Undercover Protector

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.