Not really, no.
Caleb let his gaze linger on Joe a moment more, a warning of sorts that they weren’t finished that was met with equal challenge.
“There’s not a lot I can tell you.” Caleb sifted through the details, knowing what he’d just said was an understatement. According to the contract he’d signed, he couldn’t tell them anything.
Yeah, well, Derrick Sloan could fuck his contract. He’d looked Caleb in the eye and told him the others were dead. Mark Shaw’s fingerprints on those casings voided any responsibility Caleb had to Sloan or his precious Agency.
His responsibility now was to his family, which included Samantha.
Was the shooting a coincidence? The Five Crowns was Caleb’s hang-out of choice. Granted, he wasn’t supposed to have been there that night, but he couldn’t overlook the possibility. The thought that Samantha had been caught in something meant for him chilled his blood. He wanted to give her pleasure and happiness. Not blood and pain.
It was time to have a little chat with Sloan, but first … he slid back into his chair.
“Shaw was part of a recon team I led in Columbia. He was a hothead, didn’t have the patience for recon work. He was green, wanted the action.”
Brandon looked confused. “Why didn’t you have him removed?”
Caleb toyed with a paperclip, the act of unbending the thin metal oddly soothing. “I tried, but was denied. Unfortunately, my instincts were right. We’d been there several weeks and Mark got antsy. I’d threatened to send him home if he couldn’t handle it, reminded him there were other lives at stake, not just his or ours. Needless to say, that didn’t go over well. Mark got angry. More so than I’d ever seen in him before. I ordered him to stay in camp the next two days.”
He hadn’t wanted to give him the chance to compromise their position in a temper. As it was, he should’ve handcuffed him to a fucking tree. Mark ignored his order and had followed on the second day—the day that had been etched in Caleb’s nightmares since.
“Did he stay?” Amanda asked softly.
“The first day.” He’d let them draw their own conclusions. “Mark fucked up, but he was my responsibility. The failure of the mission, the lives lost … the blame rests on my shoulders.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Joe informed him with a resigned sigh. “It was suspected that Mark was paid to give away your location.”
Caleb’s jaw tightened. “And you know this how?”
Joe cursed. “We all had a job to do out there, Caleb. You did yours. The intel you’d collected was instrumental to the mission. If you want to lay blame, lay it where it belongs. On the man suspected of betraying his team and his country.”
“Why wasn’t I told about this?” His head pounded as he absorbed the information.
Joe shrugged. “You know as well as I do that our…” He glanced around the room before continuing. “That our employer has an agenda that only he knows. Maybe he thought it didn’t matter, at that point. Maybe he thought, since you were badly injured, that you wouldn’t survive so there was no need to bother you with it. Maybe he thought it was a partly cloudy Tuesday and he didn’t feel like sharing. Who the hell knows?”
“Fucking great. That explains everything,” Caleb said coldly. “Except how Mark Shaw rose from the grave and why he was taking shots at us the other night.”
“The fire didn’t leave much,” Joe told him. “But, I know remains and identification were found for each member of your team. How Mark survived is beyond me.”
Amanda raised a tentative hand. “I still don’t see how this Mark person is connected to Samantha.”
Brandon spoke up. “It seems too much of a coincidence that Mark would play gun for hire for a guy like Matteo.”
“Wait a minute. That name…” Alec rummaged through the files on the table. He opened one and scanned the contents, flipping through page after page until he found what he was looking for. His face paled.
“Caleb. Carlotta Matteo’s maiden name was Shaw. You don’t think …”
Alec’s question hung in the air as Caleb fought the emotions that raged within him.
The missing address book, which would contain not only his information, but that of his siblings. Carlotta hiring Samantha—who was known around town to be close to Alec and Amanda. The Five Crowns.
This wasn’t about Samantha.
“Mark isn’t connected to Samantha. He’s connected to me,” Caleb ground out as the pieces began to make sense. “Jesus Christ, he’s trying to get to me.”