“Can’t be him. The bastard disappeared so long ago,” Cole muttered, standing over Ned with no idea what he ought to do. His beef with Ned was private, and Lars was an intruder.
Unaware of his thoughts, Lars shook his head and squeezed Ned’s cheeks with one hand. “I’m telling you it’s him. He’s got the big nose and everything. Come on, Wolfman, might as well tell us, huh?”
Ned roared and arched fast enough to slam his forehead against Lars’s so hard the poor guy fell back into the snow like a rag doll.
With blood shining in his beard, Ned gave a mad laugh and crawled on his knees. “Ned O’Leary is dead! Just me now!”
It wasn’t the first time a mark tried to wiggle his way out of their hands by pretending he was someone else, but the behavior was so unlike Ned Cole only knocked him down after a second of stalling.
“Motherfucker!” Lars yelled and got to his feet just as Cole kicked Ned over. Still holding his own forehead, he exhaled clouds of steam when he glanced Cole’s way with a squint. “Let’s check.”
He straddled Ned’s writhing form, and Cole’s stomach clenched when Lars pulled out a Bowie knife. Lars might have had a handsome face and eyes bluer than a cloudless sky on a summer’s day, but he could be a mean bastard with no mercy for his marks.
Had Lars attempted torture, Cole would have been forced to intervene and disclose things he didn’t want to share, but the blade dug under the sleeve of Ned’s jacket and cut. One of the wolf paws still attached to the fur flapped about, and despite no blood being shed, Ned screamed and swore as if the sharp tip had eaten into his flesh.
Lars grinned in triumph and presented Ned’s forearm to Cole in the glow of the buzzing fire. The skin was mangled with burns, but even that hadn’t completely hidden all of the ink that used to make up the cleaver tattoo.
“It’s him. That’s why you punched him so hard. You two got some bad blood you ain’t telling me about?”
Cole’s throat pulsed, and he focused on Lars, knowing he might lose his temper again if he met Ned’s gaze so soon. There were answers he’d cut out from under Ned’s skin if necessary, but he didn’t want to explain himself. Didn’t want to reminisce about things that should stay buried in the past. “Ran from the camp like a coward while the others fought,” he said and spat into the snow.
It was better if Lars never found out how deep Cole’s resentment ran. He needed to calm down. Get himself together and be a man about the whole damn thing.
Lars got up and would have kicked Ned for good measure if Cole hadn’t stood in his way with a squint that expressed all the resentment in his heart. The Wolfman might have been Lars’s dream prize, but Ned O’Leary was Cole’s.
“This one’s mine.”
Lars waved his hand in dismissal. “Then take him, by all means. Just don’t forget that skull hat of his. We’ll show it to the sheriff. Folks will come from across Colorado to see this ridiculous costume. Now I wish we’d gotten the dog too.”
“Leave him be,” Ned croaked, and Cole found himself staring down at him in cold satisfaction.
“It better be gone for good, because if I ever see it again, I’ll blow his head apart like you had that girl’s.”
Ned stared into Cole’s eyes, but if he was trying to communicate something, the times of being able to do that through a look alone were long gone, drowned in blood. Ned must have understood that too, because he hung his head in silence. “I am what I am,” he mumbled.
“Yes. The fucking Wolfman of the Rockies, who in reality is just a filthy traitor, who forgot what a bath is,” Cole growled and made himself move.
Something deep inside warned him that touching Ned might stir unwanted feelings, so he took a deep breath and thought of the canned food they’d be eating soon. It had been a mistake, because now there was nausea crawling up his throat instead of hunger.
Why? Why now? Why did Ned have to be there?
He’d initially planned to tie him to a tree, but in this weather the bastard might die without the proximity of the fire, and Cole would not allow that before he got some answers out of the stinking blood sack. In the end, he settled on locking Ned’s neck in an iron collar attached to a chain Lars fastened to the nearest trunk. Their captive couldn’t free himself from it with hands pulled back, yet he’d be close enough to the flames to survive the night.
Cole refused to pull off his gloves as he unbuttoned the collar of Ned’s fur coat to expose his throat. He didn’t want to sense the warmth of his flesh ever again. Ned had to share the sentiment, because he went as far as closing his eyes when Cole was near him.
Unaware of the dense tension hanging in the air, Lars picked up the fallen compass from the snow, and Cole itched to take it from him, jealous of someone else touching the stupid piece of brass Ned had given him all those years ago. Lars chuckled despite still rubbing the new lump on his forehead. “It’s at least a two day ride to Beaver Springs, Mr. Wolfman. How about you tell us what you were trying to achieve by scaring travellers, huh? I need to know what to tell the papers.”
Lars’s idle chatter usually helped Cole take his mind off things. Whether annoying or amusing, it kept demons at bay. Now, Cole wanted him to shut the fuck up for once so he could think.
Ned just snarled in answer.
“Shut the fuck up,” Cole hissed and kicked Ned in the thigh, below his family jewels, which Cole remembered in too vivid detail. This was a disaster. His fingers itched to claw into Ned, but he couldn’t go through with it when Lars was around. Not the way he wanted to at least.
“Cole will be fine… He knows the way…” Ned mumbled, shaking his head.
He made no sense, and that only infuriated Cole further. He slapped Ned’s stupid head. “I said shut up!”
Ned O’Leary would not hang. He would slowly bleed out through the many punctures Cole made in his flesh. He would perish knowing the full extent of Cole’s hate for him and go to hell fearing the moment his scorned lover joined him there.
Lars loved fame and money and would have been furious if he knew of Cole’s intentions, so he needed to be kept in the dark.
Cole made himself sit by the fire again and scowled at the pot where the tomato sauce had reduced too much, becoming a thick paste around the beans. It was only fitting. Yet another stain of shit on this terrible evening.
*
Night turned into day, and as they made their way down the mountain through thawing snow, accompanied by the scent of pine and tweeting of birds, Ned’s presence still felt like a bad dream. The bright sunlight made him more real, and each glance his way hurt Cole’s eyes.
Unlike many of their captives in the past, Ned didn’t try to haggle for his life or make an attempt to befriend them. Maybe he knew that with Cole present, it would have been futile. Every now and then, the green eyes strayed to him though, full of silent questions. Ned looked older and more tired, with reddened eyes and sunburned cheeks, but his gaze was so familiar Cole’s heart stung when it scratched him.
There had been a time when Ned’s eyes had invited Cole as if they were a patch of dense grass in the sun, the kind one wanted to rest on naked and just savor the heat on bare skin. But the intense color had faded, like undergrowth after a whole winter of snow.