“Decker will keep your physical body safe,” he murmured, “and God will tend to your soul. Are there transgressions you need to lay bare before Him?”
The man dragged in a defiant breath. “I ain’t done nothin’.”
“We’ve all sinned, my friend. Some of us just—” he glanced atDecker, “—more than others.”
His words weren’t aimed at him—he knew that. But it was like the preacher thrust his hands in his ribcage, as if he could feel the pulsing need rising with the thick smell of blood.
“Decker, help,” Safine hissed.
Warmth soaked his fingers as he replaced her, pressing down on the wound and blocking out the hunger clenching his gut as the man writhed.
Rotham’s face flashed in his mind. Because of him, this man would likely live.
Decker steadied his breathing as his gaze met with Mr. Lane’s.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For thou art with me.”
The man’s hand went limp and Safine cursed, bottles cracking as she snatched another one and forced his lips open. His pulse fluttered under Decker’s hand.
“Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” The preacher didn’t take his eyes off Decker. “Thou preparest a table for me, in the presence of mine enemies, thou anointest my head with oil–”
“Shit. We got a problem.” Safine swept hair out of her eyes with a blood-soaked hand and motioned sharply out the window.
Decker ripped his gaze away from Mr. Lane. His voice followed him, soothing, gentle.
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell–”
“Hold that thought, preacher.” Decker squinted past fly-specked panes of glass and heat-hazed sand.
Dust billowed from a woman’s footsteps, blending a scarlet red coat into muted brown.
Familiarity preceded her.
Either the dead had finally come to haunt him, or this was one hell of a mirage.
He took Safine’s hand, pressing it to the wound. “Keep him alive and give me two minutes.”
Gun-metal grey eyes met his own under the saloon’s back veranda.
Last he’d seen her was deep in the streets of New Orleans, stolen bride on her arm and a new life ahead of her. Memory was hazed in time like the rest of them, foggy and incoherent, but Decker knew one thing for certain—she should’ve been in the grave for fifty years by now instead of aiming a loaded flintlock at him.
She sized him up, gaze narrowing. This wasn’t the same woman helping him hide away in the belly of a ship, or fighting next to him until they’d parted ways. The world had sharpened her in her everlasting thirty years. Preserved her.
Here you are, unchanged, right down to your stubbornness.
“Why’d you gut him?”
“A hundred years later and you’re still a fuckin’ bleeding heart. Some things don’t change.” Dusty brown hair snarled across the sharp angles of her face and caught on her bloody, crooked nose.
The first time he’d met her was in the belly of a British schooner bound for the Americas. Two stowaways—one posing as a man and the other posing as a human—made unlikely companions during war. But they’d survived and traveled together for a time, helping each other.
Decker’s lips twitched. “You haven’t changed, somehow. Neither have I, but I still don’t like violence. Especially in my saloon, disturbing my morning. Why’d you do it?” he asked again and propped one shoulder against the door. He wasn’t about to leta madwoman through the back door unless she had a damn good reason for force-feeding dynamite to the man.
She sneered. “I don’t need to explain myself.”
Decker cocked his head, waiting.
The woman tapped her fingers against the trigger. When he knew her, she shot first, asked questions later. The British soldier her coat belonged to found that out the hard way.
