Cole rolled his shoulders to loosen the tension in them to no result. “It don’t matter anymore.”
“Doesn't it? Now I can't come back to these parts. They’ll know it was me under that stupid costume!”
“Maybe you should have planned it better,” Ned said.
Violence flickered in Lars’s deceptively blue gaze, and he stomped on Ned’s chest, kicking him over. “I’ll make sure you regret I haven’t left you to hang!”
Cole grabbed Lars from behind and pulled him off Ned, twisting back his forearms to the point where his elbows were on the brink of dislocating. Heat gathered in his skull, but despite the sudden desire to apply yet more pressure and mess up Lars’s limbs for what he’d just done, he let go. “He’s not worth it!”
Lars huffed and shook his head, rubbing his aching joints with a glare. “I’d bring him to Craig dead, but the premium for alive is too high, and by the time we reached Denver the corpse would stink worse than he does now.”
Ned got back to a sitting position with a grunt of pain, the jute fabric pulling closer to his face as he inhaled. “May I make a request?”
Cole swallowed, keeping his distance to make sure their captive understood that nothing had changed. As badly as he craved to punch Ned for refusing him the truth even in death, he didn’t want to see Lars abusing him for sport.
“What is it?”
“I’ll go willingly, won’t cause trouble, but can we please go to my cabin first? I’ve got a horse and a dog. Kill them if you must, or take them with you, but don’t let them starve to death. Please? They’re innocent animals.”
Cole swallowed, staring at the dense thread covering Ned’s face with a distinct sense that the other man could see him too, and he shuddered when Lars’s shoulder brushed against his without warning.
“Could be a good place to lay low for a bit,” his friend whispered.
Something deep inside Cole balked at the idea of following Ned to his home, but Lars was right. If the Wolfman hadn’t been tracked down for so many years, then there surely was a method to his madness. “You mean the dog you dressed up as a creature from hell to scare off the locals? That thing that bit me? You’re real lucky my coat was thick, O’Leary, or your beast would have been dead already.”
Ned’s shoulders sagged. “He’s a good boy. Loyal and smart.”
“Christ! Stop mumbling, I can hardly hear you,” Lars groaned and walked up to Ned to take off the sack.
Cole wasn’t ready to meet the stab of the green gaze begging like a dog for a bone. But Cole had none to give.
He’d made a mistake revealing the truth about his feelings in the face of death, and even if he couldn’t forget their brief exchange, he’d make sure Ned would.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” he snapped but kept his distance, though what he truly wanted was to kick Ned down like Lars had.
Ned swallowed, his mouth trembling. “You know why.”
“Am I missing something here?” Lars grunted, feeding a sugar cube to his mount.
The obvious suspicion prodded at Cole’s mind like a needle, and he shoved Ned down, pinning him to the ground with one foot. “Nothing. He wants to be freed. For old times’ sake,” he said in a low voice, staring Ned down in an effort to stop thinking of that moment when they both prepared for death and spoke their truths.
Lars took a deep breath. “Too bad that’s not happening, Wolfman. But we’ll grant your wish. Behave, and we might even feed you on the way.”
Light died in the green eyes and Ned looked away.
Good.
Because Cole wasn’t sure how long he could stand the warmth of that gaze.
*
Ned barely spoke to Cole as they climbed into the mountains. But that didn’t mean he remained silent. Whispers left his mouth at random moments of the day, and even at night, as if he had an invisible accomplice who remained at his side and acknowledged the words that were meant for neither Cole nor Lars.
He’d talk about needing to feed Nugget, about wolves being close when nothing of the sort was happening, or about the secret meaning only he could read from the clouds above, as if their shapes were letters of some exotic alphabet.
He drifted between lucidity and drunkenness, depending on Lars’s generosity with booze, and while Cole initially wanted to keep Ned sober for the ride, his whining became unbearable rather fast. The need for liquor triumphed over Ned’s survival instincts, as he wouldn’t stop begging even when Lars threatened to choke him if he didn’t shut up. Gagging him was yet another alternative, but Cole worried Ned might choke on his own vomit, which left the three of them at a horrible standstill.
By the time the cold forced them to don their winter coats, Cole was so tired of the constant tension he convinced Lars to share his horse with their captive and scouted ahead, just to have an excuse to avoid the sad green gaze that cut into his heart with infuriating efficiency.
He hated snow. He hated the cold. But most of all, he hated the way Ned’s presence made him feel. It forced memories to flash through the backs of his eyelids like varmint he couldn’t shoot fast enough.
For seven years, he’d had such vivid dreams about taking his time with Ned, choking him with bare hands and breaking all his fingers. But now that he’d found him, all he felt was that dull pain of wounds that might never heal.
The sun was setting by the time Ned directed them through a dense thatch of trees. Cole figured they were getting close to the Wolfman’s impenetrable hideaway, since they’d had to dismantle several traps or take a longer route in order to avoid others, all in the past three hours. But once their small party emerged on the other side, Cole found himself in a clearing in the middle of the snow-covered forest, facing an abandoned homestead.
The house, while solid enough, had boarded-up windows, as if it had been long deserted. Both a barn and a nearby shed had traces of recent repairs, but Cole spotted no smoke coming from the dwelling, nor any signal of human activity. He wouldn’t have put it past Ned to have a secret accomplice he lived with but had conveniently failed to mention. Only a loud bark echoed in the woods around them, and a ball of fur sprinted toward them from behind the house, making a terrible noise with the trinkets and bells attached to it.
The horse must have heard it too, because it let out a faint whinny somewhere in the barn. The poor thing was lucky to still be alive. As much as Ned had talked about Nugget on the way, Cole imagined that Ned had just called a different horse by the same name, but a wave of tenderness hit him at the thought that the golden stallion could have survived the past seven years.
Ned whistled at the dog, which dashed in circles, creating a racket so ungodly it spooked even Carol, who was the calmest steed Cole had ever owned.
The large wolf-like mutt with perky ears stopped in front of them, its dark eyes wide, and tongue hanging out in glee as it sat, presenting its dense brown fur, which had been stained with ash to create the disguise of a hellhound.
Ned’s features relaxed into a smile Cole no longer thought him capable of, and he made little clicking noises, which had his pet shifting in anticipation. “Hey Coley! Good boy!”
“You can’t be fucking serious!” Cole roared when it occurred to him that the damn bastard named the mangy creature after him. Ned froze and looked back at him from the back of Lars’s horse like a boy caught with his hand in a cookie jar.