Molly O'Keefe - Undercover Protector

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.