I turn around slowly, not at all amused by the joking lilt in her tone. She won’t think it’s so funny when she’s staring down my…holy shit.
My thoughts completely seize up when I turn around and come face-to-face with the shotgun toting woman, because fucking hell, she’sgorgeous. She’s wearing a half-cocked smirk that tells me she feels in complete control of the current situation, and if it were anyone but us, she might be right. She may have snuck up on us, but there’s no way she’d get the jump on us twice.
My gaze dips down her body and slowly rises back up. The girl is wearing ripped jeans and a tank top under what I’m pretty sure is a man’s plaid. But it’s the neon pink hiking boots that give me pause. Well, that and her tits. Those make me linger a bit, too, before I shove her curvy body out of my mind. By the time my brown eyes reconnect with her glacial blue ones, I’ve turned off my attraction and assessed the situation. I relax my stance and my hold on my weapon, using my body language to invite her to do the same.
“Is Remington here, ma’am? We were asked to speak with him, and as soon as we do that, we’ll be on our way,” I tell her.
“Promise?” she asks, a little too innocently.
I suddenly feel like I’m missing something, but I want to get out of here and get that fucking shotgun out of my face, so I don’t focus too hard on what it could be.
“Scouts fucking honor,” I drawl back like a smart-ass, adopting the same tone she just used.
The blonde snorts. “As if you could make it as a Scout,” she counters, and I bristle, because what the fuck? I’m a damn Army Ranger. That sure as shit is a whole lot more impressive than a pansy ass Boy Scout.
Before I can say anything though, she interrupts me. “I’m Remington, my friends call me Remi, but you Joe’s can call mebyeand then walk right back to your car and leave. I’m not interested in going back to Endstone, no matter how much man-candy dear ol’ Dad wants to wave in my face as a bribe.”
Theo huffs out a surprised laugh, but I don’t turn to give him a judging look for breaking protocol. I’m too busy trying to make my brain get rid of the pot-belliedmanI had been picturing as Remington April and replace that image with this woman. “You’reRemington April?” I ask dubiously.
“Sure am,” she chirps.
Her eyes move from me to Theo, and I immediately pounce on the mistake. I push the barrel of her gun away from me with one hand and move in to disarm her with the other. The gun comes away easily, and I quickly turn it in my hands and redirect the Remington 870 Tac-14 at the flaxen haired, blue-eyed, Remington April.
But I don’t get to bask in the victory of getting the drop on her, because as soon as I refocus my sights and the barrel of the shotgun on her, I see why the gun came away so easily from her grip. She let go of it in order to grab the Glock 43 that’s now pointing at my chest. Well fuck, I was not expecting that.
All previous traces of humor are gone from her face, and she now wears a distinctyou just pissed off the wrong bitchlook. It looks like things might have just gone from bad to worse, which is definitely not what you want when you’re trying to convince someone to come with you.
Brant holds up his hands in a placating gesture. “Why don’t we all just take a breath and relax,” he says, trying to draw her attention to him as he steps closer.
In reply, she clicks the safety off her Glock, making him freeze.
“That’s not very polite,” I tell her with a cocky grin, looking more relaxed than I really am. Then again, it’s not like this is the first time I’ve had a gun pointed at me.
“You know what else isn’t polite? Trespassing,” she volleys.
I open my mouth to explainagainthat we were sent here by her father, but an ear-splitting chirping noise suddenly erupts in the air. All three of us tense and go for our weapons, but Remington is already launching herself over the porch railing and running toward the sound in the woods.
We barely have time to glance at each other before running after her. Puddles whines and tries to shove her big ass under the car with no success, so she covers her ears with her big legs instead. I want to do the same, and I’m half-deaf in one ear. The mission that fucked us all up left me with hearing loss due to the damage that was done to the bones in my middle ear. I now suffer from tinnitus in that ear, and loud noises like this can really set it off, but I can’t just stay here with my thumb up my asshole, so I race after her.
I’m the closest, hot on Remington’s pink-booted heels, and I end up running up beside her first. “What the fuck is that noise?” I holler over to her.
“My clinger dinger!” she shouts back, still running.
We breach the edge of the trees, and she starts darting through them like she knows these woods better than the backs of her hands. The trees are thick and healthy with underbrush, so I stay behind her as I feel Theo and Brant right behind me.
“Your what?” Theo calls forward, his prosthetic slowing him down somewhat.
“It’s my clinger dinger!” she calls over her shoulder. “It’s Jim Bob for sure. He’s the only one that tries to stalk me from this direction.”
And I have…no idea what to say to that.
Just when the obnoxious noise is closer and threatening to burst my good eardrum, Remington hops over a fucking trip wire that I only barely manage to step over in time. I shout a warning behind me, and Brant nearly runs his ankles right into it, but stops just in time for Theo to run into him from behind, sending them both toppling to the forest floor.
They both grunt and swear up a storm, but I reach down and haul Theo up to his feet before he can even think about getting pissed about needing my help.
I start to shout at them to ask if they’re okay, but the chirping noise suddenly cuts off, making my now much-too-loud voice echo through the woods. I look over and find Remington with her hands on some device that’s strapped to a tree, equipped with a small solar panel and a red laser light. “Don’t be so loud!” she chastises me, her blonde brows furrowing.
I look at her incredulously before turning back to the guys. “Is she fucking kidding me? That alarm was just blaring through the whole damn forest, and she’s tellingmeto be quiet?”
