The Littlest Witness. Jane M. Choate
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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