“Wait here. Keep an eye on her. Do not let her leave,” Karl barked and Cooper tensed, his entire body locking up tight. Karl looked at Wade. “Grab your gun.”
“You kidding me?” Wade bit out. “Patrick is dead. You wanna end up like him too?”
Karl levelled a black look on the man, one that had Wade falling silent and easing back a step as he looked away from his boss. “I said grab your gun.”
Skye wanted to tell them not to be so crazy, but she held her tongue, denying the urge to press them to forget about trying to help their friend. If the bear killed them too, she would only have to deal with Cooper, and she was ninety percent certain he would let her go.
Her rough breaths filled the silence as Wade grabbed his assault rifle and followed Karl into the trees. The darkness swallowed them and she listened hard, fearing the bear would sneak up on her and kill her next. Beside her, Cooper was looking twitchy again, his green eyes darting over everything.
“We should move,” she whispered, too scared to speak any louder in case the bear heard her. “This fire is dampening our vision. We won’t see the bear coming—”
“Karl said to stay here.” Cooper’s voice gained an uncharacteristically hard edge and she glanced at him. He glared at her. “We’re not going anywhere. The fire will deter the bear. You said that.”
“No, I didn’t! I said that the fire would deter wolves. I really fucking doubt that the angry bear out there in the woods is going to care that there’s a fire blazing a few feet from us!” She strained to hear what was happening, the hope that she could convince Cooper to move and possibly mount an escape lessening as the seconds ticked past. Her gaze flicked to the cannister she had dropped, a weapon that would probably work better against the bear than the guns the men were toting, and she took a step towards it.
“Stay there,” Cooper growled.
She turned on him. “I want that bear spray. You all have guns. I deserve to be armed too.”
It turned out Cooper was more loyal than she had given him credit for, because when the bear roared and she heard a pained grunt coming from the direction Wade and Karl had gone, she tried to make a break for it.
Only Cooper lunged for her and grabbed the back of her jacket, his fingers closing tightly around the collar of it to stop her from swiping the cannister from the ground and escaping. Damn it.
She twisted and wrestled with him, trying to break free as her pulse jacked up, as adrenaline flooded her veins and every instinct she possessed screamed at her to get away from him and run for it.
Cooper refused to release her though, dragged her closer to him as he leaned to his left and grabbed his rifle. Skye stilled as the bushes swayed and rustled, her heart close to stopping as her gaze whipped in that direction and she watched with dread as heavy footfalls reached her ears.
No. She wasn’t going to die here. She wasn’t.
With renewed vigour, she twisted towards Cooper and kicked at him, battered him with her fists as a desperate need to escape flooded her, because that wasn’t Wade and Karl thundering towards them.
That was a bear.
Cooper lifted his rifle.
The bear roared and charged at them as it burst from the bushes.
She grunted as Cooper threw her to the ground at his feet and aimed his rifle, covered her head and curled into a ball as fear got the better of her, locking every muscle in her body and shutting down her mind. Cooper fired several rounds towards the woods and she caught a glimpse of an enormous grizzly coming right at her before it shifted course on an angry groan and ploughed into the scrub, heading to her right.
Skye stared at where it had been, her ears ringing, numbness sweeping through her as she kept replaying the few seconds where the bear had been charging towards her.
She tensed again as something else crashed through the bushes, her gaze zipping there and her breath hitching in her throat. It leaked from her as firelight chased over Wade as he emerged from the forest, his assault rifle gripped tightly in his hands as his gaze swung in all directions.
“It was a bear! A fucking bear!” Cooper’s voice shook as the end of the barrel of his rifle dropped, falling to rest on the dirt near Skye’s feet.
She was quick to sit up and shake off her fear now that Wade was back and looking as if he wanted to come to her.
“A big bastard too.” Wade turned in all directions again and the light from the fire caught on the blood that tracked down the side of his head. “Smashed me into a tree. Came running towards here like it was on a fucking mission.”
His gaze slid to her and lingered, the hard edge to his eyes softening.
“You okay?” Wade’s brow furrowed and he grimaced, removed his left hand from his rifle and lifted it. He gingerly pressed his fingers to the wound on his forehead. “Shit, that hurts.”
“I thought bears slept through winter?” Karl strode towards her, looking like a man on a mission, and she shuffled backwards, fearing he would lash out at her because the bear had frightened him.
She had seen plenty of men act like that in the past. Some men reacted to being scared by something with violence, as if fear was a weakness and they didn’t want anyone to think them weak, so they lashed out at everyone who was near them.
Normally picked on the weakest person in the area to make themselves look strong.
Skye swallowed her fear and gripped the log as her back hit it. She pulled herself up onto it and refused to let him intimidate her, stared him down as she pulled her shit together.
“It must have been disturbed. Bears sleep through winter, but we’re not exactly being subtle.” She dusted her black jacket off and glared up at the blond man next to her. “Cooper shot up that tree pretty good a few hours ago. It might have been enough to disturb the bear.”
Cooper’s wide green eyes swung down to her. “You mean that thing has been tailing us all this time?”
He looked ready to lift his rifle again and as much as she wanted to defuse the situation and calm him down, she was too damned tired and shaken.
Wade scowled at Cooper. “If it has, it’s your fault.”
Cooper glared right back at him. “You’ve always had a problem with me. You blamed me for losing track of that cheating bastard’s parents and now you want to blame me for a bear being on our tail.”
Cheating bastard?
“Yeah, well, I’m not the one who let them slip away.” Wade strode over to him and butted chests with Cooper, glowering down at him. “We had the woman where we wanted her. She would have talked if we had gotten our hands on her, but now she’s in this godforsaken shithole wilderness and we’re getting nowhere. You fucked us. We’ve got no leverage.”
Skye stared up at them, her mind spinning. Had they wanted to use the woman’s parents as leverage to make her talk? What was it the woman had done? Was the cheating bastard Knox or some other man?
“Wade,” Karl barked and when Wade looked over his shoulder at him, Karl slid a pointed look at Skye. “I don’t think this is something we need to discuss right now.”
Because he didn’t want her to know what was happening. What did it matter? If she didn’t manage to get away from them, she was toast. She supposed that if she did get away from them and managed to reach the authorities, she would have a lot of dirt she could give them on Karl and his buddies.