Page 16 of Chapel at Ender’s Ridge (Ender’s Calling #1)
Decker thoughtfully rubbed his glove over the bare wood.
By the lack of grime worked into the cuts, he’d broken into the Star recently—a few days before Laurie bought the first paper in Ridgewater.
They would be vigilant now, ensuring another break-in couldn’t swoop in under the fluttering laundry of their neighbors.
Dead-end.
He replayed his last encounter with Nathan over in his mind. ‘I won’t be in danger’. His snapped words and wild actions were far from the man he’d known before. Nathan wasn’t one to accept help, but the words he’d written about Ender’s Ridge weren’t his own.
What hand are you playing, Nathan?
What would drive a man to aid the unveiling of his own people? Neighbors he’d lived with, drank with. Back turned on his own, but guided by something possibly holding a larger role than what Decker could see now.
Helplessness snapped at his heels and Decker kicked it away. People like him never gave up easily.
People like them.
Snatching his hand from the windowsill, Decker glanced over the empty Star building once more and left to find Laurie.
Now, preacher, where the hell have you gone?
He searched for him in the web of heartbeats and sorted through a dozen others before he caught his faint rhythm blocks away.
Laurie’s heartbeat was fast. Anxious about crossing the street or trying to ask someone for directions if he had to guess.
Ducking through the crisp sheets, Decker followed a path worn through the sharp, dead grass past a doctor’s office, around the telegraph station, and kept in the shadow of the houses.
He heard the other heartbeat when he caught sight of Laurie underneath a creaking sign. Sheriff, the wooden plank spelled out in jagged gashes of paint.
They stood close.
Laurie smiled, laughing at something the other man said as he leaned against the post, body relaxed even as his heart pounded in Decker’s head, drowning out anything they said to the other.
Laurie’s cheeks were ruddy from the wind and he bundled the black wool coat around him, his hands folded in the pockets.
A smile hovered on his lips when the sheriff gestured towards his office.
His soft, polite smile had been cast in Decker’s direction so many times. Strange, seeing the slight tilt to Laurie’s head as he listened intently, the second flash of a smile to someone who wasn’t him.
Righteous celibacy.
Laurie was a fool if he thought celibacy absolved him in God’s eyes from how he looked at other men. Decker tore his gaze away from how Laurie leaned closer, as if senselessly seeking warmth from the cold shoulder of the law.
The second heartbeat wasn’t the lawman’s. The sheriff’s was slow, unaffected by Laurie.
There it was, behind him. An off-kilter beat, a pulsing familiarity itching at Decker’s mind as his gaze flickered over the trodden grass.
Only a stray orange cat disturbed the stillness. Green eyes peered at him between two barrels before he flicked his tail and stalked into the alley. The striped fur on his back arched when he stopped, one paw hovering in place.
Footsteps shuffled through the space between buildings and a hiss ripped from the cat, tail fluffing, as he streaked away.
Decker caught a glimpse of Nathan’s face under the wide brim of his hat.
He had a haggard look to him, like he’d been stretched thin, cheeks sunken and sallow. Under the rusty stains bleeding through his coat, his chest rose and fell with shallow breaths, as if someone had taken a knife to him.
Decker lunged at him. Nathan threw himself to the side.
Blood oozed between Decker’s gloved fingers from a damp fistful of the other man’s shredded shirt before he twisted from his grip and fled.
Sheets flapped around him like startled gulls as he ducked under, leaving blood streaked across the clean fabric.
Nathan ran like a wounded deer, stumbling around the corner of the Star. Decker shouted, boots slipping on the sharp grass, racing under the clotheslines. He came up short on the busy street.
There were too many people around to risk making himself known by quick movement, but even as he hesitated, Nathan thrust his way through the crowd, limping and looking utterly human. He couldn’t lose him, not again. This time there was no train to be thrown off.
Pressing into the street and mindfully slowing his gait so he wouldn’t be conspicuous, Decker ducked in front of a wagon.
The draft horses hitched to it snorted and balked, shafts creaking as their hooves dug into the ground, and the man perched high above swore at Decker, snatching the driving whip propped against his seat.
I don’t have time for this shit.
Decker caught the short whip as it snapped towards him. Twisting the leather around his glove, he ripped it from the hand of the man and flung it away. The drafts champed at their bits, churning the road to powder under their hooves; their driver heaved on the leather reins, shouting at Decker.
He backed away. Nathan was out there, in the surge of people, stinking of old blood—within distance to be caught so Decker could demand from him what he knew of the affliction at Ender’s Ridge.
Blood, warm and earthy and wild, clung to his gloves and speared through his senses, sending him frayed and scattered.
So much blood, too many heartbeats, pounding, pounding , luring him to feed on them and quell the ache in his stomach.
He hadn’t consumed a drop of blood since he’d forced Rotham’s oily life between his lips, but these humans, proper and—
Laurie’s hand sunk into the flesh of his arm.
The train’s whistle screamed.
A snarl died on Decker’s lips, his chest tight as he eyed the gap between the church and the bank where Nathan disappeared. Silver Creek hosted enough saloons to get lost in, and he knew damn well Decker wouldn’t be able to track his heartbeat if he disappeared in a larger crowd.
Understanding the strategies of an enemy who was once a friend was a curse. One he wouldn’t utilize tonight.
“Are you alright?” Laurie clutched his arm, and he suddenly felt like the team of drafts in the street, stiffly reined in and confined.
Decker jerked away. “Not used to big towns,” he muttered, putting his head down and heading to the train.
Nathan was gone, and he was no closer to discovering why Ender’s Ridge was in danger. Or if it even was in danger—maybe he’d been mistaken, aggravating emotions amplified by the preacher who called out to him.
The patterned brown carpet lurched under Decker’s feet when the train began to move, and he slung himself into the seat as a flushed and uncertain Laurie stumbled into his.
Decker didn’t give him a chance to catch his breath. “Hope you gave the sheriff my regards.”
“He was quite pleasant—” he began.
“To you.”
“I went to ask about my uncle.”
“I said I would tell you what I know.”
“You didn’t,” Laurie said, wrestling off his coat, cheeks flaming.
Decker scoffed quietly. “There’s no patience from you. Instead, you run to the law.”
“You didn’t want to tell me, Decker, I wasn’t going to force you. From what you’ve said, I’m grateful I didn’t get strung up the second I got off the train just for being associated with Elias. My curiosity isn’t worth someone else’s pain.”
“But you still went to him, and the law will be poking their nose in my business, same as your uncle,” Decker said sharply.
“I didn’t talk to him. Not about my uncle.
” Laurie’s voice softened, and he folded the coat in his lap.
“I want to understand what happened, but if they look into his death and bring more attention to Ender’s Ridge, it puts Cricket at risk.
And Safine. And you,” he said in a tone like he’d saved the most precious thing for last. “If knowing what happened puts any of you at risk, I can live with the unknown.”
The sway of the train underneath them and the creak of metal filled in the silence.
Laurie had been anxious talking to the lawman, and—foolishly—Decker was too busy listening to the memorized pattern of his heartbeat to hear if Laurie was now telling the truth or not.
Another investigation into Ender’s Ridge, when the veil was thin and strangers seeing them as they were, would be disastrous. Laurie only mitigated the problems he’d created by arriving, but it was more grace than some would have extended.
If this is how you’d like us to be, your olive branch won’t go unanswered .
Decker leaned forward. “I’ll show you. So you understand.”
Laurie lit up. “Tonight?”
“Tonight. Nine-thirty.”
This time, when Laurie smiled and cracked open the Bible to the New Testament, he seemed to actually read the small print.
Decker only hoped the truth wouldn’t snap his olive branch into a pile of kindling between them.