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.