Everyone was laughing and joking and chatting as though they’d done this a hundred times. Like they were role-playing or something.
But she and Cormac were going to come face-to-face with a murderer. A guy who’d shown zero remorse after annihilating another human being. He was a psychopath with an army of people just like him, and she was going to saunter into his lion’s den and offer him a free kill.
Teddy stole gulps of breath as she made her way to a quiet place outside the kitchen where she could think and hopefully calm her nerves.
She went directly for the mantle of the fireplace in the great room, gripping it, panic began to claw at her, seep into her bones, drag her deeper and deeper to its anxiety-riddled depths.
This would never work. Stas would catch them. Carmine would catch them trying to deceive him and she’d be dead. Cormac would be dead. They were all going to die!
A shiver beginning in her toes worked its way up to her arms, violently assaulting her, leaving her body one big tremble.
But then Cormac was there, slipping his arms around her and turning her into the shelter of his body. “Just breathe, Teddy.”
She scrunched her eyes shut and gulped. “I shouldn’t be like this. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m a bounty hunter, for crap’s sake! Why am I so scared?”
“Because you don’t hunt to kill, honey. You hunt to capture. But I promise, I won’t let anything happen to you. If anyone makes a wrong move, I’ve got your back.”
Her heart began to crash hard against her ribs, panic-attack style. She’d had them after her last run-in with Dennis, she knew the signs. But now wasn’t the time.
“Tell me about why you got in on the bounty hunting.”
Her throat tightened, but telling Cormac her story helped her focus on something else. “Because of my dad. He was killed in a bar fight and the guy who did it was prosecuted and sent to jail, but he escaped. We were just kids when it happened initially, but when the guy got out, we were adults. My mom was gone by then, but we never forgot how hard life became because my dad was gone. How much she missed him, how much we all missed him. So we hunted the bastard. Tracked him and strung him up and brought him in for my father, who was the kindest man I’ve ever known. It was the beginning of what became a profitable business, for the most part. I learned from my brothers how to track when I was little. I got so much better at it than them, that now, whenever we get a bounty in the forest, I take it.”
“Which was why I ended up darted,” he chuckled, running his hands along her spine.
“If I make a million apologies, it’ll never be enough.”
“Nah. It’ll be a great story to tell our grandchildren someday, don’t you think? How Grammy and Paw-Paw met one cold winter day when Grammy was out huntin’ men.”
Teddy giggled against his flannel shirt, the tension in her back easing at the mention of a possible future.
“And Sanctuary? I never really got to ask you about it last night because, well, drugged, or whatever Arch did to us. Tell me about it. It’s a wildlife rescue and rehabilitation, right?”
Her heart sank. He had no way of knowing the dire circumstances of her home away from home back in Colorado, but every bounty she took was because of the animals she loved so much. What would happen to Mr. Noodles, her deaf Macaque monkey, who was already angry and frustrated because he struggled with communication?
He’d end up sent to someone who didn’t understand him and would lock him away from the other monkeys because he was volatile. But what he needed was understanding and integration.
And Suits, her Emperor penguin who’d been born with a deformed foot? Who’d help him acclimate to new surroundings? And the giraffes and the otters…
“Yes, Sanctuary rescues and rehabs all sorts of wildlife, and even an exotic or two. And it was where I worked. By the time I get back, I’d lay bets Sanctuary will have closed its doors. The bank is foreclosing on them,” she said, her voice hitching. She should have been long done with her bounty by now and back with a nice bulk payment for the bank.
If things hadn’t gone so wrong.
Her chest ached for the animals that were her heart. They knew her. She knew them. Every idiosyncrasy, every quirk, every special need. They’d never known anything but her and the staff at Sanctuary. There’s nothing she’d miss more than her time with them.
“Where will all the animals go?”
“I don’t know. The bank’s in charge of that. I’m sick with worry over what’ll happen to them—where they’ll end up. Some of them are bonded and can’t ever be let out of captivity because they won’t survive. We tried to get the bank to appoint me their guardians, because I know each and every one of them and all of their needs. But they wouldn’t allow it. Likely, they’ll end up separated and shipped off to zoos around the country without the special care they need. I wanted to help. I thought this… Never mind. It’s over, I guess.”