Lars groaned, immune to the suggestion. “I don’t feel like hunting. We’ll be eating like kings in Beaver Springs tomorrow.”
Fuck.
“Craig!” Ned yelled and jumped up only to fall into the melting snow when the collar yanked him down again. “Thaddeus Craig. No. I’m not going to him! You can’t make me!”
Lars grabbed a fistful of snow and threw it at Ned. “You can’t even hold your own cock steady!”
“I can still call the wolves!” Ned yelled with a manic glint in his eyes, then howled.
Then hooted.
Then howled again.
For a moment, he tweeted like a nightingale, then howled once more.
Lars jumped to his feet. “Shut him up!”
Cole’s heart was made of ice, but it was slowly cracking. Sharp twitches burned through his chest as he grabbed a handkerchief from his bag, squeezed the sides of Ned’s face, and stuffed the crumpled fabric into his mouth. Ned stilled, like a wild animal surprised by a hunter, and for a moment their eyes met, offering Cole a glimpse of the man he used to be before madness had taken hold.
He wanted to dismiss all this as yet another trick, but even his distrustful nature couldn’t poke any holes in Ned’s behavior. Was this really the same man Cole used to know? Did it matter?
“Good job,” Lars said and secured the gag with a tie around Ned’s head for good measure. “We can’t have him doing this… You know, I’m not superstitious, but what if he has some tamed wolves or something. Can’t be too careful.”
Cole shook his head. “He hasn’t tamed any wolves. Look at him,” he said with more anger than necessary, and pointed at Ned, who stared straight at him, mumbling into the gag.
Needles stabbed at Cole’s stomach, and he averted his gaze, increasingly frantic. The way Ned watched him felt tender, almost intimate.
No one had looked at him like that since they’d parted. And he didn’t want it. He didn’t want poisonous caresses nor wordless promises that never got kept. Not from Ned O’Leary. Not from anyone.
He’d never again let anyone make a fool of him.
Lars put his arm over Cole’s shoulders. “His looks won’t matter on the gallows. But good thing I saved your pretty head, eh?” He grinned, convinced the real meaning behind his words would stay their secret, but being like them himself, Ned would understand.
Cole’s heart stopped when the green gaze went from him to Lars and back again. Ned frowned and huffed through his nose, shaking his head like an angry stallion.
Why?
Why was he staring at Cole that way?
Biting the inside of his cheek, Cole grabbed the empty sack, which had contained this afternoon’s provisions and put it on Ned’s head. He tied it around his neck for good measure. His heart beat so fast he was close to falling over by the time he stepped back and pushed his hands into his pockets.
He still knew none of the things he needed to extract out of Ned, but the truth about his own life had already come out. “He could tell someone,” he mumbled, fighting a thickness in his throat.
Lars groaned, but tried to pat Cole’s ass, taking the opportunity of Ned’s blindness. But when Cole grabbed his hand and twisted it to the point of pain, he settled down to his coffee without another word.
Chapter 4
The night passed, as did the morning, and Ned O’Leary still breathed. Like a parasite that wouldn’t die once it sank its hooks into a man’s flesh, he refused to perish and would suck the life out of Cole until he had to take drastic measures, like cutting off his own arm.
But as much as he wanted to stab his knife into Ned’s throat and be done with seven years of pent-up rage, it would have been like surviving on plain bread and water.
Cole needed to make the maggot face him and tell him everything. Why had he done what he’d done? Had he been working with the law from the start? Why save Cole when he’d sicced the law at the men and women he’d been genuinely friendly with?
Cole swallowed hard as his chest tightened in a reminder of the question he wanted to ask most but wasn’t sure he would.
Was our love in any way real?
He shook his head in anger, because it was something the boy he once was wanted to know even after so many years. But he wasn’t that boy any more, and such vulnerable thoughts shouldn’t have a place in his heart. His attachment to Lars was much simpler. Straightforward, physical, and with no notions of romance. He’d learned to expect nothing out of it, and if one day Lars chose to leave or betray Cole, it would not come as a surprise or cause pain.
It would only be a fact of life.
Around noon, they entered Beaver Springs through the wooden archway decorated with huge antlers, just like Lars had wanted. Their collared prisoner garnered the attention of every passer-by and Cole rode at the rear, simmering in silence every time Lars tugged at the chain attached to Ned, making him stumble for the amusement of townsfolk.
Like P.T. Barnum entering the stage to introduce yet another wild animal to a curiosity-starved public, Lars tipped his hat at anyone looking his way, and basked in both sunshine and interest, smiling as if he wanted to boast about the whiteness of his teeth. He must have taken lessons when they’d visited a circus last year.
“All will be revealed soon!” he promised to a stranger who hadn’t asked him anything.
“Who is that scarecrow?” a young man inquired, smoking a cigarette on the porch of the stagecoach depot as if he had no work to attend to.
“None of your concern,” Cole said and rode up to Lars, taking Ned’s lead from his hand.
His hat sat low on his brow to overshadow the face someone might by chance recognize, but he’d had more than enough time to settle into his fugitive status. The reason why the underside of his skin simmered, and his back beaded with sweat despite the March cold, had nothing to do with danger and everything with this being the end of the line. The moment he gave up Ned to the sheriff, he’d lose his chance to find out the true motives behind Ned’s betrayal.
Ned O’Leary might hang for crimes both against society and the Gotham Boys, but his death would leave Cole in the dark, with no answers, robbed of the closure he so desperately needed. He wanted to be the one to pull the trigger or push a rusty blade into Ned’s guts and watch him bleed out for days.
Lars urged his horse closer to Cole’s. “Listen, take him behind the shop nearby. I’ll go see the sheriff first and drum up some Wolfman fever to get us a better payout.”
Cole’s throat pulsed with excitement, but he was set on keeping the extent of his animosity toward Ned secret from Lars. It was too private to share with anyone. Too painful.
“Fine. Take your time,” he said, struggling not to be overly enthusiastic in the way he slid off Carol’s back.
Ned met his eyes with a bloodshot glare. Maybe he looked like a man about to go mad because he hadn’t gotten his daily dose of booze, maybe he was furious over the gag in his mouth. It didn’t matter, because his comfort wasn’t anyone’s priority.
Cole led both the horse and Ned along the wooden building, already thinking about the creek behind it. At a small distance from people’s houses, the stream was surrounded by little patches of leftover snow where the sun didn’t reach, and appeared peaceful with only birds to witness what Cole was about to do.