LITMIR.BIZ

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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 stern 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 burn 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

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