I still wasn't super enthusiastic about being alone in Morelli's house, so I flipped on all the lights in the kitchen and living room and decided to check my email. Rex poked his head out of his soup can in hopes of breakfast. I walked to the kitchen to grab him a cracker, and Bob bounded my direction and cornered me.

"You need to go out, big guy?" I asked patting his head. He slobbered on my pants in the affirmative. I opened the back door for him and watched as he raced out into the yard circling three times before squatting and relieving himself. I flipped on the yard light and jumped back. There was a vase of dead flowers sitting near the door.

The optimistic side of me wanted to believe that Morelli had bought me flowers, hid them outside, and completely forgot about them. I gave the vase the once over looking for any signs of foul play, but from a glance I didn't come up with any. It wasn't until I went to pick up the vase that I noticed it.

The dead flowers had an oddly familiar scent. It was hard to detect at first because Bob had started digging, and all I could really smell was fresh dirt. I stuck my nose right up next to the flowers and inhaled. Sure enough, the dead flowers smelled slightly of Ranger's Bulgari shower gel. Not good.

I nervously called Bob back in the house and went to find my cell phone.

"It could be worse," I thought. "The flowers could have been waiting on the kitchen counter." Still, this was the third morning in a row of shenanigans, and they were all giving me a very bad vibe. I dialed Ranger's number.

"You haven't been sending flowers, have you?" I asked when I heard the phone pick up. No answer. "Ranger?" I said. "Quit with the awkward silences already. I got a weird flower delivery this morning, and I need you to come and check it out." More silence. I glanced at my phone. The call was still going, and it was connected to the right number. Maybe it was a bad connection?

I was about to hang up when I heard a faint sound on the other end. "Ranger? Is that you?" My heart dropped in my chest and I got a really bad feeling.

I went and looked out the front window. Thankfully Ranger or one of his men had dropped my car off last night. I'd forgotten all about it amidst all the excitement with Bruno. I glanced down at my phone. The call was still going. I put it on speaker and raced to throw on some jeans and a clean t-shirt. Bob watched me with a worried expression.

"Everything's alright, Bob," I said mostly to reassure myself. I filled Bob's food and water bowls and dashed out the door.

Halfway down the street, I realized that I wasn't entirely sure if Ranger was even at the Rangeman building. It was still early in the morning, but for all I knew Ranger had pulled an all-nighter and was out somewhere taking care of a client. Since I had nothing else to go on, I sped towards Rangeman. If he wasn't there, at least there would be people who would know where to find him.

As I pulled up to the building, I heard some crackling on the phone followed by an eerily familiar raspy voice.

"Does the cop know?" it breathed ominously, and the line went dead.

"Does which cop know what?" I yelled in my car. "What does that have to do with anything, you sick psychopath?" I pulled into the Rangeman garage at warp speed and screeched into the first available parking spot. I skipped the elevator and took the stairs by two's until I'd made it to the fifth floor.

I stormed into the room and frantically ran toward Ranger's office. The door was half-open, but Ranger wasn't there. I yelled for Tank. Hal, yet another oversized Rangeman employee, poked his head in the door.

"Tank's out right now," he said calmly. "Ranger didn't come in this morning, so Tank's picking up his rounds." Shit.

I sprinted back toward the elevator and sent it to the seventh floor. I wasn't sure what I was expecting to find. For all I knew, Ranger had been drugged, kidnapped, and was now dead at the bottom of a river. The door opened, and I dug out the spare key Ranger had given me to his apartment. I choked back a nervous whine and tried to steady my hand to open his door.

The apartment felt normal enough. Nothing was overturned or out of place. No sign of a scuffle. No blood dripping off the walls. Ella's flowers were in a vase in the entryway, and breakfast was sitting on the kitchen counter.

"Ranger?" I called.

I was kicking myself for not having my gun. Wasn't Ranger always telling me to keep it accessible? Now here I was in a situation where I could really use it, and I was coming up empty. I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and kept walking through the apartment.

I went into the bedroom. No Ranger. The bed was still unmade and the walk-in closet door was open. Ella hadn't made her rounds yet this morning. I poked my head in and flipped on the light. Ranger's all-black wardrobe hung in pristine condition. His shoes were neatly organized on the floor. No bogeymen in the shadows.

I walked back through the bedroom to the bathroom. At first glance it was empty, but then I saw a dark form crumpled in the corner.

"Ranger!" I yelled dropping the knife and rushing over to him. His eyes were glazed over and he was foaming at the mouth. "Oh my gosh! Help!" I screamed in a panic. I couldn't gather my thoughts long enough to figure out what to do. From the looks of it, Ranger must have been poisoned, but what did I know about poison?

My hands were shaking so violently, it took me five tries to unlock my phone. First I called 9-1-1 then I called downstairs to Rangeman. Several men in black came barging into the room minutes later. Hal pulled me to my feet, and gave me a hug.

"Ranger's been through worse," he said in an effort to console me. "He'll pull through." My legs felt like jelly, and I watched in a daze as people hovered over Ranger muttering different things. Finally the paramedics showed up and took him out on a stretcher. His eyes were still glazed; he was still unconscious.

Eventually things died down and everyone made their way out of the apartment except for Hal and a few cops. Hal stayed behind for me. While the cops returned to the bathroom to look for evidence of foul play, I crumpled to the floor in the kitchen and started crying.

"Someone was in here," I sobbed. "I called Ranger, and someone else answered." Hal looked at me incredulously.

"No disrespect, but do you have any idea how difficult it is to get in here?" he asked. "Ranger's like Mr. Security. I'm pretty sure he specially designed the system in here. As far as I know, it's impenetrable."

Even I had to admit that things weren't adding up. Of course I'd never had to officially break into the apartment before, but I knew Ranger had many high-end clients that trusted and respected his security systems. They were state of the art.

There was the slim possibility that it could have been someone working on the inside, but the hiring process at Rangeman was extensive. Ranger trusted every single one of his employees, and if there was any suspicious activity, it didn't take long for Ranger to uncover it. This whole situation seemed incredibly suspicious.

I wiped my face on my shirt, and Hal pulled me to my feet offering me a tissue for my still-running nose. I wasn't sure how much information Ranger had shared with his crew about our recent problems, but I knew most of it probably wasn't public knowledge. As much as I liked Hal, I decided to keep my thoughts on the situation to myself.

We both walked to the door and back to the elevator while the police finished with their walkthrough.

"I probably need to head down to the station to give my statement about what happened," I sniffed. "With Ranger out, do you think you'll get the day off?" Hal looked over at me and laughed.

"Yeah right. He'll expect double the effort. We might even have to put in some overtime." That totally sounded like Ranger. In fact, if he was conscious, he was probably giving the nurses hell to let him out of the hospital. The thought almost made me grin until I remembered how he looked leaving the apartment. What if he didn't wake up? I tried to push the thought from my mind as I dropped Hal off at the fifth floor.

"Thanks for staying up there with me," I said giving Hal a peck on the cheek. "Sorry I came unglued." He smiled.

"Anytime," he said. I watched him walk off into the bustling workplace as the doors closed. I continued down into the garage in the basement and went and sat in my car. I grabbed a pen from the floor under the passenger seat and found an old receipt to write on. It was time to jot some things down, but I had no idea where to start.

I tapped the pen on my steering wheel then threw it across the car in frustration. I was upset, confused and slightly terrified. And I hadn't a clue what to do next. A small part of me wanted to go check on Ranger at the hospital, but I knew I wasn't ready to see him hooked up to all those machines. The other part of me wanted to sneak back upstairs to his apartment to do some snooping.

If Hal was right and Ranger's apartment was impenetrable, there were only three possibilities of who could have been responsible for the poisoning. There was Ranger, who owned the place and had the master key. I figured it was pretty safe to assume he wasn't suicidal. I had a key, and as far as I knew, it had been in my possession the entire time of the incident. And the last person who had access to the apartment was Ella, Ranger's resident housekeeper. She and her husband lived on the fourth floor of the building and provided their impeccable custodial talents and cooking services. Maybe it was time to pay Ella a visit.