Stephanie

I woke up the next morning feeling almost normal. Morelli was in the bed next to me, his arm draped across my body, warmth radiating from his core as if he were a small furnace. It was odd that he had not gotten up before me. I guess he had a long night, as well.

Remembering Ranger's instructions to call Cam as soon as I woke up, I peeled myself out of the bed and grabbed my phone. It would be easier for both Camryn and me if I just followed directions. I was sure that if I didn't check in, she would just have to come and find me anyway.

"I'm surprised that you called," Cam told me. "You don't strike me as someone who has to listen to Ranger."

"I don't," I agreed, "but I am a human, and also a woman. I'm not going to give you a hard time for something I know wasn't your fault – even if your execution was … amateur."

"Amateur?" Camryn scoffed, sounding like she was choking on something. "What are you talking about? It was perfect."

"Perfect would have been not having to go the ER at 10:00 PM on the only night my boyfriend wasn't working," I corrected.

"You mean Ranger's not your boyfriend?" She asked. I froze, unsure if she was being facetious.

"No," I responded once I got over the shock. "Ranger is not my boyfriend."

"Interesting …" Cam murmured. "So, when do you want me to show up at your place?" I padded into the kitchen and poured some dog crunchies into Bob's bowl. The sound brought him clambering into the kitchen.

"I guess I'll be ready to move in about thirty minutes," I answered. "I want to get to the courthouse and get my body receipt as quickly as I can." I had bills to pay, and Genovese had been a pretty good-sized bond. "Why is Ranger not being my boyfriend interesting to you?"

"I think it would be interesting to anyone with eyes," Cam told me. "I'll be there in thirty minutes." She disconnected. Since I was alone, I didn't bother holding back my sigh. It seemed that everyone had an insight into Ranger's feelings for me that I didn't.

Sounds coming from the bedroom told me that Morelli was awake and could smell the coffee.

"Morning, Cupcake," he said to me as he kissed me on the top of the head on his way to the fridge. "Who was that on the phone?"

"Ranger's assistant," I answered. "Her name is Cam. She's going to be following me around today."

"Why?" Morelli asked. I wasn't sure if it was wise to give him the truth, but I didn't want to lie to him either. Luckily, I was used to being in this kind of position.

"I think it might be best if you don't have all the details in this case."

"Does it have anything to do with Ant Genovese showing up in the hospital last night?" Morelli asked, cocking his eyebrow at me as he drank some orange juice straight from the carton. I would have yelled at him, but he was the one who bought the orange juice. Stocking the fridge was a little beyond my domestic capabilities.

"You could say that it does," I answered.

"She's not the one who shot him, is she?" Morelli asked.

"She says she didn't."

"Jesus Christ," Joe murmured. "Who did then?"

"She says it was his girlfriend, but who knows?"

"I don't want you to tell me anymore," Morelli said as he put his hands over his ears.

"I was hoping you would arrive at that conclusion without me," I told him as I kissed him on the cheek. "I'm getting in the shower. She's going to be here in thirty minutes if you want to meet her."

"No way I'm missing that," Morelli told me, "and no way I'm missing you in the shower, either."

OOOO

Twenty minutes later, I was showered, curled, dressed, and I had put on a few swipes of mascara for good measure, assuming that Cam would show up with her perfect winged eyeliner again.

I wasn't disappointed when I opened the door for her. As usual, I was dressed in running shoes, jeans, and a stretchy t-shirt. Cam looked more like she was ready for a New York City catwalk than a day of chasing scumbags through the dirt. She was wearing a slouchy black V-neck that hung off one shoulder, revealing a black sports bra strap, tucked into black high-waist jeans. At least the boots didn't have a heel today, so she was only towering over me a little bit. Her curls hung over her bare shoulder, still a little wet. I found myself wishing my hair could look so bouncy when it was damp. It would save me a lot of time with the blow dryer. Her leather biker jacket was hanging over her arm.

"You ready?" she asked.

"I'm ready," I told her as I gave her the classic Jersey once over, letting my eyes rake over her in a way that said I was not impressed by her wardrobe, "but it doesn't look like you are. What exactly do you think we're doing today?"

"What do you mean?" Cam asked as she looked down at herself. "These are my comfiest clothes. At least they're my comfiest black clothes. Between the hours of eight and seven I have to be in all black. It's so fucking annoying. Do you know how much more people stare at me when I'm wearing all black? It seems counter-productive but Ranger can't be reasoned with."

"Sneakers?" I suggested, ignoring her diatribe.

"Sneakers are for working out."

"Or for running," I reminded her, "which is a very common activity when you're a bounty hunter, incidentally."

"I can run just fine in these," Camryn assured me as she looked down at her Doc Martens. "Also, last night I found out that they're also great for kicking little brats in the face." She looked over my shoulder and spotted Morelli.

"Who were you planning on kicking in the face?" he asked her.

"Is this your boyfriend?" Cam asked, her tone a little judgmental for my liking.

"You could say that," Morelli answered as he took up a place next to me and reached for Cam's hand. It took all my strength to not roll my eyes. I wasn't sure how I felt about him telling people that he was my boyfriend. "Joe Morelli."

"You're the cop from last night." Realization dawned on Cam's face. "Interesting."

"Will you stop saying that?" I spat as I grabbed my jacket and herded her out the door.

"Your boyfriend is pretty hot," Camryn told me once we were in the hallway and I had shut the door. "Not as hot as Ranger, but I wouldn't kick him out of bed." I rolled my eyes so hard I thought I might have fallen down. I wasn't sure if I liked the version of Cam that was comfortable acting like a normal person in front of me. She seemed so different than the last time I saw her. Last night, it had seemed like she was focusing every ounce of her energy on disappearing. Now her presence was taking up too much space.

As we walked through the parking lot, I realized that Cam and I were driving the exact same Rangeman fleet SUV.

"We'll take my car," Cam said as she jingled the keys. "Ranger pays for the gas."

"I like it," I told her as she unlocked the doors with the keyless entry and I climbed into the passenger seat. "Our first stop is the courthouse." I buckled myself in. "Scratch that. Our first stop is Tasty Pastry. Then the courthouse."

OOOOO

Doughnuts in hand, I walked back out to the car where Camryn was waiting. She had opted not to come inside. Like Ranger, it seemed that she didn't eat fried dough.

"You sure you don't want one?" I asked, looking at my half dozen doughnuts. "I got an extra one just in case."

"One extra?" Camryn asked, this time it was her turn to judge me. "So the other five are for you?"

"I don't think I like your tone," I said to her as she turned the ignition over. Cam opted not to defend herself as we drove off. That was fine as far as I was concerned. More doughnuts for me. After a few minutes in silence, I really couldn't take it anymore.

"How did you meet Ranger?" I asked. She took a deep breath without taking her eyes off the road.

"Normally," she finally said, "I would tell a carefully crafted lie. Instead I'm going to say that I would rather not talk to you about it."

"Why not lie?" I asked.

"Because you are probably one of the few people in the world who could check my facts with Ranger himself," Cam said to me. "And though I do not think he would tell you the truth if I didn't want him to, I don't think he would let you believe a lie, either."

"I think you're overestimating what Ranger thinks of me."

"I think I have a very good idea of what Ranger thinks of you," she told me. "He wouldn't spend so much time protecting you if he didn't care about you."

"It's obvious that he cares about me," I agreed with her. "I think that's where it ends, though." Camryn rolled her eyes.

"Ranger told me that you're perceptive."

"And?"

"I think that his judgment is really clouded when it comes to you, and I've only really known him for about seventy-two hours. That's how obvious it is."

"So you never met before interviewing for this job."

"That's not what I said," Camryn corrected me. "Please stop asking me about this. We were having a good time and this is going to ruin it. We have to spend the whole day together."

"Can you really blame me?" I asked her. "I've been compelled to let a stranger into my life and I know nothing about you. Would you be comfortable with someone you knew nothing about driving you about your business?"

"No," she answered, "but I also know how to take care of myself and watch my own back, so I doubt I'll ever be in the situation you're in." It seemed to me like she was trying to get a low blow in there. I opted to take the high road. Mostly because she was right. I was completely inept.

"Can you at least tell me where you met?" I asked her. We were stopped at a red light, so Camryn closed her eyes and took a deep breath in through her nose. When she opened her eyes again, it seemed like her efforts to keep calm were in vain.

"Look," Cam said to me, her voice flat, devoid of any expression. "I know that your world is a very small place. If you've witnessed anything outside of your bubble, it has been for a week on a vacation where you probably did nothing but sit on a beach drinking expensive drinks out of a coconut. Your idea of the bad things that happen in this world is limited to the small-minded gangsters and criminals that have threatened your life in this joke of a city. I'm not discounting your experience, but I'm telling you that when I say I don't want to talk about it, it is because the circumstances under which I met Ranger were more horrible than anything you could possibly imagine. You knowing does nothing for either of us." Finally she looked at me. Her eyes were hollow and dead. Her gaze was so unnerving that I had to look away.

"Yeesh," I muttered, unsure of what to say to that. Is there anything you even can say to that? I wasn't expecting her to continue, but she did.

"I'm not trying to make you feel like I share something with Ranger that you don't," she promised me. "It's just nothing I'm willing to share with someone I know could give a fuck less about my past beyond how it affects their present."

I wanted to feel angry, but really I just felt shame. She was right. I was prying because I wanted to know more about the nature of her relationship with Ranger. She was clearly insane, and now it seemed that she hadn't gotten that way by accident.

"I'm sorry. I won't ask again."

"I appreciate it," Cam said, and then she looked back at the road. At that moment I felt like I was breathing after being underwater for ten minutes. No one had ever looked at me like that before, and I had been face to face with some crazies in my day, let me tell you.

OOOOO

Cam

My outward calm was starting to shatter. I knew that I only had a few minutes before I broke down. It always happened like this when someone pried into my past. Plenty of therapists over the years had given me plenty of great tools to keep people from asking. Hell, I couldn't count how many times I had said the exact same words I had just said to Stephanie. The problem is, people can't help being curious. It's in their nature. And I'm so clearly different.

Though I could stop them from asking, that didn't change the way their questions affected me.

"What's the fastest way to the jail?" I asked.

"Just keep going straight," Stephanie answered. I nodded as I gripped the wheel. At least she realized how distressed I was. I needed to get her out of the car. I needed to go silently to pieces in private for a few minutes. The relief I felt when she slammed the door and headed into the police station was almost orgasmic.

I pried my hands from the steering wheel and watched them shake. Hot tears were streaking down my cheeks. I pressed my hands aggressively to my face and tried to swipe them away, but they kept coming.

"Fuck …" I murmured. I didn't have time to break down. I was supposed to be watching Stephanie. Though I was sure she wouldn't come to any harm in the police station, there was no telling what could happen if she came out and I wasn't there to get her. Ranger was under the impression that she was now in significant danger because of what I did. If Ranger believed it, then I believed it.

I didn't want her death on my hands. I had enough of those. Suddenly I was aware of the feeling of the gun holstered under my jacket. I was armed. I was dangerous. It was going to take anyone a lot of effort to get to me or Stephanie, and I wouldn't go down without a fight. I never did.

I started counting backwards from one hundred. By seventy-eight the tears had stopped, by forty my hands had stopped shaking enough to allow me to grip the steering wheel once more.

My breakdown was interrupted by a knock on my window. Expecting to see Stephanie, I put on my scariest scowl and turned to face the intruder. I was surprised when I did not see her there. Instead, a Latino man with a hard stare glared at me through the window.

"Get out of the car," he ordered.

"Fuck that," I answered. He pulled a gun out of his waistband and showed it to me as if it was supposed to scare me. I reached for the handle and slowly put my hand on the door lock, knowing that once I unlocked it, I would have less than a second before he yanked the door open and pulled me out. It's what I would do. I wasn't sure if he was as skilled as I was, but I had to operate on the assumption that he was.

Almost as soon as I unlocked the door, I pulled on the latch and pushed out with all my might. I caught the intruder by surprise. The sound he made as the door knocked the wind out of him was extremely satisfying. He went down, and in the next few seconds I cuffed him behind his back and threw him in the back seat. His gun had fallen in the scuffle, so I picked it up for him before I folded myself back into the car, unloaded it, and put it in my waistband for safekeeping.

"That was way too fucking easy," I said to him as I looked at him in the rearview mirror. "You should be ashamed of yourself."

"You crazy … bitch," he gasped, still trying to catch his breath. "You're dead."

"Seems to me like you're the one in handcuffs," I reminded him as my eyes cut to the door of the police station that was connected to the courthouse. Obviously Stephanie had no idea what had just happened, so she was walking calmly towards me. It wasn't until she opened the passenger door that she started to look a bit worried. Had she not seen there was a third person in the car?

She really had no sense of awareness. It was no wonder Ranger wanted me on her.

"Who the hell is this?" Steph asked, utter confusion registering on her face.

"Beats the hell out of me," I replied. "Get in the car. We'll go find out." I was so thankful for this distraction that I was almost giddy, but I did my best to look subdued. No doubt, Steph already thought I was crazy. I didn't want to give her any more proof of that.

"Where are we taking him?" she asked me.

"Hm, that's another good question," I conceded. "You should call Ranger." The look on her face made me smile. It was a cross between disbelief and enthrallment. I knew the feeling. She dialed Ranger and put the phone to her ear. "Put him on speaker."

She complied. Ranger answered quickly.

"Babe."

"So, we've got a bit of a situation," Steph began, and I decided that I would let her do the talking. Ranger obviously had a soft spot for her, and the news would fall on his ears much more softly coming from her mouth instead of mine.

"Is everything all right?" The slight shift in his tone indicated that he was now on alert. I could practically see him pulling up the tracker on my car.

"We're fine," Stephanie assured him, "it's just that … well, there's a man handcuffed in the backseat and we're not exactly sure where to take him."

Dead silence on the other end. I couldn't help but laugh. This was the best possible distraction for the horrible headspace I had been occupying just two minutes ago.

"Do you wanna run that by me again?" Ranger asked.

"I'm going to kill these fucking bitches and leave them on your doorstep!" Our guest exclaimed from the backseat.

"Who the hell is that?" Ranger demanded, becoming more agitated.

"What's your name?" I asked our friend.

"Go fuck yourself." He was starting to squirm.

"Steph, do you wanna secure him a bit better? Maybe put his seatbelt on for him?" Stephanie nodded and put her phone down on the center console and reached to the backseat. She managed to get her hands on the cuffs behind his back and used her own set of cuffs to connect him to the handle above the back passenger door.

"Cam, you have ten seconds to explain."

"I think he might be one of those Latin Kings you're so worried about," I answered. "I was waiting for Stephanie outside of the courthouse when he came up to the door and showed me his gun. I knocked him out with the car door, cuffed him, and threw him in the backseat.

"You're not kidding, are you?"

"Wish I was," I answered. "Anyway, where would you like me to bring this asshole?"

"Have you got him secured?"

"As much as I can in this car," I answered. "Steph?"

"I don't think he's going anywhere. He's stuck in the backseat." She reached over me and flicked a switch on the driver door. "And the child locks are on."

"Smart," I complimented her. She nodded her agreement.

"I'm gonna put a bullet in your brains and fuck your dead bodies," our friend promised us. He looked really uncomfortable. Honestly it didn't look he would be able to fuck anything in that position. His arms were at an impossible angle, since his wrists were raised behind his head while his legs stretched towards the driver's side of the car behind him.

"Hear that, Ranger?" Steph asked. "You better decide what to do quickly or you're gonna miss all the fun."

"Don't bring him anywhere," Ranger told us. "Just park where you are. We're coming to you."

OOOOO

Stephanie

I couldn't believe how calm I was. Cam had this easy energy that would make any situation seem like just a scene in a sitcom. The speed with which she switched from dark and scary to light and playful was frightening in itself. I wasn't sure about how I felt about Ranger sticking me with someone who was so clearly unstable. At the same time, I kinda liked her.

She parked the car on a slow side street and took our friend's gun out of the waistband of her jeans.

"What exactly did you think you were going to do with this?" She asked him. Instead of answering, he just spit. Because of his awkward position, it didn't really get past the headrest of the passenger seat. "Can you believe this guy?" she asked as she turned to me. "Honestly some people just don't know when they're beat."

I wasn't so interested in playing games with the asshole. "Who are you?" He asked.

"I'm the least of your problems, bitch," he responded.

"Yikes," I said as I turned around and faced forward.

"Well since you're not a problem," Cam began, "do you care to share anything about the person who is?"

"Let's just say you should have never laid hands on little Glo De Silva. We're coming after you now. Your face is gonna look way worse than hers before we're done with you."

"I don't know why you've got me mixed up in this," I told him. "I didn't touch little Glo De Silva." I turned to Cam and glared at her. She just shrugged. It was like she had no fear. I didn't have that luxury. I was scared shitless, even though the guy was incapacitated in the back seat of our car.

Another black SUV approached us and parked right behind our spot. Ranger got out of the driver's seat, and Tank poured himself out of shotgun. Cam rolled down her window as Ranger approached it. Tank moved to the back passenger side door and opened it.

"Give him the key," Ranger said to me. I handed over my key to Tank and he worked on getting the second pair of cuffs off our prisoner. "What happened?" He was looking at me as he asked this and I just shrugged, deferring to Cam.

"Literally exactly what I told you over the phone." Cam responded. "I was waiting for Steph. He approached the car and told me to get out. I said 'fuck that', he pulled out his gun, I hit him with the car door, and here we are." Ranger looked unhappy. "Should I have left him there?"

"No," Ranger responded, clearly not amused, and opted not to say anything else. I could tell that he wanted to reproach her, but the truth was that she did the best thing she could have possibly done. She quickly neutralized the threat and then brought him to Ranger. Seemed to me what was really concerning him was the fact that he had the balls to approach the car in the first place. "Move. I'm driving."

"Why can't I drive?" She asked. Ranger just glared at her for a beat.

Silent and smooth, Tank got our friend out of the back seat and took him to the other SUV. He turned on the car and was idling. Clearly he was waiting for us to lead the way. Ranger was still glaring at Cam.

"I'm a perfectly capable driver," she told him.

"If you don't move, I'm going to make you," Ranger promised. We both narrowed our eyes at him.

"What, you think a woman can't drive a car?" I asked him. Ranger shifted his glare to me and I immediately backed down. I could understand why all of his men were so afraid of him. When he got that look in his eye, it was easy to believe that he would kill you without thinking twice about it. "Come on, Cam, he's driving."

Cam swiveled her head to look at me. Mock betrayal showed on her face and I shrugged at her. She wasn't getting back up from me this time. There was only so much I could do to control Ranger, try as I might. Cam sighed, got out of the car, and moved to the back seat.

"Where are taking him?" I asked.

"We have a few places where we can keep people we've apprehended," Ranger answered as he adjusted the seat a little.

"Doesn't seem like that's legal," I told him.

"I don't think anyone is going to be able to hear him complain."