin, which suggested desperation on the sniper’s part. Something she didn’t understand. Unless…
There was no time to figure out his motivation. He was taking potshots with careless abandon—someone was going to end up hurt.
Grabbing one of the freshly chopped logs, she peered into the velvety night, found her victim, and with a grunt of a cry, lobbed the heavy piece of wood directly at his head.
It slammed into the side of his skull with a satisfying thunk, but it didn’t take him out. Not by a long shot. Instead, it made him angrier.
“Teddy! Where the hell are you?” Marty cried, barreling out the door and directly into the fray.
Just as the werewolf poured out of the cabin, Cormac and Wanda followed suit, with Nina on the fringe, and they were headed directly in the path of the shooter.
“Nina, stay in the cabin before you get yourself killed!” Wanda screamed.
She had to do something, and do it fast.
So she did the only thing she knew to do. Charge the son of a bitch and pray all those old tires she’d jumped through over and over while her brothers trained her had done a good job of teaching her how to bob and weave.
Threading her way toward the man with the gun, she ducked in an erratic pattern, moving in and out of the shadows as she heard the shooter begin to retreat. His footsteps were easily identifiable just up ahead, heavy and clunky; he tore his way toward the hill.
With his back to her, Teddy decided, it was now or never. No way was she letting this guy go so he could roam freely, and chance he might come back for round two at another time.
With a guttural growl, Teddy launched herself at his back, aiming for the dark coat he wore with the sole purpose of knocking him to the ground and finding out who the hell he was.
She hit him with a bone-crunching thud, her body bouncing on his spine, his gun getting air and dropping out of his grasp before she pinned him and grabbed him by a thatch of his greasy hair, dragging his head upward so she could get a good look at his face.
“Who the hell are you?” she roared down at him.
He paused for only a moment, a brief, eerily suspended moment, before he smiled and held up a gleaming knife, jamming it into her side.
Her scream ripped from her throat when the knife sliced into her like a hot poker, searing her flesh. A scream of horror, defeat, pure rage emitted from somewhere deep within her chest. Blood began to gush from her side, warm
and sticky, the scent coppery and thick.
The shooter tossed her off as though she weighed no more than a feather, leaving her in a gasping lump on the cold ground.
But she’d seen the son of a bitch.
And he looked just like one of the mug shots she’d seen on Cormac’s computer screen before he’d shut them down.
* * * *
Cormac scooped Teddy up as gently as possible, brushing her hair from her face as the women twittered around him.
“I can walk,” she said with a protest, trying to lift out of the cradle of his arms.
“I bet. You can also bleed,” he murmured back. “You’re making a pretty big mess, you know.”
“I’ll try harder to keep my bleeding on the inside the next time I chase after a guy who’s trying to kill you. Care to explain what that was about?” She hissed the words while trying to reposition herself to ease the sting of her wound.
Cormac looked her directly in the eye and shook his head, his beautiful lips moving in precise motion. “Nope.”
“You do know life mates share everything, don’t you?” She went for the joke in the hopes he’d bite.
“I know no such thing.” He continued to crunch through the snow, keeping her tight to his chest.
Okay, he wasn’t biting. Fine. There’d be time for warm-fuzzies and long walks on the beach later. For now, someone was trying to kill Cormac.
Why the fuck was someone trying to kill Cormac? There’d been no mention of anyone else hunting him…
Marty’s face appeared to her right, masked in worry, her blue eyes wide. “Oh my God, Teddy! You ran right after him like you were part of the SWAT team! It was incredible—and plum nuts. He could have killed you.”
She waved Marty off. If she only knew the half of what she’d run into, around, over and under in order to make some cash. “I’m fine. Promise. I heal pretty quickly. Maybe not as quickly as you ladies do, but fairly fast. It’ll pass.”
“That was absolutely crazy, Theodora Jackson, and you’d better never do it again on my watch,” Wanda ordered as she grabbed her fingers and gave them a squeeze.
Nina greeted them at the door, holding it open and pointing to the couch with mismatched cushions. “Put Rambo’s ass there. I’ll clean her up.”
Cormac set Teddy down on the surface with careful hands while Wanda and Marty plumped a throw pillow behind her and settled her in.
“Do you have a first-aid kit, dude?” Nina asked Cormac, wincing when she saw the blood at Teddy’s side.
He pointed to the cabinet in the kitchen while Wanda and Marty made her raise her arms so they could peel her jacket off and lift her shirt up.
As they peeled her shirt from her skin, she hissed her pain, biting back a scream of agony. Fuck that hurt, and if she ever caught the bastard who’d knifed her in the gut, she was going to rip his heart out by digging her way inside his chest with a goddamn spoon.
Nina pushed her way into the fray, settling between Teddy’s knees, first-aid kit in hand. “Fuck all if that’s not deep, kiddo. Marty, get me some hot water, a cloth and some of that booze Yogi Bear’s hiding under the sink.”
Had Nina’s tone changed? Was that concern in her voice? Teddy was certain it was worry.
What happened to “you deal with your shit and I’ll deal with mine”?
Marty brought all the items and set them on the floor by Nina’s feet. The ex-vampire grabbed the bottle of Jack and dumped it on a cloth. “This shit’s gonna hurt like a fucking bitch. Ten bucks and a bag of my gummi bears says you scream.”
Teddy sucked in a breath, her toes curling inside her boots. “You’re on, and if you just give it a chance to heal—”
“It’s still gotta be cleaned, moron. What if something slows up the healing? You wanna wander around with your intestines gushing outta your side? I’ve been hurt a time or twenty. I think I know what I’m talking about.”
If only Nina knew how often she’d been roughed up. Never stabbed, mind you, but beat to hell and left needing stitches? Hell yeah. “Fine,” she gritted out. “Just do it.”
“Hold her arms, ladies—this is gonna sting,” Nina ordered Marty and Wanda, tucking her long hair behind her ear before she pressed the cloth to Teddy’s side.
Just a blip of a second before she nearly skyrocketed off the couch from the sting, she felt the lightest of touches, a mere wisp of Cormac’s fingertips glancing hers. Calloused and rough, he wrapped them around her digits and squeezed.
And then Teddy fought a scream of anguish—because no way was she losing ten bucks—digging her heels into the hard floor, almost biting her tongue off to keep from crying out.
Nina eyeballed her from where she was hunched on the floor in front of her and winked her approval.
And for some crazy, weird reason, as sweat formed on her upper lip and she almost burst every blood vessel in her head to stay quiet, Teddy was ridiculously pleased this grumpy, mean, no-bullshit ex-vampire approved of her stiff upper lip—and Cormac held her hand through it all.
Chapter 5
Cormac watched Teddy sip a hot toddy Marty had mixed for her, the sight of her lickable lips curling over the rim of the mug making him warm all over.
Jesus. This was such bullshit. How could he feel anything for a woman he didn’t even know? Yet, when he’d seen Teddy charge that guy, somewhere deep in his chest, a small piece of him dislodged, broke off, reattached itself and made a home under his skin, where this alarming emotion made itself comfortable.
Well, you know, that one romance novel you read said this is how life mates react to one another. You just know instinctually that person is your person. Remember? You were up until four in the morning reading all about it, Casanova.
He remembered. He’d thought it was bullshit then and he thought exactly that now.
Then why is your heart beating faster? Why do you want to ask her all sorts of stupid questions? Like if she had a date for her senior prom. What her favorite sleeping position is. If she puts ketchup or mustard on her hot dogs.
If she puts ketchup on her hot dog, it’s over. Mustard all the way. Spicy brown, thank you very much.
Stop, you silly. It’s only just begun. You won’t care if she doesn’t brush her teeth or scratches her metaphorical balls. You’re in, pal. You’re just shy of twirling your hair and batting your eyelashes.
Clearing his throat, Cormac sat up on the recliner across from the couch and forced himself to be involved in this conversation about the sniper. “So you’re sure this guy was aiming at me?” he asked, Teddy.
Brushing her hair from her face, she bobbed her head. “One hundred percent. He had a site on a sniper rifle with a red laser beam. It was aimed at your chest via the bedroom window. So why don’t you tell me what’s going on here? How many people have a hit man after them? I think at the very least I deserve an explanation.”
Because she’d put herself in the line of fire for him, was the not-so-subtle implication.
Wanda looked at him, sending him some kind of signal he didn’t understand in what he supposed was girl-speak. It probably meant shut up. So rather than run the risk of saying too much, he remained in stubborn silence.
Teddy slid to the edge of the couch, her wound obviously feeling better. “Better yet, why don’t you tell me why the guy I tackled out there while I was keeping him from killing you looked just like one of the men you had up on your screen when we first got to the cabin?”
Cormac fought to keep his face nonreactive, but his pulse began that harsh bounce in his neck. “A guy on the screen?”
Fuck all, they’d found him. Fuck, fuck, fuck all.
Teddy rolled her eyes to let him know he wasn’t fooling anyone. “Yeah, the guy with the scruffy dark beard, beady black eyes, who looks like he bathes once every full moon cycle and goes by the name of Andre, if I caught it right before you turned the computer off. What is it you don’t want me to see?”
Shit. She had seen. Andre was one of Stas’s goons. One
of the motherfuckers responsible for hacking off his finger.
So Andre had finally come to take him out, which meant Stas and whomever he worked for had found him and decided his time on earth was due to come to an end.
Fuck. How the hell had they found him after all this time?
He liked it here. It was as close to safe as he’d felt in the three years he’d been on the run.
So he played dumb. “You’re sure it was the same guy?”
Teddy’s eyes narrowed in suspicion as she set the mug down and folded her hands together, her slender fingers curling into a ball. “I already said it was. So who is Andre and why does he want you dead?”
Because he works for my sister’s psychopath ex-boyfriend and I know sensitive information about him. What was the right answer here? What if Teddy worked for these murderers?
That makes absolutely no sense. She would have just let Andre take you out and skipped on down the mountain all sexy and sassy. She sure as hell wouldn’t have let him knife her in the gut for you just for show, fool.
His eyes went to Wanda, who clucked her tongue and intervened. “You saw his face. Did he see yours, Teddy?”
“Well, yeah,” she scoffed with a snort. “I was on top of him, demanding who he was. Looked right at me before he jammed the knife in my side.”
Nina smiled on a grunt as she nudged Teddy’s shoulder with her own. She held up her fist for a bump. “You are one bad muthafluffin’ bitch. Gimme one.”
Teddy grinned for the first time then, and it was exquisite. The upward turn of her lips changed the map of her face entirely as she fist-bumped with Nina, punching him hard in the gut with more feels.
Stop getting the cuddlies over Teddy. She could well be the enemy.
Make up your damn mind. You can’t have it both ways. Either I allow the warm-fuzzies to take hold or I think of her as a foe.
“Okay, that means we’re absolutely not safe here,” Wanda reminded. “First, this Andre is still wandering around out there, maybe waiting to take another shot at us. Second, he’s seen Teddy, which means she’s not safe either.”
Bearly Accidental (Accidentally Paranormal Book 12) Page 5