A/N 1: As always not mine, but still wishing they were…
A/N 2: I wanted to apologize for the long wait in-between stories. My Father passed away from a long and tough illness and it has taken me a while to come to grips with it. Also, I want to thank everyone who emailed and messaged me, checking to see how I was.
A/N 3: This story isn't Beta'd though I would like to thank and apologize to my wonderful Betas for all their help. From now on I will be sending you all my stories but I wanted to get this out as fast as I could so I didn't send it to you guys. There was such a long wait in-between the stories I wanted to get this out as soon as I finished it… I hope you can forgive me…
Story number six in the iPod Series, after Eight Easy Steps
For this chapter everything in italics is in Spanish. (Except the song lyrics)
Not Meant For Me
By Hummer246
"Let me get this straight, you three want to have Thursday and Friday off because you're all going to Vegas to see my Babe? Is that what you are telling me?"
"Yeah, Steph invited us to come see her new place and spend a long weekend with her." Lester explained, bouncing on his toes like a little kid. Tank shook his head, doubting Lester's intelligence. He knew that Stephanie had told Ranger that she didn't want him to contact her anymore and that they should just leave each other alone for a while.
And now here was Lester, Ram and Hector asking for time off to go see her, at her invitation. This had to be killing Ranger.
"Sure, you guys go and have a great time. No Problem."
Every face in the room held shock at Ranger's words, their eyes wide, mouths open, staring in disbelief.
"Are you serious?"
"Yeah, I'm dead serious because you guys are going to be my eyes and ears and maybe leave a few little trackers on some of her stuff for me."
"Oh, um, well boss, I don't know…"
Ranger looked at Ram, his eyes black and blank, with that one eyebrow raised in question. Hector said something in Spanish to Ranger and Lester quickly agreed.
"Fine, Ram can do it. Isn't that right, Ram? You want to go see Steph so you won't mind doing this, will you?"
Ram sighed heavily and just shook his head.
############
Three Days Later: Las Vegas
Lester, Ram, and Hector were dropped off in front of a mirrored twenty-story building. They looked up at the façade of the building that Stephanie now worked at. The hot sun was reflected back at them in the bronze glass. They walked into the air-cooled lobby and up to the round desk with three people working the phones. Everything in the lobby was sand-colored, including their computers and clothes.
"Welcome to Las Vegas Bond and Security, can I help you?"
"Yes, we are here to see Stephanie Plum." Ram said nodding to the blonde woman in front of them, her two male counterparts on the phone headsets talking and directing calls.
She pointed to the counter in front of her.
"Tap the glass, then type in her name and it should give you directions to her office or wherever she is in the building at the moment. Enjoy your stay Lester, Hector, and Michael." She instructed then went back to her computer monitor, dismissing them.
Lester looked at them with a raised eyebrow at how she knew who they were, while Hector tapped on the glass counter, which turned out to be a touch screen computer. It indicated that Stephanie was on floor three, the gym. It then gave highlighted instructions on how to get there.
Ram opened a set of doors and they saw a sign that said the gym was closed but there was an arrow pointing to stairs to the right. They followed the arrow and came to an upper level and they saw about ten guys leaning on a railing looking down. On Flat-screens in the corners they could see Stephanie holding a knife with a blindfold on, a man barking orders at her and her instantly following whatever he said.
"Arm. Heart. Leg. Leg. Lung."
Lester dropped his bags in shock. He knew what she was learning. They had taught him the same sequence when he was training in the Rangers. It was how to kill as close up as possible and to be a ghost while doing it. Something was seriously fucked-up here.
"Good, good, Steph, now I'm going to cut on the music and I want you to take out as many assailants as you can, when I touch your shoulder it will begin. You ready?"
Hector grabbed the railing, his knuckles turning white with strain, as he watched his sweet angel prepare to kill as many people as she could with a knife.
The music began and steadily rose in volume until it was concert level and no one could hear anything but the beat and the screaming lyrics. They watched as the instructor touched her shoulder and stepped back off the mat. Ram adjusted his glasses and leaned in closer over the railing, watching as Stephanie took deep breaths through her nose.
Hector caught her tell right before the first man attacked; her grip tightened on the rubber knife in her right hand. Lester's mouth dropped open as Stephanie took out man after man, some with the knife in her hand and some with a kick to the head; not a single groin shot, as the men fell and rolled out of the way of the next attacker. All three of them were holding their breaths until they felt light-headed and had to breathe before they passed out.
Slowly the music faded until there was silence. The only thing heard was the groans from the men that Stephanie had taken down. Even though they could see her chest rising and falling they couldn't hear her over everyone else. Lester looked down the line of men watching and saw someone he hadn't seen in three years; he was beginning to have a very bad feeling. His head snapped back to the mats when the instructor clapped his hands three times.
Stephanie reached up and took off the blindfold and looked over at Marcus, Shadow, and Jonesy. They nodded at her and smiled at how well she was doing in her knife classes. Shadow walked toward her intending to show her one more thing, when Mitch attacked her. His arm going around her neck in a choke hold, before he could say anything, Steph had him on the ground holding his stomach and groaning in pain. She grabbed a handful of his hair and punched him in the face, letting his head fall onto the mat. Everyone knew of the animosity Mitch had for Stephanie. He was pissed that she had shown up and was making more of a percentage than him, and he had been there for two years.
"Mitch, you are now suspended for two weeks, no pay. Now leave my building before I just let her have you."
They watched as he sneered at her, but the look that Stephanie gave him made him pale and slide away from her and out the door. Her head snapped up at them and she nodded in acknowledgement that Lester, Ram and Hector were there before focusing back on Shadow.
"I can train you to be in and out of anywhere without anyone even knowing you were there. I can train you to disappear like smoke. I can train you to survive, or not. Once you are able to mentally handle killing, the physical part is easy; the difficult part will be learning how to turn it off. Are you sure this is something you want?"
Lester gulped at the words he had heard himself while training and he looked at Ram, into his eyes and raised both eyebrows, hoping that his message was read, 'Why was Stephanie wanting to learn how to kill?'
"Excellent Honey, ten attackers and only two slices; you did wonderful." Marcus said as he crossed the room and gave Stephanie a brief kiss on the cheek and forehead. Hector growled as the other man's fingers brushed against her right bicep and then on her left thigh where they guys could see florescent green marks indicating where she had been cut by the fake knives during the fight. Hector didn't like anyone touching her, even though she was covered head to toe, black long sleeved shirt and black cargo pants. Stephanie shrugged.
"Scratches only, nothing life threatening, what about the guys?" she asked as she looked at her attackers and the injuries she had inflicted. It seemed that all but one was a kill and the last was a serious wound if not treated quickly would result in death as well.
Stephanie looked back up at the gallery and raised five fingers and then pointed back to the floor, telling them to give her five minutes and then they would meet on the gym floor. The guys grabbed their gear and started making their way to the gym with the other spectators. They let everyone pass them before stepping into the gym.
"What the hell was that? Beautiful wants to learn how to kill people with a knife?"
"I do not like this. Something is going on." Ram adjusted the glasses again and sighed heavily. "Let us just see what she does and says this weekend, si?" They all nodded at Hector's suggestion and walked into the gym not knowing what to expect from this Stephanie.
Lester could see right away that Stephanie had gotten more emotionless since she left Jersey. Over the last year he watched helplessly as she lost more and more feeling, her empathy, her light that she brought to everyone at Rangeman. Sure she was smiling at them but her eyes were shielding whatever she was feeling. She had stopped broadcasting her thoughts and feelings in her eyes a long time ago. Now no one knew what she was thinking anymore but they knew she was not feeling anything.
It was as if she was a perfect replica or emotionless doll, of Stephanie Plum.
#######
Steph hugged the guys and gave them a small smile grabbing a duffle bag off the floor. She started talking as she led the way.
"Sorry guys, but I gotta work Saturday night. I have a distraction set-up. The skip's in town for some 'thing' they are having at The Palms. You guys are more than welcome to tag along and we can hit some clubs after. I don't see this thing taking more than an hour, tops." She explained as she led them out of the building and to a silver Tahoe SUV idling at the curb.
Steph was in the front seat with Jonesy while the guys were in the back watching the Vegas Strip passing out the window. Ram saw that she looked neither left nor right; just straight ahead, seatbelt buckled, both feet on the floor, hands seemingly relaxed at her sides; but he could see the tension in her muscles. How they twitched with awareness, how if you really looked at her body and face you could see she knew where everything and everyone was in relation to herself. It was as if she had a force field around her, about inch of space around her body that wasn't breached, ever.
They all got out of the SUV under the portico at The Bellagio. Steph grabbed a duffle from the cargo area and led the guys into the hotel, bypassing the casino route and straight to the elevators. Lester saw that her place was huge. Five bedrooms, formal dining room, all very sophisticated but in a very upscale five star hotel way. There was nothing of Stephanie in this condo. As they were given a tour he noticed there was not one knick-knack or photo, nothing to show who actually lived there. In fact it looked like any other five bedroom suite that you could stay in on the strip.
With the exception of one room.
This room was dead-bolted and had a keypad beside it. And with the way Stephanie acted now there could be anything from a nuclear weapon to a stalker chained up in there. With the way Steph was now, you just had no clue. And Lester being Lester, he knew he would be in that room before he left to go back to Jersey.
They all changed and went downstairs to Prime Steakhouse in the casino for dinner. They all were acting like polite, nice strangers, not best friends they had been not that long ago. Steph showed them around and then said goodnight, and went into the locked room.
Lester cracked his door and saw that there were no lights on in the apartment and crossed to the locked door. After unscrewing the faceplate and clipping two wires to his handheld computer it showed him the combination, 0812. He shook his head; he should've known she would use something of Ranger's for this. He picked the deadbolt and then the door lock and slipped silently into the room closing the door behind him before hitting the light switch.
His eyes skimmed the walls and the large table sitting in the empty room and a very large safe in the corner. It was a Lutz, and he knew there was no way he could crack that safe. Manny would be able to, but not him. On the table, the size of a Ping-Pong table, was a laptop, hibernating, and a scale model of a house with little army men around it. On the walls was surveillance photos of the house and guards, several of the men were circled in red marker and times were written beside them. On the back of the door was the poster-sized calendar that he had made out the pic she had sent to Ram and a necklace hanging from a nail at the top. He looked closer and saw they were a set of dog tags; Ranger's dog tags, to be specific.
Stephanie had some serious Intel on this house. She even had satellite images of the house and he knew those did not come cheap, especially for the high resolution that these images were.
Looking around on all the walls were schedules, car descriptions with the manufacturer's specs underneath each car showing make and model. There was several close up pictures of some men with a complete dossier underneath, even down to the type of toothpaste and condom they preferred. Everything was laid out except for a few key things. There were no names anywhere and he couldn't find a single piece of paper that said or showed the location of the house.
What had Stephanie gotten mixed up in? He took some pics of everything with his cellphone and sent them straight to Ranger and Tank and just to be safe, himself. From what he could see, Stephanie was planning something off the scale.
Saturday, the guys spent the day by the pool, in Stephanie's Private Bungalow that came with her apartment, with a personal waitress. Steph called from her office about two and let the guys know that they would meet at the entrance at six tonight for the distraction at The Palms.
The guys sat around with a beer and talked about what they had seen so far and agreed that they needed to know what Steph was up to because whatever it was, it wasn't good. Lester dialed Tank and put him on speakerphone.
"I've been going over all her skips and I can't find anything. The only thing is Ben Smith. He was a skip of Steph's they pulled out of the river. The cops were looking at her for it but the autopsy showed he'd been dead for three days before he went in the river and Stephanie was in Atlantic City with us doing a distraction when he was killed. Lester, you find anything more about that house and the men in the pics?"
"No, and I've been in that room three times now. There aren't any desks with drawers, nothing you can hide anything behind. She must have memorized all the names and locations. I can't find jack shit but what I've already sent you."
"I talked to Shadow, he's very chatty when he has a few and he says Stephanie keeps to herself and doesn't say much if anything. She's strictly business and only business. But this is interesting; she consented to having a tracker surgically implanted into her neck. She's supposed to have it done on Monday. Then she's going on vacation for two weeks but he doesn't know where. "
Hector explained as they all just contemplated what the tracker meant. This was the same woman who hated having a tracker attached to her car and now she was getting one permanently implanted inside her body.
When the guys walked out onto the portico the SUV was idling, waiting. Stephanie and Jonesy in the front seat waiting for them. All they could see of Steph was dark hair, straightened with pink, white, and neon blue chunks in her hair. She turned toward them when they climbed in.
"The skip got picked up earlier today so the distraction is cancelled. We are heading to a bar I know to hang for a while, ok?"
Everyone just nodded back at her while looking her over. She looked the same, except for the bright colors in her hair. The black leather was seriously hot-looking. Santos privately thought Ranger was a dumb-ass to not snatch her up when she had given him the chance.
Everyone had heard about their 'talk' they had almost a year and a half ago now. In his opinion she wasn't asking for a whole lot from Ranger. Lester was more than willing to give her what she had asked Ranger for; like it would be a hardship for him to knock her up, yeah right. She didn't even ask for a ring first. He was giving Ranger one more month and then he was going to make his play for her himself.
They pulled up in front of what could generously be called a Dive, and on a good day, maybe a Hole. There were five, fat-boy flat black, Harleys out front and a guy leaning against the wall by the front door, who looked like he was a serial killer on his good days, and in desperate need of a mental institution as he mumbled to himself. Steph passed him a butterfly knife as she walked by.
"Hey Crazy Willy, how's the family?" Crazy Willy laughed in that peculiar way that the truly insane do.
"Still dead and buried; thanks for the knife, its sweet."
"Laters"
"Catch ya on the flip side." They nodded to each other and she led the four of them inside. Lester looked behind him and saw that the SUV was gone and it was just them. As they sat down at a table Steph yelled to the bartender for three beers and her bottle. The waitress, who looked like you would think worked here and possibly does things by the hour, sat the three beers and a clear glass bottle with a shot glass down.
They watched as Steph took two shots and declared that someone was going to dance with her. She stood up and removed her black duster coat, showing off her black leather pants and the thing that could be called a top, but was just straps around her breasts, and tied around the middle of her back. What had everyone's jaws dropping were her tattoos. They hadn't noticed them before now.
She had wings from her shoulder blades to her lower back, where there was a holster holding two 45s. She had tattoos on each wrist that couldn't be seen from the front of her arm, only from the back, that ran up into her palms, and then wrapped around her thumbs, looking like thumb rings. Lester thought he saw a tattoo on the back of her neck when she swung her hair of the way, but he couldn't be sure. There were words on her lower back in Spanish that read, "Usted Eres, Usted Eras, Usted Siempre Será, Mi Amor Eternamente", translation was, "You Are, You Were, You Will Always Be, My Love Eternally"
After dancing with Lester, Hector and Ram, they were all sitting around the table taking a break, and chuckling about the story Lester just finished, about someone girl he had hooked up with. A new song started on the jukebox in the corner; when Stephanie swept her hand across the table and flung everything onto the floor, then pulled a gun on them, but not really pointing it at them, just laying it on the table.
She looked at Ram through her eyelashes as she caressed the 45 with her fingertips as the song lyrics were playing. She would occasionally look at Lester on her right, or Hector on her left, but she mainly kept her eyes on Ram's, everyone was silent, not saying anything to each other.
You think you're smart The jury is coming So what you got The jury is coming For me
You're not, it's plain to see
That you want me to follow
It's killing me, let's see
You've got the gall
Come take it all
Coming to tear me apart
All this bitching and moaning
Come on, it's on
I'm trapped in this world
Lonely and fading
Heartbroke and waiting
For you to come
We are stuck in this world
That's not meant for me
For me
One last shot
It seems to me
That you're not needed
Come on
It's killing me
Let's see
You've got the gall
Come take it all
Coming to tear me apart
All this bitching and moaning
Come on, it's on
For me
When the song was over she spoke, looking in Ram's eyes.
"Ya know, I've always liked you and treated you with respect. I was never afraid of you and I'm still not, you need to understand that. And because of that, I've decided I'm going to kill you last, do you understand what I'm saying? So, until we see each other again, I would get my affairs in order because this gun," she nodded to the gun spinning on the table, "Will be the last thing you see. Come and Get me" She taunted, slapping her hand down and the gun was pointing at Ram and her finger was on the trigger.
Stephanie stood up, putting the gun away and sliding into her coat, when Lester went to say something to her he saw they had been surrounded by the bikers, and they were all covered with guns pointing at them. All of their heads were spinning with the threat that Stephanie just laid down to Ranger and talking about killing him.
None of this was making any sense in Lester's head. Everything pointed to her still loving him; including the tattoo he had finally seen on her neck, as they were dancing, it was Ranger's initials, RCM. It was as if Steph and branded herself with him. But to now threaten him, say that she was going to kill him, made no sense at all.
The bikers led them outside and they saw Crazy Willy behind the wheel of a Cadillac Escalade with the engine running, and another biker loading what looked like their duffle bags into the cargo hold.
The ride to the airport was silent and tense, until Willy pulled up to the loading zone.
"I hope you enjoyed your trip to Vegas, but if I was you, I'd stay away from her from now on or you might just get hurt by what she's doing, you hear me?" They all nodded their heads and turned with their duffels to the airport, with more questions than answers. Just what exactly was she doing that they needed to stay away from and they still couldn't get over her threatening Ranger. What was up with that?
When they went through security, the wand buzzed over Hector's bag and the TSA agent asked him to open it. When the zip was pulled there was a zip-loc bag filled with trackers and bugs sitting on top of his clothes. Hector did some fast talking to the TSA agent-in-charge, about how they were security specialists here for a conference and these were prototypes they were hawking for the coming year. They all breathed a sigh of relief when the door to the plane closed and they were taxing away from Vegas.
Ram finally took the glasses off his face, turned them around and looked at them, "I hope you got what you wanted, cause now I'm pretty sure she hates all of us." He said and then folded the glasses and stuck them in his pocket.