Warrior Without a Cause

by Nancy Gideon

  "They weren't looking in that direction." Her tone snapped like brittle ice. "They gave their report based on the testimony of some sniveling junkie looking to cut a deal. They took his word, a three-time loser, over my father's. All the good he'd done, all the criminals he'd put away, and they took the word of a felon."

  "Our system loves to condemn its own heroes," was Jack's philosophical response.

  "Yeah, well, it stinks. It really stinks. And now the real villain is still out there because there's no one like my father willing to hunt him down."

  "Yes there is."

  Her. He meant her.

  "Like father, like daughter," he summed up succinctly. "Isn't that why you're doing this? Because just like him, you couldn't let it go, you couldn't let them go unpunished?"

  Her reply was soft, humbled. "Something like that."

  "Then don't let them get away with it."

  Fear unexpectedly stabbed through her insides, making her go all cold again. "I can still hear his voice, Jack."

  Walk away while you can. My next visit won't be quite so pleasant.

  "And you're afraid of what he said."

  She didn't have to answer.

  Jack wanted to curse. He wanted to shake her. He wanted to crush her close in his arms and never let her go. Didn't she realize the danger she was in if any of what she suspected was true? Why couldn't she be like ninety-nine point nine percent of the populace and give up and let it go? Like father, like daughter. She'd sunk in her teeth and she wouldn't release that bite, not ever. Not even after they struck her and threatened her. Not even when the system that was set up to protect her, failed her. Didn't she know how easily professional men—men like him—could break her delicate bones?

  He'd been crazy to bring her here, to train her, to give her the illusion that she'd actually have a chance against some thug bent on destroying that which made her so unique in his eyes. But if he sent her away as unprepared as she was now, she wouldn't have a chance at all. And he'd be reading her obituary in the paper.

  Damned if he did, damned if he didn't. Already damned, truth be told.

  "He meant to scare you with what he said to you. If you cower in fear every time you think of his words, he's won and you might as well give up. Right here, right now. Is that what you want to do?"

  He knew the effect his goading words would have. She bristled, the glistening panic in her eyes becoming a steely sheen of determination.

  "No."

  "Then get mad. Play that voice in your head and get mad as hell. He was in your home. He hurt you to intimidate you, to warn you away. If he thought you were a real threat, he would have killed you. He expects you to hide. He expects you to shiver every time you think of him and what he did, what he might do. Is he right?"

  "No." A faint yet steady conclusion.

  "Then turn that anger into power, into aggression, into focus. How dare he? Who does he think he is to steal control of your life? Are you going to let him?"

  "No."

  "Who's going to stop him?"

  "I am."

  "Who is?"

  "I am."

  "Attagirl." He pushed back from the table. "Read lessons five through eight and get ready to rumble right after tomorrow's run."

  "I'll be ready."

  "Not if you let him sneak into your dreams and keep you up all night."

  "I won't let him."

  "Good."

  He left her sitting at the table, filled with an aggressiveness that he'd spoon-fed to her. Tessa D'Angelo, his fierce, fragile avenging angel. And what did that make him? The protective guardian watching over her? He stepped out into the cool night and inhaled a deep breath. It would be emotional suicide to think he could be anything else.

  Her world was black and white, right and wrong, while his had always been shifting shades of gray. He mocked the sense of fair play and justice she stood for and she scorned his lack of convictions. He tried to shrug it off. Why should her opinion matter to him?

  Maybe because of the way she'd felt in his arms. A man could get used to that feeling real fast.

  He snorted. What was he thinking? That Tessa was going to throw herself into his arms? Throw a right hook was more like it. He'd made it clear that his life was off-limits so why was he even entertaining the idea of finding a place to fit within hers? He liked his life the way it was—simple, direct, uncomplicated.

  Lonely.

  He'd cut himself off from the things that mattered to Tessa, things such as involvement and caring and honor. He'd been there, done that and still had the scars to prove it. Scars that burned every time he looked into a little girl's eyes and saw her mother there.

  He started back to the house, his Fortress of Solitude. If it was good enough for a superhero, it was good enough for him. He'd surrounded himself with things that were important to him: comfort, beauty, peace and quiet. And then he'd let Tessa elbow her way in, demanding he reprioritize. Well, he wasn't going to. Not for a woman who was going to be here and gone. Not for a woman who asked him to take up her cause and get burned by it. Not for a maddeningly independent woman who believed he had a conscience for hire.

  He climbed up onto his porch but the usual feeling of welcome was missing. He turned to look down at the barracks, with its one light burning, and a sense of belonging began to tug annoyingly at the edges of his heart and mind. Tessa D'Angelo, the woman who filled his thoughts with foolish, heroic ideas he'd long outgrown, the woman who made him ache with desires he'd long pushed from his life, called to a conscience he didn't want to claim.

  * * *

  "How's she doing?"

  "Tougher than she looks," Jack admitted reluctantly.

  Stan laughed on the other end of the connection. "Warned you, didn't I? Told you she wasn't going to be easy to discourage."

  "Point taken." He hesitated then figured he might as well plunge right in. "Did you find out anything on your end yet?"

  Stan was silent, probably surprised into swallowing his tongue. Finally he recovered. "Are you asking out of idle curiosity or because you really want to know?"

  "Don't get cute, Kovacs. It was just a question."

  Stan's sigh was heavy. "And that's all I've found. A lot of unanswered questions. Rob always called me in to do his investigative legwork. Always. But not this time. He was playing this one close to the cuff. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was personal."

  "Because he was planning to run against Martinez?"

  "No. That would be business and to Rob, business was business. Only family was personal."

  "If he had information on Rachel Martinez that he wasn't ready to let anyone see, where would he keep it?"

  "In the office, but I've been over everything. I've gone through every piece of paper, every computer file. There's nothing on Martinez. Just a file on his potential campaign strategy against her."

  "Would he have won?"

  "Won what?"

  "The election," Jack asked out of interest. He was rabidly apolitical but this wasn't about party lines. It was about the lines of anxiety that tightened around Tessa's mouth and eyes.

  "Polls gave him sixty-three percent to Martinez's thirty-seven."

  "Is Martinez the kind of woman who would murder over that twenty-six-percent margin?"

  "Don't know. She grew up in the school of hard knocks. Got elected because of it. You know, wrong-side-of-the-tracks girl with motivation escapes dead end of gangs and drugs to make good. Horatio Alger stuff. The public eats it up. Maybe she didn't disassociate herself from some of that bad company she grew up with. Maybe she was owed some favors and called them in. Politics is a dirty business."

  "But is it a killing business?" That's what he needed to know.

  Stan mused for moment then said, "You sound like you're starting to believe her."

  "Just an overly active imagination, Stan. I like a good brain teaser. You know me."

  "Yeah, Jack. I do. And this isn't like you. She getting to you?"

&nb
sp; Jack didn't like what that question implied. "Yeah, she got to me with a right jab this afternoon. Stung like a son of a gun."

  Stan laughed but he wouldn't he dissuaded. "She's a pistol, our little Tessa. And she grows on you, whether you like it or not."

  "She's not putting down any roots here, Kovacs. So you'd better get out there and find out something fast. Because if you don't, she's going to wade right back into the middle of a whole lot of hurt."

  "I hear you," Stan replied glumly.

  Then something else occurred to Jack. "Did D'Angelo have a home office?"

  Stan considered this then admitted, "I don't know. He might have. He didn't like leaving Barbara alone for very long."

  "Barbara?"

  "The missus."

  Jack recalled the elegant woman standing at D'Angelo's side opposite Tessa. "Have you looked there?"

  "I didn't want to intrude yet. She was pretty broken up about … everything. Her two boys have been staying with her, helping her get things in order. They're flying out on Friday. I was planning to make a call then."

  Good. Until Friday, the D'Angelo home was secure and Barbara D'Angelo safe in the company of her sons. Why wasn't her daughter there to keep her company, as well, instead of out chasing after vague hopes and suspicions?

  None of his business.

  "Let me know what you find out, Stan."

  "Will do. And, Jack … keep her safe."

  "Don't make her my problem, Stan," Jack warned as the claustrophobic sense of commitment crowded in.

  "She already is."

  * * *

  Get mad and get even. Tessa liked the sound of that but thinking about it and realizing it were two different animals. Adopting a tough pose in front of Jack wasn't the same thing as fighting off the suffocating panic that fell over her in the night.

  I won't let him, she'd told Jack so boldly. Did she have the courage to push her assailant out of her mind, out of her dreams? He'd taken control of her life for long enough. He'd stolen her sense of security, of trust, of control. He'd left her trembling and shattered on the floor of her apartment. He'd left her shivering and weak with dread beneath her covers. And now, he'd left her … stronger.

  The notion surprised her. Yes, stronger. He'd shaken her from her complacency. He'd shown her a cruelty she never thought she'd have to experience. The fear, the pain, prepared her to fight back. To get mad. Damn him for taking her life away from her. Well, she was going to take it back. And she was not going to let his boss smear her father's name and spit on everything he stood for, on everything she believed in.

  The truth was out there. The hard, cold facts that would restore her father's good name. No one else was going to do it. The police had turned away, case closed. Even his legal associates winced from the whole affair as if Robert D'Angelo had tarnished their institution. Only Stan stuck by him, remembering the man her father was, not the greedy abomination the press had created circumstantially.

  If only he'd lived to prove himself innocent.

  The man with the sinister voice had stolen that opportunity. Along with her chance of ever realizing a father's love.

  Too restless to endure her own company in the big, empty barracks, Tessa slipped carefully out onto the porch. The night air caressed her fevered cheeks, cooled her rage, soothed her pain. With the moon shining ripe and heavy overhead, the surroundings were illuminated by a soft, silvery glow. Mindful of Jack's warning, she stepped off the porch and onto the path that led along the edge of the stream. It would have been easy to lose herself in thought but she'd never wander in that placid white zone again. She moved purposefully, surveying her environment and listening to the night. And amazingly, she noticed that it wasn't quiet at all.

  Frogs sounded from somewhere in the thick pads where the stream angled in its serpentine course. Crickets chirped their last songs of the season. Somewhere a distant dog howled. Or was it a coyote? She'd heard there were coyotes in the north woods. The occasional screech of night birds, of owls and hawks punctuated the subtle music of the forest. And suddenly she didn't feel so alone.

  She heard another sound, one not of nature or its creatures.

  A twig snapped behind her.

  Tessa immediately shifted into a level orange.

  She'd gone a lot farther from the barracks than she'd planned. Through the thick stand of pines, she could faintly make out the light she'd left burning. She couldn't even see the main house. She'd let herself get separated from her safe zone, an easy target, a victim.

  Or was that what Jack was hoping?

  Irritation spiked. Of course. He'd seen her leave the porch even after he'd laid down Chaney's Law. So, to teach her another lesson in consequence, he'd come creeping after her in the dark, hoping to jump out at her, catching her unaware and thus prove his point.

  Well, maybe that was what he'd planned but it wasn't going to happen.

  Sweeping the ground with a glance, she found a substantial branch about a yard in length and as big around as her wrist. She picked it up, hefting it to gage its effectiveness as a weapon. It probably wouldn't incapacitate him but it would certainly get his attention. Smiling grimly at the thought of Jack's unexpected welcome, she stepped off the path into the deep shadow of an oak tree. There, she waited, quieting her breathing so she could hear every scuffle of leaves, every stir of stones. Until her stalker was upon her.

  "Hiyyya!"

  She leaped out from behind the tree, brandishing her makeshift cudgel, ready to smack him senseless for thinking to scare her.

  But instead of Jack Chaney, she confronted a much smaller form, a figure that fell back and down the slope to the stream. With a very feminine squeal.

  * * *

  Chapter 5

  « ^ »

  A dismayed Tessa found herself staring down, not at a duly chastened Jack Chaney who would have deserved the indignity but at the young girl from the main house. A young girl who wailed in pain when she tried to get up.

  Tessa scrambled down the steep embankment, uttering apologies and assurances. Surely the child must have thought her some kind of mad woman to leap out at her in the dark. Guilt tore at her when she saw the girl clasp her ankle, her features pulled tight in misery.

  "I'm sorry I frightened you. I thought it was Jack. I'm Tessa. I'm not going to hurt you."

  She knelt so they were on the same level and was relieved to see no fear in the child's large dark eyes. Just pain. Tessa's remorse notched tighter.

  "I'm not supposed to be here but my aunt said you had a kitty. Mr. Jack is going to be very angry." Her velvety-dark eyes glistened. She was a lovely girl with a heart-shaped face and flawless bronzed skin. Her bob of thick black hair was hidden under a Pistons ball cap and she was wearing an Orlando Bloom T-shirt. But she was no All-American girl. Her voice held the melodic cadence of South America.

  Mr. Jack. He wasn't her father.

  "I'm not supposed to be out here, either, so I guess he'll be angry with both of us."

  The girl responded faintly to her smile and offered, "My name is Rose. I'm almost twelve."

  Such a tiny little thing, all spindly arms and legs and huge eyes.

  "Well, Rose, we'd better get you back where you belong. Do you think you can stand up?"

  She gnawed her lip for a moment. "I will try."

  She weighed next to nothing. Tessa had no trouble lifting her but the girl grimaced when she tried to put weight on her left ankle. A tiny whimper escaped her. Tessa immediately scooped her up into her arms and started toward the house.

  "My cat's name is Tinker." She chatted to distract Rose from her discomfort.

  "A funny name for a kitty."

  Tessa didn't explain it was short for Tinker's Damn because whoever had tossed him out onto a freeway median in the middle of February hadn't given one. No one except her when she'd seen him shivering there in a blizzard. "You can come down and meet him. He's a fat, grumpy old guy."

  "I'm not supposed to cross the bridge," Rose
replied. And Tessa could see the wisdom there. A young girl had no place among whatever sort of men Chaney usually housed. But then, she wasn't exactly his usual sort of trainee.

  "I'll talk to Mr. Jack and see what we can do."

  The child clutched at her and let her dark head rest on Tessa's shoulder. A surprising sense of maternal instinct ran amuck within her. She didn't have much experience with children. Her middle brother Todd had twin boys who were six and had more energy then a whole outfield of battery-powered bunnies. They were too wiggly to be held for longer than a hug. But since Todd and his family lived on the West Coast, where he worked for a computer firm, she only saw them on holidays and in photos. Not up close and personal. Rambunctious little boys didn't smell sweet and feel soft like this.

  "Does your aunt work for Mr. Jack?" Tessa asked, partly to keep up the conversation and partly because she'd been curious about the two of them, as well. They'd reached the gravel drive of the main house. Up close, it was even more impressive.

  "Sí. She work for him and he take care of me. He brought us to live with him here in the U.S. after my mother died."

  That presented more questions than answers. But Tessa didn't have time to ask them, for suddenly Jack was there on the porch above them, backlit from the open front door.

  "What happened?" he demanded tersely as Tessa climbed the steps.

  "She hurt her ankle. Just a sprain, I hope."

  "It was my fault," Rose cut in quickly to save Tessa the awkwardness of explaining. "I slipped down by the creek and the lady heard me cry out."

  No retelling of the madwoman who'd jumped out to threaten her with a big stick.

  "And which side of the creek were you on, little monkey?" Jack asked as he reached to take Rose from Tessa's arms. She gave the girl up reluctantly. Jack enfolded the child with the same practiced care Tessa had seen her brother use when one of his sons scraped their knee. The thin arms went easily around Jack's neck.

  "On my side, like you tell me, Mr. Jack," she said sweetly as she glanced over his shoulder to wink at her coconspirator.