Disclaimer: Nope, they are still not mine, nothings changed.
Notes: huge thanks to the readers and reviewers out there! you guys rock my socks!
One of the reviewers asked what is going on with Stephanie's family right now; and while I wont be bringing them into this, since lets face it Ranger would hardly stop in for coffee cake and coffee to ask Grandma and Mrs. Plum if the 'burg grapevine knew where his Babe was...*snort* oh that idea has me in stitches! Ranger would probably develop his very own Stephanie plum style eye twitch... LOL
They WILL probably get a one or two line mention where appropriate-that's part of the problem with becoming a fugitive, you cant exactly go home for dinner at 6pm without SWAT and the FBI showing up (not to mention a pissed off Tank!) This chapter will let you know a bit more about what happened to Joe during all this, so maybe that helps? -K
Typos fixed! 8/25 740 pm est
Chapter Eleven
Ranger's POV
March 31, 2014 - Day 139
The call had come up from five at close to ten thirty the previous night. He'd finally gotten the information he'd needed to track his Babe. Hector had double checked the tracker's GPS signal—in both passports and they still showed the same locations—San Juan, Puerto Rico—specifically old town. The pilot had been informed, flight plans arranged, Lester had done a little dance towards the elevator to pack his tightest t-shirts, Hal and Cal had bitched about not being on the core team. And Tank and made lots of un-happy faces, which was usually Ranger's job.
Ranger had hung up on them all, then stopped answering the phone and locked the door to seven and spent some serious time contemplating a bottle he hadn't touched since Scrog. Now head pounding, military duffle bag packed he was driving toward the Newark Airport where they would be taking off for Miami Florida, and then immediately bouncing to Puerto Rico.
His Babe was incredibly crafty Ranger mused, for probably the hundredth time since this all began—Puerto Rico was 'outside' the country yet one of the few places that didn't require a passport to visit. The PO boxes were available online and tracing back mail showed she'd sent several packages to the three boxes she'd purchased on different parts of the island. Ranger assumed the packages she'd dropped into the mail to her real PO boxes contained the money she'd walked off with in the early morning before her flight and if he had to guess the guns—most likely in broken down form. Separate parts wouldn't alarm most mail screenings since people ordered parts all the time. Most or mail carriers wouldn't seize mail or start a full blown investigation just because a few springs or barrels went through their system, and she'd used different initial companies for the drop off.
No mailing company had transported the parts for one complete gun. Chances were good no one but Rangeman realized the PO boxes had receive enough 'spare parts' in that first week to reassemble two complete and unlicensed weapons without the proper paperwork. When he finally got his Babe back they were going to have a serious discussion about how devious she'd been in all this—he was starting to feel like she'd been holding back on him. When pushed had come to shove while he was in the wind he imagined she'd surprised even herself at her ingenuity and strength.
Steph and Julie had apparently boarded a cruise ship in the port of Miami after their bus trail and a short taxi ride still under a false ID and sailed away with full desert bar. The thought made his lips twitch into an almost smile. His Babe had style, and chocolate, that had to help her stress levels.
The photos in the cruise companies database—digital copies of photos taken on board the first three days of the trip had been forwarded to Rangeman after a formal security request—which may have sounded like they were part of the official FBI investigation and definitely mentioned they were searching for a missing child. The woman on the phone had been rightly upset and insisted there must be some mistake when she'd pulled up the photos on her own computer before forwarding them on to Rangeman—this child couldn't be kidnapped, it simply wasn't possible. When Ranger's own laptop upstairs had pinged later that night showing him the file of forwarded photos sent up from Hector on five he'd understood the confusion.
He'd rarely seen photos of his Babe or his daughter looking so happy. Every picture he flipped through they were smiling and laughing and hugging large costumed sea-life on the deck of the ship, rock-climbing, getting ready to step off of the boat in front of a decorative round white and blue life-preserver that declared they were in 'San Juan, Puerto Rico!' it was the last picture they'd had made on board. The cruise director had assured them that according to digital records Both passengers had went to port in Old San Juan, but never returned to the ship.
The trackers Hector had slipped inside the Passport jackets before dropping them off with Cred, and Stephanie's PO boxes on the island agreed.
Ranger had spent half the night flipping through the photos of them both. Julie was dressed like a boy, but there was no mistaking his daughter, or his Babe—though her hair was shorter and clearly straightened in almost every photo she was laughing and smiling and didn't look bothered in the least to find herself on the wrong side of the law.
Ranger scowled at the reflection catching his eye in the rearview mirror, it had only taken him seconds to spot the tail, he knew the car so didn't bother pulling out his phone to call it in. At least he'd had the decency not to use his lights. Even so the tail on his Porsche was possibly the very last person in the entire state of New Jersey he wanted to see.
Making his way off the turnpike and into the parking lot of one of the way-stations situated between exits so he didn't have to deal with the tolls to exit and return to the road after this shit was through Ranger parked far from the building. At this distance people would be less likely to overhear their conversation if it turned heated. And admittedly because the steep grassy hill at the edge of the lot with the drainage pond at the bottom seemed a tempting place to quickly lose a body should the need arise.
He didn't bother to get out of the car; he'd stopped out of courtesy. The Trenton police had been kicked off the investigation for Stephanie Plum same as Rangeman—and he couldn't think of a single other thing he could possibly be involved in since his return which would draw the attention of this particular cop specifically. He certainly hadn't killed anyone-yet.
Joe got out of his car dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt over another. His face was drawn and tired as he approached and he needed a shave. Ranger let the window roll down as the other man drew nearer. He didn't speak, and at first neither did Joe. They eyed each other reproachfully through the open window before Joe shook his head marginally and glanced away over the parking lot and to the fields surrounding the turnpike beyond that. But Ranger didn't believe the man was actually seeing any of it. He knew that look, he knew it well.
"I was going to walk up to this car and demand that you tell me where you had her." Joe's voice was quiet though, no heat in the words. Even their previous stare down had lacked the open hostility they'd once seemed to almost revel in portraying towards one another. Alpha dogs were usually wise enough not to tangle with one another when there's no trophy for the points. Even if Stephanie wasn't a prize to be fought over—the very idea would have sent her into full blown Rhino mode and he'd no doubt she would have drop kicked both their balls into next week…but that simple fact had never stopped the posturing.
Ego is after all Ego—even if it's pointless and stupid, he never said he didn't have his faults. Hell he was growing more aware of them every damn day.
"And now?" Ranger found he honestly wanted to know.
"Now, I know you don't have her. It's written on your face." Joe gave him an odd look Ranger didn't like, it made his hands itch on the steering wheel and his knuckles tightened almost imperceptibly against the leather grain under his palms. He pursed his lips, facial features schooled into a carefully blank mask that had saved him so many times before, in re-cons and ops and top-secret missions where one screw up, one tick—one tell was the difference between life or death. He didn't like the idea that Joe could read him, even in a small way—and especially not about something as sensitive as his Babe.
"It's the eyes." Joe told him holding his stare for a long moment before looking away again, out over the field, or maybe to the sky beyond even that. "I know that look." His voice had gone tight—strained.
Ranger felt the snarl building in his chest, but pushed it down. How many times had he lost control this week? He'd lost count. He'd destroyed half his apartment just last night after too many shots of vodka reminding himself in the morning not just with the pounding headache and desert for a mouth but with the staggering destruction he barely remembered doing why he didn't drink. Especially not when he had a damn fucking good reason to and his control was already slipping.
He drew a tight breath and let it go, knowing he'd regret asking but needing to know what the other man saw when so many men before had missed so much. "What look?"
"Pain," Joe answered and even the syllable seemed difficult for him to work out—like admitting it out loud was a defeat he hadn't expected. "I've seen it before, with Scrog. When Julie and Stephanie were in there, and you made the choice."
It wasn't a choice he wanted to say, because this man of any other should understand at least that. It wasn't just pain then either, he almost voiced; it was surrender. The final price he was willing to pay to save his Babe and his daughter's, no matter what the cost.
"You're still in love with her." Ranger realized eying the other man. The man who didn't have missions; and darkness filled with secrets, the man who didn't have countless deaths on his hands and horrors etched into his very soul. There were no shadows waiting in Joe's past possibly biding their time to leap out and rip everything from his tentative grasp. This man who'd had her in his bed so many nights that Ranger had to stop keeping track after a while because it made him want to down half a bottle of vodka and destroy things to remind himself he was alive, the rest of the time it made him want to drink away his precious control and then crawl to her door and beg her to forgive him every stupid thing he'd ever said about not needing her like air.
And Joe still couldn't hold onto her with all those advantages.
Because her heart wasn't his.
"Christ," Joe breathed out sounding pained at the other man's blunt wording. "Who wouldn't be?" Then he walked back to his car, climbed in and simply drove away.
Maybe Joe never won her even after all this time because his Babe was always meant to be his.
Ranger sat for frozen, mentally walking himself through every memory—every kiss and word and touch they'd ever shared long after the cop drove away. Long enough that Manny called from the control room to check on him—make sure he was alive.
He was parked awfully close to that ditch after all.
Stephanie's POV
November 23, 2013 - Day 11
My heart clenched the moment I opened the packet standing beside the PO Box with Julie by my side. She was leaned against the wall of metal boxes staring out the big plate glass window across from us, presumably at the mixture of tourists passing by on the cobble stone street even at 8am on a Saturday morning. Really she was playing lookout for muscled men in black and anybody that looked like an FBI suit.
"What's wrong?" Julie's voice was quiet, but had an edge to it—tension that had never been in her voice before this all started, before her initial kidnapping almost a year ago—before Scrog. Sometimes I laid at night wondering what the long term effects of this mess might be on her. I shook those thoughts away. My spidey sense was telling me even before I reaching into the packet that was clearly postmarked as originating from New Jersey that something was off.
What was wrong was her passport had a photo in it—and there were four of them. "Shit," I said.
"Shit what?" Julie asked her voice growing more impatient.
"Don't curse," I said. And Julie shot me a look through the dark fringe of bangs hanging in her eyes that clearly said; Hello, we're fugitives, potty mouths are the least of our problems!
Right. "Come on, let's get out of here." Julie nodded in agreement. I closed and turned the key on our PO Box to lock it back up and we left the postal office.
"So what's going on, you have to tell me," Julie said as we started walking. "I'm the only other person here!"
She was right. "There are four passports, not two," I told her, "and I never gave the guy your photo because I didn't have a passport standard photo to give him—I also didn't think it was a good idea considering the alerts that were going to go out."
Julie nodded slowly, and lowered her voice again as we slipped into the crowd her expression thoughtful, assessing. "So someone gave him my photo, and sent you extra passports." Julie said.
"Yes." Julie made a hmmm noise in response and we walked on.
Someone knew. Without a doubt—and I was pretty sure I knew who it was, and I was obviously torn. I mean the fact that a fleet of black SUV's or a sea of FBI suits and local police hadn't shown up outside the café was a good sign right? It'd been almost two weeks since our escape, seven full days since we left the cruise ship and never went back—plenty of time to organize the Rangemen into a full scale island invasion. They had to know we were here if someone at Rangeman had supplied Mr. Gap-Tooth with Julie's photo—and obviously paid for, or 'negotiated' two extra passports. Though I had a very strong feeling it wasn't the kind of negotiations I'd done as a pantie buyer for EE Martin; I'd never had to introduce someone to my fists. Yikes.
The moment we got back to the apartment I pulled up my new laptop and booted up the computer, the Café downstairs offered wi-fi, and we had the password and while it was dangerous to do this, if they already knew where my real PO boxes were located there was a good chance they already knew exactly where we were anyway.
"I don't want to leave," Julie said plopping down on the couch beside me and hugging a turquoise and white pillow. Her fingers picked at the tasseled fringe on the corner absentmindedly while I entered the password for my private email—the one Hector had set up for me—the one Julie had originally used to alert me when this entire mess started.
As I suspected I had several emails, about fifteen from Tank all pretty much the same message growing more and more harassed with each day:
Little girl, Are you in trouble?
Little girl, Where are you?
Steph, What's going on? Call us please! We're all worried!
Then after the fifth day shit got more Tank-afied:
Stephanie, What the Hell is going on? Where the Fuck are you? Why do you have Julie? Your Trackers are all over town, you're not in Washington, North Dakota or LA! The Fuck is going on?! Shit around here is getting ugly! Call me, Now!
And finally:
Stephanie, if you don't contact Rangeman in the next few hours I'm going to have no choice but to turn all our information over to the FBI. My hands are tied. -Tank
There was even several from Lester, but all of his were more pleading and asking if I was in trouble; begging me to call him so he could help, a few he even offered to meet me in private anywhere, anytime to help me with whatever it was I was on to. But even the tone of those grew more depressed and anxious as the days went on. Those emails made a lump form in the back of my throat and stopped opening them before I reached the last one. I didn't want to know. Julie had remained quiet this entire time still sitting beside me, I knew she was reading over my shoulder.
"He's a good guy," Julie said quietly when I stopped opening Lester's emails, and I was suddenly reminded that Lester was actually Julie's uncle.
The most recent email was from Hector, and there was only one.
It was short and sweet and left no doubt in my mind that he'd been the one to fix my passport problem—after all he was the one I'd taken with me that day to see the damn guy. I should have known. It was stupid to think Hector had bought my ridiculous lie about the FTA and information, or to think that he was too busy playing with the radio to notice what was going on inside. He was Rangeman after all, they were astute like that. He'd probably seen me fill out the form at the counter and since he was one of Ranger's main informants on Stark knew exactly what that thing was for—Hell it wasn't like I'd taken anything inside to pawn that I could actually get money for!
Angelito—I still believe in you. Stay safe. I let you know the minute he is home. -H
"Is that him?" Julie asked still sitting beside me and I nodded. She pursed her lips and we both continued to stare at the screen for a long while before I marked all the messages as unread (like that would stop someone like Hector, or Silvo or even Tank from knowing I'd accessed them, which it probably wouldn't) and closed the laptop down.
"What do we do?" Julie said. "It doesn't sound like Hector will turn us into Tank, he's going to tell us when my Dad comes home—that's a good thing right? I mean, he'll know long before we can figure it out; we're not even in the country!"
I nodded. It was a good point, but I was also worried that Hector would cave if Tank or Lester or several of the other linebackers at Rangeman or even the FBI leaned on him—they could threaten Hector with jail time, or threaten to just shoot him or throw him out a window, (if it was Tank.)
"We probably can't stay here—at the very least we can't use those passports." I reasoned, which was a pretty big problem. I'd planned on having two really good passports to get us through the airlines and some place even farther away—though we hadn't decided on where yet, somewhere in Europe? Julie had told me Brazil, which I thought was an odd choice but was definitely far away and as far as I knew pretty safe…I think.
"So we need new passports?"
I nodded and then blew out a breath the magnitude of that one problem weigh on me. Without my contacts I had no idea where to start to get that done here. It also hadn't occurred to me just how dangerous getting the fake passports the first time around might have been for me—In New Jersey I was 'Manoso's Woman' anytime I went somewhere remotely dangerous, it had probably saved me more times then I even wanted to know. Here I had no insight, no connections, and no protection beyond what I could offer myself—and I had Julie to think of.
Shit.
"We need another plan?" Julie said.
"We need another plan," I agreed.
"This is my favorite part," Julie said practically rubbing her hands together in front of her at the thought.
Definitely Batman DNA.
TBC, sorry this was a short one compared to the last few ones!
