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

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.