Warrior's Second Chance

Too late.

Too late for whom? For the daughter and grandchild at the mercy of a maniac? A deadly lunatic, government-trained to do only one thing and do it well. A man like that didn’t value life. Not even his own. And that made him the worst kind of threat.

She was right to be afraid.

The moment she recognized his voice on her home phone, Barbara had shifted into a numb sort of overdrive. She’d called no one after confirming Tessa’s safety. A tenuous condition. Whether she remained in that state of grace was up to Barbara, and that burden weighed like a Mack truck parked atop her heart. What could she do but follow Allen’s dictates? Who could she call for help? The police were no match for a man like Chet. Not after Robert’s murder and not now. Even after she, Tessa and Jack had snared him and the councilwoman he’d worked for, the justice system had somehow opened their doors to put him back into a society where he didn’t belong. If she reached out to the world around her for assistance, he would know. Somehow, he would know. And the consequences were too awful to consider.

So she’d locked the doors of her palatial home and driven off in her big luxury car. She went to the office of Personal Protection Professionals, where currently she was the entire office staff. And with all that expertise, all that well-honed skill surrounding her, available upon her single word, she hadn’t dared speak it.

If she did, somehow he would know. And the two she loved most in the world would die.

There were only two people who’d ever been able to handle Chet Allen. One, her husband, was dead. The other belonged to the unclaimed seat.

“Please, ma’am.” The attendant gestured down the tunnel where the sound of her jet whined impatiently.

Lifting her carry-on, Barbara gave the terminal hall one last glance, then committed to the rush down the gangway. A relieved attendant directed her to her seat in the full main cabin. Two empty seats together. Too late now to regret her decision to comply with Chet Allen’s plan. She’d just have to find a way to handle things in Washington on her own. Whatever those things might be.

The overhead compartment was already full. While those seated around her glared at the delay, Barbara wrestled with her bag, trying to force it into the narrow space remaining. The Fasten Seat Belts tone sounded twice, urging her to hurry. Frustration knotted in her throat and burned behind her eyes. Just as the need to weep nearly overpowered, a man reached up to clear the necessary space into which her bag fit snugly.

“Thank you.”

Taking a jerking breath, she looked over her shoulder to her rescuer, but any other words died on her lips. Her pathetically grateful smile froze there.

“Hello, Barbara.”

She couldn’t draw a breath. Her head grew light, her vision unreliable. But there was no confusing the man in the aisle beside her with any other.

How could one forget the man who had fathered a child and then left her and the baby for another man to raise as his own? The man she must now depend upon to save that precious child’s life.

Chapter 2

He’d stood behind the forest of racks at the gift shop for almost fifteen minutes staring, not at the line of passengers being herded onto the plane, but at the tattered papers in his hand. A sensational newspaper clipping, an airline ticket and a short note from a onetime friend he’d never expected to hear from again. But it wasn’t the sordid nature of the article dealing with a six-month-old murder case, or the tersely worded invitation that brought him to this place. It was one fact. That fact had beaten like a wild, hopeful heart every mile of the hard day’s drive to get to Detroit Metro.

Barbara Calvin D’Angelo was free again.

Just seeing her name in the article ripped into him with all the delicacy of a chest cutter, exposing emotions still raw and pulsing with desperate life. The years didn’t matter. He’d last seen her, last touched her, last heard her soft voice more than three decades ago, but the memories were as fresh as the strong aroma of coffee in a vacuum-packed jar. Tear back the protective cover and the immediacy of feelings long stored away overwhelmed him.

A fool’s errand. That’s what he was on.

He’d told himself that at every mile marker, too. But it was Barbara who drew him like a beacon. The memory of her was a light so bright it burned into the brain. Yet, he couldn’t look away, despite the pain. Remembering her throbbed with toothache intensity clear to his soul, an insistence that may have dulled but never quite went away. It was all he could do not to moan that anguish aloud. Instead, it wailed through his spirit, a mournful banshee of regret and loss. Chased with a sharp edge of anticipation.

Finally, he had his excuse. His reason for seeking out that one wonderful spark from his past that had kept him alive. And he couldn’t pass it up.

A smart man would have left well enough alone. He would have crumpled up the unwelcome news and used it to flame the evening’s fire. But the spark had taken hold. And once it began to burn, it would not be contained or denied.

He had to see her again. If for no other reason than to put the memories to rest.

He knew time had preserved and sugarcoated his treasured recollections. He remembered the sweetness of those moments with a heart-piercing pleasure so pure, so right, he knew they couldn’t be real. The passing of years and the bitter roads he’d traveled only made them seem perfect. Still, he couldn’t let them go. Barbara had been the one good thing he looked back upon, the one slice of recall he didn’t doubt was real. He shouldn’t risk tarnishing that by opening those memories to the harshness that had transpired between that fragile then and this bleak now. He’d be snuffing out his one faint flicker of contentment.

Maybe that’s why he was here. To grind out that relentless ember beneath his heel so he could move on.

Move on to what?

The only direction he’d ever wanted to take was the one Barbara D’Angelo was heading. She was his North Star and home was wherever she resided.

Sheer foolishness, of course. But the poet’s soul that used to dwell inside him was as hard to crush as that poignant flame of hope.

Last chance. Last chance to just walk away and head north, preserving his memories in vacuum-sealed museum quality and his emotions in their static state. The first he could continue to take out, to dust off and admire with a dreamy wistfulness, and the other he could simply continue to endure. But if he stayed and made Barbara D’Angelo’s business his own, all that would drastically alter.

Go. Don’t be a fool. Nothing has changed.

But then that poet’s heart and a fool’s footsteps carried him onto the plane and back into her life.

She said something. He couldn’t hear the words over the sudden loud humming in his head that rivaled the drone of the turbine engines. The surroundings faded out into soft focus until only she existed in a sharp field of vision.

She hadn’t changed at all.

She was still slender, stylishly dressed in charcoal-gray slacks and a two-piece sweater of sparkly silver thread. Blond hair framed her face in a youthful cut that just brushed her shoulders. And that face…mind-stunningly beautiful. A face that launched a thousand dreams, though none of them came true.

But of course, when she turned toward him, standing so close he could hear her sudden inhalation, he noticed the patina of age that settled over her with grace and protective care. Her eyes were a soft gray, malleable yet enduring like pewter. Her mouth was all sweet curves and wistful angles. High cheekbones and a delicate jaw lent her a classic loveliness, but all those attributes that made her gorgeous didn’t make her glow. That came from the inner beauty of Barbara D’Angelo. Her goodness shone through, transforming mere breathtaking to an ethereal perfection.

Those gray eyes widened. Those tender lips parted in shock. She didn’t move. He didn’t think she even breathed.

“Hello, Barbara.”

It took her a moment to say his name. She looked so startled, he doubted she remembered her own. Then she said it in a quavery whisper and his heart rolled over.

“Hello, Tag.”

Her surprise bled away into a palette of emotions, all of them as bittersweet as the moment. Delight, guilt, relief, remembrance, and finally, pain. Each dawned with stunning intensity, like a spectacular new sunrise or sunset. He stood and simply marveled.

How had he ever thought he could confront the past with a stoic demeanor? He was shaking inside like a schoolboy. She still had that effect on him. Reducing him, while at the same time making him want to be more.

Get a grip, man.

Thirty years had passed. This was not the same girl who’d sent him off to war with promises she couldn’t keep. This woman had been another man’s wife, the mother to his children. And he was suddenly, brutally, aware that he couldn’t reverse time, that he couldn’t return them to that golden slice of innocence where she would rush into his arms and return to him his happily-ever-after dream. That dream had died when Robert D’Angelo returned from leave wearing a grin and a wedding ring.

He’d been a fool to come. What had he been thinking?

His jaw tightened. Disillusionment lent a saving detachment to his outward appearance. Get tough, get through it and get out alive. His motto from Southeast Asia still served him in a crisis. He’d survived worse. He’d survive this moment with grace under fire and escape before his heart was a repeat casualty.

“I didn’t think… I wasn’t sure… I mean, I didn’t know if you’d—” She broke off the uncharacteristic stammer to demand, “What are you doing here? Why did you come?”

He read shades of meaning in her bewildered questions. After all these years. After abandoning our friendship. After no word for so long. Then her gaze toughened to, How dare you just show up now? Her confrontational glare helped him reinforce a wary stance.

“I heard about Robert.”

Anguish cut across her stare, crushing the momentary rebellion. Her right hand moved to cover her left, where she still wore a ring. She wet her lips, the gesture achingly vulnerable. Then the edge was back, a tight, honed look he’d never seen from her before.