JE deserves the credit for the Plum Universe below.
Jen (JenRar) gets the credit for any clarity of thought or well written portions as she is the beta.
Chapter 4 – The Friendly Skies
I was rushing around, trying to assure myself I hadn't forgotten anything, when I heard the front door of my apartment swing open. I peeked around the corner, assuming it was Ranger, but needing to be sure I hadn't somehow managed to pick up a crazy just as I was about the leave town.
"You ready?" he asked as soon as I snuck a glance around the corner.
I shouldn't be surprised that I'd been spotted; after all, I was going to train people about creating distractions, not about stealth surveillance techniques. Plus, this was Batman, and I couldn't imagine anyone sneaking up on him.
I stepped out fully, figuring there was no point in trying to be covert anymore. "I think so."
He glanced at the two suitcases on the floor and raised an eyebrow. I knew there was a question in there somewhere, but didn't know if it was that I packed too much or too little.
"What?" I finally spat out, tired of waiting on him to clarify his expression.
My impatience only made him smile all the more. "I have a guy on standby at the airstrip in Boston to help you with your bags, because I assumed there would be more than what you could carry alone."
"Oh good," I jumped in. "Because in addition to those two, I have a care package from my mom."
He smiled. "Are you going to summer camp?"
I stuck my tongue out at him, proving I was definitely in the right maturity level for summer camp. I didn't even have time to focus on the fact he was moving until I felt the cool wall hit my back and his hard warm body press into my front.
"Didn't I warn you about sticking your tongue out at me?" he asked with his lips hovering less than an inch from mine.
All I needed to do was lift my chin and our mouths would touch. Instead, I froze, with the minimal distance between us causing all kinds of sparks to fly in that small space.
Ranger found his voice before I did to say, "We need to roll so you don't miss your flight."
"I thought it was a private plane that you owned," I pointed out, not really wanting to end this moment.
Neither of us moved, making the tension rise to a nearly unbearable level. Finally, Ranger lifted his head and placed his lips on my forehead. He lingered there with his hands tightly gripping my hair. Having just experienced a goodbye with Joe on Saturday, I recognized the shift in the way he was handling me.
He didn't look at me or release my hair so that I could see him as he spoke. "If you need anything while you're gone, you call me. I'll have the office provide whatever you need, but if you want a familiar face, just say the word, and I'll bring you home, or I'll meet you there."
I felt like there was more he wanted to say, but his ever present control prevented it from being spoken. After another moment of closeness, he released his grip on my hair and stepped back. His expression was neutral, and I knew he'd said more than what I'd heard from his mouth. The trouble was I didn't really understand what the rest of the message was.
Ranger picked up the two suitcases easily, leaving me to grab my box from my mother, my purse, the satchel with my laptop and new search requests from Rodriguez, and the envelope with a letter for the guys back at RangeMan. I'd stopped by yesterday with Rex and spoken to a good number of them, but for the ones that I missed because it had been a gorgeous Sunday afternoon, I wanted to thank them for adopting my little guy as the company mascot for a while and for taking care of him while I was away.
I shut the door and locked it, pausing to look at it for a second to say goodbye.
"I'll have the guys swing by to check on it while you're gone," Ranger assured me, as if knowing that despite it being what most people would consider practically a deathtrap with easy access for the criminal elements of Trenton, it was still my home, and I wanted it to be waiting on me when I got back.
The ride to the airstrip was typically silent, with Ranger in his zone and me beginning to mentally worry about meeting Rodriguez. If he were just shy, I could work with that, but if he was rude or disagreeable, I wasn't as excited about being in close proximity for extended periods.
We stopped much sooner than I'd hoped, near a cute airplane that was shiny and black.
Ranger was shaking his head and grinning. "You didn't just call my new jet 'cute' did you, Babe?" he asked in disbelief.
"Well…" I began losing any idea of how one defended that word choice to a man that took masculinity to a whole new unchartable level. "It is." I finally gave up and stood by my original opinion.
"Come on," he said, motioning before opening his door. "Let me introduce you to your new partner."
We got my stuff out of the truck and made our way to the plane, where there was a vaguely familiar looking man standing beside the drop down steps to board.
"Do you remember Erik?" Ranger asked, pointing to the well built man with a crew cut in front of us.
"You look familiar," I said, holding out my hand for him to shake.
He smiled, before explaining the déjà vu. "I was going to help you learn to play blackjack in Las Vegas, but you and your friends thought I was one of the bad guys, instead."
My face instantly went red. Now I remembered him approaching us in the casino and completely overreacting. "Don't worry. Once I meet someone, I tend to remember which side they're on. I promise not to hurt you a second time."
He laughed easily and replied, "Hal assured me you are a one and done kind of gal, so I'm holding you to it."
"Erik's going to be your pilot today. He'll drop you off and officially introduce you to Angel, who runs the Boston office. Then he'll be back once you two are ready to go to Miami," Ranger explained.
I was glad to know there was someone who was going to take care of getting us where we needed to be. I had traveled some, but I always stressed a little until I got from Point A to Point B in a strange city.
"Are we waiting on Rodriguez?" I asked, not seeing anyone else.
"No," a voice came from behind me.
I turned and saw a man I recognized standing at the top of the steps on the plane, looking at his watch with a face that said the two minutes or so he'd been forced to wait had been a huge inconvenience. This wasn't exactly how I'd hoped to begin. I realized he'd been the one to come into Bobby's office as I was finishing up and getting my Tootsie Roll Pop. If that was all he knew about me, I'd already started off on the wrong foot.
Ranger's blank face slammed down, and he picked up my bags once more to lead the way to the plane. The man stepped back, allowing us to board easily. Ranger stowed my suitcases in a little locked closet, and I put my laptop bag and purse in an empty seat beside the one I hoped to sit in. Ranger offered to take my care package, but I refused. I was going to wait to open it until we got to Boston, but something told me if I my mom packed me something to make me smile, I might just need it on the flight, so I kept it with me.
"Steph, this is Rodriguez. You two will be working together in Boston to train the staff there in better research techniques, and then you will work with their takedown team and new distraction hire to learn how to run a successful distraction for a skip capture. Do you have any questions before you leave?"
Rodriguez looked at me, and then back to Ranger. I guess that meant he was good to go.
"No, I think that sums it up," I said, feeling the need to break the silence.
Ranger pulled me to him and hugged me tightly in a rare show of affection. This kind of contact was no big deal when we were alone, but in front of the guys, he rarely held me to him. He moved us slightly so that he was facing where I thought Rodriguez was standing, but no words were spoken. Maybe he was passing along a message with the standard RangeMan ESP that everyone had but me.
Ranger let me go and lifted my chin to look at him. "Anything, anytime," he said, reminding me to call him.
"Got it," I assured him, trying to act braver than I felt about him getting off the plane and leaving me with the silent man standing across from me.
Ranger left without another word.
Erik came back with a goofy smile and told us to buckle up, promising it would take less than an hour and he didn't expect any trouble along the way. "I'll be busy up front, so you're on your own for drinks or snacks, but I'll let you know when we're cruising and you can get up and walk around to self serve."
I smiled at him as a thank you for attempting humor and wished Erik could stay to keep any awkwardness from descending when it was just the two of us.
With that, Erik closed a little curtain separating the cabin from the cockpit and left us alone. I sat down and clicked my belt into place, before picking up my box from home and holding it in my lap. I figured maybe a distraction of some sort would be helpful, since I hated flying, and obviously Rodriguez wasn't in the mood for helping to take my mind off of it.
Mom had taped up the package pretty well, so tearing it open with my hands wasn't going to work.
As the plane began to pick up speed down the runway, I opened my purse and found my keys, hoping I could use one of them to get the tape open. I ran a key down the side seam, but nothing happened. I tried a second time, pressing in harder, but that only made it jump to the side and hit the hand trying to hold the box still as the plane became airborne.
I tried not to make a big deal out of it, but the keys grating my skin hurt. Even though it wasn't bleeding, there was an angry red line over my knuckles. Seeing that might have caused me to make a noise of frustration, but when the box suddenly disappeared from my lap, I screeched from the shock of it. I quickly covered my mouth to make myself hush, and then I looked up to see Rodriguez with a black switchblade in his hand. He easily flipped the blade out, and then ran it across each side and down the middle, as though the tape were warm butter being split by a table knife.
He pushed the blade back in against his leg, and the knife disappeared into a pocket of his cargo pants, before he handed the box to me.
"Thank you," I said, hoping this might break the ice between us.
He nodded solemnly as a response, but his face didn't change at all.
Once he returned to his seat, I opened the box and tried to ignore the fact that he obviously had no interest at all in being here with me.
The flaps lifted easily, and I instantly saw two round tins inside. One was definitely larger than the other and had my name on it. The other one had a little tag that simply said Your Partner in my mother's beautiful script.
I knew there was food inside, so I cracked open mine and saw she'd made a large batch of small chocolate chip cookies. The smell was wonderful, and because of their tiny size, I could easily pop them into my mouth in one bite. They melted in on my tongue, still perfectly fresh. When I was a little girl, my mother would make cookies in this size to pack in my lunch for school. I asked why they were so little, because I knew it took her longer to make them that way instead of as a bigger size. She said it was so that I would know each cookie was a kiss from my mother, reminding me that she loved me.
It had been years since I'd seen her quarter sized cookies, but knowing what she'd once said they meant made me smile. I was tempted to rip the label off the second tin and keep them all for myself, but I realized this might be a way to thaw the ice a little. I set the box down on the floor at my feet and unfastened my seat belt so that I could turn in the chair and put my feet in the aisle, facing Rodriguez.
I held the tin with my mother's note in his direction and said, "My mother sent these for you."
He looked at me as though I was crazy, and then he glanced at the circular object in my outstretched hand. The silence made me nervous, so I started to ramble.
"She cooks all the time and loves feeding people, so when she packed up a little care package for my trip, she included a tin of her special cookies for me, and thought you might like some, too."
He kept his eyes on the tin and finally said, "I don't usually eat sweets."
Normally, I would respect that kind of determination to be healthy, but for some reason, it felt like an insult to my mother, which hooked something in me, preventing me from keeping my mouth closed. "And my mother doesn't usually cook for people she doesn't know. They're tiny. If you don't want them, give them to the guys in Boston, but there is no way I'm going to talk to my mother tonight and tell her that you refused to even taste one after she went through the trouble of thinking of you."
His eyebrows went up in stereo, making me wonder if he was unable to raise just one like me, or if I'd surprised him.
I wiggled the tin as a reminder that he needed to accept them, which snapped him out of whatever shock had grabbed him. He took the tin in one hand and set it in his lap, just staring at it.
I opened mine once more and pulled out a cookie. "See," I said, getting his attention once more as I popped it in my mouth. "They're tiny, so you pop them in your mouth whole and no one will see what you're eating."
He watched me for a minute, and then looked back down at his tin and said, "Thank you."
We rode in silence, until the curtain in front was pulled back and Erik advised us we were safe to move around.
"I'm going to explore," I announced to no one in particular, before getting up and walking to the back of the plane, where there were doors.
I found some more storage closets, two bathrooms that were both much larger than in any plane I'd ever seen before, a bedroom with a queen sized bed covered in pillows and fluffy blankets, and a room with two seats that had metal rings on the floor all around them. I noticed the floor back there was not carpeted as the rest of the plane was and wondered why that was.
I walked back up to where I had been sitting, and then moved to the front of the plane to visit with Erik in the cockpit. He gave me a very boiled down version of how he flew the plane and kept me company for a while before I figured I should get back to my seat and leave him to focus on keeping us up in the air.
I sat back down and realized as long as I'd been moving around, I hadn't minded flying, but now that I was sitting again with nothing to do, I was nervous again. I grabbed my box and started digging around to see what else was in there. I found a box of band aids, with a note from Mom that read, For your paper cuts – Hopefully this is the worst thing your new adventure will hold for you.
There were some fun pens that had different designs on the outside and a book about a crazy bounty hunter and her misadventures trying to bring in a guy she'd once dated. I laughed out loud at the book summary, thinking how crazy that was in its similarities to my life.
She'd packed a box of Tasty Cakes, which she rarely ate, but obviously she understood that I loved them. At the bottom was a magic eight ball, with a sticky note advising me that if I got lost again, maybe this would help to answer my questions.
From the corner of my eye, I saw that Rodriguez was sitting with his head against the back of the seat with his eyes closed, but I could tell from the tension in his body that he wasn't asleep. I thought to myself, Will the two of us ever get along and be able to talk? Shaking the black ball in my hands, I glanced down and saw the prediction, 'Ask again later.'
I guess the fates inside a children's toy couldn't read the closed off man across the aisle. I wondered what good Ranger really thought I could do. I couldn't melt him one on one with the offer of cookies. How on Earth could I get him to open up to me once we got to the Boston office and were surrounded by other people?
Erik pulled the curtain back to separate us as he began our descent. I threw everything back into my box and failed at getting it to fit so the flaps would close smoothly. I had to ignore that as a problem to solve once it felt like we were no longer hurling through the air at a breakneck speed.
I pulled out the magic eight ball, allowing the box to shut once more, and then held it to me and shut my eyes, trying to think about something other than the plane crashing.
Once it felt like we were no longer moving and the sound of the curtain being opened once more hit my ears, I opened my eyes and saw Rodriguez standing over me, staring down as though he had no idea what to make of the scared woman clutching a children's toy like it contained all the answers of the universe.
"It was in my box," I offered as an explanation. I quickly opened the care package once more and shoved it in, crushing some of the other items in order to force it to fit. The flaps still wouldn't close, and I was frustrated trying to make it bend to my will with an audience that I felt like was silently judging my every move.
I felt two hands pull the box away as Rodriguez took the care package, carefully moved a few items to repack it correctly, and then shut the top, tucking one flap in to keep it closed.
"Thank you," I replied as he handed it back without comment.
I doubt I could have made a worse first impression on my partner for the foreseeable future, but at least I knew some of the guys in Boston would be good for a little conversation, so I wouldn't have to dwell on it.
As I turned to grab my laptop bag and purse, I caught movement to my left and looked over at Rodriguez, who was carefully putting the lid back on the tin of cookies I'd given him and sliding it into his messenger bag. Well, what do you know? Mr. Silent Treatment had eaten a cookie and was obviously not in a hurry to give the tin back to me.
It wasn't a big sign of improvement, but I was desperate here, and any hope at all was enough for me to cling to.
Erik unlocked the door and pushed the stairs out for us. He unlocked the closet with our luggage and handed an over the shoulder duffle to Rodriguez and one of my suitcases to me. The second of my bags, he kept in his own hand as we made our way off the plane and to the two waiting SUVs.
"Gentlemen," Erik said with a big grin on his face. "Allow me to introduce Rodriguez, who I believe you all know, and the Bombshell Bounty Hunter, who I think you all came out here to meet."
All eyes were on me, so I tried to contain my cringe at hearing the nickname I disliked so much, and then corrected Erik with, "I'd really prefer to go by Stephanie or Steph."
That got me three new smiles in return. The largest of the three people standing in front took a few steps to close the distance between us and held out his hand. "Stephanie, I'm Vincent Angelino, but the guys just call me Angel."
I shook his hand, glad that he had a firm handshake without feeling like the bones in my hand were being crushed.
"We've all heard so much about you from the guys in Trenton that we can't wait to have you in our office and all to ourselves."
I realized this was probably rude to Rodriguez, so I turned and gestured his way. "We're both looking forward to working with your staff and helping out in any way we can."
I glanced at the remaining two men who had yet to speak. One I didn't recognize at all, but the other I knew from a distraction a few months back that he'd come up to observe. We'd met so briefly that it might have been tempting to forget him, except for the fact that he had a long scar running across his face from his right temple, around his eye, over his nose, and curving down his left cheek to his neck.
I raised a hand to wave at him and said, "Hey, Scar. I'm guessing after your trip down to Trenton that you'll be working with the distraction team when we're ready to go out in the field."
His whole face lit up with a smile when I spoke to him, and the other guys from the Boston office seemed completely shocked to see him with anything other than a blank face. It was too late for him to try stoic and silent with me. I'd seen him celebrating with us after the takedown, and after he got a couple of shots in him, he became a regular chatty Cathy.
The final man spoke up and said, "Well, I can't be left out here if everybody else knows you." He came closer, picked up my hand, and kissed the back of it. "I'm Needle, and it is a great pleasure to make your acquaintance."
I couldn't help myself and blurted out, "Please tell me Needle is a nickname that's going to be explained while I'm here? I mean, if I'm left to figure it out on my own, you may not come out in the most flattering light."
The guys burst out laughing and hit Needle's shoulder, prompting him to explain. "Before you start to think less of me, my last name is Needlemeyer, and I'm the medic in this office, so the guys shortened my name to just Needle."
"Yeah, you're right. That was much better than I was thinking. I mean, I've never been to Boston, so I don't know what guys are like here, but my mind went somewhere totally different with the possible explanation," I blurted out, probably making matters much worse.
Angel wrapped an arm around my shoulder and picked up the suitcase I'd set down. "I like her. I'm calling the boss to see if we can keep her permanently."
And just like that, I felt that even if Rodriguez chose to ignore me, I'd still be okay up here.
We got to the office building on Congress Street in Boston's south side, a place the guys referred to as Southie. Other than a few voices at the front desk that were thick with the New England accent, everyone here sounded and acted the same as they did in Trenton. Because the building itself looked like somebody moved the office from Haywood, it felt like we were still at home.
Scar and Angel took us to the fourth floor and showed us to our apartments, which were side by side. "You had two empty units?" I asked, wondering why they had so many open.
"No, but to thank you for coming up here to help us out, a couple of the guys decided to bunk up for the time you're here." Scar opened the door in front of me and handed me a key, before saying, "This is my place, but I'll be rooming with Needle while you're here."
I shook my head, still smiling about that name. "I feel really bad about kicking you out of your own home."
He laughed, giving me the strangest urge to run my hand over the scar on his face. When he was smiling, it didn't look nearly as intimidating. I was able to resist when he started talking again.
"Actually, every man here volunteered to let you have their place for a few weeks. I think we all like the idea of having a great woman sleeping in our bed, even if we aren't in it."
I was pretty sure my face was beginning to take on one of its trademark rose tints.
"But in the end, I won out to host you, because we'd already met, and the boss thought that since you knew me, you might be more comfortable here. Plus, my bathroom was converted to handicap accessible, with a handheld shower spray. I guess you must have an old injury or something like mine that the water massage helps, and Ranger thought you might appreciate that, since no one else on this floor has one."
Okay, if I was just mildly blushing before, now I was completely red and wishing the fates would just swallow me up. I set my box on the bar in the kitchen, trying to find anything at all to comment on to get the subject off why the boss would think I needed pulsating jets. When I talked to Ranger the next time, I was going to come up with some kind of threat for him for talking about my fondness of shower massagers. Of course, now that Joe and I had broken up, I might be glad for the relief.
I quickly unfolded the top of my box, pulled out the tin of cookies, and offered some to Scar.
He looked in, and then glanced up at me with an innocent expression on his face. "Are those homemade cookies?"
"My mom sent them along. I had nothing to do with them, so they're completely safe for human consumption," I assured him.
He reached in tentatively and pulled out one to pop in his mouth. The look on his face convinced me that I needed to beg my mother to get baking and send me up a fresh batch. I was pretty sure I could get the guys up here to do anything I wanted, as long as I paid them off in tiny cookies.
As Scar blissed out with his bite sized treat, I picked up my magic eight ball and gave it a shake, while asking it in my head, Am I going to have a good time here?
My eyes fell on the open bathroom door, just before I looked down to see the answer floating in the window: 'It is decidedly so.'
