Pops appeared in the doorway. “Not going to change your mind, am I?”
Caleb tried to look like a guy who hadn’t just taken a shower for the simple reason he’d burned three bodies in a cabin and smelled like smoke. “No, you’re not going to change my mind.”
He needed to get somewhere he could turn over the phones and IDs and get some answers. As soon as he was out of this area he’d research private forensics labs. Someone with the tech to look into the phones he had taken the batteries out of and shoved in the bottom of his duffel. A company that would take his cash and not ask too many questions, but who could give him actionable intel at the end of it all.
“Your father was the same way.”
And here he was thinking that he had to leave before his business got someone he cared about killed. “I’m nothing like him.”
Caleb wanted to be far more like Pops than either of his parents.
“Noah is more like your mom, but you have your father’s stubbornness. And his sense of duty.”
This was how he was going to try and get Caleb to stay? He looked at Pops. “Where are they?”
“I don’t know.”
Probably so that Pops couldn’t be captured, tortured, and forced to tell someone where they were. But what on earth did that mean his parents even did? Caleb had realized all too latethat he knew nothing about them. Only what he’d been told, which had turned out to be a lie.
“Why did they leave us?”
“Why do you think?” Pops stared at him. “It’s what you’re doing right now.”
Caleb hated everything about that, because it meant he lost his parents all the same—but that they had done it to save his life. Self-sacrifice didn’t do the other person any favors if they didn’t even know. Was he supposed to be grateful they’d abandoned him? Far as he could see it only made the person being noble feel better about themselves and their choices.
And yes, that was exactly what he was doing right now.
And he hated that as well.
Caleb gritted his teeth. “If I stay, I put you all in danger and expose myself.”
“And if you leave,” Pops said, “you’ll never find out what I know, or what the preacher knows about them.”
“Why don’t you just tell me so I can go knowing and you’ll be safe?”
Pops shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that.”
Caleb shoved the last few things in his duffel and zipped it up. He slung it over his good shoulder. Which was of course, a misnomer. Everything hurt right now. But he would take a couple of painkillers and get on his way. It didn’t take a lot of strength to drive for days. Sleep in his car. Continue pretending to be dead.
Never see Tessa again.
“I’m not going to back down. It doesn’t matter what you say.” Caleb had made up his mind and he was going to stick with it.
“God brought you back here and right when you’re starting to get answers you’re going to leave?”
“You didn’t see Tessa facing off against a gunman.”
“Thought that plan was your idea.”
Caleb said, “Just because it was the only way to resolve the problem doesn’t mean I liked seeing her in danger. A second from getting shot. Any of us could have died, and if it was me there would have been nothing I could do to save her.”
“Because she’s just an innocent, or your neighbor? Or because of something else?”
“This isn’t the time for us to get into that. I have a job to do.”
“So do it. Here.”
Caleb shook his head. “These people are serious. They aren’t going to back down just because I think someone shouldn’t be involved. They’ll do whatever they want with no regard for collateral damage.”
