Steph and Ranger left for Miami. Tank is running Rangeman Trenton, but Morelli´s still around. And he is still fascinated by curly haired brunettes…
This story is complete. I decided if I ever would take the plunge and publish anything I wanted to be sure that it would be finished. The chapters will be regularly posted when I am done with the editing.
English is not my first language, but hopefully I haven't mangled it too badly.
Disclaimer: Don't own anything but the plot and Annie. Even the title is borrowed from Van Morrison.
Italics - Spanish
Some bad words, some violence, and fade into black sex-scenes, nothing too graphic
Chapter 1. Meetings and greetings"Shit! What´s Bomber doing back in Trenton?"
Bobby immediately turned his eyes in the direction Cal was looking. A curly haired brunette in jeans and a heavy brown coat was walking towards the mall entrance. They had just had a false alarm from a high end jewelry store right outside the mall, and were on their way back to their car.
Automatically they began walking toward the brunette.
"Double damn. When the fuck did he get here?"
A dark haired police officer in plain clothes was closing in on the oblivious brunette from behind her. Bobby and Cal were about 20 meters out when the officer, Joe Morelli, grabbed the woman's right arm.
"So Cupcake, back already. Trouble in paradise?"
The woman had obviously not noticed him before he grabbed her, and tried to get her arm free. Instinctively Morelli held on more firmly, and the woman began to scream.
Bobby began to run towards them, while Cal had picked up his phone and was taking a film.
"Let her go", Bobby said.
"Fuck off!" Morelli replied, all the while holding on to the brunette.
At the same moment the woman turned around, and kicked him on the knee. It was a good kick, Morelli let go of her arm, and fell to the ground.
Bobby turned to the brunette.
"Are you OK, Steph?" he asked. And then he got a good look on her face. She was pretty, with a sprinkling of freckles over her slightly upturned nose, full lips, and big brown eyes. Brown, not blue.
"You´re not Steph!" he blurted out.
The brunette looked upset after being grabbed.
"I´m Annie. Is it common practice in Trenton to grab unsuspecting women?" Her British accent made it very obvious that she, indeed, was not Stephanie Plum.
"Bobby Brown." Bobby slowly, so that she could refuse if she wanted, made to shake her hand.
"Annie Morrison." She had a firm handshake, and looked him in the eye.
"This is my colleague Calvin Henderson."
Cal, still filming Morelli, came over and shook her hand.
"And this", Bobby indicated Morelli, who by the look of him, was thinking of trying to get to his feet, "is Joe Morelli. He´s a police officer, but more to the point, the ex of a woman that from behind looks remarkably like you. That, of course, is no excuse to grab a woman."
Joe Morelli finally managed to get back up. One look at the upset woman made him take a deep breath before he said anything.
"I´m sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."
"I must say that those are not the most reassuring words I´ve heard from a man grabbing me. Especially not if you're a police officer. Even if you thought I was somebody else, grabbing is not the best way to get someone's attention."
A little bit away quite a few people stood staring, whispering amongst themselves.
"As I said, I'm sorry." Morelli quickly turned around and began walking, more like limping, away.
"You got him good," Cal said, and gave her a crooked smile.
Annie did a double take when she really saw the tattoo on his forehead. A big flaming skull was not what most people decorated themselves with. Both he and his colleague Bobby were seriously built, and quite tall.
"Sorry", she said, with a slight blush. "I didn't mean to stare."
Cal laughed. "No problem, you're not the first to stare, but certainly one of the more polite ones."
Bobby gave Annie an assessing glance.
"How are you feeling? It must´ve been quite a shock to be grabbed from behind."
"I suppose I´m a bit shaken, but I'll manage. Thanks for helping me."
"I don't in any way excuse his behavior, but he and his ex, who is your look-a-like from behind, broke up about a year and a half ago. Three months later she´d married another man and moved to Florida. The other man is our boss, and they're expecting their first child any day now. I suppose when he saw you he hoped something had happened and that he´d get another chance."
Annie gave him a small smile.
"I had a boyfriend who also believed that a grab and a shake was OK behavior. So now I'm here and he´s back in Britain. And very much ex as well. I suppose that´s why it upset me, bad memories."
"Would you let us buy you a cup of coffee and talk until you're calmer? Not that you don´t seem really collected after all this."
"If there´s decent coffee or tea to be had, I´d like that."
x x x
Bobby and Cal escorted her inside the mall. Annie said that she would have an espresso, and while Bobby stood in line she and Cal found a table.
"So, what are you doing in Trenton? I don't think I've met many people here with that posh accent."
Annie smiled a little. "In my ears it's not that posh, but I´ve heard it be called that quite a few times since coming here. I´m a private researcher and I´m staying for half a year, having access to a private library in Trenton. What's your line of work, Bobby introduced you as a colleague."
"We're working for a security firm, Rangeman. We´d just been on an alarm call when we saw you and Morelli. Or rather, we saw you first, and we also thought that you were Stephanie. I suppose it's the hair."
Annie laughed. "That´s a bit humbling, I've always thought I had one of a kind-hair."
Bobby came with their drinks, and had also bought some biscotti.
"I don't know that it's one of a kind, but I suppose not many people have that number of follicles," he teased.
Annie laughed and took her cup.
"I was always teased for it in school."
"I was teased for my glasses", Cal said. "Lasics", he added when both Bobby and Annie looked at him.
"In the spirit of confessions I was teased for my weight", Bobby said. "I wasn't overweight, they called me the skeleton."
Annie took a look at the built man and smiled. "Well, we seem to have overcome most of those childhood attributes."
"I just told Annie that we work in security", Cal said.
"I´m also the company medic."
"Medic. Is that a military term?"
"Yeah, I started as a medic when I was in the army."
"So", said Annie. "You gave me the bare bones of the police officer earlier. I´d like to know a bit more if that's alright with you."
Cal and Bobby looked at each other, and Cal smiled. "I´m not all that talkative, and Bobby knows Stephanie a bit better."
"I began working in Trenton after I was done with the military", Bobby began. "It´s about five years now. We were four ex-military that decided that we ought to do well in the security business. One of us was a bit more business minded, and he managed to get most of the loans. Today he owns 49% of the company, and we other three together owns 51%. We started out in Trenton, and after less time than we had calculated, we had a solid firm. So solid that we have expanded to other cities – Miami, Chicago and Boston. Most of the employees are former military, and we knew most of them from the army, or we had some mutual acquaintance.
"One of the things we work with is called skip tracing. We try to find people who after they have put up bail don´t return for their trials. Mostly they have left some security at a bond's office, and to get the office their money back, they pay us a percentage if we can deliver the person to the police. Some are really high bonds, but some don´t pay as well. We met Stephanie Plum soon after she had started as a Bond Enforcement Agent, called BEA or more popularly bounty hunter, for her cousin Vinnie's firm, Plum Bail Bonds. She had no prior experience, was not in a good physical shape, and hated her gun. The office manager at the firm called in a favor from our boss, Ranger, and asked him to help Steph get started."
"It sounds like a tough job to work in without experience."
"It is tough. Mostly people believe that the lower bonds are not as tough, but you can get some really unpredictable people, and some quite nasty as well. Steph is very persistent, thinks outside the box and she has a lot of connections so she usually could find the person she was looking for, but was not always all that good of getting them to come with her. Almost right from the start you could tell that Steph and Ranger had chemistry, but they never really gave into it. Steph´s mum was at the same time nagging at her that she had to get married before she was too old to give her grandchildren. Obviously her mum thought that Joe Morelli was quite the catch - steady job as a police officer, had his own house and Italian. She kept nagging at Steph, and she and Morelli had an on and off relationship for quite a long time. They both have quite explosive tempers, and they both wanted different things from each other. Steph mostly wanted Joe to accept her as she was, and he wanted her to be a copy of their own mothers – stay at home mum with a spotless home, home cooked meals served precisely six o'clock every week day. If just Ranger had got his head out of his ass earlier he and Steph would have been together a lot sooner. Joe and Steph was not a good couple, and they really hurt each other over the years."
"The ex who liked to shake and grab me had a mother that sounds a lot like Steph´s. And she was also convinced that I should be a stay at home mum, wed to her lazy son, catering to him all the time. And he believed that too."
"Do they know which century we live in?" Cal shook his head.
Annie smiled a bit, but it was a sad kind of smile.
"I´ve always thought that I´d like to have one or two children, but not before I was done with my studies and had a career going. Well, and a partner as well." They all smiled at her phrasing, but understood her priorities. "My mum was a working mum, she and dad had their own dental practice, and had me when they were established. My ex´ parents started having children right out of school, five of them, and that on one income."
She took a sip of her coffee and looked at Bobby, silently urging him on with his story.
"So we met Steph when Ranger tried to teach her Bounty hunting 101. She also did work for our firm sometimes, and I also met her quite a few times to patch her up when she´d been hurt. She really hates hospitals, and being born and bred in Chambersburg here in Trenton she was very much someone who other people gossiped about, even staff at the hospital."
He took a biscotti and Cal continued:
"Steph´s about your height, maybe a little shorter ´cause she usually has shoes with heels, this really curly brown hair, and is about 30 years old. From the front you're not that much alike, especially since she has really blue eyes, but from the back with a heavy coat I also thought you were her. I´m just a bit leery of the fact that Morelli so easily grabbed you. We didn't get all the details about their last break up, but rumor has it his father used to treat his wife as a punching bag."
Annie grimaced before she took a nibble on her biscotti.
"Well, now I know that I better stay clear of him if I ever see him again. Thank you for the coffee and explanation." She smiled at Bobby. "I feel quite calm and collected now, so I´ll continue with my errands."
Bobby and Cal let her out of the booth, said their farewells and Bobby gave her a card from Rangeman. "If you want to get in touch with either one of us, or if you run into Morelli again."
"Thanks." She shook their hands and went into the mall.
Cal looked at the disappearing woman. "She was polite and well spoken, but I think Morelli spooked her quite a bit. I can't understand a man who hits or abuses women, and her ex seemed a nasty piece of work."
"I agree. And I wonder what really happened between Morelli and Steph. Hopefully we won't have to see him again. And I definitely hope Annie won´t meet him again."
Cal gave him an appraising look. "She was really pretty, and seemed nice. Why didn't you give her your personal phone number, or got her number?"
"I agree, she´s pretty and nice, but she seemed kind of sad, and not interested in me or you."
"As you´re the medic you better make sure we're not sick. I try not to say too degrading things about women, but she was good looking, sexy and nice and neither one of us got her number."
Bobby laughed and they went to the car.