Disclaimer:  All things Barkley belong to the PTBs and I am not making one red cent on any of it. 

Summary:  Nick can handle any trouble square on.  But what happens when the avenging brother of a dead bank robber goes after his own brand of revenge: An Eye for an Eye.

Eye For An Eye by Chianna

The sun, high in the sky, blistered the barren landscape for as far as the eye could see.  Sitting quietly, biding his time, Lance Rawlston chewed on a dry blade of grass and contemplated his revenge.  Often he pulled his hatred out like a box holding precious jewels and with a miser's greed pawed over each and every facet.  Charlie was still a boy in this brother's mind's eye when he died at the hands of an older and faster gunman.  It was no matter that a kink in the boy's nature had led him down the path to his ultimate destruction.  In fact, Rawlston had discarded the news that he had heard over the eight years of his brother's dark history.  Instead, he saw the tow-headed youth as he was on the day when he left the sixteen-year-old on the farm, intent on striking out on his own.  And he saw his brother as his "friend" and fellow gang member had described in his last few moments of life, blood soaking the ground and gasping out his last breaths as his black-clad killer loomed over him.

Rawlston had found his place in the world.  The world he chose was populated with gunpowder and the stench of death.  He had become a hired gun for a cattle baron up Montana way.  He was hundreds of miles away when Charlie and his friends - his gang - had tried to take the bank in Stockton one evening, just before closing, two years ago.  Grabbing the money, according to Charlie's friend, had been the easy part.  The cowed citizens in the bank hugged the wall and prayed for the whole ordeal to end as quickly as possible.  No, it wasn't until the robbers had gotten outside that the whole deal had gone south.  Charlie evidently had seen a woman on the sidewalk and decided that she would make the perfect shield.  Fooled into thinking that Stockton was populated by the same sheep that they encountered in the bank, Charlie underestimated the young woman's escort. 

Approaching them from behind as the couple strolled, Charlie only saw a couple that seemed touched by golden light and good fortune.  Dressed up and obviously heading for a dinner at the ritzy hotel across the street, Charlie noted that the man was not armed – and he made his move.  His arm shot out like a coiled snake, grasping the young woman by the upper arm and dragging her from the light embrace that held her hand on her companion's arm.  As a startled gasp escaped her lips, Charlie got the first hint that his plan might not work as he had originally intended.  The young man that had been so blithely walking down the street, spun in a tight circle and lunged at Charlie.  Eyes that had been sparkling with mirth just moments ago, narrowed into deadly determination. 

Charlie's intent may have been to shout out a threat to the woman to prevent her escort's meddling, but no more than, "I'll shoot her…" came out.  Overwhelming instinct to meet the danger running headlong at him urged him to point the gun away from the woman and toward the man, that in just a moment, looked to flatten him.  He brought the gun to bear just as the man's hands closed around his arm and pulled it away from its close proximity to his sister.  In that brief moment, after looking into the frightened eyes of the girl and the raging eyes in front of him, it was obvious that the two were kin. 

Honor among thieves is a rare commodity, more often practiced within the pages of dime novels than in real life.  Charlie's accomplices melted into the darkness of the alley and headed for their horses when things seemed to get complicated.  Charlie might have the money, they could reason, but it would do them no good if he was caught.  If he wasn't, well they'd wait outside of town and get their cut.

The young man had pulled the gun away from his sister, drawing it closer to himself.  Charlie saw his chance and took it without remorse.  His finger still on the trigger, he pulled on it ever so slightly and it went off with a deafening roar.  He might not have immediately grasped that he had successfully placed his shot if the ear-piercing scream of the young woman, "Heath!" had not sliced thought the street. 

Forward momentum and determination continued to drive the young man toward the bank robber in an effort to shield his sister's escape as he ground out, "Run, Audra...run!"

Fleet as a young doe, the girl picked up her skirts and ran toward the lights of the hotel, screaming out names that Charlie thought sounded like "Jarrod!  Nick!"

Hearing his sister's departing, the man fell to his knees, his right hand grasping his wounded side as blood oozed steadily between his fingers. 

It was Charlie's unbridled anger that sealed his fate.  He hesitated for one fateful moment to aim his gun at the bowed head of the stranger that had fallen before him.  Failing to notice that people were streaming out of the hotel, he did not see the two well dressed men running toward them.  The taller brunette dressed all in black had grabbed a gun from a stunned cowboy and shot the robber in the chest before he could shoot the young man laying on the sidewalk. 

When word had finally reached him about his brother's death, Lance Rawlston devoured the news that he could find about the shooting.  If the story had been just about a thwarted bank robbery and a dead gunman, he doubted that the incident would have gotten more than a few lines in the news.  But it had been the Stockton Barkley's that thwarted the robbery.  It had been Heath Barkley that had been shot heroically protecting his sister.   Rawlston found articles in newspapers about the incident as far away as San Francisco and Denver. 

But for all the information that they had, they could not answer the questions that were burning in his mind – burning a hole where his heart had been and now only revenge resided like a cold hard lump of resolve. 

As Charlie lay on the ground watching the scene unfold before him, did he wonder why his brother did not run to his side and press a cloth to his wounds?  As the other was gathered up and carefully borne to the hotel to wait for a doctor, did he wonder where his brother was?  Why his brother wasn't there to hold him?  No newspaper, short of heaven would have the answers that Rawlston needed.  His only answers lay in creating the same terrible questions for Nick Barkley.  With that thought, he leveled his rifle and drew a bead on the rider picking his way through the pass below.  He sighted first on the blond head and then lowered his aim – and fired. 

TBC….