“Which grows longer by the second,” Cormac snarked.
“Oh, shut the fuck up, Lumbersexual, and quit beatin’ the kid down,” Nina ordered, her brow furrowed in a deep frown. “Think about what it was like for your brooding ass to take a chance and trust us—or anyone, for that matter. Teddy Bear didn’t know what the fuck was going on. She didn’t know us. She didn’t know you. So she weighed her options and stayed cool. Not many chicks do that these days. They wring their hands and whine. She came clean two days after meeting us. Not two years, Grudgey. Get over yourself and all your heavy-handed, holier-than-thou crap and give a kid a break. And remind me to tell you about Toni, and how she can tell if you’re a lying sack o’ shit by making your nose grow right on your fucking pouty face.”
Cormac rolled his eyes. “Oh, c’mon, Nina. She cannot.”
Nina strolled over, yanked a tuft of his beard and flipped him the bird. “The fuck she can’t. I wish she was here right now. She’d give you hell for being such a dick to someone who’s just trying to help you. Fuck, men are such pissy bitches.”
Marty nodded her head in total agreement with Nina. “She can, Cormac, and she can also breathe fire. Just so’s ya know.”
Wanda hopped up from her place on the couch and warmed her hands by the fire. “Okay, so all this aside. The man who hired you tried to kill you last night. That’s a fact. Which means he used you to find Cormac for him because you’re known for your tracking abilities. How did he know to look in Colorado to begin with, is what I want to know.”
“How did you know?” Cormac wondered out loud.
“You’ll never believe us,” Marty said on a grin.
“Let me guess, a crystal ball?” Cormac asked, but his tone suggested he was being a smartass.
“Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding! Winner-winner-chicken-dinner, Grizzly Adams. And don’t start hollering about how we’re crazy. You’re a bear because some Russian dude bit your leg, okay? If you’ve finally swallowed that shit, Roz’s crystal ball in Shamalot shouldn’t be a fucking stretch. So can the disbelief and the implication we’re a bunch of liars, because it damn well pisses me off,” Nina ordered, reaching for a large silver bowl filled with miniature Almond Joys.
Wanda turned to face them, tucking her ivory sweater around her waist. “She’s telling the truth. Take it or leave it, Cormac. I think you know my stance on your disbelief at this point. If not. I’ll tell you. I’m over it. Now, the next question, how is the McDaniels fellow connected to Andre? Is he connected to him at all? Why is everyone suddenly coming out of the woodwork and trying to kill Cormac now—after three years? They have to be working toward the same goal, right?”
That made complete sense to Teddy. Maybe this Arty guy was a part of the mob, too? Or someone they paid to handle their dirty work, like a subcontractor for murder, and Cormac was the final loose end?
Wanda suddenly whipped around, her finger in the air. “Can you describe McDaniels to Cormac, Teddy? Maybe he saw him when Stas and his crew kidnapped him?”
As she created a picture of the man she knew as Arty McDaniels for Cormac, a beefy man with a receding hairline, thick New York accent, and penetrating black eyes, he shook his head. “There wasn’t a soul with a New York accent. Everyone was Russian—or they were really good at making me believe they were Russian, with their accents.”
Wanda began to pace the floor, her low-heeled, chic pumps clacking on the hardwood. “But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved. So who is this man? Why does he want Cormac, and anyone in contact with Cormac, dead? What does he have to do with the murder Toni witnessed?”
“He has to be involved with Stas. I just can’t figure the connection,” Teddy replied.
Cormac shook his head, jamming his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “And so what does this all mean in the end? It still means these mob guys want me dead. Now they want Teddy dead, too. Nothing changes except for how many of them we have to look out for.”
“I hate to even say this out loud, but what we need to do is catch them in the act of attempted murder,” Wanda said in her no-bones-about-it way.