Undercover Protector

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.