You reckless fucking idiot.
Do you have soup for brains?
Haven’t you just said you wanted to take care of Tommy?
Don’t die!
Breathless with fury, Cole sprinted from behind the statue, his gaze already hitting the bullseye that was Zeb’s forehead. Aiming was second nature, and if Zeb as much as twitched in Cole’s direction, lead poisoning would take him to the afterlife.
The old outlaw still looked like the man who’d taught Cole how to catch fish, how to hunt animals without making them suffer or damaging the pelts. He’d been a mean bastard at the beginning, and on Cole’s second night with the Gotham Boys, he’d even offered to give him money for disappearing while Butcher Tom slept, but he’d come around and learned to care for Cole in his own way.
Now the eyes that used to express fondness only had hate for him.
“Zebediah, drop your weapon!” Cole shouted at the top of his lungs.
“Why?” The crazed bastard laughed, his skin duller and more scarred than Cole remembered. “So you can save your murdering lovebird? No chance!” Perhaps he had a death wish, because instead of going against Cole, he aimed his repeater at the produce stand and released bullet after bullet, spraying the dirt with lush juices as Ned cowered behind the flimsy wooden crates behind the vehicle.
Was this a test? Did Zeb want to end this painful quest for revenge as much as Cole used to?
It did not matter, because the result would be the same.
Cole shot once. Twice. Thrice. He emptied both six-shooters into Zeb by the time the heavy-set lump of blood and bone hit the ground.
“Ned!” he cried, wanting to run behind the cart and prove to himself that Zeb had lost his skill and missed every single time, but his feet had grown into the dirt. His head felt hollow as he breathed in and out, aiming the empty guns at the fresh corpse, almost certain the man who’d just fallen would get back on his feet and spit the bullets out as if he’d caught them all in the gap between his teeth.
A part of Cole believed Zeb to be indestructible, but he no longer moved, and the dirt in the middle of the road changed color as his blood soaked into it.
“I’m fine!” Ned yelled back and was smart enough to stay hidden. “Just a few scratches. Tommy?”
The clamoring bell was joined by several whistles, and that was what pushed Cole back into action. There was no time to linger, but his mind suggested Zeb was only acting dead, so he threw a knife at him. The blade sank into Zeb’s thigh and the man didn’t twitch.
It was done.
He’d never come after them again, yet Cole sensed a profound sense of emptiness, almost as if he’d lost his gang once more. This time, it was he who’d cut that last thread.
“We… need to go,” he uttered, walking back so fast he almost tripped over the first step of the plinth. “Keep your eyes closed, Tommy. I’ve got you,” he said but avoided looking back as well and instead focused on the boy, who’d curled up next to Dog’s still-bristling form, shaking like a frightful rabbit.
“Dog! Come with me!” Ned whistled in the way Tommy had come up with, and despite still growling, Dog pulled out of the boy’s arms and limped to Ned. The beast usually rode with Tommy, but they had to move fast.
“The marshal’s coming, you bastards! You’ll regret the day you were born!” A woman yelled from the window, but ducked right after, as if stunned by her own bravery.
Tommy was stiff like a frozen carcass and avoided Cole’s gaze even when spoken to, but this wasn’t the time for coddling.
“Can you ride, or shall I take you?”
When all Cole got from him was a shudder going through his tiny frame, Cole put Tommy on his own horse and climbed on after him, urged by the frantic pulsing in his veins. He could almost sense the heat of bullets tearing into his flesh, but if they were fast enough and rode off before the police arrived on the scene, the lawmen would only have vague statements to go by.
They would take care of Zeb, like they’d dealt with everyone else Cole used to hold dear seven years ago.
“Follow!” he snapped, digging his heels into Carol’s sides. She broke into a gallop right away, speeding past Ned and down the road. But even with the chase that would soon be on their heels, one question knocked at his mind and refused to wait for its turn.
How had Zeb found them?
Chapter 23
Folks liked to believe that there was a higher power protecting them from harm. That most people were kind, and that one could always count on their neighbors, as long as you lived in harmony with them. The uncomfortable truth was that each man walked his path alone. Feelings of belonging were temporary, and each person assumed the world revolved around them and their needs.
When push came to shove, they would turn against those close to them. They would make choices that benefited them most and push others into the fire, if that ensured their survival. If mothers left their children. If husbands beat their wives. If a lover could reveal himself as a traitor, then there was no such thing as certainty in life. Clinging to hope that this or that person would be different made living easier, but Cole no longer believed in such lies.
Human beings were unworthy of trust, and relying on them resulted in misery.
Always.
Through the huge window made up of numerous sheets of glass Cole watched the faint lights of Denver as the night took over the landscape. He, Ned, and Tommy had hunkered down in an abandoned factory on the outskirts of town, and if the law didn’t find them by morning, he’d assume it was safe to come out.
The horses had been hitched to the only machine remaining in the vast, empty space that amplified each little noise made by the grime crushed under Cole’s boots. Bigger than any church Cole had visited, it was a cathedral of commerce, and while decorated with dust and old parts scattered where dozens of workers used to swarm each day, the factory had an odd charm to it.
Its vast emptiness embodied the hollow sensation in Cole’s heart—a grand building once so useful and able, now rusting away.
He’d sneaked away from Ned and Tommy under the pretense of checking the place for vagrants, but even though he’d wandered the corridors twice over and spotted potential escape routes, he didn’t want to face the others just yet.
Because how was he supposed to pass the time in Ned’s company after yesterday? At least Tommy was a kind of buffer between them, and they could always talk about the boy’s future. One other acceptable topic would have been Zeb, but Cole didn’t care to speak about that either, so he inhaled a long drag from a cigarette, unwilling to decide what he’d do next.
He’d told Ned they’d go their separate ways but would he be able to go through with that decision now that Thaddeus Craig, the same fucking US marshal who wanted to try Ned O’Leary over the killing of his late father, was out looking for them?
Ned had nowhere to go and, after yesterday’s row, would not agree to travel with Jan’s troupe. He had nothing and no one, and while Cole wasn’t at fault for Ned’s home burning down, he still felt responsible because of the same instinct that made him vulnerable to Ned’s schemes in the first place.
It would have been much healthier to wash his hands of Ned and let him go, yet here he was, still worried what might happen to Ned without him.