Disclaimer: I own nothing they all belong to Janet.
A/N: Written as a response to BB/Kym's "The WARDen Says It Best" Challenge on BB
Stephanie started out her day like any other, by getting up late and immediately going to the Tasty Pastry for a dozen Boston Crèmes. Stephanie ate one of her doughnuts as soon as she got into the car hoping it would wake her up enough to get through the day of skip tracing.
So far the entire pot of coffee that she had drank at her apartment wasn't doing the trick. When she was pulling on her sneakers before leaving she had noticed that her socks didn't match and after she came back to put her shoes on again she noticed that she had been putting on two different shoes.
She pulled up in front of the Bond's Office grabbing the box of doughnuts she dragged herself inside.
"Geez, girl what happened to you? You have one of your fine men spend the night?" Lula asked taking in the stained jeans and wrinkly shirt that Steph was wearing.
"No. I got a new neighbor and he seems to believe that all of his neighbors are hard of hearing. He was up to three last night blasting his music." Stephanie said between yawns.
"Well you and he are probably the only ones that aren't over sixty-five. Maybe he didn't know." Connie tried telling her.
"Oh he knew at one this morning when I went banging on his door trying to get him to turn his music down. He told me to get a life and slammed his door in my face and then – and then he turned his music up even louder." Steph said getting more and more aggravated as she kept talking.
Lula made the appropriate noises and cussed Steph's new neighbor appropriately but when Connie remained silent the two of them looked over at her.
"I don't know if you are going to like this or hate it." Connie told her with a grimace on her face. "But it looks like your new skip is your new neighbor." Connie handed Steph the file so she could see for herself.
Steph grabbed the file quickly flipping through it to see his picture. "It is him!" And there was the kid that had moved in above her. Even in the picture he had the greasy long black locks that had clung to his face last night.
"The kid still has pimples he shouldn't be getting into enough trouble to need a bond." Steph said. She looked through the file further to see what the kid had been brought in on.
"What!?" Steph exclaimed when she saw the long list of charges against the boy.
"What is it?" Lula asked peering at the file over Steph's shoulder while munching on a doughnut.
"He's been arrested over ten times already. And all of them are for possession."
"Oh and look aren't we lucky," Lula pointed out. "He changed it up a bit for us." Steph read the latest arrest to see that Lula spoke the truth.
"Oh no. He assaulted a police officer and discharged a firearm inside the station. Why the hell didn't this kid go to Ranger?" Steph directed her question Connie.
"First let me point out that he's not a kid, he's a couple years younger than you. Can we please call him by his name, Derek, instead of the kid? And second Ranger's swamped with skips, they are jumping like crazy this week. He doesn't have the time to go after all of them." Connie told her as if she should have known.
"Oh alright." Steph hiked up her shoulder bag still feeling huffy about having to take the skip. "You coming with me Lula?"
"Hell yeah. We can't have him keeping you up, you look like shit when you haven't slept."
"Thanks Lula." Steph said begrudgingly.
Together they hoped into Steph's latest car and drove over to the apartment building.
"So how you want to do this girl?" Lula asked her once they were standing outside the Derek's apartment.
"Knock?" Steph asked her.
Lula scoffed at her, "Well anyone could have said that."
Steph shook her head and knocked on the door after ten minutes there was still nothing so she knocked again, but louder.
After another five minutes they finally heard the locks being open on the other side of the door.
"What the hell?" Derek exclaimed when he opened the door. "What're you disturbing a man's sleep for?"
"'Cuz, you skipped your bail and we here to take you back." Leal told him standing with her hands on her hips.
Derek stared at her standing there in her bright yellow spandex outfit and burst out laughing. Before Steph could get mad another voice joined in on the laughing. It was a deep baritone that you felt booming inside of your chest.
The man came into view and Steph could only stare. The man was almost as tall as Tank and easily had the same amount of muscle.
"Well, well, well, what do we have here? The little brunette that was yelling at us last night." The man took a step towards Steph.
Steph didn't remember what happened but all of a sudden she was standing in the hall with the man on the ground in front of her and her stun gun in her hand. Lula was nowhere to be seen but she heard the squeal of tires letting her know that her ride had just taken off.
"What the hell?" Derek screamed at her.
"He tried to keep you from me. I will level anyone and anything before I'd let that happen." Steph told him smugly.
"Well next time you should react like your friend and run. Because there is no way I am going to go down as easy." Derek told her pulling a gun from behind his back that must have been hidden in the waistband of his pants.
Steph stood there stunned at the turn of events usually her skips run rarely do they pull a gun on her.
"Steph inside slowly, no fast movements and keep your hands where I can see them." Derek instructed her. Steph did as she was told keeping her hands in the air above her head so that he could see them.
"Good, good." Derek walked her into the kitchen and them picked up a chair and placed it next to the fridge. Derek then pointed at the wooden chair that he had just moved. "Now sit in this chair." Steph hesitated for a moment before complying.
Steph sat down and Derek grabbed her handcuffs that were hanging from her belt and used them on her securing her to the refrigerator. Derek tugged on the cuffs himself to make sure they held and put the gun back in the waistband of his pants.
"Well, I'm out of here, I'll deal with you later when I get back." Derek then motioned to the guy that was still unconscious in the hall. "Of course if Samuel out there wakes up before then there are no guarantees."
Derek walked over to his door laughing as he left.
Steph tried tugging on the handcuffs herself but the only thing that happened was the door on the fridge swung open and hit her. Steph took a look in the fridge to see if there was anything good in there, but it was emptier than hers was.
Steph sat there looking around the apartment and spotted the phone that was near the doorway to the kitchen, she just might be able to reach it.
Steph stood up on the chair and reached towards the phone, not even close. She pulled open the door to the fridge and tried again. Her fingers were just touching it and not able to grab it.
She looked inside the fridge again but there was still nothing that could help her. She opened the freezer door and only found ice cube trays. She grabbed one of them and used it to knock the phone off the hook. The phone fell from the wall and hit the counter and then bounced to the floor skidding towards Stephanie.
Stephanie smiled to herself as she picked up the phone and plugged in Ranger's number.
"Yo." Ranger picked up on the third ring.
"Yo yourself."
"Babe. Where are you? Just talked to Lula she said some goon came after you."
"Yeah, but I took care of him. It's the skip I went after that I need some help with."
"You at his house?"
"Yep."
"What's the address I'll met you there. How long have you been watching the house?"
"Since Lula left me here. But I'm not exactly outside his house."
"Where are you?"
"Chained to a refrigerator."
"I liked the shower rod better."
"Sorry, Batman, not this time."
"Give the address."
"It's the apartment right above mine."
"Be there in five." Ranger told her and then hung up.
Steph sat there in the apartment waiting for Ranger when she heard Samuel from the hall come in. Steph looked from the doorway to the phone in her hand and knew if she would be in even more trouble with him if she was caught with it.
Steph grabbed the handle to the fridge opened it and threw the phone inside.
She had just shut the door when Samuel came inside. He saw her handcuffed there and his face contorted in to a smile that looked like a sneer.
He walked over to the butcher bock that was on the other side of the room and pulled out a long serrated knife. He turned towards Stephanie and slowly walked towards her. Steph kept her watch on the kitchen doorway, hoping ranger would show up before this goon killed her.
Samuel took the knife and ran the flat side of it along the skin of her arm. "Try not to struggle to much, I don't want blood everywhere."
Then there was a noise from behind him and the sound of a stun gun going off. The current rushed through Samuel down his arm through the knife and went right into Steph.
When Steph woke up later in her own bed, Ranger was there sitting in the chair across the room.
"What the hell happened?" She asked groggily.
"We didn't want to shoot him in case the bullet went all the way through and ended up in you. So we used a stun gun, but the current went all the way through him into you." Ranger told her. "We figured you'd rather get stunned than shot."
Steph shook her head. "I still have to get Derek."
"No need."
"Ranger I can't let you get my skips."
"He walked in as we were leaving, so we grabbed him too and brought them both in."
"Thanks Ranger."
"Any time Babe." Ranger replied with a smile.
Wrath, pg. 196, Dark Lover, The Black Dagger Brotherhood, Written by JR Ward