"What are we doing?"
"You'll see in a minute."
Aurelia and I were standing in the Rangeman lobby waiting for Lula and Connie to show up for our big Fourth of July plans. I'd kept her in the dark about what we were doing on the off-chance that something happened to interfere with my plans, only telling her that my friends were coming over. I heard the thumping of Lula's bass about twenty seconds before I saw her car pull into the visitor's lot. She and Connie climbed out of the car and headed towards the front door, both dressed in halter tops and short skirts. Once they were admitted entrance by the Rangeman employee assigned to the front desk, I made introductions and told everyone to follow me onto the elevator. When we arrived on the seventh floor, I thought Lula and Connie were going to explode with happiness. They had begged me time and again to take them up to Ranger's apartment over the years, but I had refused. I knew I was probably going to regret bringing them in now, even for just a minute, but I hadn't been able to work out a better plan.
"Okay, ladies," I said as we all walked through the quiet apartment towards the kitchen. "The plan for tonight is that we will make margaritas down here and then take them up to the roof to watch the fireworks."
I turned around to find that only Aurelia had followed me into the kitchen.
"Where are Lula and Connie?"
"I think they ran towards Carlos's bedroom," Aurelia replied.
We both headed to the bedroom, where I found Lula rifling through the bedside tables and Connie in going through Ranger's underwear drawer in the dressing room.
"What are you guys doing?!" I shouted. I wasn't so shocked by Lula's behavior, but I'd thought Connie would have had a little more restraint.
"I doubt we're ever going to have this opportunity again, so we are taking full advantage of it," Connie replied unashamedly.
"Yeah," Lula agreed. "Like I would have never known Ranger used Magnums if I hadn't come in here. Good for you, girl. I always thought he looked like he was packing something good."
I tried not to blush as I slid a glance in Aurelia's direction. Either she possessed Ranger's uncanny ability to display no emotions when confronted with an uncomfortable situation or else she hadn't understood Lula's reference. I prayed it was the latter.
"I've got to admit I'm surprised to find all of these pairs of underwear," Connie said, holding up a pair of black boxers. "I always figured him for a commando kind of guy."
"You two need to get out of here before Ranger finds you and kills us all."
"Too late," came Ranger's voice from behind me. I sucked in some air and turned around to face him.
"We were just stopping by the kitchen for a minute, but they got away from me," I blabbered. "I was just trying to get them out, I swear."
Aurelia nodded enthusiastically. "It's true, Carlos."
No one said anything as Connie and Lula slowly closed the drawers they had opened and made their way towards the bedroom door. Ranger caught Connie by the arm as she tried to walk around him to leave the room. He finally broke his eye contact with me when he pulled a strap of Connie's purse down her arm enough to reach inside her bag and pull out a pair of his boxers that she'd been attempting to smuggle out. She gave him a sheepish look before scurrying out behind Lula, dragging Aurelia along with her.
"I really am sorry," I whimpered.
I saw the corners of Ranger's mouth twitch. "Babe, I believe you. No apology necessary."
I stared at him for a beat. "Then why did you look like you wanted to kick the nearest available ass?"
"I wanted to get the message across to Lula and Connie that it wasn't acceptable for them to be in our bedroom going through our personal belongings."
Our bedroom? Our belongings? I hadn't even had a chance to unpack the stuff I'd brought with me to leave here and he was already giving me ownership.
"Thanks for not being upset with me. We'll just grab our margaritas and head up to the roof now."
"Why are you drinking margaritas on the roof?"
"It's for Aurelia. She told me that your other sisters get together every year and watch fireworks from Silvia's roof and drink margaritas, but that she was never allowed to go. I talked to Louis about how to access the roof, I brought stuff over to make margaritas—virgin margaritas for Aurelia—, and then I asked Lula and Connie to come over. I wanted her first holiday here to be special."
Ranger kissed me on the forehead and wrapped his arms around my waist. "Thank you, babe. She'll love it."
"Do you want to join us?"
"No, I'm working tonight. I'll check in on you later to see if you're still upright."
Ranger left the apartment and I headed to the kitchen, where Connie and Lula had started making the margaritas. Aurelia was standing by watching the process with obvious pleasure. I opened the refrigerator and found that Ella had prepared a small platter of food for us consisting of sandwiches, brownies, and a couple of different dips for the chips that sat on the counter. Not the standard Rangeman food, thank goodness.
"Don't put the tequila into the margarita mix," I told Connie. "Aurelia can't drink and I'm probably going to have to limit myself to one with tequila if I want to stay conscious for very long. We can add as much as we want to each glass."
The roof was accessible from the stairwell and Louis had left the doors unlocked for us that evening. Upon our arrival, we found four adirondack chairs with tables arranged between them set up for us on the roof, undoubtedly Ella's doing. We set our food and drinks down and each took a seat, taking in the sounds of illegal fireworks, faint music, talk and laughter from people walking down the street, and emergency sirens that indicated Trenton's celebrations of America's independence were in full-swing. The last glimmers of twilight were visible on the horizon and I guessed the fireworks would start within the hour.
"Why haven't we ever done this before?" Lula asked as she took a big gulp of pomegranate margarita. "We're gonna have an excellent view of the fireworks without some drunk-ass fool trying to get a piece."
Aurelia's glee was evident as she took a sip of her margarita. "This is so cool. My sisters aren't the only cool ones now."
"Damn straight," I replied, clinking glasses with her.
After we ate our food and refilled our drinks, Lula decided we needed some music. Most of her music ran in the hip-hop and rap genres, but after a margarita with quite a bit of tequila, I found I was able to dance almost as well as Lula. Connie decided not to dance, saying someone needed to be able to see if we were getting too close the ledge, but Aurelia was up and shaking her ass without a care in the world. I had a feeling the guys in the Rangeman control room might be laughing at us, but I didn't particularly care at that moment. I was having fun, and more importantly, so was Aurelia. At one point, she insisted that we all crowd around her for a group photo to post to her Facebook page.
The city-sanctioned fireworks began booming in the distance shortly after ten o'clock and the roof of the Rangeman building proved to be one of the best views in the city. The entire display lasted about twenty minutes and once the finale was over, the city expressed its pleasure with more illegal fireworks. Somehow, Lula and Connie managed to talk me into one more margarita while Lula taught us something called the Cupid Shuffle. The next thing I knew, I was naked in Ranger's bed with sunlight streaming in the windows. I found him lying next to me, watching me with an amused expression on his face.
"What?"
"How's the hangover?" he asked.
"I don't remember what happened after my second margarita," I said, snuggling into his chest to protect my eyes from the bright light that felt like laser beams.
"According to the men in the monitor room, you guys drank and danced until you fell over. Ella set up cots for Connie and Lula in Lia's apartment and my men helped get you three off the roof. You woke up at some point in the night, still drunk, and started sending me text messages."
"What kind of messages?"
Ranger reached over to his table and grabbed his phone. He pressed a couple of buttons and scrolled through the screen for a few seconds before handing me the phone. It took a second for my bleary eyes to decipher the messages. I had misspelled a bunch of words and when Ranger asked how drunk I was, I had responded with a topless picture of myself. I was standing in the dressing room and took the photo in the mirror. I felt my face go red as I stared at the picture. I had never in my life taken dirty pictures like that. The rest of the conversation proved to be equally embarrassing. I said things in the messages that I wouldn't ever say out loud or in written word and sent him more naked pictures.
"Oh my God. I can't believe I did that," I said, giving Ranger his phone back and immediately looking around for my own. I didn't want to say it to him, but I was worried about my judgment the night before and if I may have sent any of those pictures to other people.
"You didn't send them to anyone else, if that's what you're worried about," Ranger replied. "I checked."
I breathed a sigh of relief, but still grabbed my phone. "I still want to delete these photos. I don't want to risk accidentally forwarding them to anyone or having them found if someone grabs my phone."
"I don't intend to delete them from my phone," he told me while placing a kiss on my bare shoulder. "In fact, I couldn't wait to get home so I could fulfill your requests, especially that first one about eating your—,"
"Please, don't say it out loud," I begged, putting my hand over his mouth. "I'm mortified that I actually said that to you."
"Why? I've done it to you several times and it happens to be one of my favorite activities," he replied as he pushed the sheets off of our bodies and climbed on top of me. He kissed me deeply before moving his way down my body and fulfilling not only the first request, but the three requests that had followed. The experience was not only magical, like it always was with Ranger, but also proved itself to be a better hangover cure than McDonald's fries and a Coke.
While Ranger stayed in bed to get some sleep, I took a shower, unpacked the things I'd brought to leave at the apartment and then headed home. I fed Rex before I went to my closet to start digging through the clothes that would be acceptable to wear to work at Rangeman. My dress code in bond enforcement had been jeans and t-shirts, so that made up ninety-percent of the clothes I owned. I decided to thin out the closet a little, piling worn out clothes in a bag, and headed out to Goodwill.
I had intended to just drop the clothes off and head to the mall, but as I passed the windows, I noticed a really cute dress on display and decided to see what the store offered. I wasn't a snob. Two hours later, I walked out of the store with ten pairs of pants, five pairs of capris, four skirts, and twenty tops that would cover every season. The dress had been too small, unfortunately. But the whole trip had only cost me $150 because I'd been lucky enough to show up on a half-off discount day.
I spent the remainder of the day cleaning my apartment and doing something I hadn't done since the first week I'd lived in my building, which was to use the basement laundry facilities. I survived the event unscathed from the gremlins that I was convinced lived down there and by seven was starving for a pizza. Ranger showed up thirty minutes after I placed my order with my pizza in hand.
"I ran into the delivery guy in the hall," he told me.
"Are you going to join me?" I asked him as I opened the refrigerator to grab a beer.
"I can't. I came over to tell you that I'm heading for Boston as soon as I leave you. My managing director, Josh Duncan, took a hit while on a call. He's in surgery now, but they aren't optimistic about his long-term recovery. He's co-owner of the branch and we were supposed to finalize paperwork for me to buy him out this week. I need to be up there to check on him and his family and to keep his men functioning in his absence. He has a wife and eight-year-old twin girls and is well-liked by his men."
I could tell Ranger was worried about his partner, so I went over and gave him a hug. He wrapped his arms around me and we stood silently for a minute in each other's arms. I was not only worried about Josh, but I was worried about Ranger. He'd always been hesitant about a relationship with me for reasons that had included his dangerous job. I hoped that Josh's injury wouldn't set us back or cause us to stagnate in our relationship when it was just getting started.
"I'm not sure when I'll be back," he said after another moment. "But I'll keep you updated. By the way, Chuck told me to tell you to check your email. He sent you some stuff to read before you start on Monday."
We headed back towards my door, but before Ranger moved to open it, he gently pushed me against the foyer wall and kissed me. The kiss was tender, but no less spectacular than any other kiss.
"Love you, babe," he whispered.
"I love you, too," I replied. "I know Ella's there, but I'll still stop in and check on Aurelia every day."
Ranger nodded, kissed me on the forehead and left the apartment, leaving me to my pizza and beer with a slightly heavy heart. I spent the rest of the evening and most of Sunday reading the Rangeman employee manual and rules of employment confidentiality that Chuck had sent me on the iPad I'd gotten from Rodriguez. I could tell Ranger had had a hand in the policy writing, as it was very concise and direct. No flowery language or long-winded explanations. Do your job, or else face his wrath.
Monday morning rolled around much faster than I would have liked. I managed to haul my carcass out of bed at six-thirty so that I could be dressed and functioning when I walked into HR at eight. I figured with Boston's office not only being down an HR generalist but now their managing director that Chuck would be stressed beyond belief. Even though the men didn't know each other that well between offices, there was still a sense of brotherhood that would mean the Trenton guys would be feeling the pain of their Boston brothers. Ranger had called me Sunday afternoon to say that Josh had made it through surgery and survived the night, but that it was likely he would be paralyzed from the waist down. The sell-out of the business was currently on hold until it was determined whether Josh would be returning to work. If not, then Ranger intended to give him more money in the buy-out. He had also told me that he would be home on Tuesday evening and asked if I would spend the night with him. No one had needed to hold a gun to my head to agree to that.
I arrived at Rangeman at ten minutes to eight and went straight to the HR office. Chuck pounced on me as soon as I walked in the door.
"Did you read the manuals I sent you?"
"Yes, I did."
"Then I need you to start going through every office's personnel files and check to see if anyone is overdue for physicals, evaluations or recertifications. Anyone overdue gets an immediate email and ass-chewing from their managing director. Then I want you to work on the list of people who are due for any of those things within the next sixty days, got it?"
He hadn't stopped once for a breath and had continued typing on his computer the entire time. I was impressed by the level of multitasking.
"Okay, I can do that if you'll just show me how," I said, setting my purse down next to the small desk that was presumably mine.
Chuck sighed heavily, as though I should already know how to do this, and took five minutes away from his computer to walk me through the program HR used to record and monitor employee data. I quickly learned how to run a report for certain date ranges, by particular topic, for the entire company and for individual offices. Through running the reports, I learned that every field employee of Rangeman was required to have an annual physical that met certain standards, psychological testing every five years and trained in CPR and first aid, defensive driving, weapons, hand-to-hand combat, surveillance techniques, and strategic planning, all of which was recertified every one to two years, depending on the topic. My first run of overdue recerts found three in Miami, one in Atlanta, and two in Boston. There weren't any overdue in Trenton, of course. Ranger wouldn't stand for that. All of those that were overdue had just recently expired, but only one had a note in the system as to why they hadn't been completed, which was a man who had broken his leg last month and was undergoing physical therapy. No one else had reported an injury or valid excuse, so I emailed each individual, copying Chuck, Ranger, Tank, George the trainer, and the respective managing directors to the email with a deadline of scheduling their needed appointments by the end of the week. Two of the men had immediately replied to my email with excuses of why they couldn't meet that deadline. I had replied with a simple "Quit whining and do as you're told" to both of them before moving on to run the list of people who had trainings coming due.
"You can't tell people to quit whining!" Chuck shouted. "Jesus Christ, you're working in Human Resources. You're supposed to be the objective rule-enforcer. Their boss is the one who kicks their ass."
"I figured this was Rangeman-style HR. I can't imagine Ranger holding his employees' hands over some lame excuses for not getting something done," I replied.
Seconds later, I heard my email ding and saw a reply from Ranger.
Babe. Maybe this HR job should be permanent.
After a glance back at Chuck, who had gone back to typing, but was shaking his head and mumbling under his breath, I composed a reply.
I think Chuck would disagree with that. He didn't appreciate my response as much as you.
Ranger's reply came back two minutes later.
Chuck is a very good manager, but also an uptight asshole. I tell him so every year in his performance evaluation.
I barely restrained a snort of laughter at the visual that popped into mind. It was always disconcerting to see Ranger in his office, so I couldn't imagine him doing something as mundane as giving a performance appraisal.
The job of contacting the list of employees due over the next sixty days turned out to be a lot more involved and I was only about half way done by the time lunch rolled around. Chuck and I headed to the dining room to grab lunch at noon and he talked the entire way, telling me about how I should always eat lunch in the office while I worked in HR because it didn't do well to fraternize with employees outside of the professional HR relationship. I managed to not roll my eyes at him. I knew several of the field employees well, having been protected or rescued by them multiple times over the years. I wasn't going to walk around with the same stick up my ass that Chuck did. After grabbing my lunch, I left Chuck and headed up to Aurelia's apartment to see how she was doing. I ran into her talking to Ella about learning to prepare sandwiches for the lunches each day. Once I knew she wouldn't need me for the day, I took my lunch back to the office and finished in record time, since Chuck was still working while he ate and looked at me like I had two heads because I wasn't.
I finished my task around three that afternoon, just as Chuck was heading out to a meeting with the accounting department. When I asked him what else I should be doing, he'd simply grunted that I should familiarize myself with the entire system. I was scrolling through the employee list trying to get a count on how many people worked for Rangeman when I stumbled across Ranger's name. And his personnel file. I bit my bottom lip and tap my foot under my desk. It would be wrong to look at his file without reason, right? But perhaps his trainings were coming due one day after that date range I'd searched? He'd want to know. With a prayer that Ranger didn't have an alarm rigged that would blare throughout the company if I looked at his file, I clicked on the link to his name and his personnel file appeared on my screen. No dire warnings, lightning bolts from God, alarms or immediate phone calls came in the first couple of minutes after I opened the file, so I figured it was safe to go ahead and browse.
Employee files consisted of the usual information like demographics and job history, but also with medical details, IQ tests, psychological profiles, government security clearances and background checks. I'd seen employee files in the past when I'd been helping Ranger look at whether a rash of break-ins was an inside job, but I hadn't seen his file. Next of kin had listed his parents, followed by all five of his siblings. An addendum had added Julie's name to the next of kin following her kidnapping and the revelation to the world that Ranger had a daughter. He had no allergies or medical conditions, but his more serious injuries had been listed. He sported a Top Secret government security clearance, and had been arrested three times for weapons charges in New Jersey, Nevada and Florida, but all charges had been dropped. He had a sealed juvenile record, which I knew was from the time when he had stolen a car as a teenager. His work history went all the way to his high school days when he worked as a life guard at Rocco Beach in Miami. He'd worked part-time for his father for two years while he'd attended Rutgers, Newark to study business. His time in the Army had lasted five years. His post-Army jobs had included bond enforcement for his cousin in Miami along with a job at a security agency in Miami. It also showed where he had moved back to New Jersey two years after leaving the Army and did bond enforcement for Vinnie while Rangeman was in its early days. No crappy, embarrassing jobs like hot dog vendor or lingerie buyer for Ranger. The results of a Stanford-Binet IQ test had measured his IQ at 136, which fell into a "gifted" category.
Attached to his file were two psychological assessments. One had been completed when Ranger was first getting his business off the ground. The other had been completed two years ago. I knew from the Rangeman policy book that employees had to undergo a psych evaluation every five years, or more frequently if a highly traumatic situation occurred. The second test had coincided both with the five-year mark and Julie's kidnapping and Ranger's most serious injury. This was where I was getting into some very deep waters. I could click on the links and see what the hell was going on in Ranger's head, but was that too far? Did that overstep even the bounds of a romantic relationship? I knew it did to some extent, but part of me justified that Ranger was so private and secretive that he would never share the information with me otherwise. Making an executive decision, I quickly printed off both copies on the printer at my desk, sealed them in a large envelope, and put it in my purse, which was located in one of my desk drawers. I knew there were cameras on me in the office, so I was casual and discreet as I placed the envelope in the drawer, thankful that my messenger bag was open so that I could easily slide the papers inside. I closed out the personnel record and went back to exploring the system until Chuck returned at four-thirty. He informed me then that he had spoken with Fredrick Rodriguez about my hours in Sales and they'd agreed that I would report to Sales from eight to noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays during my time in HR. I bid Chuck good evening and nearly ran for the door as the clock struck five.
I felt like a spy smuggling out state secrets as I left the Rangeman building, wondering if I was going to be busted for accessing the reports and tortured in a small, dark room for days on end. As I drove back to my apartment, I began to feeling increasingly guilty. I had in my possession very personal information about Ranger that I'd obtained without his consent and through my position within his company. He had trusted me to take this job and not to misuse any information I received and this felt like a violation of that trust. But there was still a part of me that reminded myself of his secrecy and how I'd never get to know the depths of his demons if I didn't take a look. When I got home, I took the envelope out of my purse and stared at it. I didn't have to open it right now. I could think things over and then decide after a while whether to destroy it or read it. I figured I owed it to Ranger to give him time to open up to me with our new relationship status. With that guilt-freeing thought in mind, I found some packing tape in a kitchen drawer and secured the envelope to the underside of my bedside table.
