by Nancy Gideon
"You."
"It was my pleasure. He got in the middle of my plans and it was only fair that I did likewise. But enough about ancient history. We'll get back to it shortly, after your mother arrives. Let's fast forward to present day. Imagine your father's dismay to find me back in the picture on the eve of his first political campaign. It was naive of him to think I'd be gone forever. Martinez figured I could use our past ties to convince Robby to back off from declaring his intention to run and from his snooping around in the councilwoman's business. I could have told her what Robby's reaction would be."
"He told you to take a hike." An acquitting sense of satisfaction gripped Tessa. Her father hadn't faltered after all. He'd been one of the good guys.
"In so many words. So we had to manufacture some manure for your father to step in. The money in the bank, O'Casey's testimony. Nothing fancy but effective enough to create that shadow of a doubt over Robby's good name. But it wasn't the smear to his professional name that the D.A. feared the most. It was the past rising up in all its ugly glory that had him quaking in his loafers. Your daddy was a man of secrets, Tessa. Want me to tell you the big one? The one that made him risk his military career and Goody Two-Shoes reputation? Can you guess what it was? No?"
"Shut up, Chet."
Both of them turned at the sharp cut of Barbara's voice.
Tessa's relief at seeing her mother, tired, worn and slightly worse for wear, took the venom and confusion from Allen's mocking game.
"Babs, come join the party. Tessa and I were about to start without you."
"She doesn't want to party with the likes of you, Chet. Leave her alone. You have no idea what you're talking about."
"Don't I? Could be I do, Barbie. Could be I know I lot more than you think. Family skeletons are rattling, just dying to get out."
"Why did you kill Robert? I can't believe Rachel Martinez ordered you to do it."
Chet smiled, a slow, spreading gesture like an oil spill contaminating a placid surface. "No. That was my idea. Rachel was pretty peeved about it. Just about canceled my contract, if you know what I mean."
"Why, Chet? He was your friend."
"Friend? Rob didn't have any friends. He had people he could manipulate to get what he wanted. The ultimate political machine even back then. And you know what he wanted, Babs? He wanted you. And he was willing to do anything to get you and then to keep you. Anything." Allen's gaze narrowed into hard, angry slits. His breath seethed with the remembrance of past perceived wrongs. "Too good for everyone else, he was. The perfect athlete, the perfect scholar, the perfect soldier and he planned to be the perfect husband. Not so perfect there, was he, Barbie doll? And we know why, don't we?"
"Why did you have to kill him? I'd think ruining him would have served your purpose far better," Tessa interjected to give her mother time to regroup. Something in the direction of the conversation was getting deeply, dangerously personal and Barbara wasn't ready to face it yet. Tessa stalled for time.
"That was the plan and it was too good to be true. The perfect Robert D'Angelo knocked from his soapbox of justice by his own character flaws. How perfect is that? But the bastard wouldn't play the game like he did in Nam. I tried the same old tricks and he wouldn't jump through the hoops. Told me to go to hell, that the past couldn't hurt him anymore. He was wrong." Allen's palms slapped down on the desktop, startling both women. He leaned forward, oozing menace. "He was wrong."
After a moment he dropped back in Robert's chair, tenting his fingers in front of him. His gaze grew speculative as it touched on Tessa. "Let me tell you a story of three buddies about to go off to Vietnam."
He laid it out in a cheerful recollection, Robert, Tag and Chet, idealistic kids on the cusp of manhood, each driven by different dreams. Tag's number came up in the draft. He was the most unlikely of the trio to go off to war but made no attempt to shirk his duty to his country. Robert saw the military as a way to get ahead, the means to pay for his schooling and a backdrop to build his image as a supporter of what was right and good about the American system. And Chet was eager to escape what he saw as a dead end of mediocrity. The chance to excel at something he'd prove to be very, very good at. Killing.
The three finished basic training. Chet and Tag stayed at the base getting ready to deploy. Robert made a quick trip home to marry the woman who would make all his future dreams come true. And then they were shipped out.
"It was a different world over there. You could do anything, be anything, with nothing to hold you back. We'd go out on three, four missions a week, hunkering down in the mud and bugs and rot to wait for our chance to pop one for our country. Only on one of my trips out, way out, I ran across Rachel Martinez, it was Drury back then, with one of the province warlords. They made it worth my while not to pull the trigger. And then they were paying me well to run interference for their transactions. Until Robert got wise and took some pictures. He was going to have me brought up on charges, Mr. Holier-Than-Thou D'Angelo. He was going to ruin everything we'd set up out there in the jungles to come out of the war rich men … and women. Couldn't let that happen. So I took my buddy Robert aside and we had a little meeting, a kind of lay-it-all-out-and-weigh-the-options. And Robby boy decided it would be in his best interest to turn his back and let me get on with what I was doing."
"I don't believe you."
Allen laughed at Tessa's outrage. Then he looked to a very silent and pale Barbara. "But Babs does, don't you, Babs? Because you know what I was holding over good old Robby's head. You know the one threat I could make that would have him turning his back on the red, white and blue and truth, honor and the American way. You know, don't you, Barbie?"
"Oh, my God. This is all my fault," she moaned softly.
"I don't blame you, Barbara. You saw a way out and you took it. A nice girl like you from a fine, upstanding, church going family, the pillars of the community. How would it look if we'd left you behind, pregnant and unmarried?"
Tessa gasped but Barbara and Chet didn't notice. Their stares were locked, Allen's as mesmerizing as a snake paralyzing its prey.
"Things like that just weren't done back then. The scandal, the whispers. So good old Robert saw his opportunity to lock on to the woman who never returned all his passions, who never shared his dreams or ambitions. He came back and made her his wife. His every wish fulfilled, the son of a bitch. Only tell her the kicker, Babs. You tell her or I will."
Tessa looked between them, panic and foreboding massing inside her to an unbearable degree.
"Tell me what, Mom?" she demanded at last.
Barbara looked to her, her eyes welling up with misery and regret and an empathy for the pain to come. She did the merciful thing and cut right to the heart.
"Robert wasn't your father, Tessa."
There it was, the secret her father kept, the reason he would never hug her close or tell her that he loved her. She wasn't his child, in body or in heart.
Tessa's senses reeled but her mind remained amazingly clear, the eye of the emotional storm. That was the truth Robert D'Angelo had wanted to share with her that day, not some confession to criminal activity or theft hut that he was guilty of stealing almost thirty-four years of devotion and love without the slightest intention of returning it. She stared at Barbara, seeing her anguish, her pleading for an ounce of understanding and all she could think to say was, "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I wanted to. So many times." Barbara's voice broke and Allen's taunt filled the strained silence.
"He didn't want you to ever know. That's the man you've been fighting to avenge," Allen sneered. "A man who spent his whole life pretending to be what he wasn't. He bargained for my silence all those years ago so he could hold on to a dream family built on a lie. We traded, Robby and I, my sin for his, but when I came back to hold him to it, to keep his mouth shut about what he knew, he said he couldn't do it anymore. He couldn't let Martinez win even if it meant he'd lose. Stupid. Stupid. I went to him that night to try one last
time to persuade him to be reasonable. All he had to do was to step back and say nothing. Martinez would get her spot as congresswoman and Rob could run for something else. He could even have walked away richer for it. The money was real. He could have had it all. The bank account, the all-American family, his reputation. His secret safe forever. No one else would have ever known."
"But he knew," Barbara said at last, her tone strengthening, her gaze becoming defiant. "He knew and he couldn't let it happen. He couldn't let a cheap drug dealer like Martinez prosper because of what he'd done in a moment of weakness thirty-some years ago. He knew if he went along with what you offered, he'd be just like you. And he couldn't live with that."
"And he didn't." Allen smiled narrowly. His eyes glittered like a bared knife blade. "And neither will you if you don't give me Robert's little insurance policy right now. You can walk away from this. I don't have any reason to harm you if you cooperate."
It was Tessa's turn to laugh. The sound was as sharp and fractured as those pieces of glass on her apartment floor. Allen regarded her narrowly, his smile frozen, his brow beginning to furrow in aggravation.
"You're not going to let us go. Don't be stupid."
He flinched at that, his jaw clenching in a tight spasm.
Tessa continued, her words hard, fierce and fearless. What did she have to lose at this particular point?
"There's no way Martinez would trade one albatross around her neck for another. No. She'd want the vicious little secret to end here. That's why she didn't meet us herself. No ties while you clean up the mess. Right?"
A reluctant smile quirked at the corner of his mouth. "Cut right to the chase and damn the cost. Just like your daddy. He wouldn't compromise no matter what was in the balance. Good old Tag saw a wrong and he had to right it. He was a sanctimonious bastard but I had a lot more respect for him than Robby. Rob wasn't afraid to go after what he wanted by bending a rule or two. He let ambition become his god. You know why he wouldn't trade on his war record? The real reason? That nice little wound in the line-of-duty scratch he got, that wasn't enemy fire. I gave it to him. I pulled that trigger. It was the only way they'd believe him, he told me. The only way they'd swallow the story and let it go to save a potential scandal. They'd have Robby as a hero and I'd no longer be an embarrassment. Good press and problem solved. Everybody wins. It's the American way.
"He never expected me to show up on his doorstep thirty odd years later to call him on that little arrangement. I almost thought we had him but then he had to go and get all honorable and throw the past in my face. He let his pride push him into taking integrity over his family's good name. A little late, I told him, but he wouldn't bend. The rest of the story you already know. Now give me the clippings or I will shoot your pretty little mother right in the head."
His gun was out and leveled before Tessa could blink. Barbara didn't move, her gaze drawn down that deadly barrel as it yawned wide and deadly in front of her face.
"I can't," Tessa told him flatly. "I don't have them to give. They were turned over to the police last night." She glanced at her watch and said with some satisfaction, "They're probably picking your boss up out of her pew about now. So I guess I have to ask you, what's the smart thing? Complicate your options with two more killings or get the hell out of Dodge before they come after you?"
"That would be the sensible thing, wouldn't it? I mean what loyalty do I have to Martinez? Yep, running away would be the smart thing to do but then, the smarter thing would be to leave no witnesses. That's kinda been my policy all along." A cold glaze settled over his stare. "Sorry, Babs. Nothing personal."
Tessa's mind scrambled. Do something, it screamed. The muscles in her calves bunched. Her body became coiled-spring taut. And just as she readied to throw herself across the table at a man she had no chance of defeating, she caught a glimmer of movement behind him.
And then everything exploded.
* * *
Chapter 18
« ^
Glass fell inward and shattered across Allen's back and the desktop. Jack swung through the opening but already Allen was recovering, remembering his purpose. Bleeding from countless lacerations, he lifted the gun once more as Jack rolled to hands and knees.
Using one hand to push her mother from the chair, Tessa lunged for Allen's wrist with the other. She wrenched it upward, away from the target Barbara made sprawled upon the floor, and stepped in closer for more leverage. The discharge was deafening. She felt something tug at the loose spill of her hair but had no time to process the fact that a bullet had just missed her head. A man like Allen couldn't be allowed to remain armed.
With her hand clamped down on his wrist, Tessa wrapped her other arm around his, locking that hand over the one holding his wrist. Turning slightly, she managed to torque his arm up at just the right angle to force his grip to lessen. The gun hit the desk and bounced harmlessly to the floor. But unfortunately, that left her within his reach.
His hand went to her neck, fingers pressing, forcing hot dots of color to swirl through her vision. Before they could form a solid curtain of blackness, she exaggerated the natural movement of a sneeze, whipping her head back then forward. Right into his nose. His hold opened so she could stagger back a safe distance and then Jack had him.
She would have liked to have stepped back to watch the two professionals engage in deadly hand-to-hand but the sound of the shot drew the four from the other room. Knowing Jack was fully involved with the dangerous Allen, she brazenly rushed the others as they pushed through the door. They weren't prepared for her aggressive, hands-on assault and she used that surprise as her weapon of opportunity.
She grabbed the first man's gun, letting his arm pass beneath hers, then locking down tight to hold him immobile. Her knee found his kidney and he dropped. She went over him to confront the second man who had yet to recover from his astonishment. Keeping his body between her and the others, she dealt him a hard jab/cross/hook/cross combination that had him shaking his huge head like a stunned ox. Not giving him a chance to gather his senses, because if he hit her, he was going to hurt her and most likely stop her cold, she threw all her energy into a left jab and right cross followed by an uppercut with the left elbow and a horizontal right elbow strike. Then she shoved him back into the other two. Before they could regroup, Tessa had snatched Betsy from her waistband.
"Stop! Everybody freeze."
They stared at her, at the gun, weighing her capability. She worked the slide with an I-mean-business rifling.
"Don't even think that I'm not ready, willing and able to take out your kneecaps if you so much as scratch your noses. Mom, are you all right?" She risked a quick glance.
"I'm fine," Barbara announced as she got carefully off the floor. But her eyes were on Tessa and that look was filled with concern. Tessa looked away. She couldn't afford to let her attentiveness slip even a notch. Not now. Not yet.
Jack had Allen's pulped nose buried in her father's expensive carpet, a knee in his back and the killer's arm twisted up at a stay-put angle. The start of a spectacular shiner attested to the ferocity of their struggle.
"I must be getting old," Allen panted. "You're still alive."
"Me, too," Jack replied. "Because you can still talk."
"And I'm going to have plenty to say, right, ladies?"
If he thought to intimidate them, he was wrong. Tessa glared at him. "Say whatever you like, Allen. And keep saying it for the rest of your miserable life behind bars."
"What about your career, missy? Won't the scandal put a black mark on your perfect record?"
"I can take it," she promised him with a fierce smile. "I'm tougher than you think."
Allen chuckled. "Just like her old man, eh, Babs?"
"Anyone in here need some members of the law enforcement community?" Zach Russell peered in and assessed the situation. "Looks like my timing is a little off. It would seem that the two of you handled things quite nicely." Behind him the four goons were bein
g cuffed.
"All but the reading of the rights." Jack dragged Allen to his feet. "You have the right to remain silent, scumbag. You might consider using it."
Allen smirked at him. "Glass houses, Mr. Chaney. We're the same, you and I. The only difference is this time you get to walk away."
"If you believe that, you are a fool. I'm nothing like you. I never was. There were lines I wouldn't cross and you never recognized any lines at all." He pushed Allen toward one of the officers Russell brought with him to the scene. "Mirandize him and make sure you enunciate every word. No glitches to keep him from going down for the murder of Robert D'Angelo and attempted murder of these two very-willing-to-testify ladies."
"It's hard to keep a truly bad man down, Chaney. Remember that," Allen vowed as he was being handcuffed. "And, Barbie, I'll see you again so we can go over old times."
Barbara said nothing as she moved back to give the police officers plenty of room to escort her husband's killer away. Then she looked to her daughter. "Tess, we need to talk."
"Not right now. I have to have time to think … to think about what all this means." She turned to Russell to escape the tension of issues she wasn't ready to deal with. "Mr. Russell, thank you for coming to the rescue."
"My pleasure, although I regret missing my friend's rather grand Errol Flynn entrance."
Tessa looked toward the window, her brow furrowing in confusion.
"That's how he got in and out, Tessa," Jack explained. "When Allen came in dressed as a repairman, he took out the glass and replaced the seal with a temporary adhesive. When the office closed down for the night and your father went to answer nature's call, he rappelled down from sixteen the same way I did. There's a conference room up there. He used suction cups to hold the glass while he pushed it inside so he didn't make the same kind of mess I did. I'm afraid I was in a bit of a hurry and, well, I wanted to make a dramatic entrance." He grinned and Tessa returned the gesture faintly. Then he was all sober business once more. "He was here waiting for your dad. He offered him a bribe and when that didn't work, he went straight for blackmail but D'Angelo wasn't having any of that, either."
