Warrior Without a Cause

by Nancy Gideon

She'd never spent any quality time with nature. Her short jaunt at camp when she was nine had ended when a chicken pox epidemic sent all the girls scurrying home in their anxious parents' Mercedes after just one afternoon. What she knew of trees and other woodland fauna, she'd discovered at carefully arranged gardens under protective domes or in sculpted backyards for the occasional summer party. She'd had one plant, a dieffenbachia she'd been assured could endure any hardship or neglect. It had lasted a month under her care. Cut flowers in a vase was as close as she got to appreciating the great outdoors. And now she was wondering if she should have kept it that way.

  Warmth and welcome, however, glowed behind the massive walls of glass and steel. But not a welcome for her. She wasn't sure why the idea of Jack Chaney having a family unsettled her so. Perhaps because she was uncomfortable with bringing possible danger to their door. Possibly because of the more basic things that had stirred her when she'd looked at her teacher and protector. Things one shouldn't admit to when the man had a family.

  A wife and child threw all her conceptions about Chaney off balance. Lone Wolf. Stan had summed him up with that moniker and she'd liked the deadly and fiercely independent image it evoked. That was the image she'd bought into when she'd hired him: the skilled assassin, capable of slipping in anywhere to get the most unpleasant of jobs done. Just because he moved with government approval didn't change the basic makeup of the man. He was a killer. The kind of man her father made a career of putting away for as long as legally possible as a danger to society. The kind of man she now turned to to preserve all that her father had stood for. She smiled grimly at the irony, not sure straight-arrow Robert D'Angelo would have appreciated it.

  A brief movement behind the backlit vista of glass caught her notice. A single figure stopped and stood in bold silhouette, staring—if the creepy sensation along the hairs on her arms was correct—right at her.

  Jack.

  He was watching her watching him. And he probably wasn't liking it.

  Abruptly the shadow was gone and Tessa was alone once more. At least she felt alone. As alone and abandoned as she'd felt at her father's graveside. Without direction. Without purpose—except for one driving goal. To prove that everything her father embodied wasn't a lie.

  "You shouldn't be outside. It makes you a target."

  A squeak of surprise escaped her as Chaney's voice sounded practically at her elbow. After a few panicked blinks of her eyes, she could make out his shape in the darkness on the other side of the porch rail. She'd never heard his approach. It infused her with the debilitating sense of vulnerability again.

  "I thought you said I'd be safe here."

  "Safe implies a certain amount of common sense. You don't stand out in the open unless you want to draw attention to yourself."

  Then what had he been doing up at the main house in front of the window? But of course he'd wanted her to see him then. Just as he hadn't wanted her to see him until his disembodied voice nearly scared the beef-and-rice casserole out of her. He was making a point.

  Point taken. She wouldn't be safe anywhere until her father's murderer was caught. And the only one who could protect her was herself. Those were the skills Chaney was going to teach her.

  "When do we get started tomorrow?"

  "So early you'll still think it's today so I'd suggest you get some shut-eye. I guarantee, tomorrow night you'll hurt too bad to sleep."

  She thought he was kidding.

  He wasn't.

  * * *

  His voice came out of the darkness.

  "If you have comfortable shoes, get them on."

  Tessa dragged herself up out of the bed where it felt as though she'd only laid her head minutes ago. She'd left the door to her room ajar so Tinker could use his box and it was from the other side of the door that Chaney issued his orders.

  "We do five miles every morning at sunup, rain or shine. Get ready."

  "Before coffee?" she muttered, shoving her fingers through tangled hair. "How uncivilized."

  "If you were waiting for breakfast in bed, you should have checked into a hotel. Let's go."

  Fifteen minutes later she was yawning her way out onto the front porch where Jack's stem gaze was as bracing as the chill morning air.

  "Tomorrow you get five minutes. No more. You don't need to put on makeup for a run. No one you're going to meet out here cares how you look."

  She looked as though she'd been hauled out of the sheets and stuffed into the first piece of clothing available.

  Jack thought she made breakfast in bed too damned inviting. And that made him testy.

  She wore a black warm-up suit with pink racing stripes and some high-dollar name brand embroidered on the back. Her blond hair was swept back from the delicate bones of her face and secured in a no-nonsense plastic clip. Her shoes were expensive and made to take the abuse he planned to put her through. By the next morning she'd meet him with a belligerent hostility instead of bleary-eyed confusion … or she'd be begging him to take her home.

  She's tougher than she looks, Stan had said.

  Well, they'd soon find out.

  * * *

  The sun slanted through the trees, irregularly illuminating the winding path through the woods and, often as not, failing to warn of hazards until she'd stumbled over them. Twisting roots, loose stone, unexpected holes. This was no nature hike. It was her first exercise in survival. And she wasn't sure she was going to make it.

  Tessa believed herself to be in shape. She'd played volleyball and tennis in high school and competitive tennis in college. She had a gym membership that garnered less and less of her time as her work took up more of it. She religiously used the stationary bike in the bedroom of her apartment. But she'd never punished her body the way this morning run behind Jack Chaney was meant to.

  The first mile had gone fairly well. She'd kept up a decent pace that didn't embarrass her too badly. The air was crisp and the cool temperature made the vigorous exercise bearable. Somewhere between the second and third mile, her calves had started to bum in anticipation of things to come. By the time she plodded toward mile four, a stitch in her side made taking each breath a near sob for mercy.

  But no mercy came from the man trotting in front of her with his long relentless strides. He never once looked back to see if she followed. He could probably hear her floundering and gasping and groaning as she staggered in his wake. By the approach of mile five, she was in a hazy fugue state fueled by pain and caffeine deprivation. The only thing that kept her going was the notion that Chaney was smiling at the thought of her distress. That, and the sight of his tight butt creating a visual carrot dangling in front of her.

  He wore a black hooded sweatshirt and nylon running shorts. The kind designed to breathe and follow each movement. And following the movement of the skimpy fabric as it pulled and sighed over the bunch and stretch of his rump did funny things to Tessa's breathing, too. If she could manage to take a breath. Her cracked rib was screaming obscenities but she refused to listen. The man truly had buns of steel, while hers felt more like jelly-filled doughnuts. All her focus funneled into the mesmerizing flex of that amazing rear end until he abruptly stopped. She staggered into the back of him, wheezing, blinded by sweat. When she realized they stood outside her cabin door, she just wanted to crawl inside, feeling as though she'd completed a Boston marathon.

  Holding her aching side, she gasped, "Can I have my cup of coffee now?"

  "Water," he offered stingily. "While you're moving. As the song goes, we've only just begun."

  * * *

  By nightfall Tessa was sure she'd been plunged into a vicious hell devised by Jack Chaney to break her will. And he'd come perilously close to doing his job.

  They'd spent the day on his homemade fitness course where he pushed her until her muscles screamed and her lungs cried for a moment's rest all in the name of evaluating her level of fitness. By the time she dragged herself to her single bunk to flop down still fully dressed, she knew he
'd branded her with a big F.

  Chin-ups, push-ups, rope climb, hand-over-hand ladder crossing. She was surprised he hadn't had her down on her belly wriggling under barbed wire as live rounds burst overhead. Live rounds felt like they were bursting inside her head as she managed to roll over onto her back and hoist one leg up onto the bed. The other continued to hang over the side. She knew she should shower. She hadn't had anything to eat except an apple and power bar for lunch. How many hours ago? She had swished down a couple of painkillers for supper before toppling onto the sheets. When Tinker jumped up onto the bed, the movement of the mattress made her groan. She was whipped, wasted, totally wiped out.

  But if Chaney thought she was going to quit, he was mistaken.

  And if she could ever get her rubbery legs to support her again, she'd prove it to him.

  Tomorrow.

  Tomorrow, where he probably had all sorts of other fiendish things planned to force her to cry uncle.

  But she'd made it through the first day, even if just barely. And she'd make it through tomorrow, too. And the next day and the next. Jack couldn't make her quit. And he couldn't make her cry.

  But what Chaney could do was exhaust her into a good night's sleep. No dreams. No restless tossings and turnings that left her wringing with sweat and limp with despair when she woke to find the nightmare was real. The nightmare that ended her father's life and her neatly planned future with a gunshot.

  Tessa opened her eyes to the first gray streaks of dawn and lay for a moment, thinking with a bittersweet anguish that even after his death, Robert D'Angelo still controlled the mechanics of her day.

  She had worked for him part-time to put herself through college, planning to follow his footsteps into the legal realm where justice triumphed and one determined individual could make a difference. At least, that's what she'd believed at the time. Her father had encouraged those beliefs with his unflagging work ethic, with his stirring speeches, with a firm handshake and firmer declaration that he would do whatever it took—within the limits of the law—to see one more criminal off the streets. His demeanor held the voting public, even the fickle press, in thrall. No one could say a bad word about the dynamic D.A., until he'd been found slumped over his desk with a pistol in his hand.

  And she would do whatever it took, without complaint, to restore the good opinion the world once held of District Attorney Robert D'Angelo.

  And that vow gave her the strength to drag herself out of bed. Another brutal day in paradise.

  She survived the run that day, and on the next eight that followed, with legs trembling and the image of Jack's tight ass bouncing in front of her like one of those beckoning balls leading from one word to the next in a karaoke sing-along. Whatever gets you through it, Stan used to say. Her new mantra. She couldn't remember what day it was and the thirst for daily news of the outside world made her feel as though she'd been incarcerated in solitary confinement. In a way, she was, isolated from the reality of nine-to-five and the eleven o'clock recap of the day. Her day never deviated. And the sameness made all else a blur. She was stuck in a Twilight Zone of her own making.

  So she focused her energy into Jack's regimented schedule, looking no further than the next exercise, the next meal, the next exhausted night's sleep. And for the present, it was enough to get her by from one brutal day to the next. Muscles and tendons she never knew existed now complained like old friends. Where she'd been and where she was going faded into limbo. Only the moment mattered. And Jack Chaney ruled those moments with a dictatorial fervor. He expected her to break or get bored. She saw it in his cynical smile every time she asked how she was doing. "Still here and that's saying a lot," he would answer.

  Still here. Damn right.

  He didn't believe in her and he didn't believe in what she was doing. A deep stubborn streak surfaced to defy him. She didn't need his encouragement or his coddling. She'd come into his hands a house pet, domesticated right out of any natural instincts to survive, and his uncompromisingly harsh treatment was making her into a lean, mean junkyard dog. That's why she was here. Not to hide, not to ogle his fabulous butt, not to give in to the fears that ruled her every waking hour. She was here to get in touch with that inner she-wolf. And then she would make them howl for mercy.

  After a scarfed-down breakfast of a surprisingly delicious scrambled egg burrito and juice chased with crude-weight coffee, Tessa confronted Jack's fitness course with a bring-it-on attitude. After all, what could Jack put in her way that was worse than finally breaking down the door and stepping into her father's office where the metallic scent of blood and gun discharge hung in the air? What could he do that would reduce her to the quivering, pleading mass she'd been on the floor of her apartment? Nothing. Nada. Nothing he could put her through could rival those life-altering experiences. Oh, he could make her hurt, he could make her curse him under her breath, he could make her long for a breath that didn't tear up through the lining of her lungs, but he couldn't shatter her world the way those two events had. So, bring it on, Jack Chaney. She would take whatever he could dish and she would grow stronger, more confident, more dangerous a foe than her unseen enemies bargained for.

  Because she was Robert D'Angelo's daughter and odds didn't matter when justice was the reward.

  * * *

  What made a woman like Tessa D'Angelo tick? Jack wondered as she wound her lithe body through his obstacle course. Seeing her at Jo's, trembling like a fragile flower on the end of a delicate vine, he was sure she'd wilt before the end of the first day at his Wolf's Den. She belonged in a world of expensive silk suits, high heels and perfumed evenings, not grunting and sputtering her way through a break-of-dawn run or sweating to calisthenics that would have a made a newbie marine falter.

  Tougher than she looks. No kidding.

  And he was kidding himself if that didn't impress him out of his usual detachment.

  He frowned as his gaze followed her graceful crossing of the balance beam. Even though she must have been exhausted from the morning run, she managed to move with the agile strength of a dancer, arms seesawing in fluid sweeps as she hurried across the narrow plank. With a hopping dismount, she sped without hesitation toward the tires and tiptoed through them like a child playing hopscotch. Her pale blond ponytail bobbed with girlish energy but there was nothing childish in the bounce of her breasts beneath her zippered jacket. He glanced at the stopwatch in his hand to give his imagination a time-out.

  Everything about Tessa nudged uncomfortably against the barriers he'd created to keep the outside world at bay. Her determination combined with the wounded-bird protectiveness she'd stirred the moment she peeled down her sunglasses to bare an unwavering stare above all those assorted bruises convinced him to take her under his wing. And that made her a threat. A threat to all he'd built here in his isolated, insulated wilderness. A threat to his "Don't involve me" motto.

  He hated causes, knowing that starry-eyed do-gooders like Tessa and her father often fell victim to them. He could have told her that her father was probably guilty of everything the papers accused. He knew, firsthand, that good men sometimes got mixed up in bad things through no fault of their own. But it wasn't his job to educate the mulish and high-minded Ms. D'Angelo in that area. Her unrealistic ideals were not his problem.

  Whatever information Stan was bound to discover once he put his nose to the ground wasn't going to clear Robert D'Angelo's good name. It was going to show his naive daughter an ugly truth, that when he was pressed into a situation he couldn't escape, the D.A. had taken the coward's way out by putting a gun to his head, leaving his family to clean up the mess.

  Well, who was he to condemn D'Angelo? Hadn't he done the same thing on a less fatal level?

  Tessa swung across the ladder, going rung to rung like a twenty-first-century Jane in his own private jungle.

  Coward, she had called him. Who was he to argue? As long as she believed him to be a man without honor, a coward who trained then sent others to carry out
deeds he refused to champion, she would keep a safe distance. Stan would ferret out the facts and make her face them. Then she'd be gone to piece her world back together and he could go on living day to day in his. Without complications. Without risk. And he'd be happy as a clam about it, closed up in his impenetrable shell.

  Tessa D'Angelo and her cause was not his concern.

  He clicked the stem on the watch as she sprinted past him. Purposefully he didn't look her way as she bent over, hands braced on her knees, her sweet little derriere pointed in his direction. He was glowering when she came over to peer down at the sheet tacked to his clipboard.

  "How'd I do, coach?"

  Her voice was breathy, slightly ragged, the way he'd imagine it would be after an exuberant bout of sex. His own growled in response.

  "Better by five point two seconds."

  She looked ridiculously pleased at that, as if she'd won some prestigious court case or the lottery.

  "But don't start booking your Olympic berth just yet."

  Even his surly retort couldn't dim the sudden flash of her smile.

  His gut twisted.

  Then her bright, curious eyes lifted to a spot past his shoulder and her tawny brows arched in unspoken question. He glanced behind him to see Constanza carrying linens across the footbridge to the barracks. Even before she asked, he suddenly realized the conclusion Tessa had drawn.

  "Are she and the little girl—"

  Jack cut her off. "What they are, is none of your business. You were not invited here as a guest and I'll allow for no intrusions into my private life. Clear?"

  She blinked, startled and hurt, but the fiery pride was quick to resurface. Her tone was equally chilled. "Like my mother's fine crystal."

  She caught the book he tossed her way without checking the cover. Her gaze still skewered his, letting him know how unforgivably rude he'd just been.

  Knowing she was right didn't improve his mood.

  "Homework. Read lessons one through four. We'll be going over them at fourteen hundred hours. And I don't mean in a lecture hall."