Author's note/administrative details note: First off, I haven't forgotten about "Nothing About You". I'm trying to find time to do the revisions on the rough drafts for the last two chapters, but this full length has been eating up a lot of my writing time. Hopefully I will be in revision mode on this one by March and can squeeze "Nothing About You" into the schedule. Secondly, I hope you enjoy this one. The ladies at Perfectly Plum urged me to start posting it here instead of waiting. I'll be updating at irregular intervals until I finish the rough draft and start revising. This is my first full length, and it's going on 2 years of writing, so I apologize for inconsistencies in writing style and quality. Thanks to Denny for the prompts that gave birth to this story, and to SueB for her unrelenting support and patience.

All Plum characters belong to JE. This is a Babefic, but not a HEA ending—at least, not in this installment. (Yes, there will be at least one more part although I hope to expand it to 6 full lengths when all is said and done.) The good news is no major character death. The bad news is a representative of an endangered species doesn't fare too well. This is in the style of a 13th century chanson de geste, which sounds very highbrow except when you're wearing 80 pounds of plate armor and chain mail while lying face down in the mud puddle where your noble steed just planted you with extreme prejudice because he thought he saw a carnivorous butterfly in the grass twenty feet away. Warning for a strong fantasy element. Not Cupcake friendly. Rated M for strong emotional content, violence, adult situations and language. All mistakes in the depictions of medieval life are completely my own. All grammatical/spelling/colloquialism mistakes are mine as well.

Abide

To continue to be sure or firm; endure.

Archaic [Old English]: To Live.

Prologue

Stephanie Plum parked the rusted out '92 Corolla in the parking lot behind the bonds office and switched off the ignition. She sat in the faded blue fabric driver's seat and tried to work up some enthusiasm for actually getting out of the car. Her muscles ached all over with dull, throbbing pain and her knee sported an ostrich egg-sized swelling liberally decorated with purple and blue bruising. The entire package was courtesy of her last FTA, a no-necked, pea-brained Neanderthal named Fred Garipoli with a penchant for slapping women around. His latest girlfriend wised up before the first ER visit and called the cops when he started beating on her. He objected and won a ride downtown courtesy of the responding officers. Just to make sure everyone understood his feelings, he blew off his court date and that landed him directly in her stack of FTA files.

A sigh escaped her. Of course, Garipoli felt insulted by having a female bond enforcement agent show up on his doorstep. And of course he didn't feel constrained to merely voice his displeasure. No, he had to take a swing at her. Fortunately, she ducked under it and tackled him backwards into the house. It certainly wasn't her fault he landed on an end table with a glass lamp, and it wasn't her fault that he turned into a whiny, screaming, kicking mass of blubber when the impact drove glass shards into his ass.

The clean up had been low key even for her. The cops arrived after a neighbor called 911, and Big Dog was more than happy to haul Garipoli's sorry ass into the back of the patrol car. The EMTs insisted on checking her over, and she'd been seated on the bumper of the ambulance, biting her lip as the glass shards were picked out of her hands, when Joe Morelli arrived.

The litany was more familiar to her than the Catholic catechism she memorized in grade school. You're a wreck. Check. This job is dangerous. Check. You're over your head. Check. Why can't you be sensible? Check.

Then he took a deep breath and stared down the street, his lips pressed tightly together and his dark eyes hard. Steph watched him, struck by the harsh flashing of the emergency lights on his face, and the unhappy despair she saw written large in his expression. Something inside of her shriveled, and she called his name in a soft voice.

The scene played out as it had in other times: her apologizing, Joe relenting, and her following him to his house to eat pizza and share the comfortable parts of their relationship. The only thing missing in the entire tableaux was Ranger, her mentor and bounty hunter extraordinaire. There'd been no sign of his sleek black Porsche among the mess of police and emergency vehicles, and not once had she felt the prickle at the back of her neck that warned he was near.

Now the next morning, she sat in her rustbucket of a car, her head tipped back against the seat and her eyes staring over the parking lot without seeing any of it. She hurt, both inside and out, and she didn't have the strength to face Connie and Lula with their questions and comments.

She palmed the keys and briefly considered playing hooky with an afternoon at the mall, but there was the small matter of the body receipt laying on the seat next to her and the negative balance of her bank account. If she wanted to enjoy eating and having electricity, she needed the money, and that meant braving the Trenton Inquisition.

She shoved the keys into her front pocket and grabbed the piece of paper. Heaving herself out of the car, she slipped her purse strap over her shoulder and slammed the door shut. A fine red powder sifted slowly onto the pavement, staining the dark surface an industrial strength red-orange.

For a long moment Steph stared at the powder, then she shook her head and trudged across the parking lot. The sounds from the street were loud in the dank, humid air. She could hear the cars humming by on the busy road out front, and the hundreds of other sounds and smells that made up the city's mélange. None of it seemed to touch her, though. Not today. Today she was wrapped in layers of thick cotton, completely apart from whatever this day chose to throw at her.

If the air outside was warm and muggy, the air inside was rancid, freezing and wetter than a locker room towel. It slapped her in the face like a clammy fish when she opened the back door, and Steph almost gave into her third impulse to run.

"White girl!"

Too late. Steph straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin, going for the Jersey Girl 101 bluff. It didn't matter that she felt like shit. As long as she had her arsenal of attitude and stubbornness, they'd never see her sweat.

"Hey, Lula," she said as she breezed into the office and flopped onto the couch. "Connie. Got any new files for me?"

Connie leaned forward on her elbows, her shell pink fingernails aligned in a perfect row along her cheek as she gave Steph a knowing look. "Word has it that you're not in any shape for it, Steph. In fact, word is that Fred Garipoli landed a couple of good hits on you before the end table broke."

"Hey, that end table was not my fault." Steph huffed out a breath and crossed her arms over her chest. "I am not the person to blame that Garipoli has a big ass."

Lula pulled out a filing drawer and stuffed some folders into the front half. "You had something to do with why his fat ass landed on the end table, Miss Thang."

"He started it," said Steph, and leveled one of her better death glares at them.

Evidently, Lula's spandex now included Kevlar. She shoved the drawer shut and rested a hip against it. "You look like his fat ass landed on you, to be telling the truth. You need some shopping therapy?"

She shook her head. "Maxed out. Even with the Garipoli fee, I'm still scraping bottom for the month."

Connie sighed and slid some files off the stack at her elbow. "I can give you a couple of regulars, but there's nothing in your range beyond the nickel and dime stuff. I'm sorry, Steph."

"It's all right," she said, slouching on the cushions. "I can always mooch off my parents for food until something turns up."

"What about Ranger?" Lula held up a hand as Steph gave her a narrowed-eyed look. "I'm just sayin'. Batman's usually good about comin' up with jobs when you need 'em."

"He didn't even bother to show up last night. I guess I'm not such great entertainment anymore." Steph got up and took the files Connie had set aside, then gave Lula a faint smile. "Don't worry about me. I'll figure something out."

She didn't wait around to hear more suggestions about what she could do to improve her life. It seemed like everyone had an idea, but no one asked her about what she wanted to do. After all, it was her life, wasn't it?

A sigh escaped her as she pushed out the back door. The emptiness inside of her grew a little more, aching in the way that an old injury often did. It was the emptiness that only Ranger filled, and for the life of her she didn't even know if he even wanted to fill it. Maybe she was just fooling herself into thinking he was interested in her for anything other than a good laugh. Maybe—

"Babe."

Her traitorous heart lurched painfully. Drawing a shaky breath for courage, she turned around to see Ranger standing in the doorway, one muscular arm bracing the door open. His dark eyes studied her with uncomfortable intensity, and she took an instinctive step back.

"Hey," she said, trying to keep her voice light. "Where've you been?"

He stepped outside, letting the door shut behind him. The movement brought him even closer to her, and she had to fight down the instinct to increase the distance again. "Talking to Vinnie. Tank drove over last night to check on you, but you'd already left the scene." With Morelli hung between them, unspoken but very real.

"Oh." Steph tried to keep her voice steady, but every fiber of her body felt the irresistible pull towards him. Ranger was like a magnet and she was nothing but a pile of iron filings, drawn towards him by the laws of nature. "So—did you need something?"

He slid a finger under her chin and tipped her face up so she had to look him in the eye. A long moment passed as he stared into her eyes, and Steph felt like every secret she'd ever held was stripped bare beneath his scrutiny. Finally, he nodded. "Got a job for you, if you're interested."

"Classy or street-walker slutty?" Steph asked, feeling a tiny bit of hope that her money troubles were about to disappear.

He smiled faintly. "Surveillance."

The hope stuttered a bit, but Steph grabbed onto it with both hands and held it still. "Love to. Where, when and for how long?"

He reached into a pocket of his cargoes and pulled out a folded up piece of paper. "Here's the short version. Lester can drop off the file tonight."

"Okay, sounds good." She took the paper and unfolded it, her eyes widening slightly as she read. "Ranger, this is a Renaissance festival."

"Sure is," he said, leaning against the brick wall next to the door. "Multi-state. The main company hires performers to travel a circuit along the coast throughout the summer. Word is that some of the performers might be using it as cover for other . . . activities."

"Such as?"

Ranger shrugged, a mere ripple of his shoulders under the black t-shirt. "Smuggling, maybe. Contraband would be easy to hide, and no one would question the number of people stopping at the vendor's, either to leave something off or pick it up."

Steph chewed on her lower lip for a moment, thinking. She'd been to a Ren Faire once in college, and hadn't been overly interested in ever going to another one. It seemed more like an excuse for geeks and nerds to dress up as elves and wizards than anything else; but on the plus side, at least she could wander around instead of being stuck in a car for eight hours with nothing to do.

"Smuggling seems a little low-key for RangeMan," she said, shooting Ranger a look from the corner of her eyes. "Won't your guys get bored with nothing to shoot?"

Again the shrug. "Even the little jobs pay," he said mildly. "Still gotta eat between the big ones."

Direct hit. "Okay, I'm in. What do you want me to do?"

"Wander around, keep your ears open. The guys will be doing the same, but they don't blend as well. I have one guy on the inside, but he's limited in range. He might have some info on where the action is."

"What's his name?" Steph asked, half her mind on the question and the other part trying to figure out how she would approach this job. She could go as a typical visitor in jeans and t-shirt, or she could try to blend in with a costume. Both approaches had their positives, but she wasn't quite sure—

"Mark." Her head jerked around, and Ranger gave her that faint smile again. "He has a lot of names on the circuit. Says he can reinvent himself every few years. Sometimes he's a performer and sometimes behind the scenes. I'll pass the word to him that you'll be working the festival. He'll probably approach you at some point during the shift."

"Got it," she said. Steph stared at the paper in her hand again. The location was northwest of Trenton. On an old dairy farm. Parking free, costumes encouraged, family friendly . . . yada yada yada. "I don't have a costume, though."

Ranger reached out and ran light fingers through her curls, lifting them away from her head and tucking them behind her ear. "Much as I want to see you in costume, you'll probably be better able to move in casual dress. Play the part of a tourist for the day."

There was something in his eyes that sent a shiver down her spine, and Steph had a sudden vision of herself in a medieval bar maid costume. "So, do I get to see you guys in tights?" she asked, mentally fanning herself at the mere idea.

Ranger's smile flashed out of hiding, blinding her with its sheer power. He pushed off from the building and slid next to her, his breath warm on her ear as he leaned in close. "They don't make codpieces big enough, Babe." Then he was gone, leaving her to gulp air into lungs that no longer worked properly.

Holy Mel Brooks, Batman!