he said again, and this time she did.
“It’s not my place to make judgments, Miss D’Angelo. That’s not what I do. I wasn’t aware that my opinions were why you sought me out. So I guess it’s time to ask, just why have you called me?”
“Justice, Mr. Chaney. For my father and me.”
“Vigilante style?”
“Would it matter to you?”
Her sharp tone was a quick barb to a conscience he wasn’t sure up until that very moment could be reached by mere words. His features stiffened.
“Obviously you think it shouldn’t.” She thought she was looking at a gun-for-hire, a quick, violent solution to her problems. What had Stan told her to give her that erroneous impression? Why come to him when the streets of the inner city were most likely teeming with guys who would kill for a quarter? That wasn’t what he did and it was about time she found that out. “What do you want from me, Miss D’Angelo? You want to put a contract out on whomever you think is responsible for putting your father in the ground? You want me to pull the trigger, is that it?”
She never so much as twitched. “I plan to pull my own trigger, Mr. Chaney. That’s not why I need you.”
He blinked.
“I need you to teach me how to stay alive long enough to pull it.”
She was blowing it.
Tessa could tell by the sudden blanking of his dark eyes. Gorgeous dark eyes that she bet could beg for forgiveness while making a woman forget what he had done wrong. Eyes that saw right through her tough outer shell to the marshmallow filling. It didn’t help that with his smoldering George-Clooney-like sex appeal, he looked more like a romantic leading man than the Rambo she’d been expecting. She had maybe a minute to plead her case or he was going to be gone. And with him, her last chance at finding out the truth.
“Stan said you could help me.”
It was an emotional ploy but she could tell it was effective by the way his sensuously shaped mouth thinned into a disagreeable line.
“Stan told you I could make you into a killer?”
Now, she was surprised. “N-no. No, of course not.”
Chaney relaxed ever so slightly. “Then I’m to assume we are speaking of a symbolic trigger.”
“Yes. Oh, you thought—that I—No.” Indignation stained her cheeks in hot points. “Mr. Chaney, my father gave his life to defend a system I will not abuse, even if it failed him. This isn’t about vigilante justice, it’s about truth. A truth someone doesn’t want me to find.”
“Isn’t that what the police are for, Miss D’Angelo?”
It was hard to hang on to her patience. Just what did he think she’d been doing since the official report and its damning summation had been released to the press? But no one wanted to listen to a distraught daughter anxious to save her father’s reputation with unsubstantiated tales right out of high-tech spy fiction.
“They don’t want to look beyond the truth they think they’ve already found. Someone framed my father and now he can’t defend himself against their lies. But I can and I will. But I can’t do it…the way things stand now.”
The coffee arrived and gave the tension between them time to ease to a manageable level. Tessa sipped her coffee, not caring that it burned her tongue and brought a swimming dampness to her eyes. She wasn’t a stranger to pain or tears these days, but she wouldn’t give in to either. Not any longer.
“Okay, I’ve heard your story. Now tell me how I fit into the next few chapters.”
She took a shallow breath and made herself meet his steady stare. She couldn’t let his sullen silent-screen-star looks distract her from what he was. He was a killer. A man who trained assassins for the government. A man so dangerous and beyond the laws she revered that she felt soiled just speaking to him. He had no respect for her cause or for honor; men like him never did. They had their own agendas, outside the rules that governed her world. But he was just the kind of man she needed to see those rules bent to her advantage.
“I’ve been threatened.”
Her simple statement had the impact of a ten-pound sledge. The evasive glassy look was gone from his keen gaze, replaced by a sharp understanding. “Is that verbal or physical?” He was studying her battered features, betraying no reaction to the sight. She forced herself not to cover the ugly reminders. Better he look and judge for himself.
“Both.” She didn’t care to go into more details with a stranger. He didn’t need to know that she lay awake at night listening for a telltale footstep, that if she was lucky enough to fall into a restless sleep, she always woke from it screaming and drenched in a sweat of dread. But he did need to know that the stakes were, as he’d said, serious.
“Just phone calls, lately. And I’ve been followed. Someone’s been in my apartment. More than once. The second time I walked in on them. A robbery gone bad, the police called it.” Her chin trembled slightly until she clenched her teeth. She could hear the voice whispering in the back of her mind and shook her head slightly to chase it away. Easy to do here in the light with noise and the companionable smells of coffee, grease and cigarette smoke to surround her. She fought to keep her own tone level.
“So far, it’s just a game of intimidation but I don’t like games with no rules, Mr. Chaney. I play to win. I always have. And to have any chance at all in this game, I have to be able to compete on their level.”
He made no comment on that, no judgment. “Do you have a gun?”
“No.”
“Get one.”
“I will. But when I do, I need to know that no one is going to take it away from me. I’ve been a victim once and I didn’t like it much. Next time they come for me, I want to be prepared. They hurt me and they scared me. And they killed my father. But they don’t know me. I’m not going to run and hide, Mr. Chaney. And I’m not going to give up. That’s why Stan sent me to you. I’m a sitting duck and I don’t want to be. Teach me how to protect myself so that I can see justice done for my father and see those who killed him brought to trial.”
Teach me how not to be afraid.
She didn’t have to say that. She knew he saw it in her face, in the shaky hands that nested the bottom of her coffee cup seeking the warmth she lacked inside. But would he do something about it?
Would he make it his fight?
“You’re wasting your time, Miss D’Angelo.”
His crisply spoken summation struck the wind from her lungs, the hope from her heart. For a moment she couldn’t respond, so he continued with that same detached calm.
“Go to the police. This is their job, not mine. I won’t give you any false confidence so you can go out and get yourself killed. I train professionals who are already without fear to do a job they have no illusions about coming home from. I don’t do Girl Scout camp. I’m sorry if Stan misled you.”
He
