Holding Out For A Hero. Pamela TracyЧитать онлайн книгу.

       CHAPTER TWO

      “I JUST MET Shelley Wagner face-to-face.” Oscar Guzman sat on his bed, Peeve content and panting at his feet, and spoke via phone to Lieutenant Colonel Lionel Townley. Currently, Townley was Oscar’s boss at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Before that, during Oscar’s military service, Townley had been the second lieutenant who’d given Oscar most of his orders. Of all the men Oscar had served with, he respected Townley the most. So much so that when Townley requested Oscar be pulled from a long-term assignment for this under-the-radar case in small-dot-on-a-map, New Mexico, Oscar said yes before he’d known the specifics.

      Of course, Oscar had spent a summer of his childhood in this small dot and had an aunt here. He had contacts in Sarasota Falls and could get close to Shelley Wagner without her suspecting who he worked for and what he wanted: her ex-husband, Larry Wagner.

      “She was walking her son to preschool.” No surprise there. Since his arrival, Oscar had tracked her routine. Two weeks ago she’d made things amazingly easy by moving into a garage apartment just five houses away from his aunt’s bed-and-breakfast.

      “I thought we were going to avoid contact for now,” Townley said.

      Oscar thought about Shelley and just how hard, in the flesh, she’d been to avoid. For a moment, when he realized she was heading his way but also her son was doing a nosedive aimed at Peeve, he’d been unable to move.

      She’d been wearing white capris, a huge red shirt and sandals. Her toes had been painted the same red as her shirt. Cops noticed things like that.

      Even more, red-blooded men noticed things like that.

      Pregnancy, if anything, only made her more beautiful.

      But he’d not been in his cop persona. He’d been an overtired dog walker thinking about a big breakfast and his bed. “She must have been running late. Usually she’s gone when I walk Peeve.”

      “Anything unusual happen?”

      “No, not really. Ryan wanted to pet Peeve. She and I exchanged pleasantries. I acted like I didn’t have time. She acted like she wanted to get away. After a moment, I watched her hightail it back to her apartment. Funny, I thought she was taking the kid to preschool. Maybe she forgot something. Anyway, it was bound to happen, us meeting. We’re living so close.”

      Townley waited a couple of beats before saying, “You’re right. Do you think there was something unusual about her being late?”

      “I do. Before this, she left at the same time every morning with a variation of only three minutes.”

      Anyone else would have laughed. Not Townley. He’d taught his soldiers about punctuality. “Okay, let me know if anything changes.”

      Punching the off button, Oscar lay down on his bed, sweats still on. He stared at his police uniform over the chair by the window. He was bone-tired and intrigued. He was still amazed that he worked for one law-enforcement agency and was undercover for another one.

      The graveyard shift was a tough one, but he’d done worse.

      Shelley Wagner wasn’t what he remembered or expected.

      He’d known her briefly as a kid, but he’d not seen her in sixteen years. Nor had he kept track of her, so reading about her and studying her photos from before Larry Wagner’s departure had been informative. Ten years ago, she’d been a driven high school student; six years ago, she’d been accepted into every college she’d applied to; and two years ago, she’d come home to spend one more summer with her family.

      From what he could tell, nothing had derailed her until her parents’ illnesses and her misfortune of meeting LeRoy Saunders, also known as Larry Wagner, and by a few other names—some even the FBI probably didn’t know.

      He wasn’t sure why this morning’s encounter had him on edge. He’d never hesitated to think the worst of people; military intelligence had a way of wringing empathy and sympathy out of a man. He stretched out on the bed. He’d reported the encounter, knew where she was, and needed sleep. Still, his mind continued going over the scene and what was happening in the neighborhood. There’d been a black cat sleeping on the top of one of the parked cars. A child’s scooter had been tossed carelessly in one yard. A white car had driven down the road, not in a hurry.

      Hours later, a light knock on the door woke him. The sun still brightened his windows, and he was due back to work in an hour. Peeve was long gone, no doubt given freedom the first time he whimpered at the door. Oscar was going to have a hard time separating Peeve from Aunt Bianca. Or would it be Aunt Bianca from Peeve?

      “Oscar! Get up,” she yelled from downstairs. Aunt Bianca didn’t know how to whisper. She’d not been in the military, but she could take on any drill sergeant when it came to giving orders.

      He headed for the hallway bathroom, and after splashing water on his face, he went down the stairs to the kitchen, where Aunt Bianca waited.

      “I have chicken on the table.”

      It was never that simple. Aunt Bianca usually had some household maintenance detail she’d like him to attend to, or worse. Tonight was the or worse.

      “Abigail Simms’s granddaughter will be in town this weekend.” Bianca sounded very matter-of-fact.

      Oscar didn’t take the bait. Instead, he finished his first helping of chicken.

      Aunt Bianca was patient. She gave him a second helping before adding, “She’s here for Abigail’s birthday.”

      “That’s nice,” Oscar said.

      “I told Abigail that you had some free time Saturday and that you might be convinced to take her granddaughter for a ride on that bike of yours.”

      Funny, when Oscar first arrived on his aunt’s doorstep, she’d hated the motorcycle.

      “Death machine,” she’d called it.

      Now it seemed the death machine was okay as long as she could connect it to a little matchmaking.

      “I’m doing some undercover work this weekend,” he said, heading to the pantry to look for dessert.

      Aunt Bianca placed an elbow on the table, crooked her hand and placed her chin in it, looking at him and waiting. His mother did the same thing when she wanted an answer.

      Bianca loved that he’d joined the police department, never dreaming that strings had been pulled and procedures ignored. Even chief of police Tom Riley had no clue his new rookie wasn’t a rookie at all.

      Somehow the deception felt wrong. He tried to blame it on keeping secrets from his aunt, but he’d grown to respect Riley and wished the man was privy to all the details.

      His FBI boss, Townley, insisted on the assignment. “This legitimately gives you access not only to the files but also to the people who wrote them. If we can prevent Larry Wagner from conning even one more person, your role will have made a difference.”

      Townley had that right. So far, Larry Wagner, Saunders, Templeton, whatever name he was working under, had conned a lot of people. He was an equal opportunity crook and didn’t care who he was taking advantage of.

      That he’d married Shelley and left her pregnant without any remorse said it all. He was a man without a conscience, and his crimes were escalating. Sarasota Falls—a town with two squad cars and six officers—had been taken, from face-to-face fraud to account hacking. If acting as an officer, low man on the totem pole, working eight at night until eight in the morning, was what it took to bring Wagner down, Oscar would willingly do it.

      Chocolate-chip cookies discovered,