Total pages in book: 179
Estimated words: 165476 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 827(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 165476 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 827(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
“I’ll go with him so he doesn’t run off with all our loot,” Cole said, laughing when Adam kicked him in the shin as he passed. “Much obliged,” he told the terrorized older man and rolled out of his lap, facing Ned for the briefest moment. Their eyes met in an electric shock that made Ned feel as if Cole’s gaze were lightning, and he—a lone tree struck by it deep in the night.
He’d already forgiven Cole for the cruelty shown the man he’d robbed, and Ned was slowly coming to terms with the fact that he’d excuse all of Cole’s questionable actions. He didn’t even try to explain it to himself anymore. Cole’s power over him was magnetic and solidified every time their eyes met.
Ned stared after him as Cole walked backward behind Adam, eyes smiling, posture carefree, just like when he’d strutted on the viaduct earlier that day.
“Just don’t die! I’m done saving your ass,” Ned grumbled, and he could have sworn Cole winked at him before turning around o leave the car. It was as if the terrified passengers weren’t really there—only props in the background of their budding friendship.
Behind him, Tom chuckled, lassoing Ned back to reality with cruelty rather than rope. “Maybe it’s time someone taught him how to avoid dropping to the bottom of the river like a rock.”
They were here to take the valuables, and there was no point in terrorizing the poor souls traveling on the train any longer than necessary, but if he was to run with wolves, he needed to hunt and howl with them too. To have a casual conversation with Tom while the passengers cowered in their seats, Ned had to slice away his true self and become the criminal apprentice he claimed to be.
“I’ll teach ‘im in the summer.”
He needed to forget reality and pretend Tom was a good leader and overall decent human being. That the people they were harassing had done something terrible and their fear was the means to a noble end. That the bulk of the takings would go toward poor orphans, and the rest would fund Adam Wild’s wedding to the girl he loved. In that fake reality maybe he had a chance of fooling everyone into thinking he was a part of their tribe.
A squeal made Ned focus on Tom again, and his insides twisted when he realized Tom was pulling on the hand of a young woman in an expensive-looking pink dress. He hadn’t yet applied too much force, only teasing her for now, but that was enough to make her chest work at the speed of a piston.
“Please… I already gave up all my jewelry and money,” she croaked.
But Tom squeezed her hand in both of his, having a brief look around the frozen passengers, as if he were a famous actor waiting for applause. No one clapped or hooted though, and as the girl tried to pull her slender hand out of Tom’s grip, Ned smelled his mother’s fear along with the dried herbs in the pantry where she’d told Ned to wait everything out without uttering a sound—no matter what happened.
Ned’s blood boiled. His hand gravitated toward the gun at his hip, blackness swallowing the edges of his vision until it narrowed to the width of a crack between planks of wood and all he saw was the girl turning her head away, then Tom yanked her up, hand sinking into a pocket in her skirt.
Something collided with Tom, and Ned stepped back, returning to reality in time to see the girl hitching up her petticoats to scramble over the seats while Tom collapsed under the weight of a man in a checkered jacket. Big as a grizzly bear, the stranger had been seated across from the assaulted girl. His weight and size played to his advantage as he roared something in a foreign language, sliding his arm around Tom’s neck and pulling as if he intended to rip the bastard’s head off and carry it on the tip of a bayonet.
Time slowed as the passengers raised their voices, some of them watching the confrontation, others glancing to Ned in fear of more violence. Nobody noticed Tom’s fallen gun yet or tried to grab it.
Ned could have left. He could have stepped off the train, slid onto Nugget’s back and ridden off knowing that Tom’s body cooled in the railcar and that he hadn’t even dirtied his hands for it to happen.
But then, he thought back to Saul shoving that poor man outside. To Doc cracking open the safe as if it contained a prize, not people’s livelihoods, to Zeb, Adam Wild, and others tearing cash and family heirlooms out of innocent people’s hands, and knew that they’d walk unpunished unless he chose to sacrifice his conscience.
Ned was in this for the long haul. He needed to help the Pinkertons catch the gang red- handed, and so Butcher Tom, the man who killed his father and forced himself on his mother, needed to live another day.