Lucas jerked the shotgun up and aimed it in the direction of the voice, bless him, but he’d be shooting blind. The forest vista was blank. Abandoned. Eden’s gaze raked the trees, but she didn’t see any sign of the speaker, just an uninterrupted sun-dappled landscape like something out of a Walt Whitman poem. The wolfhound emerged first, trotting into view with a bouncing step that was at odds with the vicious teeth on clear display and the low growl rumbling out of its massive throat. She recognized the animal from last night, and a shivering sense of unease rolled over her skin. Had it been tracking them? Stalking? Was this a savior or a new threat? Then a figure slipped out from behind a tree only twenty feet away, giving Lucas a target. A damn big, heavily armed target. Jesus flipping Christ, it’s Rambo. He approached slowly, his movements silent and steady. Unhurried. Confident. She’d be confident too, if she was holding a freaking machine gun and packing enough artillery to topple a dictatorship.
