The Man Who Hated Ned O'Leary (Dig Two Graves 2)

Lars descended the steep hill on one side of the ravine, howling through the horn as another cow smashed into the side of the gallows, tilting them farther. Cole froze when Lars produced a gun and shot just above his head, aiming for the noose as if he’d ever been able to hit anything smaller than a man’s torso. At this rate, instead of saving Cole from hanging, Lars would plant a bullet in his forehead. But Cole’s anger ceased to matter when the sheriff spun around, about to pack a whole round in the assailant despite balancing on the edge of the trembling platform.

But Lars was faster, and for once, he didn’t miss his mark.

The sheriff screamed out when a bullet hit his midsection, threw him off balance, and then sent him off the gallows. Rory leapt off the wagon used to transport Ned and Cole earlier, but he couldn’t have grabbed his superior’s hand on time, and the lawman disappeared under the endless stream of cattle, swallowed like meat in a grinder. He didn’t even make a peep.

Rory fell to his hands and knees, deathly pale in the yellow clouds of dust that brought Cole another chance at life and stared at the running cows as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.

Cole, on the other hand, couldn’t believe his luck until the platform creaked under someone’s weight, and a warm hand touched his. There was a single tug at the rope binding his wrists, and once a knife cut through hemp, he was free.

Lars pushed a revolver into his hand, but by the time Cole’s neck had been released, Rory stood, coughing as the herd’s stragglers dashed past them like hyenas eager to enjoy what the lions had left behind. Cole pointed the gun at the young deputy without thinking, painfully aware of Ned wiggling on the rope just over an arm’s length away. His choked grunts overpowered all other noise, drilling into Cole’s head with the insistence of an army surgeon.

“Just walk away,” Cole said, cocking the gun. Life was once again flowing through his veins, and this time he was truly grateful that fate saved his hide.

Lars pointed his gun at Rory as well. “Do you want to live, boy?” he yelled, attempting to obscure his Norwegian accent without much success.

Rory put down his gun and backed toward the wagon, which was somehow still whole.

Lars pulled on Cole’s arm, staring at him from behind the skull mask. “I’ve got your horse uphill.”

He’d come for Cole at a risk to his own life.

He really had.

But as Lars dragged Cole to the other side of the platform and jumped off in the ridiculous Wolfman costume, Cole’s eyes were drawn to the figure still struggling against the rope tightening around his neck.

Ned was shaking now, the noose so impossibly tight the sight alone made Cole’s own throat ache. Lars called his name, already halfway up the wall of the ravine, but Cole couldn’t follow.

This couldn’t be the end of his seven-year-long search.

Cole’s back screamed as he grabbed Ned around the waist and pulled. With the gallows leaning forward, Ned’s feet soon found support, but he couldn’t remove free himself, and Cole reached up, fighting through the numbness in his own hands to loosen the tight loop around Ned’s throat.

His veins burned with fire when Ned sucked in air, so he held on to keep him from stumbling back into the open trapdoor, and yanked at the rope in an effort to untangle it.

“Leave him!” Lars yelled, but was already on his way back to Cole’s side.

“Cut him down!” Cole urged him while his arms trembled with the effort of holding Ned’s fainting body.

Lars grumbled something in Norwegian but jumped onto the gallows in fast strides. As soon as he cut through the rope, Cole couldn’t handle the additional weight any longer and let go.

Ned dropped into the rubble of wood under the gallows, and for a moment all Cole could hear was his coughing.

The ice of Lars’s gaze froze Cole in place. “Satisfied? I said, let’s go!”

In the cloud of dust, he looked like a real monster about to unleash its wrath on the town, but Cole knew the person hiding behind the skull mask was only a man.

“We’re taking him,” he growled and lay on the broken platform, reaching into the hole that had just swallowed Ned.

Lars didn’t argue for once and helped him yank the writhing body back up.

“I guess,” Lars scoffed. “Might as well get paid for him elsewhere.”

The words snapped Cole back to a reality he’d forgotten in the rush of this second chance at life, and as the truth sank in, he dragged Ned away from the gallows and toward the hillside, deaf to anything but his own heartbeat.

He’d told Ned O’Leary he still loved him.