As promised, this chapter, I start solving clues of the crossword. And just in case you don't have the clues at hand while you're reading this, I have included the cues into the chapter, despite my first draft which merely stated the number and the solution.

Chapter 11

There was yelling coming from all corners of the office when I rolled out of the elevator Monday morning. In one ear I was battered by a very loud argument, the subject of which was undeterminable, while the other was subjected to excited whooping. It was a little like being in a crowded bar, but without the pressing bodies, alcohol and smell of urine. Carlos and I stopped, staying absolutely still as we attempted to pick up individual lines of conversation. I sent him a questioning look as he cocked his head to the side, but he didn't say anything. Instead he stuck his fingers in his mouth and let out a long, loud whistle. The entire floor went completely silent.

"General meeting," Carlos said, barely raising his voice. His men were just expected to hear him, which they always did.

It always amazed me watching the diversity of the Rangemen and their methods of gaining attention. All Tank had to do, for example, was stand up, or walk into a room with a certain air about him. Carlos could get away with that as well, but in a situation like this, it clearly wasn't going to work. Lester tended to put on his drill sergeant voice and bark out some commands, which, again, Carlos was known to do, but only in dire situations.

"Five minutes," Carlos went on, drawing me out of my thoughts. "All staff. Skeleton on deck." And with that, he leaned down, dropping a kiss on my forehead before heading for his office.

Assuming that 'all staff' included me, despite my lack of enthusiasm for meetings, I started toward my cubicle to pick up my laptop. If I was going to be made to sit through a dang meeting I may as well have something to do. Probably, I wouldn't even be needed to contribute. It wasn't like I was the expert on anything much other than searches around here, and what were the chances of them needing me to run a search or give them a refreshed on how to get the results they want themselves? Hopefully, zilch.

When I made it to the conference room with twenty seconds to share it was to find that as always, I was the last to arrive. Jews fine with that, usually, but something about being the last to arrive AND being in a wheelchair just made me self conscious. Not only where they all watching me as I entered, I had to manoeuvre myself around all the people in the room. And let me tell you, it was packed. Standing room only, kind of packed. I couldn't even see the conference table.

"We saved you a seat with a clear view of the screen," Tank informed me when I stopped in the doorway. I glanced beyond him in the direction he hiked his thumb, which I knew to be the end of the table and noted that there were at least two dozen people between me and it. Why had I never realised how many staff we have on each shift?

Making a decision, I hauled myself into an upright position and gave my chair a shove so that it went back out into the hall. Tank raised an eyebrow T me, silently asking what I was doing. "Can I get a lift to my spot?" I requested by way of explanation. His eyebrows shot up to meet where his hairline would have been if he had hair. It was quite comical, and I probably would have laughed had I not been concentrating on staying upright. "What? Is there something on my face?"

"You're standing," he stated the obvious, pointing to my legs.

"No shit, Sherlock," I rolled my eyes and lifted my arms. "Now give us a lift." He looked over my shoulder nervously, as if checking that Carlos wasn't watching, not that it really mattered, because even if he did get angry about the fact that I asked someone other than him to carry me somewhere, he'd get over it. It was only Tank. "Seriously, Tank," I prompted, getting impatient. "What's the worst he can do to you? I've seen your sparring sessions, no one wins. Ever." I wiggled my fingers in the hopes that he would just do it, and was rewarded when he scooped me up and walked quickly in the direction he'd indicated. The men in the way hurriedly scurried to the side to let us through and before I had the chance to take two breaths we were standing directly next to Lester and Bobby who were quite obviously guarding the space at the very end of the table. But there was no chair. I raised my eyes at them, but remained silent.

"Aw, come on!" Lester complained. "You have your own chair that you take everywhere! We thought all we needed to do was save a space."

"Now we're gonna have to make one of these guys stand," Bobby added, gesturing to the table full of Merry Men.

I almost laughed at their exaggerated grousing, but the fact that Hal, who was sitting nearby, immediately stood and moved his chair into the space at the end of the table gave me pause. "Set me on my feet," I requested of Tank. As soon as he did so, I beckoned Hal back over and gave him a quick hug, thanking him for giving up his chair before I plopped into it.

When I raised my gaze from the table, intending to check if the screen had come alive yet so I could attempt to work out the reason for this gathering, I found myself staring directly into my husband's eyes. He stood at the opposite end of the table, hands braced on the surface as he eyed me with a semi-closed expression, one eyebrow raised in question. As if in reply to that eyebrow, which was the only expression-like feature currently residing on his face, I raised my hand and gave him a finger wave.

The corners of his mouth tilted up slightly, but his brow remained erect.

"You weren't there," I called down to him, assuming he wasn't happy about someone other than himself carrying me anywhere. "Tank was."

"Babe," was all he said before he lifted two objects from the table in front of him. My laptop and handbag which I had, of course left in my wheelchair when I shoved it back out into the hall. I sent him a smile as I reached my hands out in a gimme-gimme gesture. He shook his head and disappeared from sight only to reappear at my side a moment later. How he'd managed to get all the way down to me, through the masses of oversized bodies, in so little time, I had no idea, but it was these mysteries that kept me entertained.

"You should have waited for me," he said softly, placing my laptop in front of me and my handbag beside my chair. "I was literally walking down the hall when you wheelchair exited the room of it's own free will."

I rolled my eyes at him. "You always say I should ask for help when I need it, Carlos," I pointed out. "So I did. It's not like it was some random stranger. It was only Tank. I figured you'd be okay with it."

"I am," he assured me, despite the fact that I knew the two men were going to have a more aggressive than usual sparring session later on. Giving yet another eye roll, I pulled him down to me so I could place a firm kiss on his lips. When I released my hold on him he was gone in an instant, reappearing almost immediately in front of the screen. He raised one hand and the chatter that had filled the room ceased.

"First in, best dressed," he announced cryptically, locking eyes with a few obviously key people in the room. "I don't care if you came up with the answer first, if someone else posts it before you, get over it. This is not a competition."

Unfortunately, even with his longer explanation, I was at a loss as to what he was talking about. I tried looking past him to the projector screen that usually held a clue as to the subject of the meeting. It was blank. Silently sighing, I opened up my laptop and brought up a chat window. What are we here for? I typed to Lester, knowing he was the most likely of all the men to reply to me during a meeting because he was constantly being told off for not paying attention. I listened to my husband lecturing his employees some more while I waited for a response. Nothing he was saying pointed directly to any kind of misdemeanour I was aware of the guys committing.

After a few moments, Lester got back to me in the form of a link. I clicked on it and it took me to what looked to be a Rangeman discussion board. Quickly skimming the first post, which had been left by Bobby I realised this was about the crossword. I scrolled down the discussion, noting a few theories on what the solutions could be, but the further down the page I got, the more the discussion dissolved into arguments over who came up with what solution. Now it all made sense. If they'd been at this all weekend it had probably developed into the noisy mess we'd walked into this morning when we arrived.

"Now," Carlos stated, regaining my attention with his crisp tone. "We're going to go through the answers as a group for the next fifteen minutes and then I want groups of five in here around the clock working on getting all the answers filled in. If you're not in here, you're not working on the crossword."

Ohhh-kay... We were seriously treating a random man's dead father's crossword with that level of importance?

The crossword grid appeared on the screen behind him with only TRENTON filled in.

"Fifteen across is ANGEL," I provided, recalling Bobby's genius break through last week. A curser appeared in the fifteen box and someone typed in ANGEL. I then pulled up the clues to attempt to follow along as more answers were called out from around the room.

"Ten across is CAKE," someone I couldn't see announced. I read the clue: Cate liked her baked goods. I guess I can see how they could get that.

"Four down is CAR," another put in. She couldn't finish her carrot on the drive home. Okay, that one was pretty straight forward too, I suppose. The ball just seemed to roll after that.

"Fourteen down is FLY." What a pest! Buzzing about high in the sky!

"Seventeen across is STUN GUNG," Tank said slowly, staring over my shoulder at the clues on my laptop screen.

I read over the clue – Nuts about a weapon that goes off with a bang – and I got the 'gun' part, but I couldn't figure how he'd gotten 'stun' out of it. I said as much to him and he pointed out that NUTS is STUN backwards. It hit me anew just how useless I was at these things.

"Two across," Lester said, raising his voice a little in excitement. "The extreme plot had all eyes on disaster. It's EXPLOSION!" He was practically yelling by the time he got to his solution, making me shy away, since he was leaning over my other shoulder.

Carlos spoke up then, striking fear into my heart with the tone of his slow, calculated words. "Five across is BOUNTY HUNTER," he said so quietly that I almost didn't gear him. My chest constricted as a hush fell over the room once more. They'd all heard it too. His tone was one that suggested something was up. I couldn't take my eyes off his face for fear of missing something vital.

"Shit," Bobby uttered from directly behind me, prompting grumbles of agreement from Tank and Lester.

Confused, I turned to look at the three of them, a questioning look clearly evident on my face. Tank leaned in further and highlighted the solutions I'd been typing in as they were provided: Trenton, Explosion, Car, Bounty Hunter, Cake, Fly, Angel, Stun Gun. I stared at the words a moment before letting out a barely audible, "Ah hell." I had no time to act on my despair further, however, as my cell phone began ringing loudly from my purse.

I dug it out as quickly as I could while Carlos shoved his way to my end of the room to confer with Tank, Bobby and Lester, and groaned when I read the caller ID.

"Hello, Stephanie speaking," I greeted, keeping my apprehension under wraps until I knew exactly why the boys' school would be calling me.

"Mrs Manoso, how are you?" the woman asked pleasantly, like there wasn't a thing wrong in the world, when clearly, if she was calling me there had to be.

"I'm fine," I replied, feeling myself begin to tense. "Are the boys okay?"

"Of course," she assured me and I could just tell she was smiling. "Juanito and Tomas are just fine." I rolled my eyes at that. Obviously, if she was referring to them as Juanito and Tomas she had no idea. It was a tradition in the Manoso family that the men would be known by their middle names. As such, the only time we used their first names was when they were in trouble. "I was just calling because I noticed you haven't scheduled a PTI yet."

"A what?" I asked, not understanding.

"A parent teacher interview," she pronounced carefully, maybe thinking I was a bit slow.

"I didn't know I had to," I informed the woman, probably playing directly into her this-woman-is-stupid plot.

"Did you read the letter we sent out a few weeks ago?"

"I was actually in a rehabilitation facility a few weeks ago," I explained, cringing at how bad that could actually come across, since I hadn't given the full amount of information. "My husband didn't mention anything about a parent-teacher interview, though," I added, slightly louder than usual in order to gain the attention of said husband, whom I knew was standing nearby.

When I twisted in my seat to catch his reaction he just lifted an eyebrow. "No clue," he mouthed.

"Well that's okay," the woman was saying. "We can just organise one now. Are you and your husband available at all today?" she queried.

I quickly pulled up Carlos's schedule on my laptop to check and found that he had absolutely no meetings today. "Yes, we're available," I confirmed.

"Fabulous," the lady said cheerily. "We have a time slot free in a half hour. Is that too soon?"

"Sounds perfect," I assured her.

"Great. I'll pop you down. You just need to come to the administration office to grab a visitor's badge before you head down to Juanito and Tomas's classroom." She was talking fast, like she really wanted to get off the phone. "Okay, I'll see you soon." I barely had time to say goodbye before she hung up.

"What was that about?" Carlos asked as I closed my laptop and dropped my phone into my bag.

"That was one of the office ladies from the school," I informed him, slowly pulling myself into an upright position. "Get a security team together; we're going out."

"What's wrong?" Bobby asked, stepping forward with a worried expression. "Are the twins okay?"

I mentally slapped my forehead for once again making the situation sound worse than it was by leaving out details. "They're fine," I assured the entire room – all the mean had shut up and turned to stare at me apprehensively at Bobby's words. "The security team is for my safety. I figured that until we figured out why this crossword seemed to be about me, I should probably have back up, even when I'm out with Carlos." I locked eyes with Carlos to make sure I was doing the right thing, the pride his eyes telling me he was glad I'd suggested it rather than having to be forced to put up with it. "It's just a parent-teacher interview," I added, just for the extra clarification.


DUN DUN DUUUUNNNNN! Okay, who's gonna review?