Page 7 of Her Wild Warrior

Ryker loved winding Jase up, and he was now wound tighter than an eight-day clock.

“Everyone but Kostya. That’s because our lieutenant has me, and I can outperform Dante ‘Zed’ Zaragoza any day of the damned week.”

“Again, I’m going to have to call bullshit. Our team and Zed’s team couldn’t even get a bet with decent odds going until everyone agreed to load up Zed with a ninety-pound backpack to even things up.”

“They only needed to do that because I was stuck with you as a partner and you’re such a liability.” Jase pointed his finger back at Ryker.

“Say whatever makes you feel better, but that poor man is out there lugging around ninety pounds and still making you work for it,” Ryker grinned.

“Whose team are you on anyway?” Jase demanded to know. “We’re going to start stepping it up from now on, and you just do your best to keep up. And you better keep your eyes peeled and listen when I show you something, because I’m not going to tell you twice. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Try to keep your face out of the mud.”

Ryker flipped him the bird.

“Let’s go,” Jase growled.

It was midway through the second day, and Ryker was pretty sure he still hadn’t gotten the mud out of his ears. But at least he’d seen the last screw-up on Zed’s part before Jase had. Only because Jase was a phenomenal teacher and he’d had the good sense to listen and learn.

“There,” he pointed.

Jase stopped and looked. “You’re right. The bark on that log definitely had something scraping against it.”

Zed would have been damn careful and sat on the tree that was recently felled so that no bark would have been scraped off, but he’d screwed up. He’d leaned his rifle against the older log and scraped off some moss and bark. When they got up closer and really looked, they found two deep impressions the size of footprints and a depression where Zed would have set down his backpack.

“He must have had lunch or dinner here,” Jase said.

Ryker was confused.

“Where are his bootprints?”

“There,” Jase pointed to the two impressions. “The man is at least two-hundred and thirty pounds of pure muscle, plus ninety pounds of backpack, and all we get are these two light impressions,” Jase said in awe as he bent his head sideways to look at them. Ryker followed his lead and leaned over, tilting his head sideways so he could get a better look as well.

“Oh shit, he’s got his boots covered with some kind of cloth. Shit, I forgot about that.” Ryker shook his head, disgusted with himself. He looked at them again. "What would you say, size fourteen?” Ryker asked Jase.

Jase put his boot down beside the depression. “Nope, sixteen, same as me.”

“You’re both kind of deformed, you know that don’t you?” Ryker asked.

“You know what they say about how the size of your foot relates to the size of your dick,” Jase said.

“It’s your hands, you dumbass,” Ryker responded.

Jase held out his big paw of a hand.

“It’s just an old wives’ tale,” Ryker scoffed.

“You’re just jealous.”

“You know, talking about your dick so loudly probably has Zed laughing his ass off. We’re never going to find him at this rate,” Ryker whispered.

Jase had the good sense to look sheepish. “You’re right,” he whispered back. Let’s get going.”

They moved on, and it took another half hour before Jase found a broken spiderweb at a man’s shoulder level. They grinned at one another because the spider was still hanging on the left side and Ryker imagined her kind of disgruntled. They were gaining on the bastard.

“We’re going to get him,” Ryker whispered with satisfaction.