Undercover Protector

Author

Molly O'Keefe

Reads

17.6K

Chapters

Author

Molly O'Keefe

Reads

17.6K

Chapters

🏰 Historical

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 un-crackable 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 eyebrow. “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.