Page 6 of Tormented Hearts

Then the pain spread in a scorching heat across his muscle and up into his lower back.

Snake.

He’d grown up forty miles from here, and every summer of his childhood had come with the same warning drilled in by his grandfather—watch the rocky ground, watch the ridgelines, watch where you kneel.

Wyoming had fourteen species of snakes and only a couple worth losing sleep over.

But from his position on the ground with his heart already hammering from the firefight minutes earlier, Hawk wasn’t in a position to identify which kind of snake had just decided his ass was worth biting down on.

Training took over before panic could.

Heart rate down. Keep it low. Keep it slow.

Panic was the actual enemy here—more than the snake or the two dead men twenty yards back. If he let his pulse spike, he’d shorten his chances of survival.

An elevated heart rate meant faster circulation, and faster circulation meant venom moving through his system quicker than his body could compensate. He had to buy time to get out of the forest.

He forced his breathing into an even rhythm. Four breaths in. Four breaths out. He lay down flat, letting gravity keep the bitten site lower than his heart as he willed himself to stay calm, stay calm, stay calm.

Sinead had frozen in her tracks, and she stared at him, eyes wide and face pale. “What happened? Are you hit?”

“Rattlesnake.”

Her eyes flew wider, the whites circling the deep brown. “What should I do?”

“Don’t move.” His voice came out steadier than he expected given the circumstances. He raised his weapon and cocked it. “I need a clear shot.”

If he was going to survive, he needed the snake to find out if it really was a rattler or another species. His team would need to know which antivenom to treat him with.

He twisted, gun already up even though his arm felt heavier than it should. He squeezed off a shot at the shape a few feet from his boot.

The shot scraped the dirt, and the rattler recoiled, gathering itself for another strike. Hawk’s vision blackened at the edges, and he told himself it wasn’t the venom causing his vision to tunnel. It was the fact that he’d never once in his career missed a target—and now missed the most important one of his life.

In his peripheral, he saw a feminine hand. Suddenly, Sinead pulled the weapon out of his grip before he could protest.

She put the snake down in a single shot with an air of deadly calm, as though she’d been doing it her whole life.

The forest silenced, making it more obvious how fast his heart was pumping.

“You’re welcome.” Sinead crouched to check that the snake was dead before straightening.

Hawk swung his gaze from her to the snake and tried not to think about the numbness starting to crawl up his leg or the fact that an heiress in one-thousand-dollar hiking boots had just outshot him with his own sidearm.

Those boots cost more than my first truck.

He was losing it if he was noticing things like expensive boots.

“There’s antivenom at the ranch,” he said, mostly to himself, working out the logistics because that was the only thing keeping the panic at bay. The ranch was closer than the hospital by at least twenty minutes on these back roads. The therapy lodge had a clinic and a doctor on staff. If they moved fast—

Sinead crouched beside him, sweeping a look over his face. “You’re shaking.”

He wanted to say no wonder he missed the shot, but that would only sound like an excuse.

“Well, I just got bitten by a rattler.”

“Do you need me to suck out the poison?”

He stared at her. Suck the poison out of his ass?