Page 42 of Untamed Hunter Daddy

He doesn’t expect me to come at him. They never do. Defenders are supposed to retreat and try to reestablish the long-gun advantage. I don’t retreat. I close.

He swings the baton. I read the arc in his shoulder and step inside it, letting the steel pass behind my back, then drive my shoulder into his center mass. We go down hard in the snow. It’s like fighting in cold quicksand. Every movement is sluggish. The footing is garbage. He’s big enough and he fights dirty, driving a knee that I block with my thigh, then an elbow that catches me above the left eye and splits the skin open.

Blood floods my left eye. I blink through it and rip his balaclava sideways.

Buzz cut. Heavy-set. Ridge Auto shirt under the jacket.

The man from the diner.

The recognition hits hard and clean. Tyler sent him.

I hit him with my right fist, full rotation of shoulder and hip. His head snaps sideways. He goes limp for half a second. I flip him face-down, wrench his arm behind his back hard enough that the joint strains, and hold him there.

From behind the cabin: a crash. The back door.

Zoe.

I’m up and moving before the decision fully forms. I round the back corner and the second rider is half inside the doorway.

From inside the cabin comes the flat, sharp crack of a SIG P320.

The rider staggers backward, clutching his left arm. Zoe’s standing six feet from the door, both hands on the sidearm, arms extended, stance textbook. Her face is white and her eyes are blazing.

She shot him.

I put the second man down hard. Face in the snow, arm locked, knee in the spine. He screams once, more surprise than pain.

“Zoe!” I call without turning. “Are you hit?”

“No.” Her voice is shaking, but it’s adrenaline, not fear. I know the difference now.

“Put the safety on. Set it on the counter. Come to the door but stay inside.”

She appears in the doorway. Hands empty. Gun on the counter. Her eyes find the blood running down my face and something fierce crosses her expression. “You’re bleeding.”

“Head wound. Bleeds a lot. Looks worse than it is.”

“You’re bleeding a lot, Ryker.”

“I know. Sit tight. I need to secure these two before the first one gets his legs back.”

I zip-tie the second rider’s wrists with the ties from my pack inside the door, then drag myself through the snow to the first man. He’s managed to sit up, a purple bruise already blooming across his jaw. I zip-tie him too. Then I sit in the snow between them and try to get my breathing under control while the adrenaline drains and the pain moves in.

The cut above my eye is deep. My left ribs ache in a way that suggests a crack. My knuckles are split. The old Helmand scar is throbbing from the grappling.

Zoe comes outside anyway. I told her to stay in and she comes out with the med kit in her hands and murder in her eyes.

She kneels beside me in the snow and opens the same canvas roll I used on her ankle the first night. Her hands are shaking but they move with purpose.

“Hold still.” She presses an antiseptic wipe against the cut. The sting is immediate. I hiss through my teeth. “Big baby.”

“I just fought two men in thigh-deep snow and you’re calling me a baby?”

“You flinched at an antiseptic wipe. I once had a panic attack over chamomile tea and I didn’t flinch.”

“You absolutely flinched. I was there.”

“I flinched internally. There’s a difference.”