Undercover Protector

For Patrick she would do anything.

She would sell off a little bit more of her soul.

“That’s the plan. Gomez has called a housecleaning service and is interviewing candidates today. We’re sending in two decoys and then we’re sending in Fitzgerald.” Curtis tapped her folder.

“Why two decoys?” Gordon asked.

“To make Fitzgerald irresistible.”

“Thanks a lot,” Maggie groused.

“In any case, you get in and during the interview, you plant three surveillance bugs. Hopefully you also get the job, allowing us broader access to Gomez.”

She nodded and bit her lip against a satisfied smile. Finally, finally she was getting close to nailing the man responsible for her brother’s death.

“Sounds good.”

Walters leaned back and ran his hands over his thick brown hair and laughed, though the sound was not funny. Maggie’s satisfaction dimmed and Gordon’s smug smile fled.

Walters was going to give them a reality check.

“Before you kids start thinking you’ve cracked this case, let’s look at what you are up against.” He took a deep breath through his nose and it seemed to Maggie that he sucked all the air out of the room.

“Three years ago,” Walters continued, “in the span of a week, Delgado takes down every drug dealer, racketeer, arms dealer and money launderer in Los Angeles who poses any kind of threat to him. He murders Hernandez and takes over his syndicate, has every Latin King from here to San Diego bowing to him.”

He paused as if waiting for confirmation and Maggie, Gordon and Curtis all nodded.

“And now, thanks to this journalist, we’ve got two options. One, baiting a trap with Caleb Gomez in the hopes of maybe, possibly catching Delgado.

Or two, finding out what information Gomez has that Delgado is ready to kill for then somehow using it to bring him down.”

“That sounds about right,” Curtis said. “It’s the biggest break we’ve had in the case in a year.”

“What do we know about Gomez?” Walters asked and Maggie could have sworn Curtis got red under the collar.

“Not much,” he admitted. “He was brought in for questioning regarding a burglary ring about six years ago. He’d gotten some information from one of the men for a story he was doing on the federal penitentiary system. When the Bureau tried to subpoena him, he raised such a stink he was labeled uncooperative and that the whole thing was dropped.”

That’s not good, Maggie thought.

“What kind of stink?” Gordon asked.

“Op-ed pieces in every major U.S. paper regarding the FBI and the swiftly diminishing civil rights of Americans.” Curtis cleared his throat. “It wasn’t good.”

“That’s our guy?” Gordon asked, almost laughing. “He’s going to love us going undercover in his house.”

“Well, that’s why I brought in Fitzgerald.” Curtis nodded, though the director seemed very unconvinced. “She’s good.”

“She better be or he’ll be dead and we’ll be no closer to catching Delgado.”

“Yes, sir,” Curtis said and Maggie and Gordon stood.

“You have one week,” Walters said, “to turn up anything that proves this isn’t a wild-goose chase and then I’m pulling the undercover operation. After that, we’ll plant some protection outside his house.”

“We’ve tried that, sir, and it doesn’t work. Six months ago the female witness was killed in the safe house with two armed guards right outside her door,” Curtis said. “The assailants had killed one guard and disabled the other and slit the witness’s throat. The Bureau, the LAPD and ATF had huge mud on their faces for that one. We ended up with more bodies and no evidence. There’s every likelihood that the Gomez case would end the same way.”

“Or not. Either way you’ve got the Bureau out on a limb going into this guy’s house. He’s a public figure right now, a public figure with no respect for the necessary investigative measures the Bureau takes. This has the potential to go bad in a big way. You got me?”

“Yes, sir,” they said in unison.

Before she turned toward the door, Walters’s brown eyes bored into hers and she felt like a bug under glass, skewered and exposed. “Fitzgerald?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your brother was the cop—”

“Yes, sir.” Maggie interrupted before he could finish. As always it was on the tip of her tongue to explain Patrick had been set up, but she’d screamed her throat raw trying to get people to believe that without proof.

Walters studied her and she did not flinch. Did not blink. He could look for any sign that she was as flawed and corrupt as everyone thought her brother was. He could look for any weakness, any soft spot that might be used against her or the Bureau.

He wouldn’t find them.

Walters smiled again and a chill danced down Maggie’s spine.

“What year did you graduate?”

“99-92,” she said giving the year of her graduation and the class number.

“She was top of her class in investigation and fitness,” Curtis said, leaping to her defense. She gave him a quick half smile of appreciation.

“You were a part of the hydroponics farm drug sting last year,” Walters asked.

She nodded again.

“Well, Fitzgerald. Let’s hope you can do the job.”

“Yes, sir.” She nodded.

There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that she could do this job. Even in one week, she could do this job.

FOUR HOURS LATER Maggie, Gordon and Curtis were in place, the three of them and thousands of dollars of surveillance equipment wedged into a white utility van parked at the bottom of Gomez’s street.

“You all right?” Curtis’s hand on Maggie’s shoulder felt like a ton of bricks, a million pounds of expectation.

“I’m good,” Maggie answered. “Ready.”

She had been ready for this moment for six months. Since the very moment she and her family found out Patrick had been killed—exactly two weeks before he was supposed to give testimony against Delgado.

That moment had created this moment, which she knew would create the moment Delgado either rotted away behind bars or was given the lethal injection.

These were the only possible outcomes.

She took a deep breath of the humid air in the van and held out her hand. Curtis dropped the three surveillance bugs in her palm and she slipped them into the special pocket in her khaki pants.

“How come no one asks me if I’m all right?” Gordon whined from his station in front of the monitors; his brown hair glowed red from them. “Maybe I’m a little nervous. I’m sweating my ass off and I’m starving—”

“Shut up, Gordon,” Maggie said out of habit more than anything.

Curtis leaned close, his broad sweaty face illuminated by the red and green monitors. “This guy is smart, Maggie.”

“I know.” According to the file, Gomez had spent more time undercover than she had. His investigative journalism had taken him to some pretty scary places and the man always got out alive and with the story.

“And tough,” Curtis added.

“No kidding.” Gordon whistled through his teeth. “He wouldn’t even tell the Iraqis his name until they broke his arm in four places.”

Maggie swallowed and looked down at her clenched hands. He wouldn’t even tell the Iraqis his name. She could hardly fathom that kind of pain. Or that kind of strength.

“Don’t for a minute underestimate Caleb Gomez or let your guard down.”

“I got it, Curtis.” She tried to keep her frustration to a minimum. “Let me do my job.”

She was good undercover. She had the ability to turn her real self off. Maggie Fitzgerald disappeared and instead she became an instrument, a camera. Something sharp and smart that collected all information and stayed solidly in character. It made her a highly sought after undercover agent.

She was good. Now it was time for her to be the best.

Caleb Gomez was not going to be a problem.

“Hey.” Her boss grabbed her hand where it rested on the back door of the Municipal Utilities van she had spent way too much time in already. “I don’t need to tell you what’s at stake here—”

“Curtis, I was at the briefing. Benny Delgado is after Gomez—”

“No,” Gordon interrupted. “He means what’s at stake for us.”

The two men stared at her and she tried not to roll her eyes. These two could be so damn dramatic sometimes.

“We blow this and we’re back at robberies or celebrity stalkings,” Curtis said.

“And I can’t afford the pay cut,” Gordon added. “Daddy just bought a new car.”

These guys didn’t know the half of it. Failing to bring Delgado down would result in things far more devastating than losing this plum assignment.

“So, go in there and—” Curtis started to say.

“Be nice?” She tried to joke around, to lighten the heavy air in the van.

“Well, that’s a bit of a stretch.” Curtis grinned and Maggie didn’t take offense. She often wasn’t nice—it wasn’t part of the job.

“He was going to say shake your ass. Gomez has got to be lonely—”

“Shut up, Gordon.” Curtis yelled over his shoulder. “I was going to say just try and get the job.”

Maggie nodded, opened the door and blinked in the bright California sunshine.

She stepped down from the van and the door slammed shut behind her, somehow putting a special emphasis on how alone she was at the moment. Those guys in the van weren’t going to have to look Gomez in the eye and lie to him. This case hinged on her performance.

Fine by me, she thought. She did her best work alone. Always had. Always would.

She crossed the narrow residential street to the small hatchback that was her car or rather, Margaret Warren’s car.

Margaret Warren, a single mom who wanted nothing more than to raise her son away from the crime and congestion of Los Angeles.

Margaret Warren who had recently moved to Summerland and signed up with a local housekeeping service.

Margaret Warren who knew nothing about the seedy underbelly of the largest Los Angeles crime syndicate other than what she saw on the ten o’clock news.

And she had no idea that Caleb Gomez was the key to bringing it down. That was the bait in a complicated mousetrap.

That’s all. Margaret Warren, housekeeper.

Maggie checked the camera/microphone hidden in a tiny gold and rhinestone angel pin on her collar.

A housekeeper with a superstitious belief in guardian angels.

“You boys there?” she asked.

“Loud and clear.” Curtis’s voice was in her right ear thanks to an imperceptible receiver. The guys in the van would be able to hear everything she said and still give her instruction. She could do without the voices in her head, but Curtis was good and tweaked about this case, so she made the compromise. For today. If she got the job, there would be no camera and definitely no receiver. She couldn’t work this way.

“All right, just try and keep it down,” she told them.

Maggie drove up the hill toward Gomez’s house. He was nestled in the foothills, away from the more popular properties closer to the beach.

I bet he’s got a great view, she thought. She was able to catch glimpses of the wide blue ocean on her left between the flowering mountain laurel. On her right, wild sage and yellow wildflowers crawled up the mountain. She thought for a brief moment of her apartment and her view of Mr. Sayer’s garbage can.

The views of the middle of nowhere sure beat the views of city living.

The road ended in a cul-de-sac and Maggie pulled into the only driveway, between two large jasmine bushes that provided nearly impenetrable privacy.

His house was a one-story ranch with a typical stucco exterior. She faced a garage and a nondescript back door. There were no windows on this side of the house. Just cracked white stucco and red bougainvillea growing wild.

The lawn, what there was of it, was neglected and turning brown in the heat.

Reports indicated Gomez had a dog. A big one. The last agent who supplied surveillance information said the dog was a “freaking monster.”

Maggie looked around for the freaking monster but there was no sign. Hopefully, Gomez had the good sense to lock him up for their interview.

“What’s the holdup, Fitzgerald?” Curtis asked.

“Looking for that dog.”

“Forget the dog and let’s get the show on the road. Your appointment was for one, it’s now five after.”

Maggie rolled her eyes and got out of the car.

She took a deep breath, adjusted the pin on her lapel and rang the doorbell. From inside the house she heard the deep bellowing of a dog.

She could also hear a distinct slide and thump sound that got louder as it got closer to the door.

She closed her eyes and sent a quick promise heavenward.

I swear, Patrick, I’ll make good on everything that was done to you.

Maggie wasn’t sure how to react when Gomez opened the door. Margaret Warren would have no idea that the man whose house she had been sent to by the agency had been disfigured in a fire.

Maggie Fitzgerald, of course, had seen the Army medical reports.

The door swung open before she had a chance to decide her course of action.

“Margaret Warren?” A man, a big man wearing blue jeans and boots, stood in the shadows. She couldn’t even see the top half of his body thanks to the dark hallway and the very bright glare from the bay of windows twenty yards behind him.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Gordon said in her ear. “We need a better picture than that.”

She blinked and shielded her eyes. “Yes, I’m—”

“Late.” Gomez took an awkward step back with the help of his metal cane and waited. Perhaps it was because she couldn’t see his face, but there was something about Gomez, an energy—her sister would call it an aura. Whatever it was it knocked her off her stride and she hesitated at the doorway.

“You can come in,” he finally said, his deep voice laced with humor. “I only eat people who are early.”

She smiled and stepped into the tiled foyer. The foyer was shadowed but the great room and the kitchen—visible from where she stood—were bathed in light from the floor-to-ceiling windows that faced the ocean.

“Mr. Estrada—” She called him by the name he’d registered with the agency. It was a fake and a bad one at that, but she could hardly tell him that.

“I’m telling you the guy is nuts. Who uses a fake name like Estrada?” Gordon said in her ear.

“Shut up, Gordon,” Curtis said.

Maggie bit back a smile.

Gomez laughed, apparently very entertained with his little inside alias joke. “You can call me Caleb. Caleb Gomez.”

So far so good, she thought. “It’s a lovely house.” She turned as if admiring the view and used the chance to case the place.

Phones. Two units. One in the kitchen beside the refrigerator. Another cordless beside the couch, facing the windows. The hallway, directly across from her and through the great room, led to three shut doors. Office, bedroom, bath was her guess.

“It’s a pigsty,” Gomez said and lurched away, leading her into the great room. “I wish I could claim all this mess as my own, but I rented the house unseen and the landlord didn’t clean after the last tenants. I’d wondered why it was so cheap.”

You’re a housekeeper, she reminded herself. Act like one.

“I’ve seen worse,” she said. Not really. There was some clutter—newspapers covered the sofa, a moat of coffee mugs surrounded the overstuffed chair. But dust bunnies so big her mom could use them to knit scarves floated across the filthy floor like strange tumbleweeds.

The windows were cloudy with grime and the air in the house seemed stale and musty and smelled a little like tomato sauce and dirty socks.

“You’re going to have your work cut out for you cleaning that dump,” Curtis said and she almost smiled. She’d done worse for her job. She didn’t even want to think of those long days on that hydroponics farm.

She followed Gomez and his lurching slide-and-thump gait. From the back, his injuries didn’t seem to diminish him other than the limp. He was tall and still broad, though he held his shoulder at an awkward angle. Long black hair brushed the collar of his blue T-shirt, which hugged the wide muscles of his shoulders and back.

The reports of his injuries must have been exaggerated, she realized. He didn’t look like a man who had been standing at death’s door a few months ago.

And he definitely didn’t look like any journalist she had ever met.

He looked like a man more used to activity than sitting behind a computer. He had a magnetic force about him that she couldn’t imagine allowed him to be a quiet observer.

He poked at the dust bunnies that congregated around the foot of the brown twill sofa. “I’ve never had a housekeeper before. I’m afraid I’m not too aware of the protocol,” he said and turned to face her.

She had read the reports. She knew about the burns—the torture and the broken shoulder and arm. She had seen the grainy surveillance photos. But nothing could have prepared her for the reality.

The bright sunlight was unforgiving and the red and white scar tissue on the left side of Caleb Gomez’s neck stood in violent relief. The skin was taut and shiny. His arm—the one held at an angle—was covered in similar scar tissue and his hand curled into a fist that looked unusable.

She was used to seeing injuries—had treated and caused her fair share in the field—so it was not the scars that made her feel as though she’d been punched in the stomach.

It was his eyes, as blue as the sky behind him, untouched by the fire and horrors of captivity, that made the impact. They were the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen and they absolutely dared her to pity him.

For a moment she couldn’t tolerate what she intended to do to this man. She was breathless, her stomach in knots and she knew without a doubt that he would be trouble for her.

“Holy shit,” Gordon breathed in her ear.

CHAPTER TWO

FIRST TEST, Caleb thought. If she doesn’t stammer or stare or run screaming, then they could commence with the interview. However, if she was going to cross herself and get all teary, the way the last woman he interviewed for the housekeeper job had, Margaret Warren could go. And quickly.

He found that his new body, as painful and ugly as it might be, was the great personality barometer. People took one look at him and their reactions told him all he needed to know about their inner workings. Their base-line take on the world.

Granted, his present appearance was more extreme than usual. Most of the time he didn’t use the cane and his arm was far more mobile than people assumed. But some days his physical therapist was a sadist and Caleb felt freshly tortured all over again. Today was one of those days.

Caleb used to pride himself on his spot-on first impressions. His editors had claimed he had the best gut in the business. But, man, this banged-up body was even better.

Survive some time in an Iraqi prison and a helicopter crash and this is what you get. A foolproof lie detector.

Margaret Warren took her time. She didn’t look away immediately, the way a lot of women did, throwing their attention to other places and yammering on about the weather.

Her eyes widened and her lips parted, which, frankly, he liked. They were pretty amazing lips.

He read a tangle of emotions on her plain face and thus began test number two.

If she was going to pity him as the guy he first interviewed for the position had, he’d boot her out himself, bad leg or no.

He would even let his dog out of the office to chase her down the driveway.

Well, not really. But he liked to think he was that kind of badass.

She blinked and all that stunned awareness vanished and instead of pity there was…nothing. Inwardly, he had to applaud. She was good. Politicians could learn something from her rock-solid composure.

“Perhaps you should tell me what the job will entail?” Her raspy voice went through him like good whiskey.

And that, it seemed, concluded Margaret Warren’s reaction to the relative monster he had become.

Great. If she wants to pretend there’s nothing strange about me, I’m all for it.

“Right.” He turned and lurched farther into the living room. “As you can see I am not much for housework.”

“Clearly,” he thought he heard her say, but by the time he got his head turned, her face had the same slightly interested but completely removed expression.

Those lips, though. They didn’t seem to belong on that plain face. The upper lip was fuller than the bottom and, while she did not appear to wear makeup, her lips were the color of the bougainvillea creeping over his window.

“I don’t really like to cook, either,” he said, too fast thanks to his juvenile reaction to Ms. Warren’s lips.

“The agency said nothing about cooking.”

“Yeah, well, I tricked you. Can you cook?”

“Sure.” She continued to look around his house, no doubt cataloging the months’worth of neglect.

“Would you be interested in doing it for me?”

Good grief, the woman was worse than Colin Powell, with all the stone-facing.

“For a price.”

“A girl after my own heart,” he said, hoping those lips would curl into a smile, but no.

“Perhaps a tour?” she asked, all business.

Stop trying to flirt, Gomez. You’re embarrassing yourself.

“Absolutely.” He gestured at the cluttered room. “This is the ocean room. This is where I look at the ocean and read the paper.”

He pointed over her shoulder at the kitchen. “That’s where I don’t cook.”

She turned and walked into the kitchen and, because he was sore from the physical therapy and using a cane, it took him a moment to get all of his appendages to agree to follow her. “You’ll notice the museum of pizza boxes, probably the largest in California. Again, they are not all mine, but I’ve added to the collection. Perhaps in—” He rounded the corner just as Margaret was hanging up his phone.

Irritation and suspicion leaped in him.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

“Your phone is dirty.” Margaret scraped pizza sauce off the receiver.

He told himself to calm down. He was no longer a reporter, looking for the hidden agenda in every person he met. And, should things go well with Ms. Warren of the fantastic mouth and careful expression, he would no longer be a complete hermit.

He needed to get used to people again—or at least people who weren’t inflicting pain on his person in the name of healing.

Worse, he was going to have to get used to help.

“Well, it gets worse.” He smiled.

Margaret’s lips twitched and he relaxed.

Score one smile for the horny hermit.

He retraced their steps through his living room, kicking aside papers and books.

“Back here is the bedroom, which is probably the cleanest room in the place.” He opened the door and she ducked around him to enter the nearly empty dark room.

His clothes sat in stacks along the wall. Pulling open dresser drawers was more than he could be bothered with, thanks to his bad hand. His therapist had told him using the drawers would be good for him, but frankly being a slob made his life easier. His nicer stuff—suits and a tux he would probably never wear again—hung in the closet.

The bed, of course, was unmade. His brown comforter was tangled, the pillows were on the floor and the sheets pushed down to the bottom of the mattress. It appeared to be the site of rather athletic sex.

If only that were true.

Ah, sex. I think I heard of it once. If it weren’t so damn depressing, he’d laugh.

He hobbled over to the window to drag open the drapes, illuminating the dust motes in the air.

He turned as Margaret lifted her hand from his bedside table and rubbed her fingers together.