Page 77 of The Last True Hero
Twenty
"YOU TWO KNOW each other?" Rykker demanded.
"We've met," Adam replied roughly, tension radiating through him. "A long time ago."
Eden screamed as Johnny Colton dragged her toward the small hut. “Adam! Adam, help—”
“You leave her alone!” he’d roared, straining at the shackles tied to his ankle. The ring he was tied to moved a fraction of an inch, but it was driven deep into stone. Adam grabbed a fistful of the chain and yanked, but there was no shifting it. Thwarted, he looked helplessly at his sister. “If you fucking touch her, I’ll—”
Laughter echoed, rough-edged with pure sadism. Bartholomew Cane—the bastard who’d made him a warg—merely lit his cigarette, the flame flaring in the near dark as he cupped his hands around it. “Don’t have to touch her.” He shook the flame out, drawing in a sweet lungful of smoke as he sneered at Adam. “That’s the beauty of this.”
Adam hadn’t understood.
“Throw him in there with her,” Cane told Colton, who was struggling to shove Eden through the door. "I told you what I wanted, McClain. You refused. This is punishment."
Eden gripped the edges of the door like an octopus, kicking at Colton’s shins.
Adam stared in horror at Cane as he began to understand what the devil wanted with him.
“No, I don’t have to touch her,” Cane said with the faintest of smiles. “You get to do the honors yourself. Consider it your first meal, unless….”
Unless he did what Cane wanted, and delivered his friend, Luc Wade, up to the same curse he himself had been inflicted with.
"I warned you," Colton muttered as he slammed the door shut and came back for Adam. "Cane always finds a way to get what he wants...."
Adam blinked, and Colton’s face swam out of memory. All these months of hunting the bastard and here he was, right here. Adam’s fist curled. He’d never gotten to repay Cane for the misery of this curse—Luc beat him to it a year ago—but if he wanted a target, then Colton was right here. He could finally take his fury out, finally get some blood in return for the hand he’d been dealt.
All he had to do was kiss good-bye any chance of rescuing Mia’s sister….
That thought brought him up short. Adam hadn't realized he’d stepped forward until he was an inch from the bars. Colton didn’t move. Merely watched him with those black, emotionless eyes. Slowly he tipped his chin up, as if daring Adam to do it.
They stared at each other. Rage burned through him, like a wildfire through his veins. He was shaking.Jesus.
Rykker laughed. “Doesn’t look like you were old friends.” He kicked the cage, but Colton never flinched, and so Rykker resorted to spitting through the bars at him. “Fucking wargs. Caught him a month ago. Then he broke out three weeks ago, trying to get into the slave pens. Let's just say, he won't be trying that again.”
"Oh, we weren't ever friends," Colton muttered, his voice raw as if with disuse. "No, never that, were we, McClain?"
That froze the blood in Adam’s veins. He met Colton’s gaze again. All it would take would be a single sentence from Colton’s lips and his cover was blown.
A faint smile curled up Colton’s mouth.Do it?asked the arch of his brow, as if the exact same thought was running through his mind.
Adam stared at Colton, swallowing hard. Everything depended on this moment. Everything.
“No,” Colton rasped, moving away toward the stone bench that served as a bed. “McClain was hunting me. Haven't seen you in a couple of months."
"Lost the scent," he snarled. And that was when he'd lost his motivation, ending up in Mia's bar.
Colton shrugged. "I don't think your heart was truly in it. If you'd wanted my head that badly, you could have caught me twice. I watched you ride by from a couple of gulches, you and that kid at your side."
"Oh, I wanted your head." He stopped himself from grabbing on to the bars of the cage just in time, and stood there quivering. One touch would reveal him, as surely as the sun rose in the east. "After what you did to my sister...."
"I didn't touch her." Colton slid a sidelong look at Rykker, and picked his words more carefully. "If I recall, once you did as Cane asked, I was the one who returned your sweet sister back to her home. If I'd wanted to hurt her, I had my chances. You were the one who tried to burn me alive. You and that bastard you rode with."
Luc. That was the last time they'd ever worked together, when he and Luc trapped Cane and Colton inside the hut, and flicked a match. Too late to save themselves perhaps. Then Luc vanished into the wilderness, and Adam headed out to find a spot to kill himself.
Colton's reticence made him catch hold of his temper. Colton could have given him up then. Only, he'd chosen not to. Why? Adam paced. "Can't say I regret that moment. And you survived.”
"Well, isn't this just fascinating," Rykker said, and Adam recalled they had an audience.
