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She had underestimated them and they had overestimated her belligerence which had now put her life squarely in danger.
Fuck. If anything happened to her, if she so much as landed a scratch on her perfect skin because of her own stupidity they were going to take turns strangling the little vixen.
They had gone in separate directions, no one understood the terrain better than them, during the day, at night, in a snowstorm. But the footprints they managed to see under the flashlights seemed to go in different directions. She knew she was lost and had kept going around in circles.
The weather had let up a little but it wouldn’t be long before it started up again.
What was she thinking? Where did she think she could go?
They knew the terrain like the backs of their hands. But she was a novice. He hated the feeling that she might have fallen down a ditch, or something worse.
But clearly she hadn’t gotten very far.
Ryder was the one to find her. She knelt in the wet earth, in the dark, the torch had gone out, shivering uncontrollably and crying as well.
She had been going around in circles. And fuck he wanted to blister her ass for her stupidity.
“Ryder,” she sobbed. He hated that funny thing his heart did.
“Are you hurt?” he asked gruffly.
She shook her head.
He bent and scooped her up, then whistled into the night air. Sawyer and Karter would know he had found her.
Grinding his teeth and barely able to control his anger at her, he forced himself to wait until she was inside before he ripped into her.
Sawyer and Karter went in ahead and rekindled the fire.
He set her down on her feet.
“Take that jacket off,” Karter ordered her briskly.
She took off the heavy coat and that left her in only one of their oversized T-shirts and oversized track bottoms. She looked like a tiny piece of treasure.
“What the fuck?” Sawyer shouted at her.
She had the decency to flinch.
“I needed to get my... things from the car. I thought I could make it.”
That was enough to set Ryder off completely.
He charged toward her and pressed her into the wall.
“Your things? Your fucking things?”
As the warmth seemed to circulate through her, it also brought out her sauciness.
“Let me go, you imbecile. I don’t have to stand here and take this from any of you. I don’t even like any of you. Let me go.” She pushed against him but her touch felt like petals fluttering over his skin. “I could have died and I know it’s my fault but I... I hate you all. I hate you all so much and you know what? My name is Harper. Harper Swift. I’m not a nobody you picked up on the side of the road then was forced to rescue. I have a name and my name is Harper Swift,” she cried.
She startled and sucked in her breath then gasped when Ryder ripped off his beanie and glared at her, daring her to look at him.
He never hid who he was. They were reminders of his time in the military and that one bullet that had caught him unaware. He never had to hide the evidence of his battles before, but the instant he had seen her, the need to conceal his blatant flaws came out of nowhere. Sawyer and Karter had said nothing, but they knew he had never done anything like that in all his life.
“Do I frighten you, Harper Swift?” he growled, pinning her to the wall and robbing her of air, trying to frighten her so she would cringe at the sight of him. She gasped at the sight. Her eyes widened.
He didn’t need to see the fear and disgust in her features to know how she felt about him now. He should have released her, but fuck he wanted to hear her say he scared her.
