“Nothing like a little excitement in the middle of the day.”

As Caleb spoke over the sound of the smoke detector blaring, he looked at Maggie. His eyes were penetrating, piercing as though she were smoke he was trying to see through.

“So tell me, Marg–”

She put her fist to her mouth and coughed in a desperate and hackneyed effort to stop him from asking about her. If he started probing Margaret’s life, she’d probably tell him the truth about herself.

“Are you OK?” His concern was real and she felt the bite of guilt she always experienced when a subject expressed concern over her faked moments of weakness.

This was no different. In fact, seeing the worry in his blue eyes was worse. I gotta get out of this job, she thought. Caleb Gomez is going to be the last person I trick. The last person I lie to and hurt.

MOLLY O’KEEFE

has been enjoying her new quasi-hermit lifestyle as a mum and writer in Toronto, Canada. In an effort to make sure she isn’t as much of a recluse as Caleb Gomez, she does force herself out of the home for lattes and scones. It’s a rough life. She loves hearing from readers, so drop her a line at www.molly-okeefe.com.

Undercover Protector

MOLLY O’KEEFE

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Wanda Ottewell. I can’t thank you enough

for everything you’ve taught me.

You’re amazing.

PROLOGUE

“JEFE!”

The door to Benny Delgado’s office crashed open and ricocheted off the cheap wood paneling on the wall behind it.

Benny’s semiautomatic was in his hand, safety off and aimed at the intruder’s heart before the walls stopped trembling.

“Jesus,” Benny sighed when he realized whom he nearly killed.

His younger brother, Miguel, stood in the doorway like a dog waiting to come in. “Sorry, jefe, but—”

“The door was shut, Miguel,” Benny said, laying the gun back on the desk.

“I know, but you need—”

“The door was shut.” He folded the Los Angeles Times crossword puzzle he’d been doing and arched an eyebrow at his little brother.

Miguel twitched and cracked the knuckles on his right hand, clearly worked up about something, which was odd for Miguel. He was usually too high to get agitated about anything. But whatever was wrong, there was no reason to break the one damn rule Benny insisted on.

When the door was shut, Miguel was supposed to knock.

The rule was put into effect during a particularly nasty period when one of his soldiers was suspected of cooperating with federal agents.

Benny tried to protect his brother from the bloodier aspects of the business.

Finally, Miguel sighed heavily, stepped back and knocked on the open door. “There’s something on the news you gotta see.”

It was their mother’s fault, Benny thought. She’d babied Miguel, allowed too many weaknesses to grow underneath the profile that was so much like her long-dead husband’s.

Benny, she always said, looked like a mongrel. Bits and pieces of no one in particular—a fact that had never inspired much maternal devotion.

In the end he was better for it. Stronger than his beautiful brother.

“This better not be an excuse to get the Lakers’ score on my TV.” Benny reached over to the remote control at his elbow and turned on the giant flat-screen monitor on the other side of the room.

“It’s not.” Miguel came to stand beside Benny’s desk.

“What are you doing watching the news, anyway?” Benny asked, looking at his brother from the corner of his eye. Miguel wore the white tank top and oversize khaki work pants that were the uniform for Chicano street thugs in Los Angeles.

Benny had stopped dressing the part of a petty criminal years ago; looking like a thug raised too many red flags for the cops. And once he stopped being a petty criminal, he could no longer afford the attention.

“Lita was watching it. Turn up the volume, jefe. Jesus, you got enough stereo equipment to blow the roof off.” Miguel pointed to the flat-screen TV and high-tech stereo equipment that stood out like a shiny technological thumb in the dumpy room. “You could at least listen to it.”

Benny could afford better than this crappy house—with its water-stained ceilings and fraying carpet—in Long Beach where his mother grew up, but he liked it here. He had grown up here, was safe here.

“Channel twenty-four,” Miguel said. He crossed his arms over his chest and tucked his hands into his armpits. “They been talkin’ about it every fifteen minutes.”

Benny changed the channel and turned up the volume so he could hear the special report, wondering what it was that inspired Miguel to watch the news.

“—the American journalist who was held hostage in Baghdad then rescued in a daring prison break that cost the lives of three American soldiers, is being released from the hospital today,” the blond anchorwoman with the great tits said. “Caleb Gomez—”

A photo of a good-looking man with dark skin and blue eyes flashed on the screen and Benny’s body went cold.

“See? Isn’t that—?”

Benny held up his hand and his brother quieted. Transfixed by the image of the Hispanic man on the screen, Benny stood and walked around his desk.

“Gomez was in a coma for three months following his rescue from the Iraqi prison,” the blonde said as pictures of a single-story building the color of sand and surrounded by Iraqi soldiers replaced those of the handsome man. “The tape of his captors holding a knife to his neck demanding the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq circulated the world last spring—”

The picture of the prison was replaced by a far more grainy shot of a soldier holding a long knife to the throat of a bearded, blindfolded man.

Benny had seen the picture a million times, just like the rest of the world. But now, even without seeing the man’s eyes, the prisoner seemed familiar. The way he sat, so proud, his lips twisted in what Benny knew was anger. It was so like the man he had befriended a little more than three years ago. The man who, shortly thereafter, had disappeared off the face of the earth.

“Gomez was kidnapped by Iraqi soldiers while covering the war for the Los Angeles Times—”

“Benny? That’s him…that’s Ruben, isn’t it?” Miguel asked. “He’s been in Iraq? What’s this mean?”

Journalist? Benny’s brain screamed. He’s a freaking journalist? All of those conversations. The things Benny had told Ruben, believing he had finally found a thinking man amongst all of the thugs and butchers of his world. The man Benny had trusted with secrets was a journalist?

When Ruben had disappeared, Benny had thought for a while that Ruben had been an undercover cop. Or a Fed. But when no harassment or raids had followed he figured him for one of those nameless dead spics found in the mountains.

He’d been wrong.

His hands spasmed into fists, the edges of the remote cut into his palm.

“Gomez won a Pulitzer four years ago for his exposé of the meat-packing industry,” the blonde continued. “Many experts say his work from Iraq would have garnered him another award. Gomez was released from the naval hospital in San Diego today. He plans to recover in privacy in New York City.”

Benny’s brain went cold then hot.

Everything was at stake. All he’d done. It could all be taken away from him if that journalist opened his mouth.

“That’s Ruben, isn’t it?” Miguel asked. “That journalist. Did you know he was a reporter?”

Benny shook his head. Rage caught fire in his gut—blind and hot and merciless. His chest heaved and he fisted his hands in his hair. He paced between the couch and his desk. He’d been fooled. Him. Benny Delgado.

Benny knew this journalist—this Caleb Gomez—as Ruben Villalobos. Three years ago his sister, Lita, had started bringing her latest boyfriend, Ruben, around the house. Benny had liked Ruben. Respected him. He’d tried to recruit him, but Ruben had resisted and Benny kind of respected that. They’d smoked joints in the backyard and talked about their dead mothers.

“Damn it!” he screamed and shoved over one of the folding chairs in front of his desk. He picked up the other one and hurled it across the room at the TV screen.

Sparks crackled in the dead air.

Gomez knew things about him. Things he had been keeping secret. Things that kept him safe. If that hibrido were to write a story about him now…

“The news said he’d be in New York City.” Miguel stepped forward and Benny started shaking his head, knowing by the wild hot look in his brother’s eyes what he wanted.

“No, Miguel.” Benny put up his hand, stopping Miguel’s advance.

“Why not?” Miguel asked. “You need to send someone, why can’t I go?”

“You want to go do what has to be done?” Benny asked, anger churning hard through his body. “You want to be the man to slit that reporter’s throat?”

Miguel’s chin went up. “Yes, jefe.”

Benny looked at his brother and saw only the mistakes. The drug use. The gambling. The soft heart and softer head.

“No way.”

“Benny, this guy could screw up the meeting with that ambassador. That Reyes guy. I know—”

Benny worked hard to control his expression, to smother the surprise and outrage. Everyone in his organization knew they were not supposed to tell Miguel these things. Miguel ran some drugs. Kept track of some books. He was not supposed to know about Reyes or the meeting.

“You don’t know anything.” Benny shook his head.

“I’m your brother, but you don’t trust me.” Miguel’s dark eyes turned liquid, a trick that used to work on Benny the way it worked on their mother.

Not with this. Not ever with this.

“You’re my brother,” he said instead, clapping a hand on Miguel’s neck and squeezing. “I can’t risk you. The cops. The Feds. You get caught and it’s me who goes to jail.”

“Sooner or later, brother, you are going to have to treat me like a man,” Miguel said, shrugging away from Benny’s hand, like a sullen teenager rather than the man he wanted to be.

Not until you act like one.

“You are a man,” he pacified his brother. “But you are my brother first.”

“What are you going to do?” Miguel asked. “What if this guy talks? What if—”

“I can fix this,” Benny said. The way he fixed that female witness and the cop six months ago.

He had to deal with Ruben—He shook his head. There was no Ruben, never had been. There was only a reporter named Caleb Gomez who had to die, fast, before he had a chance to open his mouth. Before the meeting with Reyes in a month.

First Benny would have a little talk with his sister and then he would send some men to New York.

CHAPTER ONE

“THANKS, GORDON.” Maggie Fitzgerald took the cup of coffee from her favorite techie’s hand and weighed the pleasure against the pain of taking a sip.

Her doctor said she should cut back on the caffeine if she ever wanted to get rid of her ulcers. But the smell of coffee—even the crappy stuff from the bakery on the corner—was too much to resist. She tore open the small square on the plastic lid and took a sip.

She was so used to her ulcers at this stage, what would be the point of getting rid of them?

Gordon collapsed into the stiff reception chair beside hers and stared at Deputy Walters’ closed office door.

“So.” Gordon yawned but talked through it. “Why do you suppose we got the royal summons at 6 a.m. on a Saturday?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Maggie said, watching the steam escape from the coffee cup.

“You’re lying.” Gordon gestured with his cup and coffee sloshed over onto his brown corduroy pants. “You are totally lying.”

Gordon was the best surveillance tech she’d ever worked with and he was—in certain lighting and on special occasions—vaguely loveable. But not so much this early on a Saturday morning.

“What makes you say that?” She took another sip of sugary coffee. She was lying. She did have an idea why they were here. But she wasn’t about to share that with Gordon.

“’Cause you always know more than you let on.” Gordon shrugged and slumped deeper into his chair. “When you’re not around the guys in bank robbery call you the freaking Cheshire Cat.”

“I think I’ll take that as a compliment.” It was, after all, better than some of the things she’d been called since entering the hallowed halls of Quantico four years ago.

“You think it’s got anything to do with your brother?” Gordon asked.

“No.” Her voice was cold, her heart colder. “I don’t think it has anything to do with my brother.”

“But with Delgado—”

“I don’t think it has anything to do with Patrick.” She looked at Gordon, feeling the bite of anger and grief that she’d been fighting since the accident six months ago.

She was getting better. Most of the time those emotions only surfaced at night—in disjointed dreams of her brother lost and cold someplace and her unable to find him. But sometimes she was ambushed by her feelings, caught unawares by the terrible reality that Patrick was dead. Gone.

Murdered.

“Okay.” Gordon raised his hands in truce. “But I think you’re wrong.”

Maggie didn’t say anything and they drank in stiff, uncomfortable silence.

“Whatever it is I hope I’m being reassigned to the Delgado task force. I’ve had it about up to here—” he held his hand about a foot over his head “—with bank robberies and celebrity stalkings.”

Maggie smiled. They were in L.A., after all. Celebrity stalking, bank robberies and gangs composed about seventy-five percent of the workload.

“How is it over at gang violence?” Gordon asked. “Better?”

“I wouldn’t say better. I’d just say less mundane.”

He nodded his head. “I like less mundane. But since your brother got killed and that witness—”

“Gordon,” she said through tight lips, “shut up.”

“Right. Shutting up.”

She had the sinking fear that Gordon was right. She was here because of her brother. Maybe she would be removed from the Delgado case because of the media coverage surrounding Patrick’s death.

Nothing like a few headlines shouting Dirty Cop or, worse, Dead Cop Linked to Drug Lord to sully a whole family’s name. No matter if they were true or not.

“Hey, did you see the Lakers game yesterday? I swear I keep betting on the wrong team—”

Luckily, Gordon’s small talk was cut short by the sudden opening of Deputy Walters’ door.

Curtis Johnson, the agent in charge of the Delgado task force and the closest thing she had to a mentor in the Bureau, stood in the doorway like a huge black shadow in an ill-fitting suit.

“Come on in,” he said in his deep baritone that sounded like the voice of God in the cartoons Maggie had watched as a kid. Gordon leaped up and Curtis stepped out of the way as Gordon walked past him. Maggie took her time, trying to catch Curtis’s eye before going in those doors, but she couldn’t discern anything from his locked-down expression.

Her ulcers didn’t like this one bit.

“Relax,” Curtis whispered as she walked by.

“Easier said than done,” she whispered back.

Curtis chuckled and followed her into Deputy Walters’s inner sanctum.

Maggie took a deep breath and pulled the loose collar away from her throat. The oak paneling and oil paintings seemed to close in on her with every breath. Her father had this dream of her being the first female assistant deputy director of the West Coast Bureau, but if that meant working in this ever-shrinking room every day, dear old Dad could forget it.

Deputy Walters was a small man who looked far younger than his years and much too young to be the assistant deputy director in charge. He was dwarfed by the large oak desk he sat behind, which Gordon loved to make penis compensation jokes about. But there was no joking about this meeting.

Walters had held his position for five years and in the year since the Bureau had put Delgado on the Ten Most Wanted list, Walters had already gone through two agents in charge. Flores and Smyth hadn’t managed to bring down Delgado and were now fielding bomb threats and UFO sightings at their desks.

Curtis had been put in charge a month ago and she’d been angling to get on his team from the start. Two weeks ago, he’d brought her on board. And so far she’d turned up nothing. Trying to get information on Delgado was like running into a brick wall headfirst. No one in the neighborhoods would talk. No one in jail would talk. They’d offered one convict reduced jail time on a twenty-five year sentence and the guy wouldn’t budge.

I’ll take the time, he’d said. Better alive in jail than dead on the street.

They had thrown in relocation and protection to sweeten the deal, but he’d only scoffed. You can’t take me where Delgado won’t find me.

Delgado ruled his syndicate with fear and brutal violence. Anyone even suspected of talking to the Feds was killed, their families were killed, their dogs were killed.

So far it had been a pretty effective deterrent.

“Have a seat,” Walters said with a smile that was about as warm as an ice bath. She and Gordon sat in the chairs across from him and Curtis stood to the right of the phallic desk.

“What’s going on?” Gordon asked, his eyes darting between Walters and Curtis.

“Delgado is on the move,” Curtis replied.

He turned and hit a button on his remote and the screen on the right wall was illuminated with the face of the handsome Hispanic man who’d been all over the newspapers and television in the past few days.

“Caleb Gomez was released from the naval hospital in San Diego four days ago,” Curtis said and Maggie sat back, wondering what a Pulitzer-prize winning hostage survivor had to do with one of the most brutal gang lords in Los Angeles. “According to his press release, he is planning to spend time recuperating in New York City.”

Curtis clicked the remote and a bad surveillance photo of Gomez dressed out like an East L. A. native standing in front of a taco stand with Delgado filled the screen.

“What’s Delgado doing with a journalist?” Gordon voiced Maggie’s thoughts. “That’s like suicide for Delgado.”

“Or the journalist,” Maggie added.

“That’s what we’re wondering, too,” Curtis said and jerked his thumb toward the screen. “This photo was taken three and a half years ago. According to Gomez’s editor at the Los Angeles Times, that’s about when Gomez stopped taking assignments and was working on what he called his ‘next Pulitzer.’ The Times had commissioned Gomez’s mystery story to run in the fall of 2003, but when Iraq really started heating up, Gomez requested to be embedded with the troops near Baghdad. He spent the better part of two and a half years over there before the kidnapping.” He shrugged, a nervous tick he had, as though he was uncomfortable in his skin and constantly wanted out. “The details of what happened to him there will be in your files.”

Maggie swallowed. The whole world knew many of those details—he’d been brutalized over there. Beaten. Tortured. For three days.

But their files would hold classified—and much more grisly—information, thanks to the military and medical personnel who had assisted in Gomez’s escape and recovery.

Her stomach turned.

Professional detachment could only take you so far in the face of the evil man could do.

“You think he infiltrated the Delgado gang?” she asked, shoving thoughts of torture aside. “You think that was his mystery story?”

“Three years ago, Delgado was just entering our radar. It was before he murdered Hernandez and took over his syndicate in East L. A.” Curtis shrugged a massive shoulder and clicked ahead to the next photo. A closer image of Gomez and Delgado in front of the taco stand. Delgado was clearly smiling at something Gomez was saying. “Delgado was far more accessible then. He was just a soldier in the Hernandez syndicate. If a good journalist was going to get in on the ground floor, that would have been the time to do it.”

“Good and crazy,” Gordon muttered and Maggie had to agree, but things still didn’t add up.

“That’s a huge conclusion to jump to,” Maggie said. “Maybe they just happened to be in line together at a taco stand.”

“Well.” Curtis grinned like the Cheshire Cat her colleagues claimed she was and clicked onto the next image—mug shots of two of Delgado’s top men. “Hernando and Boyer were spotted in New York City yesterday outside of the apartment Gomez used to rent.”

All the short hairs on Maggie’s neck stood straight up.

This smelled like a break in the case.

She could see Gordon beside her, grinning in the half dark. “Delgado must think Gomez knows something or why would he send his two best thugs all the way to New York?” Gordon asked.

Curtis nodded.

“So where is Gomez?” Maggie asked. If he was in that apartment, he was as good as dead; however, a certain gleam in Curtis’s eyes indicated that wasn’t the case.

“Summerland, California.” Curtis turned and smiled at her while he advanced onto a photo of a stucco house behind high hedges. “He’s renting a house in the foothills.”

Curtis set down the remote and turned on the light behind him. Maggie could feel the electric hum of excitement radiating off him. It filled the air and she breathed it in with relish.

This was a gift. A break. A possible crack in an uncrackable case.

Now, if only it didn’t require her to go undercover again, then things would really be looking up. But she didn’t get called into this kind of briefing to do surveillance or research.

She was undercover. And she was supposed to love it.

He lifted the three files from the corner of Walters’s desk and handed two of them to Gordon and Maggie. The third he handed to Walters.

“What’s our angle?” she asked.

“Well, Delgado is going to find out he’s got his two dogs standing outside an empty apartment in New York City and start looking elsewhere.” He arched an eye-brow. “And we know it won’t take Delgado long to find him.”

“So Gomez as bait? We just wait for Delgado to find him? Send some guys to kill him and hope we can implicate Delgado?” She hated even saying the word bait. Putting an innocent man in grave danger was an ugly way to break a case. And the odds of its success weren’t high. Delgado’s men wouldn’t roll on Delgado.

“That’s one option.” Curtis nodded.

“What’s the other?” Gordon asked.

“We find out what Delgado is clearly ready to kill Gomez to keep hidden.”

“Does that mean going undercover?” Gordon grinned like a kid being taken to Walt Disney World.

Maggie felt an inevitable tide at work here and she tried not to fight it. Tried to get excited about her role, her job. She looked down at her hands.

One more time, she told herself. For your brother. You can go undercover one more time.

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.

Again he felt that spike of irritation. He wasn’t good at sharing his space or having strangers touching his things. Made him antsy.

But considering it was going to be her job, he couldn’t tell her not to touch his stuff. He chuckled at his own absurdity.

Clean, but please don’t touch anything.

“I don’t suspect the bathroom is going—” she started to say.

“It’s a biohazard. You’ll probably need a special suit or something.”

She smiled again, a Mona Lisa curl to her lips that had devastating effects on his hermit-lifestyle suppressed libido. She really was lovely. Perhaps her features were plain, but her skin seemed to glow.

“Are you Irish?” he blurted. Nice. Really, so suave. It’s a wonder you ever got laid.

“No,” she answered and her attention drifted to the bedside table that showed that one finger swipe through the dust.

“Let’s go into the other room and discuss specifics,” he said and walked by her, close enough that he caught the soap-and-sunshine scent of her.

He heard her follow him into the hallway and then pause.

“What’s in here?” she asked and he turned just as she pushed open the door to his office. Inside, Bear, his dog, went berserk and Caleb reached out and slammed the door shut again.

“You don’t need to worry about that room,” he said. “I don’t want it cleaned.”

“But it looks—”

“It doesn’t get cleaned!” he said with more volume than was necessary with the reticent Margaret Warren. Her lips tightened and she nodded and Caleb felt like a fool.

He’d lost his touch, not just with pretty shy women who once fell to his bidding like ducks in a shooting gallery, but with other people, too. With everyone.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I just—”

“You don’t have to explain,” she said. “I won’t clean that room.”

He nodded, relieved and a little surprised by her straightforward understanding. He could imagine that she might think he was a little nuts. Maybe he was. Most of the time, he wasn’t entirely sure himself.

SHE’D PLACED two of the three surveillance bugs. There was no way she was going to get into his office considering the way he’d flipped when she opened the door.

Obviously there was something in there he didn’t want people to see.

I need to get in that office.

“I think he likes you, Mags,” Gordon said in her ear. “Dude can’t stop looking at you…ouch… Man, stop throwing stuff at me.”

Gordon was right, Gomez was lonely. Really lonely if his awkward sideways glances were any gauge. She was not a woman men stared at. She was a woman men glanced at and forgot.

Apparently, not Gomez.

The back of her neck burned and her fingers tingled and she told herself it was the job. It certainly had nothing to do with that dynamic energy that surrounded him, that seemed to reach out to her with every glance.

That’s good, I can use that.

Things were going well. She seemed to have passed some sort of test when she didn’t react to Gomez’s injuries. She had handled the situation when he caught her bugging the kitchen phone. It had been close, but luckily there really had been pizza sauce on the receiver.

They seemed to get along, if his corny jokes were an indication. Except for his privacy issues about the office, which she planned on stepping all over, she guessed she had this job in the bag.

She followed him from the dark hallway back into the bright room with the view of the ocean. She didn’t pay much attention to what lay outside the window, instead planning to get her third and final bug planted under the table beside the overstuffed sofa.

“Your ad said mornings two days a week,” she said, breaking the silence in the room.

“Right. Eight to noon.” He limped over to the large armchair hidden underneath newspapers. He brushed them all to the floor then collapsed into the dark blue cushions with a groan. “I’ll be home most of that time, but I’m usually working in my office.”

“We need more time, Maggie,” Curtis said. “We’ll be here weeks if you keep to that schedule.”

“I’m afraid that’s not going to work, Mr.—”

“Gomez,” Gomez said, “but please call me Caleb.”

“Okay, Caleb.” She swallowed, his first name felt thick and awkward in her mouth. “It’s going to take me about a week of four-hour days just to get this place cleaned to a livable standard. And that doesn’t include the cooking.”

“Good point.” Caleb looked around and grimaced. “What do you propose?”

“Two weeks of eight-to-one and then we’ll see.”

Caleb smiled and Maggie glanced away from the twist of that wounded mouth and the humor that poured out of those eyes. “We’ll see. I like that. It’s been my motto for two and a half years.”

Maggie was startled by her desire to ask what he meant by that comment, but she quickly focused back on business. “Did you want to call my references?”

“Already have, they couldn’t say enough good things about you.”

Considering Curtis and his secretary had been her two references, she wasn’t surprised. Still, she smiled as though she was pleased.

One step closer, she thought. I am one step closer, Patrick.

“Great. So, is there some paperwork you want me to fill out?”

“Not so fast.” Gomez grinned again, the wry tightening of his face looked more like a grimace than an expression of pleasure. “Why don’t you clear a seat and tell me why you are so eager to work for slave wages for a disfigured cripple?”

Maggie inwardly winced. Though his tone was casual, joking even, it was very clear what this man thought of himself.

“I need the job,” she answered. More than you’ll ever know. “I have a son.”

“You’re married?”

“No.”

“Divorced?”

Maggie narrowed her eyes. “Is it important?”

“No.” Gomez wearily rubbed the scars on his neck.

Does it hurt? she wondered.

“Sorry. Old habits die hard, I guess.” He looked out at the ocean, his face touched by the sunlight and Maggie had the strangest feeling that he was searching for composure.

“So, Margaret with one son,” he finally said, turning back to her. “What brings you to Summer-land?”

“Will is getting older and his influences were getting worse at school and in the neighborhood.”

“Where were you from?”

“Los Angeles.” The lies came fast, natural. “Long Beach.”

Gomez nodded. “Spent a little time there myself. Some neighborhoods there can eat a kid alive.”

She knew all of this, of course. Long Beach and Will, her fictitious son, were all part of her cover designed to elicit reactions from Gomez, to create a sense of common ground. She needed him to want to talk to her.

It was what being undercover was all about. Building trust and then destroying it.

“How old is your son?” he asked.

“Ten.”

“What—”

“You mentioned a pay increase if I agreed to cook,” she asked, interrupting his twenty questions. Best to keep some mystery about herself, keep the journalist engaged in her story. Spilling all of her made-up beans wouldn’t do that.

Gomez did not miss a beat at her change of subject.

“An extra $150 a week. If it’s edible.”

Maggie nodded, clueless as to whether that was fair or not. “Sounds fair.”

Gomez watched her, unabashed, and the air slowly filled with tension like a gas leak. She could feel his regard, like fingers reaching out to stroke her hair, her face. His eyes probed hers and for a moment, because she knew, at least in words, all of the things that had happened to him, those beautiful eyes shook her.

She knew people torn apart, absolutely devastated by things not half as bad as what this man had suffered and survived. Her mother for one. Destroyed by what had happened to her golden son.

“So, do I have the job?” she finally asked, acting as the composed Margaret Warren once more.

“Yes, Ms. Warren, I do believe you do.”

She, Curtis and Gordon all sighed in relief. “That’s good news,” she told Gomez.

“Well,” he said with a wry chuckle, “you haven’t seen the bathroom.”

IN THE END Margaret wanted to write down a list of cleaning supplies but didn’t have a pen so he had to go into the kitchen to grab one.

Giant suitcase of a purse and she doesn’t have a pen? What do they carry in those things?

When she drove away Caleb stood at his back door and watched her crummy little hatchback until it vanished down the hill.

There was going to be a woman in his house. A woman with a gorgeous mouth and unreadable eyes, touching his things. Making him dinner.

Caleb didn’t know how to feel.

Bear, still locked up in the office, bellowed to be let out. Caleb propped the cane on the wall and limped as fast as he could and flung open the door.

“Oh, Bear,” he groaned when he saw the mess his big dumb dog had made. “I’m gonna take you back to the pound.”

Bear sat in a nest of shredded paper, fragments of newspapers and magazine pages dotted his fur. One triangular strip hung from his lolling tongue.

Even after more than a week of seeing the beast every day, Caleb wasn’t used to his looks. Half of the dog’s right ear was missing from a fight that also took out his right eye. Because of a skin condition, he was hairless except for a couple of clumps of fur along his sides. Those clumps were coarse and wiry, the fur constantly falling out. He had a bad temper toward strangers, which was the main reason Caleb had bought the damn dog, but that didn’t make him any more endearing. Bear adored chewing paper, but left shoes alone, which was nice except Caleb often liked what was on the chewed-up paper more than his shoes.

Caleb reached out and peeled the piece of paper off the dog’s tongue.

Bear licked his hand and Caleb stepped over him to the sliding glass door that led from the office to the patio and Bear trotted out the door, knocking over the books and magazines Caleb kept piled on his office bookshelves.

Dumb dog. Caleb followed and pushed open the screen door so Bear could flop down on the deck in the sunshine. Caleb flopped down as well in the padded lounge that faced the water.

Bear sighed and scooted around so he sat within petting distance and Caleb flexed and stretched out his bad hand to stroke Bear’s single hairless ear.

“A woman’s coming, Bear.” He long ago stopped feeling stupid for talking to his dog. “You’ve got to behave yourself.”

Bear barked, once, a succinct reminder. “Me, too,” Caleb agreed, thinking of Margaret Warren’s pink mouth and those other soft womanish things that he longed to sample but were no longer within his limited reach. “I have to behave myself, too.”

“WHERE THE HELL DID HE GO?” Benny asked. He watched Hernando squirm and gasp. It made Benny feel better to know that the pain in his belly was also in the bellies of his men. Benny looked down to the floor, where Boyer lay in a slick of his own blood.

Well, he did not feel much of anything anymore.

Benny had to come all the way to New York from L.A. to deal with this Caleb Gomez problem when it should have been dealt with three days ago.

He wanted Hernando to feel the pain.

“Jefe, I don’t know.” Hernando shrugged and licked his upper lip, beaded with sweat despite the frigid temperature in the warehouse.

Good. Good. Be nervous.

Benny nodded at Ramon who held Hernando’s arms behind him, twisted high behind his back. Ramon lifted Hernando higher off his toes and Hernando screamed in pain.

“He left New York, jefe. That’s all I know. Nobody knows where he went. All those reporters that were hanging around his house don’t know either. Trust me.” Hernando was crying, snot trickling down over his lip and into his mouth like a river.

Disgusting. It was so damn hard to find men who would behave like men rather than scared little schoolgirls.

“Did you talk to the reporters? Did you ask them where they think Gomez went?”

“Of course…I…”

“Did you ask them like I am asking you right now?” Benny cocked his gun and Ramon lifted him again and the screams echoed through the empty warehouse.

“No,” he finally gasped. “No, I didn’t, jefe. Give me a chance and I will. I will find out. I swear.”

The little bitch was crying in earnest and Benny thought about shooting him just on principle. Instead he uncocked the gun and put it back in the waistband of his pants.

He could be benevolent.

“Do it,” he said. “You have ten hours.”

Ramon dropped him and Hernando landed in a heap on the cold cement, sobbing.

Five hours later the sound of Benny’s cell phone cut through the canned music being piped through the speakers behind his head.

“He’s on the West Coast,” Hernando said. “North of Los Angeles, no one is sure where. That’s the truth, jefe. I swear to God.”

Benny flipped his cell phone shut and put the biography of Mussolini on the floor for some minimum-wage bookstore employee to pick up. He kicked Ramon’s foot to wake him up. He’d been dozing in the chair in the empty non-fiction section of the bookstore since they’d arrived after dinner.

“Wha—?” Ramon sat up, blinking and huffing like a man coming up from under water. “What’s going on?”

“He’s on the West Coast.” Benny stood and picked up his leather jacket from the back of his chair. “North of L.A.”

“You want me to go find him?” Ramon stood, too, his giant six-foot, three-hundred-pound frame uncurling like black smoke against the bookshelves behind him.

“No,” Benny said. “You take care of Hernando. I know who to call to take care of Gomez.”

CHAPTER THREE

MAGGIE MANAGED to slide open the lock and get through the front door of her new temporary apartment without dropping her overnight bag, her dinner bag, her laptop bag, her purse or, most importantly, her jumbo root beer.

Once inside she put as much of her load as she could onto the floor and surveyed her new home.

Just once she wished for an assignment that required fancy digs. Some place furnished with real furniture that didn’t smell like cat pee. Some place that might actually have a view of something other than a Dumpster.

“Used to wish,” she muttered. She hoped this was her last job. It had to be. She had to get out of the Bureau while she still had something left of herself to get out with. And if Gomez had the stuff to bring down Delgado, she could solve her brother’s murder, clear his name and move on.

It was time—probably past time if her mindset today had been any indication. She wasn’t as focused as she usually was. Something about Gomez kept her off balance, a little too aware of the fact that she played a part.

She’d regroup tomorrow. Stay on task.

Tonight, however, I can enjoy my luxurious surroundings, she thought.

Her apartment, located in an old building off what appeared to be the only nonresidential street in Summerland, was small. Very, very small. She turned right and saw the blue tiled bathroom with the naked lightbulb hanging from the middle of ceiling. She turned left and saw the kitchen-dining room-living room area, complete with Formica kitchen table and chair. She hoped it wasn’t her bedroom, too.

She could have stayed in her own apartment, but she and Curtis had hopes that with proximity she might be able to run into Gomez around town—should he actually leave his house.

She needed to increase her possible points of contact in whatever way she could considering the time frame. One week. It was practically a joke.

She held on to her drink and the brown bag that contained her dinner in one hand and dug from her overnight bag one of the few things—besides her clothing, computer and gun—that came with her from the outside world.

The cruise brochure.

She took the single step required to move her from the hallway to the center of her kitchen. Her heart sank to see the mattress in the middle of the main room. The tiny space was indeed her bedroom, too.

She tried to look on the bright side but couldn’t find one.

Maggie hiked herself up onto the counter, dug out her burrito, and spread the cruise brochure with its gorgeous, shirtless, brown-skinned man out on the counter faceup.

“Hola, señor,” she cooed to the man who could be considered her dinner date most evenings.

At some point Maggie had stopped fighting the sad state of her life and embraced it. She was a workaholic who dreamed of taking a cruise but probably never would because she was too busy working. She also dreamed of having a sex life with a real man, instead of fantasies originating from a New Holiday Cruise brochure. But that was about as likely as Margaret Warren sprouting wings and flying around to dust Gomez’s house.

After Patrick’s murder was solved. Then. Then Maggie would actually take a vacation. Maybe she’d take a vacation and not come back. She’d settle down on some Mexican beach with a beautiful, shirtless man and a lifetime of umbrella drinks. She’d throw out her clothes and wear only bikinis. All day. Regardless of who she blinded with her Irish white skin.

Maggie bit into her bean and cheese burrito with gusto. It’d been ages since her last meal. That coffee at the briefing had been about it all day.

Man, the morning seems like years ago, she thought and took a slurp of her root beer. Odd how meeting Gomez today had messed up her perception of time. Anything before looking into those startling blue eyes set in that even more startling face seemed like a long time ago. She’d gathered from reading his file that he was a pretty dynamic guy, but meeting him was a whole different story.

Caleb Gomez was one of a kind.

Now, he was bait.

She cringed just thinking about it. Gomez didn’t deserve this treatment from the Bureau and she hated being the person to set him up. Not after what he’d already been through for his country. But she and her family were carrying the emotional scars as proof that sometimes life was not fair.

“Patrick.” She said his name out loud and listened to it echo around this empty place that his death had led her to.

Her voice bounced back from the window with its view of the Dumpster to the tiles in the bathroom, reaffirming all her reasons for being in this shabby apartment in this shabby town, ready to betray a good guy who clearly only wanted to be left alone.

Saying her brother’s name kept the driving edge of her pain and commitment sharp. She would not be swayed by Gomez, by fear, by anything.

Delgado would pay for killing her brother.

She only had to prove that Delgado had been behind it.

She took another bite of her burrito, licked the salsa off the corner of her mouth and forced herself to consider brighter subjects for a while.

“¿Cómo está usted?” she asked the guy on the brochure. “Usted es muy hermoso. Puede usted traerme una bebida con sabor a…” She couldn’t remember the words for a fruity umbrella drink. Her poor Spanish echoed around the empty apartment and she cringed.

“I am crazy,” she told the brochure and jumped off the counter to grab her laptop. A little conversation with the outside world was what she needed, even if it was in cyberspace.

She unzipped the case and opened the thin computer, locating the available phone jacks and outlets. She ate a little more while listening to the soft hum and whir of the booting computer.

She opened her e-mail program, thinking she could get a little work done but was immediately sidetracked by an e-mail from Liz Meisner with the word Emergency in the subject.

Maggie rolled her eyes. Of course. Her sister could be counted on for at least two emergencies during every case.

Luckily, Maggie had never been in such deep cover that some family contact wasn’t allowed. The provision was that her real life never threaten the integrity of the case.

This could be another one of Liz’s not-sourgent emergencies or it could be real. Dad’s health was bad, Dan, Liz’s husband, was working overtime, Mom was exhibiting manic behavior in her effort to counterbalance her husband. The truth was they were a family living in a state of semi-emergency.

Maggie grabbed her cell phone and dialed her sister.

“Liz, here,” her bright perky sister answered.

“Emergency?”

“Oh, my God! Mags! I’m so glad—”

“The Starbucks north of Zuma Beach on Highway 1 in exactly a half hour.”

“Uh…okay.”

Maggie hung up and picked up the remains of her burrito. The cheese was cold and her hunger had turned to a dull ache in her stomach.

“You don’t have any sisters, do you?” she asked shirtless man, and tossed the burrito in the garbage.

LIZ WAS TEN MINUTES LATE. Which, in Liz time, was practically early. She entered and scanned the palatial coffeehouse located just off the beach like a starlet looking for her public. Most of the men in the place looked back.

Liz attracted attention to the same extent that Maggie didn’t. Tall, with long legs, and brown hair cascading down her back. Big brown eyes that screamed “Help me” and suckered even her smarter-than-that older sister into offering assistance. Not even the giant rock on her left hand deterred the interested male glances in the coffee shop.

Maggie put up her hand and waved Liz over.

“Mags!” she cried, throwing her purse onto the chair. “Thank God—”

“Where’s the blood?” Maggie asked.

Liz blinked.

“This is an emergency and emergencies while I’m working require blood.”

Liz winced but then smiled—sorry, her smile said, but aren’t I charming and I am your younger sister and who else could help me out but you?

Maggie looked up at the painted ceiling and blew out a big breath. She hadn’t really expected anything different. “Go get me a latte. A big one,” she said and shrugged out of her coat to settle in for whatever tale of woe Liz had for her this time.

If she ever went in deep cover Liz would be beside herself.

“Dan’s cheating,” Liz said a few minutes later, setting down the large lattes and sliding into her seat.

“On you?” Maggie asked, jaw on the floor. Men didn’t cheat on women like Liz—they cheated on other women with women like Liz.

Liz nodded and Maggie suddenly saw the tension and strain on her sister’s face and felt the age-old big sister desire to make whatever was wrong better.

“Are you sure?” she asked, leaning forward and brushing Liz’s hand with her own.

Liz nodded. “He’s gone all the time. He’s getting these phone calls late at night and then he leaves. Just gets out of bed and goes.”

“He’s a cop, Liz—”

Liz shot her an acrid look under her eyelashes. “I’ve been married to him for six years, Mags. I know what the life is like and I’m telling you this is…different.”

Maggie sighed. “Maybe it’s got something to do with Patrick.”

Again, his name aloud straightened her spine and she saw the small muscles in Liz’s jaw flex. The whole family suffered from the same helpless rage that had settled in their muscles and stomachs. Their father already had atrophied so much that no one could even say Patrick’s name in front of him. It was as if their dad was trying to erase her older brother from the family.

Liz shook her head. “He was warned away from the case.”

“When did a warning ever stop Dan Meisner from doing something?” Maggie asked with a smile, trying to tease one from her sister. “If I remember correctly, Patrick tried to warn Dan away from you. That didn’t do much good.”

Finally, Liz smiled and took a sip of her latte. Her brown eyes no longer dull. “True.” Her smile was coy and Maggie sighed. Liz and Dan were a solid couple. Any woman would chafe at being married to a cop—the hours and the job stress weren’t easy. But Dan and Liz made it look easy. The Meisners were a dream couple.

“So.” Maggie finally took a sip of her own latte, the ulcers groaning in wretched protest. “Dan’s just doing what Dan does best, stirring stuff up and trying to solve his best friend’s murder.”

Liz didn’t look convinced, but at least the fine lines of tension were gone from her face and her hands weren’t white-knuckled around her cup. “Is that what you’re doing?” Liz asked, looking at Maggie sideways. “Trying to solve Patrick’s murder?”

“You know I can’t tell you anything.”

Liz shrugged, looking somehow smaller. “I wish I could do something, too. I feel helpless.”

“We all do.”

Liz sighed and then pasted on a counterfeit smile. “I guess I should leave things to the professionals.”

Maggie nodded. “Please do.”

They sipped their coffees in quiet for a moment. Each of them staring out different windows. This was a good Starbucks. Lots of view to be had. Lots of staring out windows to be done.

“I was surprised when you said you were going back undercover,” Liz finally said and Maggie braced herself for the inevitable question. “We all were.”

“It’s my job,” Maggie said.

“Yeah, the job you were going to quit.”

“Liz—”

“What about law school?”

Maggie swallowed the bitter coffee and stood to find a sugar packet and to avoid the remainder of this conversation. “What about it?” she asked over her shoulder, casually, as if they were talking about nothing important.

Liz shook her head when Maggie got back to the table, stack of sugar packets in hand. Maybe the ulcers would like the gut-rotting caffeine sweetened.

“Don’t pretend like this isn’t a big deal.”

“It isn’t.” Maggie lied.

“Pepperdine Law is a big deal. You’ve wanted to be a lawyer since you were a kid—”

“Yeah, and I think Patrick wanted to have children and watch them grow up,” Maggie snapped. Then she felt as though she’d just kicked a poodle. “I just deferred. I can go later.”

“Later when?” Liz asked.

“Later, later. This is hardly worth discussing right now.”

“Patrick would want you to be happy,” Liz said.

Maggie felt the hot lump of emotion assemble in her throat. She coughed and took a sip of her now-way-too-sweet coffee.

“Mags—”

Maggie pushed the cup away. “I can’t talk about this now.”

“You are just like Dad,” Liz said.

Maggie nodded. So she’d been told most of her life. Recently she’d stopped pretending it was a compliment.

“Just because he wanted a kid in the Bureau didn’t mean it had to be you.”

“Were you going to sign up?” Maggie asked, laughing at her sister. Liz was a gifted magazine stylist—about as far away from special agent as one could get.

“None of us had to sign up. That was Dad’s deal. You didn’t have to take on the job. And moreover you should be able to leave it when you want to.”

“I don’t want to just yet.” Maggie shrugged as if it were that simple. And it was, mostly.

“That wasn’t your story seven months ago.”

“Things changed, Liz. I can’t talk about this now. Let it go.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

They both stared out the windows again.

“Are you okay? Emergency over?” Maggie asked, her temper slightly cooler thanks to the rolling waves on the other side of the highway.

Liz nodded, pulling her gaze back to Maggie.

“Something is wrong with Dan, but you’re right, I don’t think it’s another woman.” The shadows that lingered under her sister’s bright eyes indicated something serious was amiss in her sister’s stylized life. Some detail was not going as planned and Maggie did feel bad about that, but she had her own amiss details to sort out.

“It’s only been six months, Liz. Dan lost his best friend.”

Liz nodded, her brown hair gleaming in the low light. Maggie wondered if it was genetics or expensive hair products that created such a shine. Maggie’s hair usually looked like a springer spaniel’s coat—after he’d chased some animal into a hole.

“Okay, I gotta go.” Maggie stood. “No emergencies unless there’s blood next time.”

Liz smiled. “Okay.”

Maggie leaned down and kissed her sister’s head and grabbed her coat.

“Oh, hey, can I borrow some movies? Dan’s been working late and there’s nothing but reality TV on in the summer.” Liz assembled herself to go, too. Flipping her hair and slinging her bag over her shoulder. She looked like a perfume commercial.

Maggie nodded; her sister had her own key to Maggie’s apartment. “Just put them back when you’re done.” It was a useless request. Chances were Maggie would never see whatever movies Liz borrowed again.

“Do you have something with Hugh Grant? I feel like something Hugh Grant-y.”

“Third row down on the bookcase. I’ve got them all.” Truth be told Maggie was often in the mood for something Hugh Grant-y.

“Thanks, Mags,” Liz said. Maggie heard a lot of gratitude in those two words.

“No problem.”

Someone had to handle the emergencies, keep the family together, bring murderers to justice and lend the Hugh Grant movies when they were desired.

Once again, Maggie was the woman for the job.

CHAPTER FOUR

ON HER FIRST DAY as Gomez’s housekeeper, Maggie stood outside his open door and tore the sticky note off the glass.

Come in. Supplies in kitchen. I am in office.

Please do not disturb.

“Right,” she muttered with a grim smile. “Like that’s going to happen.”

She kicked the door open the rest of the way. It was actually good news that the guy planned on staying locked in his office. It gave her ample opportunity to search and to learn a little more about Caleb Gomez.

She was looking forward to the opportunity.

Gomez had made a token effort at straightening the place up. Magazines, papers and shoes were stacked in piles rather than left scattered about. But still, there were a lot of piles. And underneath the piles was the filth.

Uncle Sam owes me for this. He owes me a lot of umbrella drinks.

She dropped her purse on the couch and spared a glance for the stunning view of morning sunlight over the choppy waters of the Pacific Ocean visible beyond the ravine and the houses on the next street west before starting her rounds.

A quick check of the phone and the table next to the couch confirmed the surveillance bugs were intact.

She grabbed the mail from the stack sitting on the table by the couch. “Pizza, pizza, home renovations,” she muttered, setting down each flyer as she read it. “Phone sex, YMC—Hello.” There were five envelopes from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Security envelopes with plastic windows, the sort that paychecks come in. The dates on the envelopes spanned from two months ago to yesterday. She held the latest one up to the bright sunlight but the security pattern did its job and she couldn’t see the amount written on the check.

Nothing to do but Nancy Drew it.

She put a pot of water on the stove to boil and while she waited, she ducked into his bedroom. The hushed dark room breathed with a musky intimacy. A sleepy scent that was spicy and warm filled the room as if Caleb were still in it.

She ignored the rumpled bed, the stacks of clothes and checked the bug under the lip of the bedside table. Still good.

She pulled open the drawer, looking for anything. Any clue. Never on one of her cases had she simply opened a drawer and found what she needed to solve a crime, but legends abounded in the Bureau about murder weapons being stashed in kitchen drawers and stolen, marked money found under beds.

The drawer was empty but for the smell of wood.

That’s my kind of luck, she thought.

She walked around the bed to the other table, checking over her shoulder, listening intently for sounds from the office.

Nothing but silence.

She slid open the drawer to find an iPod as well as an old Playboy magazine.

She quickly grabbed the iPod and shut the drawer, a painful heat flooding her face. That magazine was too much information about Gomez’s personal life. Unless he was the only man on the planet who actually read the magazine for the articles.

Considering the warmth of his regard for her own very average self yesterday, she doubted he read many of those pages.

She returned to the kitchen, grabbed her cell phone and text messaged Gordon that she would put an iPod in the mailbox and she needed it back pronto after he duplicated the contents.

The water was boiling so she held the oldest envelope over the steam until the adhesive became damp enough and the envelope popped open for her. She smiled and slid out the pay stub. It was too bad that credit card trick with locked doors wasn’t as effective.

The pay stub—a thousand dollars a week directly deposited into his account at the Bank of America in Santa Barbara—was for an online class. Journalism and Ethics. She nearly laughed. Caleb Gomez, the man sitting on information needed to bring down the biggest crime leader on the West Coast was teaching a class on ethics. Ludicrous.

But good for her. And good for Gordon. If Gomez was teaching an online class, Gordon could hack into the course instructional area and monitor Gomez that way. Pose as a new student perhaps, ask some sly questions. And, Gordon could access Gomez’s bank records for the past few years to see if there had been any interesting activity while he’d been undercover with Delgado.

Again checking over her shoulder, the iPod and check stub tucked in her fist, she ran out the door to the mailbox and slid everything inside.

Maggie returned to the house and made a point of closing the door hard enough to rattle a few windows.

Perhaps that would draw the guy out of his cave.

But the door remained shut. The hallway empty. The house silent.

She opened the door and slammed it again, her eyes on the hallway.

Nothing.

Is he even in the office?

That idea perked her up. Maybe he’d lied and said he was in the office so she wouldn’t make off with his… She glanced around the room. He didn’t even have a TV to make off with.

In any case, it was a little too silent in the house for there to be human and a dog inside.

She stepped lightly across the room to the corner of the hallway, where the light turned to shadows.

A narrow beam of sunlight seeped out from beneath the closed office door.

She shut her eyes so she wouldn’t be distracted and listened for a sound—the groan of a floorboard or a chair, the clatter of keyboard keys, a sneeze—anything that would indicate that she wasn’t alone. That the room she needed to get into was occupied.

She breathed deeply, held it.

Silence.

Nothing but silence.

She opened her eyes, controlled the sudden heavy pound of her excited heart and stepped closer. She watched the strip of sunlight from beneath the door and reached out a hand to touch the knob. A smooth twist and she’d know if it was locked.

The muscles of her shoulder, her arm twitched with the adrenaline rush. She released the air in her lungs to ease the tension.

The brass ball was cool in her hand. She took another breath and started a slow rotation.

A shadow passed through the light under the door.

Could be the dog, she told herself, but she paused anyway. The floor creaked. Could still be the dog.

She heard a muffled cough. A very human muffled cough and the floor creaked again, this time closer to the door.

He was in there. And he was on the move.

She stepped into the bathroom and prepared a slightly expectant look on her face, but the office door remained shut.

She shook her head at her aggressive eagerness. It was one of her better qualities as an agent, but she knew she was walking a fine line between being aggressive and being stupid in this case.

Don’t be stupid, she told herself and turned to case the bathroom.

The medicine cabinet door squawked when she opened it to reveal toothpaste, a red toothbrush, a razor and shaving foam.

The bottom shelf was filled with prescription pill bottles.

Pulling her phone from her pocket she text messaged Gordon the name of the prescribing doctor—Herrara—and the address of the dispensing pharmacy in Goleta, California.

He had a bottle of liquid morphine with a syringe still wrapped in plastic, unused. No prescription. She swallowed a hard lump in her throat and wondered if he was afraid of addiction, or if he had it around because he was so afraid of pain.

A bottle of Vicodin, with the prescription fill date nearly a week ago and the bottle was full. He was either no longer taking his medication or he had another bottle somewhere. She glanced toward the office. The guy could have untold drugs in there—a meth lab, though the air did not smell of cat urine so probably not. But still, morphine, Vicodin…Gomez wasn’t fooling around with his pain.

The pharmaceutical inventory also contained a potent anti-inflammatory and a high-dosage antibiotic, probably to fight infection in the burn wounds.

When she shut the cabinet door, her face was reflected in the water spotted mirror. Plain. Hair scrapped back, no makeup, her thin lips nearly disappearing into her pale face. Not a face worth looking at twice or remembering.

She wondered for a moment what Gomez would do if Liz were here cleaning his house. The man wouldn’t hide, that’s for sure. He’d probably camp out in the kitchen.

Maggie switched her phone to vibrate, closed it and tucked it back in her pocket. About twenty rolls of toilet paper were stacked up against the wall. He clearly did not intend to visit the grocery store any time soon.

Two towels, both brown, hung over a plastic rod

A stool sat in the bath-shower and a generic bottle of shampoo-conditioner rested on its side on the floor of the tub.

A bar of white soap rested in a small purple dish.

Nothing good here, she surmised looking around. After the initial casing she realized that the bathroom was very dirty. Scary black stuff stained the tile grout and gray soap scum coated the tub. She didn’t even want to look at the toilet.

Maggie checked her watch. Gordon should be done by now. She pulled out the front door, saw the red flag up on the mailbox and smiled.

Good old Gordon. This was why she put up with his inappropriate comments and tendency to whine—the man was an efficiency genius.

After grabbing the iPod and check stub, she replaced the electronics in his drawer—trying not to notice the worn magazine with the beautiful brunette on the cover. Then she put the pay stub back in its envelope and licked the corners of the flap—spots that most postal machines missed sealing the adhesive—closed it then stacked it among the rest of his ignored mail.

She paused, listening for him, but the house was still silent.

Excellent, she mentally cooed and as quietly as possible she slid open the patio door and stepped out onto the wooden deck. The ravine butted up against the patio, giving the house an extraordinary level of seclusion, which wasn’t so good considering someone wanted to kill him.

She noted a sliding glass door that led from his office to the deck. A giant hunk of dog pressed tight against the glass and Gomez sat at a desk beyond the slumbering animal, Gomez’s back to the door and view.

She turned the other way to be out of sight should he suddenly decide to look out his window and saw the garage nestled among the trees of the ravine.

She checked her watch then jogged across the burned grass toward the building. The door creaked hideously as she opened it, revealing the musky near-emptiness of the shabby garage.

Empty but for a motorcycle, parked in the center.

She whistled between her teeth and approached the Ducati Multistrada 1100 S. It was like finding the Mona Lisa in someone’s basement.

That is a hell of a bike, she thought circling it, admiring its lines, its lovely power and feline grace. The 1100 S was a very expensive, elite racing bike. She shook her head sadly. Gomez probably couldn’t even drive it anymore. And that was a shame because, of any bike, this one deserved to be ridden well and often.

Oh, man…I could, she thought with near hunger for the chance. Her fingers practically twitched with the sudden urge to straddle it just once.

She and Patrick used to race Nighthawks. The year of her high school graduation they drove up the coast on their bikes, camping and drinking too much beer along the way.

Thinking of Patrick, his smile beneath his beat-up helmet, was enough to kill her distraction.

She turned, noted the brand-new washer and dryer in the corner and left the garage.

Halfway across the lawn her pocket began to vibrate and she pulled out her phone.

Sooner or later you’re going to have to clean, the text message read. I’ll be thinking of you. Gordon.

Her partner thought he was hilarious.

But he was right. She was hired to do a job and she’d never get a chance to finish her real job if she didn’t get her hands dirty.

Maggie smiled, thinking of his note, his wish not to be disturbed and she walked to his office door and knocked. Loud.

There was a scuffle. A dog’s bark. Something hit a wall or the patio window. And finally, a few moments later the door eased open.

A dog’s snout pushed out into the crack and Gomez’s hand cupped it and jerked it out of the way. “Get lost,” he muttered. Maggie’s eyebrows climbed.

“Are you talking to me?” she asked.

“No.” Gomez laughed and then pulled the door open wide enough for her to see him. He faced her and, in some deep place, she braced for her first glimpse of the man, wondering if her memory had somehow made him worse or better than reality. But the sunlight hit the scar tissue and the deep blue of his eyes and Maggie realized he looked the same as she’d remembered.

Startling. In several different ways. His eyes met hers and a tingling rush of blood whooshed up her spine. Her neck went hot. Just the kind of reaction she was trying to control.

“What do you need?” he asked. Not rude, but not polite, either.

“Nothing.” She shrugged. “I just wanted to let you know I was here, in case you heard me banging around or something.”

“Great.”

He smiled.

She smiled.

“Okay,” he said, stepping away from the door as if he’d like to shut it.

She waved and stepped back into the darker shadows of the hall. He closed the door, cutting off the light.

What a weird guy, she thought.

JESUS, CALEB. Do you have to be so weird?

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