AN: This is my first attempt at writing something about Stephanie Plum. I've been reading JE books for ages now, and it too all the persuasion from my very good friend Dog_in_the_Manger for me to start this story. Dog is also an awesome beta – thanks for everything, my dear, you know I would be too ashamed to publish without you. We talked one night about how awesome it would be to have Stephanie taken in Witness Protection by the characters of In Plain Sight…. Here is a go at this plot.
Oh – almost forgot. I'm French – so, please forgive my English
Disclaimer : I do not own JE's characters. Just using them a little…
Chapter 1:Hit the Road, Steph.
The black SUV was cruising through Ohio's landscape. Autumn had claimed its dues, and a beautiful yellow and brown carpet of leaves was coating the shoulder of the I-70.
"Can you tell me where we're going?" the young woman asked. "I mean, you people come out of the woodwork, tell me I'm not allowed to talk to anyone and we have to leave immediately, but I'd like to know at least where we're headed. I haven't packed any boots, so it better not be Maine or Alaska!"
The partners in the front of the SUV stayed silent. Stephanie caught a quick glimpse of the piercing blue eyes of the driver in the rearview mirror, before he returned his attention to the road.
"Definitely not Alaska. Nor Maine. See, Mary doesn't like the cold."
"Marshall, we're not playing twenty questions again!" the blonde woman warned.
"You mean, I have twenty questions to find out where we are going?" Steph interrupted, full of hope.
"Au contraire, mon amie, sounds like Miss Plum here it is quite eager to play." The blue eyes, twinkling with mirth, flashed in the rearview mirror again. "Yes, you have twenty questions to find out where we're heading. But I can only answer 'yes' or 'no'. And you can't ask questions like "Are we heading to New Jersey or New York, okay? Oh, and keep in mind, Mary will do everything she can to distract you."
"You make me out to be the bad cop, Marshall, and I swear to God, you'll regret it."
"Oh, I'm so scared, Mare. Stephanie, you ready?"
"Are you two always like that?"
"No, today Mary is in a very good mood, so we're lucky." The man said, as his partner poked him in the arm. "Was that supposed to hurt?" he asked, turning to her with a huge grin on his face.
Stephanie slumped back in the seat, leaving her protectors to bicker over the female marshal's ability to inflict pain on her partner, as she struggled with the fear she'd thought. The fear that she thought that she had come to grips with, seized her body once again. What if she never got to see her friends and family again? What would happen to Rex now that she was gone? Would Joe give up on her easily? Would Ranger? Or would they look for her? And what about Connie and Lula? Would she ever see any of them again?
At the thought of her friends, Steph felt the tears sting her eyes. How would she live without them?
"I want to go home! I don't want to go where you're taking me!" Steph reached for the door handle, trying to open it.
"She tried the door?" The man's voice echoed inside the truck.
"Uh-huh. They always do, at some point. Thought she'd wait until we reach Indianapolis, though." Mary answered.
"Indianapolis? Nah, wrong. She's much more of an Ohio girl."
"I'm right here! And you heard me! I wanna to go home!"
Stephanie heard a heavy sigh from the front of the SUV. "Your turn or mine?"
"I'm driving, Mare, so all yours."
"Crap. I knew I shouldn't have let you drive. Anyway." The blonde woman turned to Stephanie, taking off her aviator sunglasses, before folding up the map she was holding. "Listen, little Miss Sunshine. You go back to Trenton, you're dead. There is no way the Family will let you live after what you've witnessed. So we can turn the car around, head back to Jersey, and you'll be pushing daisies in no time. Got it?"
"I know! But it's not fair!"
"Newsflash, Miss Jersey. Life isn't fair." Mary slid her sunglasses back on, and turned around to face the road.
"St. Louis," Marshall said, without taking his eyes from the road.
"Nope. Chicago."
"You up for a bet?"
Stephanie laid her head back on the headrest and sighed. For the first time, but not the last, she wished she hadn't seen Seppe Farlicorne murder that poor woman.
-o-o-
Ranger walked into the control room, on the fifth floor of his Haywood building.
"Status on Stephanie. Now."
Hal was monitoring the screens. He hit a few keys, and a dot appeared on the map of Trenton on the main screen. Ranger moved closer to the screen, and Hal zoomed in on the dot, to a back alley next to Stark Street.
"Babe..." Ranger whispered. What in God's name are you doing on Stark Street, alone?
"Get me the police scanner. Which tracker is it?"
"Her car. And her bag's there too."
The speakers in the control room came to life and Ranger turned his head slightly, to hear someone from the TPD through the static, "...C.S.I. is done with the crime scene. Get this car outa here. Morelli? Call up the Plums; they can pick up her personal effects..."
"Steph's location?" Ranger's voice was a grumble, only heard by his second in command, Tank, who wasn't very eager to tell his boss that this time they had no idea where Bombshell was.
"Off the grid. She's not in the hospital, or at the TPD, or at her parents. We're still looking."
Ranger paced around the office, turning to look at Hector, leaning against the doorframe.
"El otro GPS." Hector nodded slightly and went to the console, pushing a few keys. "The other GPS"
"Estephania esta ahí."Another dot had appeared on the map, far west from Trenton. "Stephanie is over there."
-o-o-
The night had fallen, when the SUV exited off the highway, and headed for the suburbs of Indianapolis. The blonde marshal left the vehicle, while her partner was scanning their surroundings, taking in the motel building and the street lights along the road, stretching for a few miles into the darkness.
"Can I get out now? I need to pee!" Steph asked, wanting to escape the confines of the truck she'd been in for hours.
"No. We'll wait until Marshal Shepperd returns and checks out the rooms."
"But I need to go!" Stephanie whined.
Marshall turned his head a bit, smiling.
"If you can keep a secret, I need to go too… But first, Mary has to check if the rooms are adjacent, and if everything looks okay. It won't be much longer, I promise."
"But nobody followed us! Nobody knows where we are! I heard that you picked this motel randomly!"
"So we did. But standard protocol section 17.1b calls for, …"
"Not the protocol, Jesus, Marshall, don't start.' Mary cut him off, before turning to Steph. 'See what you did ? We'll never hear the end of it now, and we still have a long way to go.' She sighed. 'Let's get you out of this truck." The door on the passenger's side was opened, and Marshal Shepperd unlocked the rear doors. Steph was out of the SUV in a flash, rushing toward the Double Deck Inn. They quickly made it inside, where Steph hurried to the bathroom.
The two marshals stared at each other, and Mary said, "Yours, definitely yours."
"Come on, Mare, she's a Jersey girl, you'd know how to handle her best!"
"I'll be sure to bring that up the next time a horse comes into the WitSec!"
"Har, har, har, you're hilarious. Can you just take her?" Marshall said, thinking that there was something about Stephanie Plum that made him uncomfortable.
"Translation, Little Miss Perfect wouldn't like to see her future husband hanging out with a beautiful brunette... "Mary said with a smirk and an evil gleam in her eyes. "I'll take her, if you take Barry."
"Barry?! Come on, not Barry. I'll take Steve, but not Barry. And for the record, Abigail's got nothing to do with this."
"Suure, it's got nothing to do with your fiancée. It's Barry or Miss Jersey. The choice is yours, Doofus."
Marshall's face went blank as he was weighing his options. Either Barry "Big Mouth" Enderson, or Miss Jersey… and given Stephanie Plum's history and the familiarity she had with the TPD, it was only a matter of time before she ended up at APD. And sure as hell, Abigail Chafee, Marshall's fiancée, wouldn't be too happy finding out that he was her emergency contact. She had told him several times that she understood what his job entailed, but couldn't help sighing or making comments every time one of Marshall's 'friends' needed help.
He sighed, admitting defeat. "I'll take Barry. But you have to promise me you'll come along to every witness visit."
"Little Marshall's afraid of Big Barry?"
"Of Barry, no. Of his roaming hands, maybe."
Barry Enderson was known within the Albuquerque Witsec office to have a soft spot for everybody in the department, but for Marshal Marshall Mann in particular. Which is why he had been placed in the program as Mary's witness.
"I'll bet. You call Stan, and I'll take care of Miss Plum here," Mary said, as she heard the sound of the flush. At her partner's nod, she closed the door, separating the two adjacent rooms, before turning to wait for Stephanie to emerge from the bathroom.
-o-o-
This isn't possible, how can I be in such a mess? I mean, I've been in trouble before, but now… Heading to God knows where, with complete strangers, just because once again I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. And she was about to start a new life far away from Jersey, without being able to contact anybody in her family or friends. This all seemed so – weird, like a scene from a bad mob movie...
There must be another solution... maybe if I tell them I saw nothing, they will let me go back? Because honestly, I can't even be sure it was Giuseppe, she thought. Well, okay, the man had the same scar on the face, right under the eye, but this can happen, and be a coincidence? And maybe, the woman is not really dead-dead. Maybe she's just hurt and will testify, so they won't need me?
She looked at herself in the mirror, feeling better that, maybe, there was an escape to this craptastic situation. She fluffed her hair a bit, mustering up her courage and walked out of the bathroom, ready to face the two marshals.
The woman, Marshal Shepperd or something, was sitting on the full size bed, next to the window and the door, with her laptop. Stephanie caught sight of the Glock, lying within the marshal's reach, on the nightstand.
"I think all this is a huge misunderstanding, Marshal Shepperd," Steph started. The woman barely looked up from the screen, before going back to reading whatever was on it.
"I mean, are we sure that the woman is really dead? Because if she's at the hospital and then she can testify, I can go back to Trenton. Or it wasn't really Farlicorne, even though, I agree, his scar is uncommon, but it could have been anybody. Maybe someone else in Trenton has the same, who knows? And I can always say I didn't recognize him, so I'll be safe! And tomorrow we can be on the road back to Jersey! What do you think of that?"
Mary looked Stephanie up and down, planted in the middle of this cheap motel room, and then smirked, before yelling, "Marshall, get over here! I won!"
A moment later, the other marshal opened the door separating the two rooms and walked in. "What happened?"
"She wants to go back to Jersey, because the woman might not really be dead, and there might be someone else, who has the same scar as Farlicorne. I won. And we're not even in Chicago yet."
"No, you lost, Mare. You said 'Chicago.' And we're still in Indie. So, neither of us wins."
Stephanie looked at the two marshals in front of her, who didn't seem to understand what she was telling them. "Did you hear me? I said I could go back to Trenton!"
She saw the partners exchange a look, and the man finally said, leaning his left shoulder against the doorframe, "Your witness, Mare..."
Mary turned to Stephanie, setting the laptop carefully next to her on the bed.
"Okay. I'll do this one more time. Catherine Bailey was shot seven times. One bullet went through her skull. I'm no medical examiner, but usually when the victim's missing a face, it means the brain is dead. And if that wasn't enough, the bullet to her heart would have done the trick. So we can say that, yes, she is most definitely dead. Add to that what I just read in the autopsy report, and I can tell you that she won't be going to the farmer's market next Sunday. And there is no chance in hell that she'll testify." As soon as she finished her diatribe, she turned the laptop around so Stephanie could see the images that she'd never forget for the rest of her life. A body lying on concrete, in a pool of blood, and a bloody mess where a woman's face should have been, leaving no doubt that Catherine was, indeed, dead.
"And as for Mr. Farlicorne, as you identified him straight away to officer Gazzara or whatever, and you told him, and I quote 'I'm sure it's Giuseppe. I saw him under the street lamp.' It leaves very little doubt as whether or not you'll survive if you go back to Trenton. Now if we're done, can we order a pizza?"
"This is true, then…" Stephanie's blue eyes filled with tears. "I'm never going back to my family…"
Mary rose from the bed and approached the younger woman. "You don't know that. I don't know that. But if not, we'll find a way to let your family know you're okay. You can send letters through the Marshals Service, and we'll make sure they get to your family. It will be fine, Stephanie, we know what we're doing. You'll be okay."
"I'm so scared…" And Stephanie went into Mary's arms, crying for the fear she felt inside.
-o-o-
Meanwhile, a private jet that taxied down the runway of the Trenton Mercer airport, was cleared for the takeoff.
Humm.. What do you think? Should I go on ? please R&R and make my day !