Warrior Without a Cause Read online

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  Contents:

  Prologue

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

  © 2005

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  Prologue

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  Glass.

  Shards glittered like scattered gems upon the hardwood floor as dim light from the hallway shifted across them. Closing her apartment door behind her, a puzzled Tessa D'Angelo reached for the wall switch. When the impotent click yielded no welcome home glow, she put it together. Exasperation made a bleak addition to her already heavy mood.

  "Tinker, doggone it. I'm going to line a pair of gloves with you."

  Taking a cautious step into the darkness, she heard crunching beneath the low heels of her sedate black pumps. She bent to assess the damage, half hoping for the best but discovering the worst. The heirloom lamp meant to light the way into her apartment with its warm rainbow glow lay on its side, the Tiffany shade in pieces atop the littering of her mail.

  Sighing wearily, she pictured the scenario: Tinker, her battle-scarred rescue cat, jumping up onto the table by the door as he heard her come down the hall, eager to greet her as he did each evening. She could envision the hefty feline losing his declawed footing on the forgotten bills Tessa had stacked there awaiting a trip to the mailbox. Tinker's scrambling leap had sent the lamp crashing to the floor. What a fitting end to her melancholy day. She closed her eyes against the sudden swell of anguish. A dark apartment with only a stray cat to miss her. Her treasured link to family in pieces just like her well planned future.

  Tears that had crowded for release all afternoon burned against the backs of her eyes. For a moment she let her shoulders hunch beneath the weight of her grief as a tremor shook them. It wasn't about the lamp or the dreams now denied her. She'd just buried her father and she'd never heard him say he loved her.

  A deafening silence filled her apartment. The same stillness had followed the thud of that first clod of dirt atop her father's coffin.

  In that void of sound, in the part of her mind not shut down by loss, she acknowledged the stir of seemingly trivial questions. Why hadn't she heard the lamp fall as she approached her door? Why wasn't a recalcitrant Tinker here to weave through her legs in a purring demand for attention and supper.

  Odd…

  From the back rooms of her apartment, she heard a soft scuffling. Probably Tinker scooting under the bed in hopes of escaping her wrath. Tessa dragged in a cleansing breath. Life goes on. So she'd been told by the faceless mourners who'd squeezed her hand in sympathy even as they feasted on the tease of scandal surrounding the day's solemn circumstances. Hypocrites in friends' clothing. But they were right. Time to carry on with what still needed to be done. And the first thing was to clean up the mess on her floor. She righted the lamp and reached to check the bulb. It was gone.

  Not broken. Gone.

  She frowned over the puzzle, then understanding clicked on like that proverbial missing light bulb.

  Someone had removed it.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Tessa caught a flash of movement, too large to be the approach of her forgiveness-seeking cat. She raised her head, noting the sight of creased trousers before her world exploded in pain.

  She hit the floor hard, registering only darkness and a paralyzing swell of panic. The tinny taste of blood filled her mouth as she cried out, hoping to touch some chord of mercy in her unseen assailant.

  "Take whatever you want. Just don't hurt me." Fingers fisted cruelly in her hair, twisting to wring a whimper from her.

  And then she heard that voice.

  "You should have thought of that before you started poking around where you don't belong. You won't like what you find. Stop now or your pretty momma will be crying over you, too."

  He cracked her head against the hardwood to punctuate his point. Blackness welled but didn't take her completely under. Not then.

  Not until much later.

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  Chapter 1

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  "I hear you're the man to see if you want someone killed."

  That's how she introduced herself on the phone. It took him by surprise and not much did anymore. He didn't like surprises. Ordinarily, Jack would have ended the conversation right then with a dial tone, but there was something in her voice. A soft tug of reluctant vulnerability beneath the tough fabric of her words. It made him pause when he should have relied on self-preserving instinct. A dangerous error in judgment.

  But there was something about her voice.

  Instead of severing the connection, he leaned back in his age-worn leather chair and shifted his feet to his cleared desktop. Maybe it was an unexpected empty calendar that had him willing to waste a few minutes baiting his uninvited caller. He only visited this shabby little office in the city about once a month to collect bills and to check the answering machine. He kept it for a mailing address and the air of permanence as a business entity. After the first thirty minutes surrounded by traffic and chaotic noise, he was always ready to head back to the proverbial hills. That she'd managed to catch him during that slim window of opportunity was reason enough to give her a few more minutes of his time. His curiosity peaked. He wanted to know how she'd found him and why she'd begun with that eye-popping statement.

  "I'm flattered," he drawled, reaching out of habit to switch on the small recorder that would preserve their dialogue. "And just where did you hear that?"

  "I know a lot of people in your business, Mr. Chaney."

  Evasion wasn't the best way to get on his good side. His tone sharpened. "And what business is that? The killing business? If that's true, why do you need me?"

  "The law and order business, Mr. Chaney." Her words picked up an interesting bite, too. Interesting enough for him to smile as he began to doodle lightning bolts and rain clouds on the blank calendar page.

  "Ah, correct me if I'm wrong but law and order isn't about killing and it isn't what I do."

  "That's why I need you. This isn't about law. It's about justice and your special talents. Can you help me?"

  "I don't know you, Miss—"

  There was silence, then she supplied, "D'Angelo." Why was that so familiar to him? Another warning he decided to ignore for the moment.

  "Like I said, I don't know you, Miss D'Angelo, and I don't do business with people I don't know."

  "I can pay you." How suddenly desperate she sounded as that persuasion rushed out. "The money doesn't matter."

  "It doesn't matter to me, either."

  "What does, Mr. Chaney? What will make you agree to meet with me? If you'd just listen to what I have to say—"

  "Lady," he interrupted smoothly, "everybody's got a story to tell. I'm not a priest or a four-year-old, so why should I want to listen to your story?"

  She cursed in a low aside, passionately, using words that made his brows arch and his lips purse. She continued with a rough rumble of anger that he found … well, he found it sexy as hell.

  "I was told you were a professional, a man who could get things done. I see I was misled, Mr. Chaney. I'm sorry for wasting your time and mine when it's clear you're not interested."

  "Did I say that?"

  His quiet interjection had her hauling in her temper. He could hear it in the sudden silence and the quick pace of her breathing that followed. Finally she asked for clarification in a husky whisper.

  "What are you saying? That you'll help me?"

  He closed his eyes. The ripple of raw silk being drawn over the head of a bed partner in the night incited the same kind of urgent response as the whiskey-edged melody of her voice. Like soft blues music and slow, wet kisses. Exciting enough to make him linger in the exhaust-laced and crime-infeste
d hell of Detroit. This was a woman he had to meet face-to-face.

  "No promises. I'm not big on premature commitments." He wasn't big on commitments of any kind. Caution was his middle name. "We'll share a cup of coffee in some very public place and look each other over first."

  "And then?"

  "Then, if I like what I see, you can tell me your story. But first—" his tone toughened, getting back to the important point "—I have to know how you got my name and this number. I'm not listed in Killers-R-Us."

  She hesitated, but only for a moment. "I got it from Stan Kovacs."

  Of all the references she could have given, she picked the one he couldn't toss off with a shrug. And that made him all the more suspicious, and uncomfortable, as though some trap was about to be sprung now that he'd been suckered in with the right bait. But he wasn't sticking his neck out just yet.

  "Ah, good old Stan. He still into fitness and jogging to work every day?"

  Humor brushed like a warming breeze against the chill of her anxiety. "I don't know which Stan Kovacs you know, but this one would have a coronary going up the steps of a bus too fast."

  Tension eased from his shoulders as that picture came to mind. Good old soft-on-the-outside, sharp-as-a-razor inside Stan. Jack chuckled softly. "Yeah, that's Stan. How do you know him?"

  "He was a friend of my father's. And mine. He told me to mention his name if you got … difficult."

  Yes, that's how Stan would describe him. She was obviously in the old P.I.'s small inner circle of friends. But she hadn't played that trump card right off the bat to smooth her way into his good graces. She'd held it back until he'd given her no choice but to lay it down. Perhaps Ms. D'Angelo preferred difficult to trading on favors.

  And damned if he didn't like that about her.

  On the blank desktop calendar, Jack wrote, "Call Stan/D'Angelo." To his husky-voiced wannabe client, he added, "All right, Miss D'Angelo, do you know where Cuppa Jo's is on Woodward?"

  "I'll find it." The steely determination was back, fortified by his momentary lapse in sanity. He hoped his libido wasn't leading him into more trouble than he wanted but he seemed to have forgotten his middle name. Oh, yeah. Caution.

  "Seven o'clock." That would give him time to do the necessary background checks so he wouldn't feel so off balance.

  "How will I know you?"

  He smiled into the receiver. "Well, it won't be by the violin case and red carnation. I'll find you."

  By seven o'clock, he'd know everything there was to know about Miss Smoky Voice D'Angelo.

  And then he'd listen to her story.

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  Cuppa Jo's was one of those dingy inner-city dives that served a questionable round-the-clock clientele. Jack liked it because the coffee was always hot and because he could collapse into one of the mended vinyl booths at 4:00 a.m. and not have to explain anything to anybody. Not even about the occasional contusions on his face. At Jo's, everyone kept their troubles to themselves. And Tessa D'Angelo could mean the capital-T kind.

  He'd read her file. Smart mind, good family, loyal to the bone when it came to her up-and-coming D.A.-turned-hopeful politician father. The glossy photos he'd flipped through showed her at her father's right hand, smiling, poised, beautiful, an asset in any public circle, while her equally gracious and gorgeous mother stood at his left. She'd given up the promise of her own law career to support her father in his. She was supposed to have seen him on to bigger and better things. Not see his reputation go down in a blaze of rumors not even the grave could extinguish.

  She sat in the rear of the hazy diner, her back to the wall leading to the rest rooms he wouldn't use on a dare. The fact that she was out of place was as glaringly apparent as the cost of her tailored business suit. Classy clothes, classy lady. The dusky-colored plum wool suit, creamy silk blouse opened in a modest vee, tasteful pearls and gravity-defying heels belonged in the business district not in the back booth of a greasy spoon. Even though the sun had all but disappeared, she still wore trendy wraparound dark glasses. But if it hadn't been for a pair of the most luscious lips this side of an adolescent boy's dreams, Jack wouldn't have recognized her from the society page photos he'd studied. This woman had none of the healthy sorority girl sparkle and confidence that had beamed out at him from the newspaper file he'd sneaked a peek at. This dangerously fragile Tessa D'Angelo looked as though she'd gone several brutal rounds with the reigning middleweight champ and lost. Badly.

  The Veronica Lake spill of her sleek blond hair couldn't quite cover the stitching that ran from delicately arched eyebrow to temple. The shades couldn't conceal the telltale bruising of two spectacular shiners. Slender fingers clasped the chipped coffee mug before her in a two-fisted death grip that betrayed a near-the-edge tremor. Her shoulders hunched protectively. At first glance, she looked like a poster child for domestic battering, but Jack knew better. He'd seen her police file, too.

  A robbery, they'd called it.

  Unsolved.

  An unfortunate coincidence in light of her recent tragedies.

  "Miss D'Angelo?"

  Her head jerked up and he was sure her eyes behind the opaque lenses had that deer-in-the-headlights glaze of alarm. He fought against the want to soften his tone with an apology for startling her. But she was expecting a kick-butt assassin not a Boy Scout, and he didn't want to disappoint her illusions. At least, not yet.

  "I'm Jack Chaney."

  She was motionless for a long moment. Not with fright, as he at first assumed, but to look him over as thoroughly as he'd done her. He fought against the impulse to stand just a little bit straighter and finger-comb the wind damage to his usually immaculate hair. He didn't care if his chin was a bit burly, if his clothing was rumpled or if the truck outside sported more rust than attitude. If he surrendered to the gods of arrogance, it was in that one small spot of vanity. He had great hair and preferred none of it out of place. But then he wasn't here to be interviewed. Tessa D'Angelo was the one on the hot seat. She nodded toward the opposite bench. "You're late." It wasn't an accusation but rather a relieved observation, as if she'd feared he wouldn't show.

  "Traffic," was his casual excuse. He couldn't very well tell her that it had taken some time and some big promises to get a look into the official records, not until he'd at least had a cup of coffee for his trouble. "You need a refill there?" He gestured toward the half-full cup. She took a sip from it and grimaced.

  "I guess I do. This is cold."

  He held up a hand and a curvy brunette with a scarred name tag proclaiming "Jo-Beth" bumped an ample hip against his shoulder. That she was the "Jo" in "Cuppa Jo's," a grandmother who spent all of her free time clucking over the much younger kitchen and wait staff and would do the same to him if he'd allowed it, didn't keep her from the expected flirtation. Though she glanced at his stylish companion, she was careful to keep any hint of questions out of her gaze.

  "Hiya, Chaney. Long time. The usual? High octane chased with a Sweet'n Low?"

  "Sounds good. And a warm-up for the lady."

  "Got peach pie hot out of the oven. Marcy'll take it as an insult if you don't let her trot a piece out to you."

  Jack grinned. "I'll pass for now but have her save a slice for the road."

  "Gotcha, doll."

  After she sashayed back to the counter, Jack faced his would-be client and got right to business.

  "I'm sorry about your father."

  Tessa D'Angelo inhaled a sudden breath as if his condolences struck like another unfair punch. She let it out slow and shaky, then, in her throaty rumble, said, "Thank you."

  "I didn't know him but he had a reputation for being a straight-up kinda guy."

  "And look where that reputation got him."

  Her flat summation puzzled him until she reached up with an elegant sweep of her hand to remove the dark glasses. The baby blues they revealed were anything but sweet. They were bright with angry, unshed tears.

  "My father was a good man, Mr. Chaney. H
e was honest and decent and stood for justice all the way. Where was the justice in what happened to him?"

  Casually he brought out the bulky tabloid he'd purchased on his way to the meeting. He laid it on the Formica-topped table where it covered the cup rings with words much more staining. She glanced at the glaring headlines and what little color her chiseled cheekbones retained all but drained away. She swayed slightly then gripped the edge of the table to regain her balance. Her delicate jaw worked a moment before she asked quietly, "If you believe that, why are you here?"

  "I needed a cup of coffee. And I owe Stan. He asked me to take you seriously. This is pretty damned serious." His finger tapped the tabloid's banner: D.A.'s Suicide Tied To Drug Scandal.

  "It's a lie."

  "Most of the stuff you find in here is. But this sterling publication isn't the only one saying it."

  "I don't care who is saying what. My father isn't guilty of anything. He wasn't making money off drug trafficking or by looking the other way. I'd think his death would be proof of that."

  That was what Tessa had been trying to convince the police, according to her numerous calls, complaints and eventual condemnations.

  Playing a calm devil's advocate, Jack murmured, "Or unfortunate proof that he got in over his head and couldn't face the consequences."

  She was off her seat so fast he barely had time to catch her wrist before she bolted. Such fine, easily broken bones. He restrained her carefully but refused to go easy on her. After all, even though she was the one who'd placed the call, they were on his dime now.

  "Sit down, Miss D'Angelo. Those opinions can't be news to you. They've been in every headline for weeks now. If you had thicker skin, you wouldn't bruise so easily." He felt a shiver go through her in reaction to her pain and rage.

  "Hardly an amusing observation, considering," came her wry retort.

  "Sit," 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?"