Wanda, the one who’d managed to keep the other two from ripping each other’s throats out, gripped Cormac’s shoulder, huffed out a breath, and gave him a good hard shove, sending him tumbling off Teddy and into the snow with his grunt lingering in the air.
“Marty said get off! Now, do not move a muscle until we’re able to explain ourselves,” she ordered from tight lips with a wave of her finger, her chest puffing up and down. “Or so help me, I’ll take you out myself! I’ve had enough of everyone ignoring my wishes. Now hear this! I’ve had it up to my cerebellum with playing peacemaker for four days since we began this journey. You, Cormac Vitali, have the unfortunate circumstance of being my last damn straw. And don’t doubt for a single second I can’t take out a big, burly boy like you either. I’ll knock you clear to Kentucky. So you march your muscled ass on up that hill to your cabin, you do it without complaint, and you do it now, or so help me, as Charles Manson is my witness, I’ll kill you all! Goooo!”
Teddy’s eyes followed the direction of Wanda’s finger. This woman, whoever she was, had clearly had enough.
That was when she jabbed her finger down at Teddy, her eyes narrowed, her nostrils flaring. “That means you, too! I don’t know who you are or what you want, but we’re going to find out. And I’ll take the dart gun, Annie Oakley, thank you very much!” She reached for the backpack and threw it over her shoulder.
Teddy began to protest, but Wanda clamped her fingers together right under her nose. “I said not a word. Not a single word, or you’ll be the first on my list of things to kill while in Colorado. Got it? Get up and wallllk, goddamn it!”
Teddy only briefly looked into Wanda’s pretty blue eyes, acknowledging she had an air of authority that couldn’t be denied, before she crab-walked on her hands to back away from her. Rather than thicken the pot with confrontation, she hopped to her feet and began walking.
Marty followed Teddy closely while Nina, who looked absolutely frozen, fell in behind them.
There was nothing but silence as they made their way to the top of the hill and Cormac’s cabin came into view.
The entire time, Teddy attempted to construct a story in her head to explain why she was in the middle of nowhere, hauling Cormac away like she was some sort of female variation on a Neanderthal—because Wanda would want a story. Oh yes, she would. She didn’t look like the kind of woman who would put up with any shit.
When Teddy finally caught sight of Cormac’s cabin, she wondered how he’d found this place. She’d never, in all her tracking, encountered this section of the forest, and she knew the forest like the back of her hand.
It was a crude structure under the purple and orange twilight of the coming evening. The logs sturdy, but with no particular architecturally appealing design to them. There was a lone folding chair by the front door, sandwiched between two bushes and an enormous pine tree. Maybe a fishing cabin?
Smoke wisped upward out of the brick chimney, and a sagging clothesline off to the right side of the cabin, with a metal bucket beneath, waved in the light wind.
More snow began to fall, the distant roar of a rushing creek filling her ears. God, it was beautiful here. Even under these daunting circumstances, Teddy had to admit, she loved the forest far more than she loved the lights of the city.
What she probably wasn’t going to love? Explaining herself.
Cormac stopped at his front door, painted—of all things—an odd shade of eggplant purple, and turned to face them as they gathered, waiting for him to admit them entry.
“Well, open the door, dude. Jesus, it’s like frickin’ Iceland out here,” Nina demanded with a shiver, her lips dry and cracked.
But Teddy didn’t pay as much attention to Nina’s grousing as she did the smells these women gave off, assaulting her nose, one right after the other. Foreign, tangy, one even brought to mind the word “displaced,” if you could in fact smell such a thing. But it was strong.
She hadn’t heard all of their conversations in detail. Most of it had been just bits and pieces. She’d heard their names, seen their arms waving and middle fingers flying, sensed some general discontent, but she’d been so focused on capturing Cormac, she’d clearly missed something important.
As Cormac looked down at them, his gaze piercing, Teddy refocused her thoughts and waited. “I don’t know what’s going on, but this is as far as it goes until you explain who you are and what the hell you want from me.”
Then he crossed his arms over his burly chest to further the notion he wasn’t budging.