Ned was already getting up, and he pulled off the next plank with much more ease. “Go in, go in!” he urged Cole once the empty window was accessible.
There was no point in arguing, so Cole did as told and rushed inside, wary of the broken glass creaking under his feet.
The musty smell of damp and mold made the air feel icy despite the summer heat outside, and he stalled, taking in the huge interior with a carpet that looked as if it had been eaten and then expelled by a giant cat.
Most of the furniture had been knocked over, seemingly out of pure malice, and paintings in fancy frames had darkened and bore stains that hid their true subject. The light seeping through the gap Ned had made in the window only reached so far, leaving the rest of the elongated room in twilight.
“We need to get out of here… or hide” Cole uttered, moving toward an open doorway as soon as Ned landed behind him. Jan had said he wanted them in the basement, where the four girls had been killed, and while this went against Cole’s survival instinct, there had to be a reason for Jan to be so specific. If it had been just about waiting out the police chase, anywhere in this goddamn grave of a house would have been good enough, so why underground? Cole now regretted that in his haste he hadn’t demanded more details, but if he could have turned back time, he and Ned wouldn’t be in this terrible situation in the first place.
He froze when a tubal voice—Thaddeus Craig, without a doubt—shouted outside, “Ned O’Leary! You and your accomplice are surrounded! There are only two ways this can end, so do yourself a favor and come out, both of you!”
Cole took a lungful of air, pulling Ned behind a large cabinet in case one of the lawmen shot through the window, but before he decided whether to answer or not, someone else spoke, loud enough for Cole to overhear him.
“Sir… with all due respect, there’s no reason to enter the house. They’ll need to leave at some point. Why risk it?”
“I said, let’s go in!” Craig roared to the men, and Cole could just imagine his face going red. “I’m not letting the bastard slip through my fingers once more!”
“It’s not a good place, Mr. Craig,” another policeman said. “The bodies of the girls were kept in the basement for weeks, and their likenesses have just appeared in the street out of nowhere. It’s not a good sign. Some say their ghosts have penetrated—”
“I can’t believe this gibberish! Are you men or chickens?”
The man who’d tried to reason with the marshal earlier spoke up again, “Shut up, Dickins. Mr. Craig, the building’s deteriorated, and both those criminals are armed. I will not put my men in danger for no good reason!”
A shadow passed through the open window, but when Cole saw that it held a gun, he didn’t hesitate and shot the bastard’s firearm clean out of his hand.
The sharp cry that chased him and Ned out of the large room meant the lawman might now have to nurse a broken wrist, but nobody shot at Cole Flores without expecting retaliation.
“Get out with your hands in the air, and you may live,” Craig roared, but a life behind bars, awaiting one’s execution, was no life at all, as far as Cole was concerned, and he burst into the hallway.
He chewed his lips as the true scale of the building’s decay was laid bare by debris littering the floor, the crooked staircase no sane person would climb, and the source of the destruction—a hole in the ceiling, which showcased red wallpaper in the room above.
“Rats with no honor!” Craig hollered, but Cole didn’t know whether the marshal meant them or his fellow law enforcement officers. A loud thud told Cole Craig was climbing into the building, so he dragged Ned across the corridor, into a room with chairs arranged in a circle around a large table that still had a bouquet of dried flowers in the middle. He didn’t want to question whether that was how the family had left it, or if someone used it for séances, and stayed by the open doorway, back resting against the cool wall. The creak of the floor gave away Craig’s approximate location, and he hoped that their deafening heartbeats weren’t nearly as loud.
Sweat dampened his shirt as he listened to Craig’s careful steps, but he still held his finger on the trigger, ready to act if Craig approached their hideout. Next to him, Ned was stiff as a wooden board, but when Cole’s gaze picked up that he was also trembling, tenderness washed through him, overpowering even fear. Cautious, he moved his free hand along the wall until his little finger touched the side of Ned’s. It was only a brush of skin against skin, yet the warmth of Ned’s flesh reminded him that they were both alive, and as he held his breath, trying to assess how close Craig was, the contact reassured him that they could still win this.
Craig was on his own, and unless the police officers chose to abandon their siege plans and joined him, Cole and Ned had the numbers. Still, he’d promised he would not shoot Craig just because, and as foolish as that choice was, he didn’t want to go against Ned’s wishes.
The fingers touching his steadied, and then one slid across Cole’s pinkie, tightening around it in the tiniest of hugs. Cole had never communicated with such ease. Not with Butcher Tom, not with any of his friends, not with Lars, and this special bond he shared with Ned grounded him in a reality where he could be good and spare the lawman who wanted them dead.
The floor creaked under Craig’s weight, and Cole emptied his lungs, listening to the man’s footsteps coming ever closer. He was on the brink of leaning out of the room and sending Craig to his maker, but when Ned squeezed his hand, he waited. And so did Craig, standing so close Cole could just about hear him breathing.
He was right outside the room, likely staring into the darkness, and if he took one more step, passing the doorway, he’d force Cole’s hand. But when Craig moved again, his footsteps became ever softer, as if the distance between them was growing.
With both hands occupied, Cole put the barrel of his gun across his lips, asking for Ned’s silence, and slowly leaned out of the open doorway in search of Craig, but only saw his faint shadow on the damp floor.
Cole’s gaze passed over the collapsed ceiling in the hallway, and just as he was about to face Ned again, something strange caught his attention beyond the carnage of debris. An irregularity in the wallpaper.
He tried not to jump to conclusions and consider that perhaps the low light was playing tricks on him, but the longer he looked at the wall on the other side of the hallway, the more clearly he saw a tiny doorknob and the outline of a discreet passage tucked under the stairs.
He pointed it out to Ned, who swallowed and squeezed Cole’s hand with a question in his eyes, but when Cole was about to check Craig’s position, something moved upstairs. Whether it was a rat, birds, or a ghost, it set the marshal in motion.
“Ah-ha!” Craig roared and ran toward them, his boots banging on the rotting floor until Cole’s hand sweated around the metal grip in his hand. But as he lowered the gun, ready to pull the trigger once the lawman stepped into the room, the heavy footsteps slowed, echoing with a creak. The damn fool was climbing the rotting stairs!
Each move could have sent the marshal into a world of pain and broken bone, but he trudged on, fueled by the need to capture his father’s murderer. Cole entwined his fingers with Ned’s and held them tightly, but the commotion he anticipated never came, and when the floor above groaned under the man’s weight, Cole couldn’t believe their luck.