Keeper of the Books (Keeper of the Books, Book 1)

by Jason D. Morrow

  Contents

  Title Page

  Books By Jason D. Morrow

  Nate

  Levi

  Nate

  Nate

  Levi

  Joe

  Nate

  Devlin

  Joe

  Levi

  Nate

  Joe

  Joe

  Nate

  Nate

  Levi

  Devlin

  Nate

  Joe

  Nate

  Joe

  Joe

  Levi

  Levi

  Nate

  Devlin

  Nate

  Levi

  Nate

  Joe

  Nate

  Author's Note

  Author Links

  Books By Jason D. Morrow

  Preview of the Next Book

  Keeper of the Books

  By

  Jason D. Morrow

  Edited by Beth Morrow & Emily Simpson Morrow

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2016 Jason D. Morrow

  All rights reserved.

  Books by Jason D. Morrow

  Prototype

  Prototype D

  Prototype Exodus

  The Starborn Ascension

  Anywhere But Here

  Away From The Sun

  Into The Shadows

  The Starborn Uprising

  Out Of Darkness

  If It Kills Me

  Even In Death

  The Marenon Chronicles

  The Deliverer

  The Gatekeeper

  The Reckoning

  Nate

  Summer, 1882 A.D.

  Nathaniel Cole was wanted for murder, but this time he wasn’t guilty. At least, he hadn’t killed the man. He hadn’t even taken part in the bank robbery where the killing took place, but that was beside the point. Nate had been in charge of the operation in question, and as far as the law was concerned, he had pulled the trigger and killed the bank teller.

  The whole situation was a mess and Nate wasn’t sure how he would get out of being strung up this time. With that looming over him and the story his brother was feeding him about how it all went down, he had to sit and have a drink. The rocking chair creaked under his weight when he sat. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a flask, giving it a little shake to feel how much whiskey was left.

  Nate rocked calmly back and forth against the surface of the dusty front porch, his stare fixed ahead. The sun baked the entire landscape in front of him, not allowing a bit of green to sprout during the summer months. That was life in West Texas. Why people ever wanted to settle here was beyond him. Always had been. He knew his own reasons for being this far west, and none of them were close to as honorable as the men and women who parked their wagons to build a new life for themselves. Nate was out here for one reason only: to make money. And what better way to do that than to steal from a town with people just getting their bearings and where lawmen were scarce?

  He watched his brother, Joe, pace back and forth in front of him. As far as Nate was concerned, Joe was little more than a kid at twenty, but he was smart. Nate considered his little brother to be about as smart as he was, but at thirty, Nate had a few more years of life experience than Joe, so that’s what gave him an intellectual edge. Of course, Joe was unmatched in a gunfight. The boy was fast and accurate, though Nate was bigger and stronger. Only once or twice did his little brother get out of line—he was just a little too cocky for his own good. A quick boxing match was enough to persuade Joe that Nate was still in charge.

  The rowels on the end of his brother’s spurs jingled with every nervous step. Sweat dripped down his bald face, caking with the dust to make it seem like he had wiped his cheeks with mud. His hat and clothes were equally dusty, and with every move he made, a light cloud followed him.

  “If you don’t stop walking like that, you’re gonna wear a trench in the porch,” Nate said, shaking the flask above his open mouth.

  “I couldn’t believe it,” Joe said. “Both of them just disappeared. Vanished. It was like they weren’t even there.”

  “Are you sure the four of you didn’t go out drinking before you went?”

  Joe clenched his jaw and stared straight into Nate’s eyes. Nate looked away from him and shook his flask one last time before screwing the lid back on and placing it back in his breast pocket.

  “Do I look drunk to you? I’m nervous as a stray dog, but I ain’t drunk.”

  Nate was nervous too, but it would do neither of them any good for him to show it. He was in charge. If he started panicking, Joe might forget how smart he was and do something stupid.

  “You said Amos was caught?” Nate asked.

  “The sheriff shot his horse out from under him,” Joe said. “But there was another man.”

  Nate looked up at Joe. “Who?”

  “We’re in a lot of trouble, Nate.”

  “Who?” Nate repeated.

  “Levi Thompson,” Joe answered.

  Nate clenched his jaw and gripped the side of his chair. He was afraid that name would come up. Levi Thompson was the best of the best. There weren’t any criminals that stayed on the run for very long if Levi Thompson was after them. With this bounty hunter so near, it meant that they weren’t long for this world if they didn’t move quickly.

  “He’s probably questioning Amos right now,” Joe said.

  This perplexed Nate. Well, the whole situation was puzzling, really. Amos was one of five in the entire outfit that Nate had put together, and he was the worst one that could have been captured. It wouldn’t take anything to get him to talk and give up Nate’s location. And that was what Thompson would want anyway. The other two crooks were Ralph and Stewart. Joe said the second they opened the book, they vanished into thin air.

  “Did you flip through the book? Did anything fall out of it?”

  “I didn’t,” Joe said. “Not after what I saw.”

  “But you have it with you?”

  “It’s in the saddle,” Joe said. “But I ain’t gonna let you open it. Not after I saw what happened to Ralph and Stew.”

  Joe looked away from Nate to stare out into the empty yard. Nate thought about getting up and looking for another bottle of whiskey to fill his flask, but he was pretty sure it was all used up. Instead, he watched Joe, waiting for him to say something else. But he stayed quiet.

  Nate often wondered why he lumped himself with fools and idiots like the crew he’d hired. Nate craved adventure and, as usual, Joe wanted to do whatever Nate was doing. Both of them had grown up in the East, attending private schools where they were taught to be respectable people with good manners and the like. But that was many years ago for Nate, and by now he should have been better at choosing employees. Amos was the worst of them and he’d give up Nate and Joe for nothing.

  Joe was on edge, and he had good reason to be. According to him, the safety deposit box that Nate and his outfit had been hired to rob didn’t contain any money, a map, or even a key. Instead, the only thing in it was a book. Why someone would pay good money to have Nate hold up a bank just to get a book was beyond him, but that wasn’t the worst part of it. Joe called it a demon book with dark magical powers. Nate didn’t often give in to fears of the supernatural, but he didn’t think it considerably lucky to dismiss the notion altogether. However, Ralph and Stewart, who had helped Joe rob the safety deposit box, were in fact missing. They were not dead. They hadn’t run off scared—Joe would have made sure that didn’t happen. They were just gone. Joe said they vanished the moment they opened the
book.

  “I want to see it,” Nate said.

  “I’m telling you, Nate, it’s not worth it.” Joe took off his hat and wiped his forehead with a dirty sleeve, leaving a fresh line of mud caked around his eyebrows. When he turned to look at him, Nate was struck by the expression of worry on his face. Joe reminded him of their late mother, Melanie Cole, so much that it was almost painful. His blue eyes looked watery as if he was about to cry, though Joe wasn’t so sensitive. His slender face came to a point at his chin. He wasn’t muscular enough to brawl with Nate effectively, but his sharp wit and steady aim with his revolver more than made up for that. When it came down to it, if Joe were to put on a long, flowing dress and grow out his black, curly locks to the middle of his back, Nate would almost have to refer to him as ‘mother’ instead of ‘brother’.

  He had made the mistake of telling Joe this once, and the result was a mandatory dance in the middle of the yard in an attempt to dodge the bullets Joe felt inclined to send Nate’s way. When he had thought of it later that day, he knew Joe was such a good shot that the bullets were never intended to hit him. Of course, the argument would have ended when Joe ran out of bullets if he hadn’t decided to teach Nate a lesson in front of the others in their group, but Nate had to establish that he was still the leader. So, naturally, as Joe was reloading, Nate rushed him, tackled him to the ground, and hogtied him with a rope.

  “I’m leaving you tied up until you say you’re sorry,” Nate had told him as he walked away from the scuffle.

  It was midnight before Nate started to feel guilty. He had never meant to say that Joe looked like a woman, only that he looked like their mother. Joe looked like a man through and through, but if he ever did try to grow a beard, calling it peach fuzz would have been generous.

  “You sorry, yet?” Nate had asked him.

  Joe never wanted to give Nate the satisfaction. “I could stay out here all night. My limbs ain’t even hurting!”

  “Well, I don’t like the idea of rattlesnakes cozying up next to you,” Nate had told him. He walked to his brother and untied the rope. Nate had expected his brother to throw a fit, but he only asked if he had anything to drink. And that was the end of that.

  Nate, on the other hand, looked nothing like their mother. Instead, he took after their father, the late James R. Cole. A hair taller than six feet, Nate was lean but built with a lot of muscle. One almost never saw him without his brown, leather hat, and he shaved about once every three or four days. Today was day three, Nate thought, but he wasn’t sure. He shared the same brown eyes and hair with his father, and often the same temperament—or so he was often told growing up. Nate never saw it. James R. Cole was a tame man with few enemies. A writer and storyteller by trade, his father easily made friends who were often entertained by his narratives. Nate, however, was an outlaw with more enemies than he could count.

  Every time Nate thought about his father, he felt burdened. James R. Cole had been shot and killed just a year before. It was still a mystery to most as to who might have done it; the popular question by many was: why? His father was a gentleman who never liked to cross anyone. After Melanie died ten years before, Nate had spiraled into a life of crime, and James had kept to himself more than he should have.

  Poor Joe had to sit through insufferable lectures from their father about how Nate was traveling down the wrong path, and the only way to become a good respectable citizen was to excel in his studies and shun everything his brother was taking part in. Of course, neither James nor Joe had any idea what Nate had gotten himself into. They just knew he came home every so often with a lot of money and a lot of secrets. At first, Nate tried to pretend that he had landed some contracting work for a wealthy businessman out west, but James saw right through him. There were countless spats over the years, but one thing Nate had to commend his father for was always letting him visit. Eventually, they stopped talking about his so-called career, and it seemed that all was well between them. Then, one year ago, James R. Cole was murdered—a bullet had ripped a hole through his chest.

  Joe was a year from finishing at the university, but without his father’s support, he was losing focus. Through letters, Joe always expressed his desire to travel—to leave his home back east. He had no family and very few friends anymore. So, despite his better judgment, Nate invited Joe to visit with him and Joe agreed. Inevitably, Joe quit school and became Nate’s second-hand man, and the result had been profitable. Robbery-after-robbery, heist-after-heist, the Cole brothers were collecting quite the storeroom of riches. So much so that Nate planned to leave the thieving life after this last job and retire to Montana for the rest of his days.

  “I suppose I’ll marry some woman,” he had told Joe once.

  “There isn’t a woman who’d have you,” his little brother had said.

  “She’d have me before she’d have you.”

  “Slim pickins out that way, I bet.”

  “You’re probably right, but what do you know?”

  “Never claimed to know anything,” Joe had answered.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  That was just before this job—the one that brought back Joe who, despite the mud on his face, looked as white as a sheet. Ralph and Stewart were missing. Amos had been captured. There wasn’t a lot of time left. Nate got up from his seat and walked past Joe toward his horse.

  “Forget about it, Nate,” Joe offered once more, though he probably knew it would do no good.

  The sun beat down on Nate as he stepped from the shadows of the front porch. He reached up into the saddlebag and felt for the book. When his fingers recognized pages and a hard cover, he gripped it and slid it out.

  “Don’t open it,” Joe said when Nate stared at it intently. “I don’t want to be out here by myself.”

  The cover was gray and had no title. There was no writing or imprints on the front or back. He studied the spine and thought about flipping through the pages just to get Joe riled up, but he decided against it.

  “Why would Montgomery want this?” Nate said, mostly to himself. “You think it’s magical?” He looked up at Joe with a lifted eyebrow when he said this. “Is it the book from hell?”

  Joe clenched his jaw and started pacing again. “You make fun of me all you want, but I know what I saw.”

  “You know what you think you saw,” Nate said, standing from his crouch.

  “I got a feeling you don’t really want to test me,” Joe said.

  Nate’s eyes narrowed at his brother. If the situation weren’t so serious, he would have opened the book out of spite. But he had never seen Joe like this. Joe was never much of a liar and he surely wouldn’t be pulling Nate’s leg. The two of them enjoyed practical jokes as much as anyone, but this would be too far. Not to mention, it was too crazy for Joe to just make it up. A book that swallows people?

  Nate studied the cover again, looking for some imprint of a faded title—an author—anything. There was nothing.

  Nate took slow steps toward the house. When he got back to the porch, he crossed in front of Joe and sat back down in his rocker. Instinctively, he reached for his flask, but shook his head when he remembered that it was empty. Instead, he stared down at the book almost as if he were waiting for it to swallow him up too.

  Surely Joe didn’t see what he thought he saw. Maybe he turned around for a second and they left while his back was turned. There had to be some explanation. Still, Nate held the book in his hands, too concerned to open the pages. What if Joe was telling the truth? What if it was some sort of magical book that made people disappear? That didn’t mean Ralph and Stewart were dead, did it? Just…gone.

  Nate could feel his jaws clenching. His face was getting red, he knew. He could always feel when his face was getting red. But this time he didn’t know if it was out of anger and frustration, or if he felt embarrassed. This was the first time he didn’t know what to do. Could he simply deliver the book to his client, Tyler Montgomery, and leave it at that? Nate was in thi
s for the money. It was his duty not to get too curious about the things he was hired to steal. But this book perplexed him. Obviously the safety deposit box didn’t belong to Montgomery. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have hired Nate to steal it. But wouldn’t he have told Nate that he would be stealing something dangerous? Maybe he thought Nate wouldn’t have taken the job otherwise. Or maybe Montgomery didn’t know about its mysterious power.

  Of course he knows about it. That’s why he wants it.

  Nate let loose a long sigh. “This is supposed to be my last job,” he said.

  “Just because this book is a demon book, doesn’t mean it can’t be the your last job.” Joe swallowed. “Besides, it ain’t like you went with us anyway.”

  “Yeah, but I deliver,” Nate said, getting angry. “I was hired by Tyler Montgomery and I delegated. It’s still my job.”

  Joe threw up his hands in surrender. “You’re right, you’re right.”

  But Joe was right too. Nate hadn’t been on the last three jobs. He had taken to delegating the duties because his face had become too recognizable. There were some towns that he would never be able to set foot in again without getting shot by someone. The bounty on Nate’s head was so large that in most counties, it didn’t matter if he was brought in dead or alive. The reward was the same. This particular bank robbery would have brought Nate to a place he had robbed not twice, but three times. Had he gone with the group, he would have been captured before the job even started.

  Joe turned his back to Nate and leaned against the porch railing, staring out into the dusty yard. “What do you think we ought to do?”

  Nate thought for a moment as he looked into the sun drenched yard. Finally, he got up from the chair and stood next to his brother.

  “We can’t stay here,” Nate said. “It won’t be long before Amos gives up our location.”

  “You think we ought to run?”

  Nate nodded and looked at the book in his hands. Joe stared at it but took a step to the side as if it might explode.