Ranger's POV
2
Oh, Baby!
I watched Babe disappear into the elevator with a sinking feeling in my gut, but I maintained the cool façade years in the army had taught me. I knew anyone on the street could pass by me and not notice that I was ready to blow my top, but on the inside it was anyone's guess how long it took before I exploded like one of Steph's cars. I took a deep, even breath, and started to count backwards from 1,000. I had just received the news of my life, and I couldn't process it. My Babe was pregnant. ¡Mierda!
Falling into the chair closest to me, I stared up at the ceiling, and wondered how my life had changed so drastically just by meeting one woman. One explosive, spitfire, blue-eyed, slightly insecure woman with a beast of a mother, a scary-as-hell grandmother, and a long past with an asshole of a cop.
Slowly, I looked around my apartment. Nothing had really changed, but since the day she'd found Rangeman, the entire building had lightened up considerably. Her presence was tangible in the walls and the fibers of the carpet, in the seams of the furniture and even the very air circulating through the rooms. She was home, now. And she was pregnant. Damn. It all came back to that, now, didn't it?
Sighing, I grabbed my cell phone out of my pocket, hit 3 on the speed dial, and waited. "What up, bossman?" Bobby asked when he answered.
"You're monitoring Stephanie's trackers, right?"
"Uh, yeah, boss. Why?"
"Keep 'em up tonight." I hung up. No goodbye.
The two weeks of Babe's bail passed, and I only saw her once in a tense moment at the bonds office. Lula, the frightening former 'ho who had attached herself to Babe, simply shook her head at me, and Connie seemed confused by the action. I heard word through the grape vine that Vinnie was glad Babe wasn't going to skip because of just how high her bail was. I didn't take into account the fact that Babe was a genius in disguise. I didn't understand that she had been planning something the entire time everyone was waiting for her court date. And I certainly didn't know she knew how to go off the grid as completely as I did, regular as clockwork.
Sorry it's so short, but I'm still getting in the hang of this, and I'm posting my prewritten seven "chapters" this first night. - Kitty
