Chapter 6 #2
Bulldog had Georgie, his almost two-year-old daughter against his chest. The poor baby had an ear infection she’d developed while Jenna was still recovering from her relapse.
Jenna would have offered to take Georgie so Bulldog could concentrate on the meeting, but nothing made that little girl feel better than being in her daddy’s arms. She might be miserable, but she was quiet and content curled up against her father.
Hagerty was sitting on a barstool next to Darrin and Viktor. As soon as Jack and Jenna entered—him steering her over to the couch—Ghost dismissed the prospects. They left out the front doors.
Jumper was sitting on the couch already.
He and Aerial scooted over as Jenna and Jack approached.
He was wearing a pair of ripped jeans, a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and his auburn hair was pulled up in a bun.
Jenna always thought he’d look right at home in a mountain cabin chopping firewood with an axe.
Ghost turned to Jack. “What’s going on?”
“I know who our sniper is. His name is Griffin Shaw.”
Keys immediately started typing on his computer. “Shaw? I had him on our list.”
Jack nodded. His face was slowly morphing into that hardened mask again, but it never touched his eyes. He was staring at Jenna, even though he was talking to the room as whole. “And I dismissed him.”
“Why?” Ghost asked as Keys handed him a tablet. Jenna assumed it had Shaw’s information and maybe a picture on it.
“Because last I heard, Griffin Shaw was on death row. Never crossed my mind that it could be him, but it makes complete sense. Everything that has happened fits his MO.”
Jenna saw Keys frown behind his computer screen. “He was scheduled for execution, but I don’t see a date. I don’t see any information on his file after that was scheduled.”
“Because he wasn’t executed,” Hagerty spoke up. “He was transferred.”
“Where?” Bulldog asked as Ghost passed him the tablet next. He continued to rock his daughter, holding her with one hand under her butt while holding up the tablet with the other to read.
They must have already introduced Hagerty to the group while Jack and Jenna were still out in the truck because no one questioned who he was or what he was doing here. Jenna wished she’d been privy to that introduction because she still didn’t completely know those answers.
Hagerty looked over to Jack in question, who nodded to him. “I trust these men with Jenna’s life. You can too.”
He always said that. Even as teens and young adults.
It was never ‘I trust so-and-so with my life’.
It was always ‘I trust so-and-so with Jenna’s life’ or ‘my kids’ lives’.
Like Jack valued their lives above his own.
Stupid alpha male mentality. Sometimes Jenna just wanted to hit him upside the head and scream that his life mattered too.
Not less than hers. Equal. But that was something he’d never understand or get behind.
Jenna remembered standing in the Zarins’ kitchen while waiting on Jack and Mr. Zarin to finish working out.
She was helping Mrs. Zarin cook dinner as Lilly did her homework at the kitchen table.
“You’re falling in love with a fine young man,” Mrs. Zarin had told her.
“Just remember, there are certain sacrifices when you fall for a man like him. He’ll always put you first, and maybe he doesn’t come out and say ‘I love you’ in the conventional sense, but he’ll tell you every day, in his own way. ”
Jack had never faltered in telling her how much he loved her, never thought himself too manly to say such things.
He’d always been true to her, and more importantly, to himself.
And she’d known from the beginning that he would always put her first, that he’d never stop fighting for her, and eventually their family.
Fucking hell. She couldn’t be mad at him for not telling her something that happened thirty years ago. He hadn’t betrayed her, and he hadn’t harmed her. In his mind, he was protecting her. Motherfucker.
Her anger left her, evaporating almost as quickly as it had come.
Rolling her eyes, she took his hand. Jack’s lips twitched, telling her he knew he was forgiven.
Frustration filled her veins, because stupid logic had presented a good defense for his actions before they got a chance to have angry sex.
Jack squeezed her hand and leaned in close to her ear. “I can not do the dishes later, so you can get mad at me for that.”
Jenna smiled, because that sounded like a fucking good plan. Literally.
“The CIA snatched him up,” Hagerty announced to the room, drawing Steel’s attention back to the current situation.
Steel sat up but did not let go of Jenna’s hand. “For how long?”
“Years,” was Hagerty’s vague answer. “I don’t know all the details, but you know how scuttlebutt works. Nothing’s kept secret within the military except the unimportant things.”
Bear snorted. “Understatement.”
Bulldog passed the tablet with Shaw’s info to Lucky. “His records look exemplary until he was arrested.”
“They were,” Steel admitted. “I thought he was into drugs at first, not wet work. If I hadn’t told Papaw my suspicions, we’d be having a very different conversation right now.
But things were run differently back then and the world’s conflicts were less…
affected by the public.” Steel would never agree that social media was a good addition to the world.
And now the whole AI thing? Hadn’t anyone learned anything from The Terminator franchise?
Hagerty nodded his agreement. “From what I gathered, the CIA continued to use him for wet work. They just paid him to shoot at whomever they wanted rather than him to shoot at whomever he was paid to by the highest bidder.”
“You said he was ‘out’,” Steel quoted. “The CIA finally let him go?”
Steel wasn’t overly familiar with how the CIA worked.
Movies and Hollywood romanticized the spy trade, but it was dirty work, and a lot of powerful people paid a lot of money to make certain secrets disappear.
He highly doubted the CIA killed off all its former agents when they were of no use to them anymore, but there was still a lot of blood on their hands and a lot of secrets in their vault.
And a man like Shaw? He’d want to get something on someone to ensure his survival.
Steel knew this because that’s what he would do if their roles were reversed.
Hagerty, though, shook his head. “I think I need to start at the beginning. A few weeks ago, I was out at a bar catching up with some old friends. One of them, his father was one of Shaw’s original victims. We all knew the rumors, but my buddy had a personal interest to keep tabs on Shaw beyond what was being talked about.
Like, why you became a training officer and then a squad leader instead of keeping your rifle.
There was even this one rumor that a sniper took a cheap shot at you while you were on patrol.
Scuttlebutt is that was Shaw out for revenge. ”
Lucky’s head snapped up from looking at the tablet. “What?” His eyes went from where Hagerty was sitting at the bar to Steel on the couch next to Jenna.
Not picking up on Lucky’s reaction, Hagerty just shrugged nonchalantly. “Yeah. It was right after 9-11. Maybe 2002 or 2003? I don’t know if it’s true, but that’s the rumor we heard when I joined Steel’s command.”
Steel kept his jaw clamped tight. He’d been more worried about saving Lucky’s life than if the sniper had been caught, and in the firefight that followed, it was always chaos.
No one knew for sure if the sniper had been taken down, but assumptions were made.
Both Lucky and Steel were alive to fight another day.
Had that been Shaw? He would have been in prison five or six years by then. The CIA must have snatched him up quick, not wanting him to be executed before they had a chance to get their claws into him.
Hagerty continued, “But my buddy, he made it his personal mission in life to bring Shaw down. Once he learned Shaw wasn’t executed, he tracked Shaw everywhere. Got disciplined more than once for misappropriation of military resources.”
Jenna squeezed Steel’s hand, an unwavering show of her love and support. It broke Steel from his thoughts, allowed him to think past the fact that Shaw might have almost killed Lucky twenty years ago.
“Who’s your buddy?” he asked.
“Trip Orrin. I doubt you would know him. He was never in your command, and once he learned there was a chance Shaw was still alive, he joined the agency. Wanted to find proof that Shaw was actually working for them before he went public with what the military did.”
Steel hid his wince. That certainly would have put a target on his buddy’s back.
Jenna spoke up. “Hi, sorry. I just want to clarify. Your friend, Mr. Orrin, he just walked up to the CIA and asked to join?”
Steel lifted her hand to kiss her finger tips. “No, love. But the agency is always poaching from the ranks. It wouldn’t have been that hard to gain their attention if he knew what he was doing.”
“Were you ever approached by them?” Jenna demanded, her eyebrows raised.
“You’re looking at the wrong Marine,” he told her honestly, “and so were they.” The spooks he’d seen overseas would have never approached him because Steel was, what they called, True Blue, meaning he wouldn’t leave the Marines regardless of what the agency offered him.
Additionally, he had a wife and kids back home, and they preferred more dispensable agents.
At least, that was what Steel had always been told.
“Did Orrin find Shaw?” Lucky asked. He was still holding the tablet, but no longer reading it.