Jane Choate - The Littlest Witness

“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.