Shaft of Truth (Choctaw Tribune Series, Book 3) by Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer

Author:Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RockHaven Publishing

CHAPTER 26

At his hotel room window, Matthew stood in the early morning streaks of light. He wasn’t ready to face the next leg in this journey he had thought was over. Al Percy was supposed to be dead, and Matthew heading home. Instead, his resurrected brother wanted him to carry fake documents, get a worker permit, then meet at another coal-mining town amid a violent strike so that his brother could find and shoot their father’s killer.

Do justly?

Matthew closed his sore eyes. As much as his heart cried for vengeance, it wasn’t what their daddy would have wanted. Matthew had to stop Philip.

Someone tapped softly on the hotel door. Matthew threw on the clean shirt Philip left him, wincing at the pain movement caused as he opened the door.

Cadenza stood there, smile tentative. “Good morning, Matt…” Her eyes widened. “Oh my.”

Matthew pulled back, putting the door more between them, but he couldn’t hide the repulsive bruises on his face. “I, uh, I’m sorry you were caught in the middle of all that yesterday. He…Toby and I don’t always get along. That is, I never knew his last name, and I didn’t realize it was someone I’d met before when you talked about him…”

How could he lie his way out of this without lying? And how could he get Cadenza away from this mess without hurting her?

“Let me get my things. I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

She nodded. “I will wait for you. We must find Toby so you two can apologize to each other for whatever it was you were fighting about.”

“I’ll be down in a minute.”

After closing the door, he checked his saddlebags. The false documents he needed to get Al Percy’s permit were in there. Matthew’s fingers brushed his Bible, remembering a time he read it morning, noon, night, and all the time in between—the immediate months following his daddy and brother’s deaths.

The strike article was also in the saddlebags. He hadn’t finished it to mail to Ruth Ann. But the problems of the newspaper were far away. All he could hold in his mind and heart right now was Philip.

Matthew buckled the bags and caught sight of himself in the mirror. His left eye was blackened, and a purple bruise covered a fair bit of his cheek. His lips were swollen, and patches of facial hair made him look like an outlaw on the run. No wonder Cadenza had been startled.

Taking a comb from the vanity, he ran it through his dark brown hair. It had grown out to his collar, longer than he liked to keep it as a newspaper publisher, but it wasn’t scraggly.

He found his razor and worked it carefully around the cuts. Rubbing his clean-shaven face, Matthew debated if he looked more European immigrant or Choctaw today. But it had more to do with how he felt than looked.

Today, he didn’t feel much but pain.

Matthew gathered his gear and headed out, dreading the conversation with Cadenza.

The young woman was seated on a cream wingback sofa in the hotel lobby, watching people come and go.

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