A while back, AVBabe posted a challenge to write After the Babe HEA, what happens when something from the past puts the bat-baby in danger? I wrote this and debated whether or not to post it, but in the end, I decided to share. Big love and hugs, AVBabe, we're all pulling for you!

Oh, and if you see any characters you recognize, that's because they belong to JE...

"Mrs. Manoso?" an unfamiliar voice spoke to me over the phone. "My name is Darla and I'm with campus security."

I was already sitting up straighter in my chair. The only campus security that would be calling me at work was Princeton University. Carlos and my daughter, Mariella, had just started her Freshman year this fall. There are days when I still can't believe that I have children, never mind the fact that my oldest daughter is old enough to be in college. I tried to keep the panic out of my voice when I answered her, "Yes? How can I help you?"

"Has anybody called you to tell you that your daughter is being held in our office? She's been here all morning, and I assumed someone was coming to help her."

"No, I was not informed," I told her. "Is there any reason in particular why my daughter is being held at the campus security office?" As soon as the words were out of my mouth, Carlos stood up and checked the gun on his hip. Assured that the clip was full, he slid it back in the weapon and went to grab his jacket.

I got up and grabbed my jacket as well. We were walking towards the door when the woman on the other end said, "I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to discuss students' issues over the phone, but parents are always supposed to be informed when there's a serious problem."

Carlos called out to the control room that we would be offline and we hit the stairs. I told Darla that we would be there within thirty minutes and hung up the phone before I fell all the way down trying to talk and put on my jacket while walking down. Neither of us spoke as we jumped into Carlos' Porsche Cayenne and he roared out of the parking lot. The in-dash GPS informed us that the drive to Princeton would take 23 minutes, but I had the feeling that we would be there much sooner.

Exactly nineteen minutes later we were walking through the front door of the campus security department. The guard at the desk asked us if he could help us as he eyed the gun on Carlos' hip. "We're here for Mariella Manoso." Carlos was back in Ranger mode. Menace poured off his body like cologne and the security guard slid his chair back almost in an effort to get out of his way.

Clearly uncomfortable, the guard swallowed and said, "I'm sorry, sir, but..."

I was in no mood to play games. I leaned across his desk and got right in his face. "I don't want to hear anything from you except, 'Right this way, please'. We are Mariella's parents, I know she's here, and I demand to see her right now."

The guard was visibly sweating now. He nodded at the gun on Ranger's hip and stammered out, "But,".

I slammed my hand down on his desk. Ranger might be the only person here who is currently armed, but I'm the one he was going to be afraid of by the time I was done. "That's not the right answer. If you're worried about Ranger's gun, he is licensed to carry it, even concealed, anywhere he damn well chooses. In fact, he is required to carry it at all times due to the nature of his job. If you don't take us to my daughter in the next minute, I will tear this building apart brick by brick until I find her. Do I make myself clear?"

The guard turned beet red but stood. He turned towards the hallway to his left and said, "Right this way, please."

He led us down the hallway and into a small room that looked suspiciously like the interview rooms at the TPD. Mariella sat in a metal chair with her head down on the table in front of her. She looked up as the door opened, and my heart broke when I saw the tracks of the tears that had obviously rolled down her cheeks. In a very shaky voice she said, "Mom?"

I could feel the tears in my eyes. I brushed past the guard and crouched down next to my baby. She looked more like Carlos than me, but she inherited my curly hair. Her skin was lighter than his, more of a sun kissed bronze to his mocha latte, but she has his nearly black eyes and impossibly long eyelashes. I smoothed her curls away from her face and kissed her cheek. "Don't worry, baby, daddy and I are here to take you home right now."

Mari held up her other hand and I was shocked to see the familiar glint of steel handcuffs keeping her shackled to the table in front of her. A fresh wave of rage washed over me. I stood and turned to the door, preparing to tear another strip off of that officer. I stopped dead in my tracks and sucked in a breath at the sight of the Joe Morelli, who now stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame. I heard Ranger growl behind me and reached to take his hand.

I looked Joe over as he did the same to me. It had been twenty years since the last time I saw Joe, and the years have not been kind to him. My best guess was that he was carrying an extra fifty pounds on his frame, and that was mostly centered around his mid-section. His hair was no longer as thick and wavy as it used to be. In fact, his hairline had receded from his forehead to the crown of his skull. The hair he had combed over it in an effort to cover it up wasn't fooling me a bit. If I didn't know Joe as intimately as I do, I might not have recognized him until he spoke, "I wouldn't be so sure of that if I were you."

Ranger took a step forward. "If I could have a word with you, Morelli."

Even though Joe no longer carried a gun, his hand drifted down to where his holster would normally be. "I have nothing to say to you, Manoso, but I could be persuaded to talk to Stephanie. It'll be just like old times." The smile he gave us wasn't friendly and I suppressed a shudder.

Ranger drew a breath to say something, but I turned and laid my hand on his arm. "It's okay, Ranger," I told him, "I'll go. Please stay with Mari, I don't want her left alone in here."

He took my hand and gave it a squeeze. "Babe, Matt is on his way, we'll get this straightened out."

Matt was the lawyer that Rangeman kept on retainer. I don't want to say that he's a miracle worker, but he's gotten Les out of more sticky situations than I want to think about. I squeezed Ranger's hand back and gave him a soft smile. "I'll be fine," I said and walked back to the door.

Joe led me to a small, cramped office, barely bigger than a closet. He sat at his desk and I dropped into his visitor's chair. He leered at me and said, "You look good, Cupcake."

Part of me wanted to jump up on his desk and slap him into next week, but rational Stephanie knew that he could only hurt me if I let him. She also knew that if I rose to the bait, I'd be sitting in an interrogation room next to Mari's. Instead of acting on my impluse, I simply said, "Thanks. I work out." What can I say? It's been twenty years, I've matured. "Now, do you want to tell me why you're holding my daughter here? Perhaps you might want to tell me why I wasn't informed when she was brought in."

Joe leaned back and propped his feet on his desk. "She has yet to be charged with a crime. We're holding her as a person of interest until we hear from the hospital. Since she is eighteen years old, her parents do not need to be informed unless their student is charged with a crime."

I slumped a little in my chair. That was Joe's story and he was going to stick to it. I knew we were in for a long day and made a mental note to text CJ and tell him to go to Rangeman when he got out of school. Pushing some of her curls off my forehead I asked him, "What happened here today?"

Joe picked up a folder and a pair of glasses from his desk. Putting the glasses on, he read from the file. "At 8:57 this morning a student was walking across one of the parking lots when he was hit by a powder blue 1953 Buick. The driver, Miss Mariella Manoso, then got out of the vehicle and according to witnesses, proceeded to yell at the victim instead of rendering aid. Reportedly, she told the victim to 'Rot in Hell' and that he was lucky that she didn't get in the car and 'Back up over his skeezy ass'. When campus officers arrived at the scene, she was still yelling at him, so they detained her and the victim was taken to the hospital."

That sounded really bad. "If what you've told me is true, why wasn't she charged and handed over to the Windsor Township PD?"

He smirked a little, and I knew that she was being held because her last name was Manoso. What he said was, "We still haven't determined if it was simply assault with a deadly weapon, or if she will be charged with attempted murder."

I could practically feel the blood drain from my face. "Joe, Mari wouldn't deliberately try to kill another student. There has to be more to this story."

Joe dropped his feet to the floor and leaned forward. "Well, we could ask the other student, but he's in the Emergency Room right now. At least I know where she got the idea. That apple must not have fallen far from the tree. Just another Plum girl running over the Morelli boy."

"Your son goes to Princeton, too?"

"Don't look so surprised, cupcake. Grandma Bella's last wish was that her Great Grandson go to college here. Staff member's kids are given preferential treatment and reduced tuition. Why do you think I took this job?"

I couldn't hide my shock. "So Mariella met your son here and hit him with the Buick? What did he do to her?"

Joe crossed his arms over his chest. "Your daughter hit my son with Uncle Sandor's Buick and it's his fault? Maybe you want to blame the car next. I swear you should name that thing Christine. As soon as my mother calls me to tell me what's wrong with my son, your daughter will be charged and sent to jail."

And the hits just kept on coming. "Angie's here? I haven't seen her since she moved about a year after you left. She and Bella packed everything up and left without telling anybody where they were going, they just drove around the neighborhood for two days cursing everyone in the Burg and disappeared."

Joe sighed. "That's because they moved in with me. I had a full time job and a baby to raise, I needed all the help I could get."

"What about Terri?" Terri had Joe's baby about six months after he left. We all knew it was his, even if he wasn't there anymore. Her uncle Vito had a fit and was going to go find him, so she left town. She told her uncle that she was going to be with him so that they could be a family. As far as I knew, that was what she did.

He ran his hand through the hair on the side of his head. "She surprised the hell out of me when she showed up on my doorstep with our little bundle of joy. We were going to get married and be a family. About three months after she moved in I came home to find little Bobby with a sitter and a note on the kitchen counter. The note said, 'Sorry, I'm not cut out for this'. It took me a month to track her down, but she wasn't coming back. I couldn't do it on my own, so my mom and Grandma Bella moved in with me."

I was starting to feel sorry for him. Living with those two couldn't have been easy. "Where were you all that time?"

"East Rutherford," he said with a sneer, "an even bigger pit than Trenton. It was either that or get fired and I had no desire to work security at the Quakerbridge Mall. Didn't Ranger tell you about that? Evidence of me helping out friends in need wound up on the chief's desk. I was lucky that he let me transfer and my new chief stuck me on Patrol. I spent the next ten years working Traffic. Did you know that the Meadowlands are in East Rutherford? Every Sunday all winter long I had to work traffic for every Giants or Jets game. Your husband did that to me."

In an instant, I no longer felt sorry for him. "What would you have had him do, Morelli? You were trying to get Homeland Security to arrest him for Treason and when that didn't work, you put feelers out to every hostile government you thought might want a piece of him. You think we didn't know? You think we should have just sat there and waited for some third world dictator to kill him? You were willing to kill him because I chose him."

Joe slammed his fist on the desk. "You were mine. You were supposed to marry me and raise our children. You kept telling me that you were never going to get married again and you didn't want kids. Three months after we broke up you were living with him and six months after that you were married. You have two children with him."

I stood up. "Please don't punish Mariella for our mistakes, Joe." I left Joe's office and walked back to the interview room. Matt had gotten there, and Mari was just starting to tell her story.

I stopped in the doorway and Carlos put his arm around me, kissing me on my forehead. We stood there and listened while she told Matt what happened. "I went to a Frat Party last night. A whole bunch of my friends were there, and we were hanging out. Bobby's been after me for a while to go out with him, but he's a hound. Anyway, I saw him at the party and we started talking. He was so sweet and charming that before I knew it, we were in his room fooling around. We didn't go all the way, but I found out the next morning that he wrote about me on the bathroom wall. I was so humiliated. When I saw him in the parking lot, I just lost it. I don't know what came over me." She buried her face in her hands and started sobbing.

I slipped out from under Ranger's arm and went back to Joe's office. He was still sitting at his desk, but he was talking on the phone. Once he hung up, he looked at me. "That was my mother. Bobby has a broken leg, but he'll be fine. Your daughter will be charged with Assault with a Deadly weapon and turned over to Windsor Township."

I held up a hand. "Before you do that, you might want to think about it. Rangeman will cover all of Bobby's medical bills, but I would like you to consider reducing the charge to Simple Assault."

Joe snorted. "A Misdemeanor? Think again cupcake."

I cringed inwardly when he called me cupcake. "If you charge her with Simple Assault, we'll plead guilty. She'll pay the five hundred dollar fine and take anger management classes. If you insist on Assault with a Deadly, the first thing we're going to do is go to the Frat house and take pictures of the bathroom wall. You were right about one thing, Joe, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I'm pretty sure you know what we'll find there." I took a small amount of satisfaction from the fact that he paled a little. "There is one difference, though. I will support my daughter one hundred percent and help her through this. The cycle ends here, Joe. How it ends is up to you." I paused so that the weight of my words could settle. "I've learned a lot in the last twenty years, Joe. I've learned that I'm the one who is responsible for my actions. I've also learned that I can be a mama bear when it comes to my children."

I started to leave his office again when he spoke. "I'll call the DA's office and set the plea deal up. Your attorney can ride with her to the Mercer County Courthouse." I turned back and he was rubbing his forehead like he had a vicious headache. "Do you want to know why Terri left me?" I nodded. I really didn't want to know, but he looked like he needed to say it. "The day before she left, she told me that she was tired of living in the past. She said that I couldn't let go of you and I just realized that she was right. When I found her again, she was living in Pensacola Florida, training to be a circus clown for Ringling Brothers. I guess she just traded one circus for another. I don't want Bobby making the same mistakes I did." He shook his head. "Go on and leave. Mariella will be at the courthouse within the hour."

I said the only thing I could, "Thank you, Joe."

He looked sad when he said, "Goodbye, Stephanie."