Chapter 6
Griffin Shaw. Steel hadn’t heard that name in decades. His was one name amongst hundreds in the files Keys had given Steel months ago. It hadn’t stood out in any way. If anything, it had been at the bottom of his list of possible suspects, all of which had gone nowhere.
How had he missed this?
Nearly thirty years ago, Shaw had tried to frame Steel for murder. It seemed so obvious now, with history’s failed attempt to repeat itself. Worst of all, he had been a sniper.
Steel had halted the club from descending on Little Shoes en masse.
Seeing James Hagerty again was like a blast from the past, but the man hadn’t been a sniper.
Still, he hadn’t liked the coincidence that in the only five minutes he’d left Jenna’s side all day, that had been the moment someone from his past had walked through the store’s doors.
Ghost’s messages were clipped, but he was calling the Officers back to the clubhouse.
Jenna looked confused when Steel pulled into the clubhouse. “You’re not taking me home?”
“You have a right to hear about this,” he told her, throwing the gearshift into Park but didn’t turn the engine off. “But it’s your choice if you’d rather go home.”
“I’d rather be with you,” she said evenly. “Now tell me why you feel guilty about that name.”
Steel raised an eyebrow. “Who said I did?”
She raised an eyebrow right back at him, not giving an inch. “Your poker face doesn’t work on me, Steel. Fess up here or in front of your brothers. The choice is yours.”
Steel really shouldn’t be so frustrated that she’d seen through his mask. It was Jenna. But this wasn’t something he was proud of, and if there was one thing he wished she hadn’t seen about him, this was likely it.
They sat in silence for a moment as Darrin and Viktor escorted Hagerty towards the clubhouse and into the main doors.
At the very least, Bulldog would already be there.
As an author, he didn’t go to work like the rest of them did.
He had a home office where he worked on his next manuscript and Cassie did her homeschool work.
“Do you remember why I gave up being a sniper?”
Jenna shifted on the bench seat to face him better, but Steel continued to stare forward out the windshield. “You got a promotion and the opportunity to become a command lead. You took it for better pay and less deployment time until you graduated.”
Steel nodded. “All true. Do you remember why I was offered that promotion?”
“Stop playing Twenty Questions, Jack, and just refresh my memory.”
“I discovered a fellow sniper from my class had been accepting money for wet work.” He caught Jenna’s confused expression in the reflection of the windshield. “An assassin,” he clarified.
“Sounds vaguely familiar. I am assuming that person has the first or last name of ‘Shaw’.”
“Griffin Shaw,” he told her. “Like me, he was young, idealistic, and fucking talented. We were neck and neck for most of our training, but in the end, I got the higher score. He seemed… pleasant enough about it. Not bitter or vindictive, and I was na?ve enough back then to still think that he wished me well.” Steel ran a hand down his face, cynicism pouring from every part of him.
“I know I did. Just because I got the highest score doesn’t mean he didn’t make rank too, and I thought him my friend, even though we were also rivals. ”
“Wait, Griff? That’s the man we’re talking about?”
Steel nodded. “I wasn’t sure you remembered meeting him.”
“He came to Mr. Zarin’s funeral with you.”
Fucker. Steel had forgotten about that. “Yeah, he did.” Papaw—back then Staff Sergeant Taylor—and his fellow classmates had also attended, to show Steel support.
No one outside of family friends from Port Townsend, Lilly, and Jenna knew that the man they were burying wasn’t Steel’s biological father.
It was a small service, but Steel had felt honored that his Marine brothers had come to support him.
“So what happened?” Jenna prompted. “You found out he was killing for money?”
“In the most simplest explanation possible, yes.” Shifting his seat, he faced her.
“You have always been a faithful military wife. Do you know how fucking lucky I am? Others talked about their wives asking questions, demanding to know details that they’re not allowed to tell and then getting pissed at them when the men kept their mouths shut.
There are things we simply can’t talk about, either for national security reasons or,” he added pointedly, “because it would embarrass the Marines, and therefore the country, if it got out.”
“And what you’re about to tell me you couldn’t before?” Jenna prompted.
“No country wants it known that a man they used taxpayer money to train turned into an assassin for hire,” Steel said bluntly. “But there’s more to it than that.”
“If you aren’t supposed to tell me, you don’t need to now,” Jenna told him, reaching for his hand. “I trust you, Jack. Whatever it is that happened, I don’t need to know if it’ll get you in trouble.”
Steel took her hand, lacing their fingers together, and bent to kiss the back of her hand.
“Baby, have I told you yet today how much I fucking love you? You’re not a military wife anymore, and I don’t give a damn if they find out I told you something that happened thirty years ago. If you want to know, I’ll tell you.”
Jenna bit the inside of her lip. “I want to know why you feel guilty about Shaw.”
“I don’t,” he said plainly. “I feel guilty that I didn’t think of him the moment I was accused of a murder I didn’t commit.”
“Why?”
“Because thirty years ago, he tried to pin his murders on me, and the only reason I’m not in prison today is because of a random twist of fate that gave me an alibi he didn’t expect.”
“You were framed for murder thirty years ago and you didn’t tell me?
” Jenna was still trying to wrap her mind around what Jack had just told her.
He was helping her down from the truck. The cold day hadn’t brought more snow, but that didn’t mean the ground wasn’t slippery.
Her joints started to tingle the moment they stepped out of the heated truck.
Thankfully, it was early morning on a Friday, and there weren’t many vehicles in the parking lot.
Jack was able to park right next to the front doors.
While the club didn’t have designated handicap parking spots, most of the brothers parked away from the building to leave the spots closer to the front doors for Bree’s accessible cage or for the ol’ ladies with kids.
“Baby, I told you. I signed a lot of paperwork that forbade me from telling anyone.”
“You almost went to jail, Jack!” She kept a tight hold on him as he guided her up the sidewalk.
“And if I had gotten arrested, obviously, you would have been told. But at the time, it was keep my mouth shut and accept the promotion or possibly be court-martialed myself.”
He wasn’t getting it. In Jack’s mind, the right man went to jail. Justice had been served. Why wouldn’t he accept a promotion when it was around the time they wanted to start their family? But it bothered her. Something huge had happened to him, and she hadn’t known.
And yes, she was aware how ridiculous that sounded after he’d just commended her for being the perfect military wife.
But fuck it, Jenna had always hated keeping her mouth shut.
She knew how much it affected the relationships of the other military couples, and she never wanted to add to Jack’s stress.
She wanted their home to be his safe haven.
The place where he could put down the uniform and just be.
But almost being arrested and charged for murder? That seemed like something she should have known.
Jack held the door open for her and guided her in, that always reliable hand at the small of her back. It shouldn’t make her feel better about what she’d just been told, but damn him, because it did.
And the look he gave her told Jenna that he knew it. Double damn him.
While they were speaking in the truck, the others had arrived. She hadn’t seen some of them enter, so they must have come in the back way or been in the apartments.
It was almost one in the afternoon. Ranger looked like he’d just gotten out of bed, wearing just his gray sweats and his cut. His white-blonde hair was getting nearly long enough to be put up in a ponytail. If it wasn’t for his icy-blue eyes, one might mistake him for being Albino.
Ghost was in jeans, a tight tee, and his cut. His boots looked wet, so he must have been outside, though he had no coat on him that Jenna could see.
Keys exited the kitchen. He was gulping down a large bottle of orange soda and had a bag of gummy worms in his other hand as he headed towards his laptop with screen extenders on the front bar. She couldn’t see his feet, but there was a good chance he was wearing slippers instead of boots.
Demo was standing next to him at the bar, his always-present legal notepad in front of him. Sometimes Jenna thought he used it because it wigged Keys out how the man could stay so organized without using a computer for every little thing he did.
Lucky was removing his winter coat. He still had his welding apron on, which meant he’d come from work. His dirty blonde hair was more gray-blonde recently, and Harper absolutely got a kick out of her ol’ man turning into a silver fox.
Bear was wearing scrubs. Jenna didn’t know why, since he no longer worked as an RN at a hospice facility.
He’d quit to spend more time at home with his and Tessa’s ‘cubs’ while she continued to work full-time at the local ER.
He also was on the club’s payroll as a part-time medic.
The scrubs implied he was doing something medical, but she had no idea what.