The Littlest Witness

After noting the location of windows and doors, he nodded to Shelley. “Looks good.” He sat next to Tommy and then propped his feet on the stone coffee table.

“We’re both exhausted,” she said and sank onto a matching sofa. “Let’s get some sleep. There’re still a few hours before daylight.”

But she didn’t close her eyes. Neither did he. Adrenaline was still flowing through his bloodstream, making sleep impossible. He figured it was the same for Shelley. His thoughts were a quagmire of questions and self-recriminations. Like rowdy children, they refused to behave and leave him in peace.

Caleb didn’t like wasting time, so he decided to use it to learn more about his savvy bodyguard. She’d been both cunning and bold in outwitting and outdriving the SUVs.

“Jake said you were a top scorer in shooting competitions in the Service,” he said, recalling what Jake had told him about his sister. “Since the Service hires only the best of the best, that’s pretty impressive.”

Her elegant brow rose at his words, but she didn’t confirm them, her lips folded so tightly together that there was no hint of softness there. At the same moment, something raw flashed through her gaze. The darkness behind her eyes hinted at something he hadn’t expected. Sorrow. Regret. Guilt.

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” she said at last. With those cryptic words, she turned away from him.

“Did I say something wrong?”

“No.” But the word was muffled.

Caleb puzzled over her reaction. What had he said to make her stiffen up as she’d done?

Shelley came off as secure in who she was and what she did with her take-charge attitude and brash confidence. As much as he told himself he shouldn’t be curious, he couldn’t help wondering why her eyes were so filled with shadows. Or had he imagined it because he was looking through his own veil of pain?

Not his business, he reminded himself. His only business was in protecting Tommy and finding out who had killed Michael and Grace.

Caleb noticed his hands were fisted and forced himself to unclench his fingers.

Never had he felt so helpless, so powerless. That wasn’t something a Delta soldier was comfortable with. Give him an enemy to defeat, a munitions dump to take out, a rescue mission to perform, and he was your man. He knew what he was doing in the field.

Time had given him regrets. It had also forced him to accept the truth about himself. He had deserted Michael when his brother needed him the most, not because he believed he could save the world—no soldier who had served believed that after the first day of combat—but because he was good at what he did. Because he relished the challenge. Because when he did the job right, he felt good about himself.

Was that so terrible to want to feel good about himself? His childhood had been spent knowing he hadn’t measured up, would never be able to redeem himself after letting his baby brother die. Wasn’t he entitled to have this one thing to feel good about?

He hadn’t exactly deserted Michael, Caleb reminded himself. Michael had sent him away, the harsh words he’d uttered still echoing in Caleb’s mind. It was scant comfort, though, when he struggled to accept that his brother was dead.

Forcibly, he pulled his thoughts from the mire of pain, and, without volition, returned them to the feisty bodyguard.

“You’re staring,” she said, and he realized she’d turned back to face him.

Her words jerked him back to the here and now, and he wondered if he’d imagined the roiling emotions he’d read in her gaze only moments ago. “Sorry. I was trying to get a handle on who you are.”

“No problem.” Shelley lifted a shoulder in a careless shrug, but the intensity in her lovely gray eyes belied the casual gesture. “What you see is what you get. Ex-cop, ex-Secret Service agent.”

He had a feeling there was much more to Shelley Rabb than that. She thought fast on her feet, kept her cool under fire and didn’t back down from a challenge. She said what she meant and meant what she said. The old saying described the woman perfectly. There was no pretense about her, but he sensed a well of pain beneath the no-nonsense exterior.

“What about you? You’re Delta. What about the man under the soldier?”

Caleb had no answer to that, at least none that he was willing to share. He’d buried the part of him that wasn’t a squared-away soldier long ago.

“Is there someone special?”

“Not anymore.” The words were out before he could think better of them.

“What happened?”

“You ask a lot of questions, lady.”

“Comes with the territory. If you don’t want to tell me, say so. My feelings won’t be hurt.”

How did he explain what had gone wrong between him and Tricia to Shelley when he could scarcely explain it to himself? He’d met his former girlfriend on one of his rare leaves home. She was beautiful, intelligent, sophisticated. It was obvious that she was going places. And she wanted to take him with her.

Through an encounter with a buddy who worked in the private sector, Caleb had learned that Tricia had interviewed for a job with an oil company and that her getting the job was contingent upon his signing with the company, as well.

Not wanting to believe it, he’d confronted her.

“I’m sure your friend misunderstood,” Tricia had said with the smile that had bewitched him into silencing the little voice that had so often told him she had been lying to him from the start.

“The only misunderstanding was in my believing that we had something real. I was just your ticket to a six-figure job.”

“Darling, what difference does it make why they want you? We’ll have such a great life,” she said with forced gaiety. “You can name your own price. Security is a hot ticket in the business world.

“You did your time for your country. Now it’s time to do something for yourself. You could go anywhere, do anything,” she said with another winning smile. “Delta’s holding you back. Together, we make an unbeatable team.”

He’d shrugged off her hands and looked at her with something akin to revulsion. “That’s where you’re wrong. We’re not a team. We never were.”

Caleb had known it was over from the moment she’d lied to him. Without trust, there was nothing. He’d put his faith in the wrong woman. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

Shelley hadn’t said anything while he took a stroll down memory lane, and Caleb resisted the urge to squirm under her unwavering gaze.

“It didn’t work out, okay? I moved on.” He shrugged, as if to say it hadn’t mattered. But it had.

“You don’t owe me any explanations.”

“What about you?”

Her laugh was hollow, her smile congealed. “Let’s just say it’s complicated.”

Complicated could mean a whole bunch of stuff, he reflected. But from her tone, it was clear she didn’t want to share that whole bunch of stuff, so he swallowed his questions.

He figured Shelley would share when and if she was ready.

A chunk of silence slipped by as darkness enveloped him. Caleb didn’t attempt to sleep during those quiet hours. Arms folded behind his head, he stared up at the ceiling. It didn’t feel awkward to spend the time listening only to the soft sound of Tommy’s breathing and to absorb Shelley’s presence.

Despite her energy, she had a restful quality about her. He appreciated it, and it didn’t take much figuring out to know why. His life was filled with noise and action, and though he had chosen that life, couldn’t imagine another kind, he found solace in the quiet shared with this beautiful woman.

He wanted to reach out and stroke her cheek. The knowledge pulled him up short. He had no business thinking of Shelley in any role except that of bodyguard.

He shook off the uncharacteristic reflections and wondered at their next move. Shelley was a top-notch operative, but despite her prowess, the threat hadn’t stopped.

His thoughts came to an abrupt halt. Why come after a seven-year-old boy? Because Tommy knew something? But he was certain Michael wouldn’t have shared anything about his work with his son. So what made Tommy so valuable?

Caleb gave a snort of disgust. Speculating was worse than useless, especially when he lacked information. He was no closer to having any answers than he’d been a day ago.

His heart clutched. “Lord, what am I going to do?” he whispered hoarsely. His voice scratched against a throat raw from unshed tears, his words releasing more pain than he’d felt in a long time.

Not even in Afghanistan when his unit had taken fire from all directions and they’d lost three men had he felt so completely helpless. With incoming fire pouring from the surrounding mountains, he and his unit had sought refuge in the scant shelter of a rock overhang.

Slugs ricocheted off the rocks behind and to the left of him and his men, and Caleb felt bits of shrapnel striking all around him, deadly pellets that tore through and destroyed flesh. The machine guns had to be spitting out .50 caliber ordnance, each round the length of a man’s finger and undoubtedly armor-piercing.

It wasn’t hard to determine the weapons used against him and his unit, not with the supersonic sound made by the guns and the distinctive muzzle flash. And then there was the unmistakable vapor trail of a .50 caliber. Once you’d seen one, you didn’t easily forget.

It was a slaughter. Only by the grace of God had he escaped with his life. Others hadn’t been as fortunate.

Prayer had come instinctively from his lips then. As though in answer to that prayer, the reassuring sound of Browning machine guns opened up as American forces came to the unit’s aid.

He’d made it through. Would he make it through his brother’s death, as well? He honestly didn’t know. The self-doubt was unaccustomed, but nothing he’d felt or done in the past few days was like him.

Michael had been everything that Caleb was not: quiet, patient, slow to anger. The qualities had served him well in his job as a federal prosecutor.

Caleb knew little about the case Michael had been trying, only enough to understand that it was a high-profile one. If anyone should have died, it should have been him, he thought bitterly. He was a soldier, one who put his life on the line every day. Not Michael, who had chosen the law as his way to fight for justice. The law was safe.

Or it should have been.

Despair moved within him, and, beneath it, like a toll of a church bell, came the pain. His grief was so dense that he felt as though he couldn’t draw a breath, that his lungs had forgotten how to work. At last a wheezing gasp escaped his chest. He listened to the gurgling sound, an acknowledgment that he was still alive despite his doubts.

He looked up to find Shelley watching him.

Her softly spoken words surprised him. “Grief is a work that must be done.”

* * *

Tension simmered in the homey room, skirted across the plaid rug and wrapped its way around Shelley. She couldn’t move, pinned by the stark despair in Caleb’s blue gaze. Her stare lasted a heartbeat too long before she looked away.

She realized how quiet she and Caleb had grown, how still they’d become. It was as if all the sound had been leached from the room.

A sob erupted from Tommy, breaking the silence. Compassion stirred within her, but she resisted the urge to go to him, though she longed to give him the comfort he needed.

Shelley understood grief. She understood loss and fear and heart-wrenching pain. She understood all of them and still didn’t know how to offer comfort to the small boy.

“It’s all right,” Caleb murmured and managed to quiet Tommy, to soothe whatever nightmare had caused him to cry out, and soon the boy was asleep again.

This time it was Caleb who turned his back to her. Whether he was feigning sleep or not, she understood that there would be no more sharing now.

It was too dark, and she was too alone, even with Caleb and Tommy in the same room. Without warning, her mind filled with reel after reel of pain-filled pictures. Her mother looking at her with a contempt bordering on hatred. Her disastrous last assignment with the Service. Her inability to forgive herself coupled with her gut-wrenching despair.

The memories speared through her, opening up pockets of bewilderment, outrage and heartache.

She’d believed herself to be in love, only to find that the object of that blind devotion had deceived her in the worst way possible. Jeffrey’s betrayal had cut to the core of her being. After that, how could she trust herself to know what was real and what wasn’t?

Caleb hadn’t confided the details of what had gone wrong in his relationship; then, neither had she. But she felt an affinity with him. Though it had remained unspoken, it was apparent that they both understood the importance of always moving forward, because if you remained in one place for too long, you risked being crushed by the weight of regret.

Her regrets came with two dead men, one she’d considered a friend, one she’d hoped to marry.

Still lost in thought, Shelley released a quavering breath. If they managed to find who had killed Caleb’s brother and sister-in-law while keeping Tommy safe, would that allow him to forgive himself for not being there when his brother needed him? And if she helped him, would that make it easier for her to visit the graves of the two men who had died during the botched mission?

Or were they both chasing the impossible?

She shook off the questions that had no answers and closed her eyes. Thankfully, the nightmare didn’t return.

The sun was barely making its ascent when she awoke with a start, Caleb’s question drumming through her mind. How had the gunmen found them?

Caleb had stretched out on the floor, next to the sofa where Tommy slept. She swept her gaze over the big, ruggedly handsome soldier as he kept guard over his nephew, even in sleep.

She stood and padded to the table. Once more, she searched Tommy’s belongings. She and Caleb had examined the contents of the backpack, but they hadn’t looked at the backpack itself.

Now she did so.

Painstakingly, she went over every inch of it. It was then that she found it: a tracker, so small as to be nearly invisible, sewn into the lining.

The implications sank in immediately. Shelley thought fast. Were the men who were after Tommy and Caleb already on their way? She didn’t want to wake the little boy and drag him from yet another safe house.

But could she afford not to?

An indistinct rustling from the outside caught her attention. A zing of apprehension jolted through her. It could be nothing, she told herself.

The woods where the cabin was nestled were alive with rabbits, opossums, raccoons and even a hungry bear or two. But every instinct was telling her to get Tommy and Caleb out of there. Those instincts had saved her life upon more than one occasion.

Hypervigilant, she listened closely and now heard the fall of footsteps. Careful to keep out of the line of sight, she crept toward the window. A man moved stealthily up the porch steps. A second followed.

“Caleb,” she whispered as she shook him awake. “Get Tommy. We’ve got to get out of here.”

He came to as she would. Calm. Alert. Ready to act. Or fight. “What’s going on?”

“Two men...outside...found the tracker...there all the time.”

To his credit, Caleb didn’t waste time asking questions of her disjointed explanation.

“Take Tommy out the back door,” she hissed.

“What about you?”

“I’m right behind you. Go!”

“Not without you.”

“I’ll catch up.”

“We go together.” His tone brooked no argument, and he carried his nephew into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him before rejoining her.

She didn’t have time to argue with him. By now, the men were not trying for stealth.

The men burst through the front door. The fact that they didn’t wear masks alarmed her more than did the military grade KA-BAR knives sheathed at their sides and the snub-nosed revolvers they wielded with casual expertise. They didn’t expect anyone to survive.

“Remember...no one hurts the boy,” one said.

Shelley revised her assessment. The men didn’t expect her or Caleb to survive, but they had other plans for Tommy.

The first man advanced on her, the grim look on his face as foreboding as the weapons he carried.

Caleb faced off against the other opponent. He didn’t wait for the assailant to make a move, instead snapping out his right arm in an arc and knocking the weapon from the man’s hand. He followed up with a blow to the chest with the heel of his palm, knocking his opponent backward a couple of steps.

Before the intruder could regain his balance, Caleb threw a deadly combination of jabs and crosses to the face. So rapid were his punches that it was all the intruder could do to protect his head as Caleb rained down blows.

Another time, Shelley would have admired Caleb’s skill; now, she was too busy dealing with her own attacker.

The hard gleam in the would-be killer’s eyes promised he wouldn’t go down as easily as his teammate. “Let’s see what you’ve got, little girl.”

“Yeah.” She let her teeth show. “Let’s.” Quick as a snake, she brought the edge of her hand down on the wrist of his gun hand, sending the gun flying. She moved in fast, hooked her right leg beneath his, toppling him to the floor. With scarcely a pause, he rolled backward and jumped to his feet.

He wasn’t even breathing hard and looked as though he were enjoying himself. “That the best you got?” His mouth twisted in an ugly sneer.

She didn’t bother with an answer.

He’d obviously had top-notch military training, and deflected her flying fists and feet with little effort. She feinted to the left, spun on one foot, then struck out with her right fist. It connected with a bone-jarring crunch to his jaw. Pain sang up her arm.

She spun, hitting his throat with the toe of her boot.

He groaned but didn’t go down and withdrew his knife from its scabbard, the honed edge gleaming menacingly. She had to stay out of its reach, and, at the same time, take him down.

Knives were a man’s weapon, requiring skill, strength and, above all, reach. Though she was skilled enough with a blade, she lacked the necessary power to be really effective. Instead, she relied on moves that Jake had taught her.

When the man reached for her throat, she drove the ball of her hand upward under his nose. His agonized cry told her she’d broken it.

Good.

But self-congratulations were premature. He was still standing, still a threat. He swiped his hand across his nose, scowling when it came away bloody.

“You’ll pay for that.”

He shifted position, and she saw her opening.

“No. But you will.”

She kicked out with her leg, striking his knee, causing it to bend in a way nature never intended. The knee, a particularly sensitive spot in the body, was crucial to standing, to movement, to balance.

Injuries to the knee could reduce the toughest of men to howling babies. Her assailant was no different. He screamed in rage and pain as he crumpled to the floor, clutching his injured leg.

“This ain’t worth it,” he muttered, spittle flecking his face. “Nobody said she was some kind of ninja.”

“Better than ninja,” she said and delivered the final blow to the back of his neck.

Shelley and Caleb made short work of tying up the assailants with zip ties she carried in her backpack. But she didn’t delude herself into believing that this would put an end to the threat to Caleb and Tommy, if anything, she was more worried than ever. The enemy had upped the stakes, making it clear that Caleb was expendable. Even more chilling, what did they have in store for Tommy?

FOUR

“When do you leap over tall buildings in a single bound?” Caleb drawled as they sped down the highway after Shelley had hustled them out of the cabin.

The Georgia countryside was a blur as Shelley coaxed the minivan to maximum speed. If he weren’t mistaken, they were heading back to Atlanta. After settling Tommy in the backseat, asleep with his stuffed bear in his arms, Caleb had climbed in the passenger side. He didn’t like not driving, didn’t like turning over that control. But clearly Shelley believed she should drive, so he held his tongue. Barely.

A dark cloud smeared the sky gray. The humidity was thick enough to slice and serve up on a platter. Much as Caleb had detested the sand that blew with unrelenting persistence in Afghanistan day and night, he preferred that to the clamminess that crawled over his skin now like a million wet ants.

She flashed a grin his way. “Haven’t perfected that skill yet. I’ll let you know when I do.”

“Seriously, is there anything you can’t do?” He ticked items off his fingers. “You drive like a NASCAR champ. You take down a man who’s twice your size. I was beginning to feel as useless as a snowball in Alaska.”

Her smile died. “I told you to grab Tommy and get out.”

“You really think I’d leave you to take out two armed men by yourself?”

“Your first responsibility is to your nephew.”

“Don’t preach to me about my responsibilities,” he said, voice cold as the desert night in Afghanistan he had only moments ago been feeling nostalgia for. “I’m well aware of my duties.” Duty had defined him for as long as he could remember. Now it lay with Tommy. And it terrified him.

“Then why didn’t you go? I can handle myself.”

“So I saw. But Deltas don’t leave anyone behind. Ever.” The lash in his voice was unlike him. He chalked it up to a combination of fear, exhaustion and worry, but it was guilt that nagged at him unmercifully.

Ignoring his tone, Shelley retorted, “I’m not just anyone.”

“Duly noted.” He turned slightly so that he could see her profile. The softness of her features was belied by the firmness of her jaw. “You handled yourself like a pro back there.”

“I am a pro, Judd. Get used to it.”

Caleb didn’t argue. He had met Shelley less than twenty-four hours ago, and in that space of time, she’d spirited him and Tommy out of a motel, engaged two SUVs in a deadly game of chicken, then taken down an armed assailant who was bent on killing her and Caleb.

She had done all this with such dispatch that he could only marvel at the woman’s skill and courage. She was the real deal.

She hadn’t drawn her weapon. He had a pretty good idea why, but he asked anyway. “Why didn’t you use your gun? You had an opening.”

“I would have if I’d needed to, but I figured the police will have plenty of questions for those yahoos. There’s a chance they may even answer,” she said, confirming his guess. “Plus, taking a life, even when it’s justified, changes you. I didn’t need that. Not again.”

Caleb didn’t mind using his gun. But, like any soldier who understood what that meant, he liked not using his weapon better. Then the last part of her comment registered. He shot her a questioning look, but she only shook her head.

After securing the gunmen with plastic flex-cuffs she’d pulled from her backpack, she’d called Sal and directed him to call the local police and have the men picked up. She’d fished in the men’s pockets and had come away with nothing. “It figures.”

“What?”

“No ID. Not even a burner phone to tell who they called last.”

Caleb understood what she meant. There was no way to know who was giving the orders.

At that moment, a deer leaped from the woods, bounded over the guard rail and onto the road. Shelley braked sharply, avoiding the animal by mere inches. “Do you know that Bambi kills more people every year than Smokey the Bear?”

“I’ve heard stories.”

The clouds of earlier spilled forth in a drizzle, which quickly turned into a heavy rain. With the beat of the rain a counterpoint to his thoughts, Caleb tried to digest the events of the past day and a half. Questions swirled in his mind, questions that led only to a quagmire of more questions. Nothing about this made sense. If the killers thought Tommy could identify his parents’ murderers, why hadn’t they disposed of him when they’d killed Michael and Grace? Why try to kidnap him now?