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…