All familiar characters are JEs, not mine. I make no money. Just doing this for fun and cause I'm bored at work! Also first story so reviews and constructive criticism welcome! ENJOY!
I spent the day thinking about everything and making a mental inventory of everything I owned.
It wasn't much. Well not much worth keeping anyways.
I was going to try to make this transition as easy as possible. I went through all my clothes and threw anything Trenton or Rangeman related into a bag. Samantha was from Hackensack so I figured my Rangers Jerseys and stuff were safe.
I started writing letters to everyone telling them I was leaving. The letters to Connie, Lula, and Mary Lou were pretty easy, but the rest took a lot out of me.
I tried to be as vague as I could while still making sure they understood my reasons for leaving. I didn't tell anyone about the baby in any of the letters and instead used me and Joe's final breakup as a catalyst reason for leaving. Seemed reasonable to me.
Writing a letter to my parents was hard, especially the new found understanding my Mom has shown me. I thought maybe Me leaving would actually be better for her and my Dad. In my letter to Grandma I told her the apartment was hers and everything in it. I would pay the rent for 3 months for her up front to Dillon the night before I left.
I wrote Dillon a short letter explaining I was leaving and giving Grandma the apartment. I made a note to buy him a case of beer, knowing I'm sure he would help her move in.
I wrote letters to Lester, Tank, and Hector. I told them I would miss them, and I would keep in touch to let them know I was ok. I would miss Hector the most probably. We had gotten close over the last year. I felt bad leaving all of them, but the more I thought about the letter to Ranger, the more I knew I needed to go.
Joe's letter was easy, all things considered. I felt ready to move on from that relationship a long time ago, I realized.
The letter to Ranger was the last one to write and I couldn't get past "Dear Ranger, I promise I haven't been kidnapped again."
I figured I'd done enough for the day and still had 2 weeks to finish it.
I wasn't sure what was going to happen in the next 2 weeks, but I was mentally preparing for it as I fell asleep.
…
I woke up late, rushing out the door to get to Tank's office by 8. Thankfully no throwing up today, cause otherwise I would definitely been late.
I skidded into a parking spot, attempted to run to the elevator, and made it to Tanks office door by 8:01.
"You're late." He said without looking up from his paperwork.
"Thirty seconds." I said. Out of breath.
"A late is a late. Weather its 30 seconds or 30 minutes." He said finally looking up.
"I'm sorry. I'm not used to how much slower the boot makes me yet."
"O yeah. I forgot about that. Sorry." Tank said finally looking up from his paperwork.
"So I'll go start on some searches?" I said going to turn back towards the main floor.
"O no. Not so fast. You'll have plenty of searches to do, but I have other tasks for you to do while the computer runs its programs. I've cleared my morning schedule to go over some of the duties you'll take over while you're here full time."
Other duties? I figured I'd just run searches and make coffee.
Crap
"With Ranger and Bobby gone, all the administrative responsibilities land me on and Lester. We usually break them up between the core team, but we all hate paperwork. We've tried to hire an administrative assistant for the office before, but Ranger and Bobby are anal about how things get done."
Shocker there.
"You'll take over the weekly schedule, trainings and certifications, and inventory ordering for now."
Tank took the next 45 minutes to show me how to go over the schedule and day off request forms, what trainings and certifications were due and how to go through each employee file to find them, and the purchase requests forms.
"Tank. I know you guys know what you're doing and I'm sure you have your reason for doing it this way, but why don't you use a centralized system like workday for all this stuff?"
"A What?" Tank looked confused.
"It's a software that does all this for you. Like a digital human resources department."
"There's a computer program that does that?"
I nodded my head.
"Do I need to hire a tech guy to make something like that for us?" I was confused.
Hector was the tech guy.
"Call Hector up here, please." I still wasn't sure who knew Hector spoke English so I played it off like Tank would have to translate.
Tank called Hector up to his office while I got a few bottles of water from the break room. I walked past the coffee pot and almost lost it. I was in such a rush this morning I hadn't eaten anything yet and was starting to feel pretty queezy, so I grabbed a whole grain muffin off the counter and scarfed it down before going back to Tank's office.
Usually those muffins taste like cardboard, Ella must be doing something different with them because that one was delicious.
When I walked back into Tank's office, Tank and Hector were just staring at each other.
I felt like I had just walked into a dog fight.
"Shut the door, Stephanie." Tank said through gritted teeth.
"Um, this looks like I should go." I started to back out the door.
Tank gave me a look like shut up and do what I say.
Which sent me into rhino mode.
I walked over to the door, slammed it shut and turned to look back at Tank and Hector who were still staring at each other.
"OK, first of all, who do you think you are?" Jersey sass in full swing.
Tank looked shocked and Hector started laughing hysterically.
Tank looked at Hector even more bewildered at him laughing. I very rarely heard Hector laugh and even then it was never near Rangeman.
"Who…..do…you…..think….you….are?" Hector spat out between laughing.
"O shut it Hec." Tank looked like he was trying not to laugh himself.
"Did I miss something here?" I'm really confused.
"I called Hec up here, per your request, to talk about this workday thing. Apparently this is a sore spot for him." Tank explained.
"I told jefe almost 2 years ago about workday. I said it would make paperwork easier here. He said ok, do it. So I call the company and set it up. Then when ready to go, he says no. I don't want it." Apparently Tank knew about Hector speaking English.
"So Ranger was the one who said no to workday?"
"I've kept it active and updated. All the information is there and ready to go. It took almost 8 months for the initial set up with the company, and it wasn't cheap. I wasn't shutting it down." Hector said.
"Paranoid Fucktard" Tank mumbled.
"Did you just call Ranger a "paranoid fucktard"?" I was shocked.
"He is. We've kept all of his info out of Rangeman online since Scrog. Hector has secured everything with more firewalls than the government has, especially after the data breach. All of your info and his is all stored on a private server, not connected to anything." He explained.
"Ok. So what you're telling me is we have the systems to run everything, and we don't because the owner of the company is paranoid?"
Both Hector and Tank nodded their heads.
"And none of Ranger's information is in this?" I asked Hector. He nodded
"I'm not stupid, Estephania. You know this. I keep everything classified on private servers. The only things we use this workday system for is schedule, Purchasing, Time card management, stuff that businesses use. All the other information, including the health records are on a different system and server. This was only to make the guys admin work easier for them."
"Then get it up and running. I've used it before so I'm pretty familiar with it, unless it's changed. We can teach the other guys, it's all pretty simple. It's not fair to Tank and Lester to have to do all this work by hand when they are gone. This would take me forever to do by myself."
"Ranger is gonna be pissed." Tank said looking at Hector
"It was Estephania's idea, so he will think it was brilliant." Hector said sounding irritated.
Tank picked up his phone and called Lester into his office.
Lester came bounding in, kissed me on the cheek, and plopped down on the couch.
"Hola, ¿que pasa?"
"Stephanie just came up with an idea to make my job a hell of a lot easier and eliminate a lot of the administrative paperwork I do every day." Tank looked smug.
"What the hell, that's not fair! I want her help. I'm never gonna get to go back in the field with all these damn purchasing contracts." Lester was whining like a 5 year old.
"You guys act weird when Ranger is gone." I said looking around. I could tell Tank was just messing with Lester by not telling him I would be doing the purchasing orders too.
"No, we act differently behind closed doors, out of view from our subordinates." Tank said.
'I'm a subordinate." I said to Tank
"No you're not, you're a mem…" Hector shut up abruptly with a death look from Tank.
"I'm a what?" I asked looking at Hector. He just shook his head like I'll tell you later.
"Lester acts the same all the time." I pointed out.
"Les is an idiot who never gets left in charge." Tank said.
Rude
"Too much paperwork being left in charge. Screw that." Lester said not sounding even offended in the slightest.
I felt a huge weight being lifted off my shoulders. I could help the guys get set up in the next 2 weeks and wouldn't feel like I left them high and dry.
I went down to the basement with Hector to his office and started working on getting all the files updated and relearning a system I haven't used in years.
Before I knew it, it was after 7:00 pm, and Hector was telling me to go home.
He had set me up on a company laptop connected to the secure Rangeman servers so I could work on it at home.
I went home, took some Tylenol for my foot, propped it up on the coffee table and started going through all the files and parts of the system to relearn it all.
I ate some frozen pizza, took a nice hot shower, and watched some late night TV.
It was weird being home and in bed by 10. Usually I was staking out some FTA, doing a distraction for Ranger, or watching the game at Joe's.
It was kind of nice, though I had a feeling I would start to hate the monotony of it soon enough.
I woke up, on time this morning, got dressed in my standard Rangeman gear, threw up twice, and headed to the office a little early.
Before heading up to 5, I stopped on 3 and went to talk to Jess. I didn't get to talk to her yesterday about my fun little visitor on Sunday morning.
"Hey, how's it going?" I asked walking through the front door of the medical suite.
"You know who scared the crap out of me Sunday on my morning run, so I'm guessing he was here to see you." She said looking up from what looked like taking inventory.
"Yep. Crawled into bed at God knows what hour of the morning."
"Crawled into bed?" Jess asked.
"He does that, just takes over my bed and lays on top of me, suffocating me."
"He's a weird guy." Jess laughed
Another understatement I thought to myself and just kinda laughed.
"Soooo….." Jess drawled.
"2 weeks. I don't know where though."
"I do. You're not gonna like it either." She said.
"Ok, now that he told you and not me, I'm a little irritated"
"He didn't tell me, and he doesn't know that I know." Jess said quietly.
"What?"
"He mention the name Cat?" She whispered.
"Yeah, he said she would be helping me. He also told me Lester was the best tracker and he knows for a fact he can hide me from him. Is Lester tracking Cat?" The question had been burning in my mind for 2 days.
"Dinner tomorrow night, your place. I'll explain what I can. But not in this building."
I looked at my phone and saw it was 7:55, "I gotta get upstairs. I'll see you tomorrow night. 7 good?"
"I'll bring Pino's"
"A woman after my own heart" I told her walking out of the medical office.
I went back up to 5 and started unpacking the laptop. I would use that from now on for everything and Hector transferred all my files to it yesterday.
I walked past Ranger's door and felt my heart contract. I missed him and wondered constantly where he was and if he was ok. I guess this was a feeling I would have to get used to, but promised myself it would get better when I knew he was back, even if I wasn't here.
I spent the next two days setting up all the files and scheduling work group meetings over the next week. I wanted to get everyone up and running before I left. It didn't seem like nearly enough time.
I spent all of Wednesday training Tank how to use it. He asked me why he had to learn it if me and Hector were there, and I used the excuse I was only going to work in house till my foot was healed, then I was going back to the bonds office. He started mumbling something about "Not if I have anything to say about it". I decided to just ignore it.
Even if I wasn't leaving in a week and a half, I sure as hell wouldn't be working here full time with Ranger after the little man showed up.
Talk about awkward.
I was putting the final touches on the training presentation I had for the first round of guys tomorrow when my phone rang. It was Jess
"O CRAP! Are you at my apartment already?" I asked her
"Nope, its only 6:45 and I'm just now picking up Pino's. You've been so busy the last 2 days I had a feeling you would lose track of time again after Tank told me you were there till 2030 last night."
Tank had cornered me last night about 8pm and tried to convince me to take an apartment on 4. He had obviously thought about it because he made some really good points that, if I hadn't gotten knocked up, I probably would have taken him up on the offer.
"Ok. I'm leaving now." I said
"Leave the laptop there." She said sternly
"Jeeze. Fine. I'm leaving it here."
I left it sitting on the desk and hobbled my way to the elevator and out to my POS. I drove home and made it up to my apartment by 7:00.
Jess was waiting at the front door with a pizza box and a big takeout bag.
"Good timing, just got here." She said as I opened the door.
She put all the food on the kitchen counter and we dug in. I gave Rex a piece of salad greens and he stuffed it into his cheek and ran up into one of his tunnels. He didn't spend as much time in his soup can now that he had tunnels.
Jess grabbed her cell phone and shut it off and went to my bedroom.
"Uh. What was that about?" I asked when she came back.
"Have you noticed Lester isn't exactly fond of me?"
"Not really. I just thought he was upset Bobby was gone."
"Like I said before, I was close to Cat and he thinks I know where she is. Which I do. So the fact that I won't tell him pisses him off. He and Tank have gotten into it over the years about bringing me onto Rangeman when Bobby is gone. He thinks I'm "untrustworthy"." She said using her fingers as quotations.
"He's done some sneaky shit over the years looking for her. I wouldn't put it past him to put a bug in my cell."
"Wow, I didn't know any of this before. Les has always been the goofball. He seemed cool with you before"
"Always has been, but he can be very serious when he needs to be."
"So Cat is indeed your friend you told me about. Who Lester has been tracking." It wasn't a question.
"I know I probably don't have to tell you this, but all of this stays between us."
"Oh, I'm not going to be the one to tell Lester he has a kid. That is NOT a conversation I want to have with anyone."
Literally, anyone.
"So yeah. You know the bulk of the story. Cat found out she was pregnant on an OP and decided it was safest for them all if she went away. So she did. I've never seen or heard of another tracker as good as Lester is. Most people don't even know Diesel exists, so it's easy for him to be number one. You make mistakes hiding when you don't even know there's someone coming after you." She said taking a big bite of salad greens.
"I had asked him just the other day actually about how I never see him with women. He got really defensive about it. Now I guess I know the truth."
It all made sense now. Lester loved her and she left him. And to be the best tracker and not be able to find her must be eating away at him daily. Guys and their easily bruised egos.
"This is why I wanted to tell you. It hurts to leave, but I've had to watch both of my friends be miserable for the last 6 years. I've also had to watch a little boy grow up without his dad. He just turned 5 a few months ago and he's starting to be aware he doesn't have a Dad like the other kids. I don't know what Cat is going to tell him when he finally does start to ask more serious questions."
I was quiet for a few minutes while I took everything in. I was second guessing my decision and having a hard time convincing myself it really was for the best.
"So Diesel called in a favor to her. To help me?" I asked Jess
"She called me after talking to Diesel. He told her you were connected with Ranger in a way and that's why he wanted her to help you out. She called me and I hope you don't mind, but I did tell her a little bit about you. She initially said no, you were too close to Lester and if he ever found you, he would find her. She only agreed to help you out after hearing it was Ranger's baby."
I thought I would be upset she told someone who was a complete stranger to me about everything, including that it was Ranger's baby, but instead I was thankful to her. If it wasn't for her right now, I would be totally on my own and I didn't have the slightest damn clue what I was doing.
"Thank you. I know you stuck your neck out for me and you've been a great friend to me, even though I've barely know you a week."
"You're family to Tank and Lester. And they are my family." Jess said
"So, care to tell me what city I'll be living in?" It was killing me not knowing, especially since she told me I would hate it.
"Well It's not Detroit." She said smiling.
"That makes me think it's not much better." I had a good feeling I was going to be somewhere cold and not the sun filled beach I was so desperately hoping for.
"It's a lot better than Detroit."
"Quit playing! Diesel wouldn't say anything either."
She pulled something out of one of the fast food bags. It was another, smaller gift bag.
She handed it to me with a smile.
"What's this?" I asked
"Just a little something for you in your new city."
I pulled the orange fabric out of the gift bag and held it up.
It was V-neck maternity t-shirt made of bright orange faded fabric with a brown, growling bull dog on the front that said FUTURE DAWG POUNDER underneath.
"Cleveland? As in Cleveland, OHIO?" I asked
"Hey, at least it's not Detroit." Jess smiled.
