The Man Who Loved Cole Flores (Dig Two Graves 1)
Bile rose in his throat along with fury. The Gotham Boys. Uncle Liam had assured him they’d never hear of those bastards again, but the name alone triggered an avalanche of memories he’d tried to wipe from his mind.
Cole Flores. Cole.
Ned now knew exactly where he’d seen those black eyes before.
Chapter 3
“Stay here, and don’t make a peep no matter what happens. Promise me, Ned,” Mother whispered, wiping tears from her eyes with fingers trembling as if she were out in the cold.
Too terrified to speak, he nodded, hoping she’d see him through the gaps between the planks that made up the doors of the cupboard at the back of the pantry.
She disappeared for what could have been minutes, but might as well have been hours. Laughter and conversation was muted by wooden walls but assaulted Ned as soon as the pantry door opened again. Ned flinched, terrified of the monster with six fingers on each hand. But the person who stepped inside was only a boy.
“Get the canned fruit, Cole!” a man yelled from the main room.
The boy couldn’t have been older than Ned, with black, tousled hair and a dirty face that was barely visible in the shadows even when he got closer, searching for cans stacked above the cupboard doors.
He stepped on a crate to reach for them and stalled, his gaze pinned to Ned’s through the gap in the wooden planks that made up the cupboard. Ned stopped breathing altogether, transfixed on eyes that were black and shiny like the skin of a snake.
“What’s taking so long?” someone else urged. “Rat got your foot?”
The boy grabbed two cans and jumped off the crate, still considering what he ought to do. But as Ned’s eyes welled up in fear, the boy turned away.
“It’s nothing, I got them!” he said and shut the door, leaving Ned in the dark.
*
Freezing water swallowed Ned, as if the back of the cupboard had broken apart and released him into the mountain lake where he and Father had fished in the winter through a hole in the ice. But as he opened his mouth and sucked in as much air as he could, the shrill voice of Aunt Muriel pulled him right back to a reality where he lay on an itchy bed of hay, covered by a blanket that smelled of horse.
“Ned O’Leary! Everyone heard of your exploits already. Have you no shame?” she asked and tossed an empty bucket to the ground. “Poor Mr. Smith is injured because of you!”
Ned groaned and rubbed water off his face, shivering at the way damp clothes stuck to his body. He deserved this. After losing all his money at the saloon, he’d drunk more—on credit—and hardly remembered how he’d even got home. Good old Nugget knew the way. Ned would have to reward his horse with an apple.
“Sorry, I might have overdone it. But Smith’s foot has nothing to do with me.” He got up, brushing hay off his clothes while his head pounded. And it wasn’t just because of barrel fever.
The Gotham Boys. Cole Flores.
Aunt Muriel studied his pathetic state with a scowl, hands placed firmly on her hips, as if she wanted to appear larger and therefore scarier. Ned wasn’t a black bear, but he decided not to challenge her authority as she spoke in a shrill tone that drilled into his skull like a woodpecker trying to make a nest in his head.
“You might not have pulled the trigger, but you did cause all that mayhem, so don’t you argue with me. You still live under my roof!”
Ned expressed his disgruntlement with a shrug, but there was no point in arguing with her. It wasn’t like he had any money left to go gambling for a while. Would his future bride come with a dowry?
“I’ll make some apologies,” he said, half-yawning as the water turned the barn floor under his feet muddy.
Aunt Muriel stepped uncomfortably close and took a very loud sniff before waving her hand in front of her face, which twisted in an expression of disgust worthy of a performer. “You stink, Ned, and there’s two well-dressed gentlemen waiting for you in the parlor. Clean up at once. If they wait any longer, I’ll have to feed them lunch!”
That woke Ned up. “Gentlemen? For me?”
Cole?
Is it Cole?
“Yes, they claim it’s important—”
“Please feed them, auntie? Washing my face won’t be enough this time,” Ned said, already in motion and stripping his shirt on the way.
She gave a low exhale but didn’t nag him anymore at least.
Ned ran behind the bunk house and took a shower using the contraption installed there. He washed away the unpleasantly sweet odor left behind by liquor with tooth powder, and shaved so fast he nicked himself twice.
Cole had been a child when the Gotham Boys had invaded Ned’s family home in the mountains and changed his life forever. He had kept Ned’s presence a secret, even though his survival had depended on the brutes he traveled with and wasn’t to blame for what happened on that night of horror. His presence in the same area as the gang suggested he still rode with them, and that fact confused Ned to the point where he wasn’t sure whether the storm wreaking havoc in his body was the result of fury or excitement.