JE created the characters below.
Jenny (JenRar) you are a tremendously talented beta. Thank you for helping me tame the chaos of my writing.
Chapter 13 – Having a Blast
Ranger's POV
After thirty minutes of listening to Tank sum up where we were, I couldn't help but notice that Steph had checked out. She was currently playing some game on a legal pad with Scar. They were trying to be discrete, but I could see the page was covered with little dots and they were taking turns connecting the dots trying to make squares. Scar's blank face was firmly in place, but every time she made a square, she would look up at him and smile and his rough expression would soften slightly.
In essence, after reviewing the searches Steph had run, the team had decided the companies with views of our roof were of no threat to us. Even the two employees with records that had skipped bond at some point had clear alibis for the time when the photos of us had been taken. Thomas Masters to our east had been in England for the last two weeks, so he was definitely not involved.
Emma Barnhardt was around, but a trip to her preferred bar showed that she had a major drinking problem, and in speaking to some of the regulars there, it was easy to figure out she wasn't capable of the stealth involved in stalking me.
The only possibility to pursue further was Alan Burrows, who appeared to be a ghost. No one had ever seen him, he had no job, no income – just money that appeared in his account from an untraceable bank that automatically paid for the penthouse apartment to our west. We all felt he was worth pursuing, but there wasn't much to go on to get us any further than what Stephanie had already dug up. That appeared to be a dead end, but we were still going to beef up security on the west side of the building, and I approved having Hector install a camera at the doorway of Alan's apartment to try and get an image of whoever was using that name.
Vince had finished his review of all my old skips, and there were only two remote possibilities – considering the others were either in prison, out of the country, or in prison in another country – but they seemed to check out, so my past work through RangeMan was bringing us nothing to pursue, either.
"It looks like we need to stick with the original plan of trying to draw this stalker out," Tank summarized. "Unless the surveillance footage from the building across the street gives us something, we are back to having to lure them into making a move that we can catch them at."
I nodded that he was right, even though I realized I was agreeing to put Steph into danger again. The longer this lasted, the more I grew uneasy about who we would eventually capture. Clearly this was no untrained psycho. My guess was we were dealing with, at a minimum, military training, and most likely some other specialty training, as well, to enable them to blend in so well that none of my men could spot them.
The guys were dismissed, and most stood up immediately out of habit, making Stephanie and Scar the only two still seated. I caught her eye and asked, "How would you feel about dinner out tonight?"
She smiled, and I loved the fact that she still seemed to have the look of a very satisfied woman. Her hair was bigger than usual and wasn't as controlled as she liked it. Everything about her was screaming for me to take her again, but I knew we had to get this stalker resolved so that I could insure a degree of safety for her, before I could let myself get distracted by sex every time I looked at her.
Her eyes lit up, and she asked, "Where?"
"Anywhere you want to go," I said before thinking it through.
"I had a sub for lunch, so how about pizza for dinner?" she suggested. "We could go to Shorty's."
I had to work to control my dread at her suggestion. "That stuff will kill you, Babe," I couldn't help but tease. I still couldn't figure out how she maintained her figure with all the junk she put in her body.
She must not have felt threatened, because she said, "You've got to go somehow. You may as well go with your stomach full of marinara and cheese."
"Plan?" Scar asked, clearly taking his role to stand by Steph no matter what very seriously.
"Same as Pino's," I responded, not seeing the reason to change something that wasn't broken.
"Why don't we drive separately?" Stephanie suggested, making me cringe. "I mean, couples don't go everywhere together. So I'll go and meet you there. We can have the big table at the back and have a lot of the guys there with us. It will be fun."
"I can't have you drive up alone and walk in unprotected," I said, not intending to be overly critical, but wanting to shoot down her plan. There were too many moving parts, and that would mean she would need her car. Just allowing her drive that piece of shit was putting her in danger.
"I'll ride with her and bring her in. You can show up alone right after us. The guys can already be there to secure the restaurant," Scar offered, probably trying to be helpful in giving Steph what she wanted, but he was blowing away all my valid reasons to keep her with me. Now I had no choice but to agree.
Steph knew me well enough to know I wasn't happy, so she pushed a little more. "Come on, Ric, It will be fun, and with enough of the guys at Shorty's, no one else will fit inside, so we'll have a blast."
I nodded that it was okay, but internally, I was hoping her word choice wouldn't turn out to be prophetic. When the terms "blast" and "Steph" were used in the same sentence, it usually meant a car needed to be replaced.
Having agreed to a plan, I left to alert the team of the plan for tonight and give them time together to do whatever sort of communication they did. I couldn't convince myself to admit that Scar and Stephanie were talking, because he was the most introverted guy I'd ever met.
Half an hour later, I was sitting in an SUV wiping my hands on my cargos to get rid of the dampness on my palms in the hope that this didn't come back to bite me on the ass as Lester had alluded in the conference room. Thinking of Scar knocking my cousin out with a single right hook made me smile. I knew Scar was one of those guys who kept everyone at a safe distance because he didn't like emotional attachments. He'd been hurt once in the past, and he wasn't going to allow himself to be put in that position ever again. I knew it was partly because he didn't want to suffer like he had years ago, but also because he recognized in himself that he tended to be a little over the top in protecting the people he cared about. The hit on Les proved he hadn't gained any more control than he'd had years ago.
My phone buzzed, and a new text showed that Steph and Scar had made it safely into Shorty's, where six of the guys had already secured the back of the restaurant. I drove straight over, arriving there six minutes later, and walked in slowly, giving the stalker ample opportunity to strike out at me if they wanted to. In some ways, I wished they would just take a shot so we'd have something to work with; maybe the unit stationed around the perimeter would get lucky enough to catch them directly.
I didn't feel a threat, and after making my steps as short and slow as possible, I was at the front door and knew I needed to go on in. When I entered, I was hit with a wall of laughter coming from the back. Sitting in the center of the chairs was Stephanie, with Scar on one side, and Lester, sporting a swollen jaw, on the other. The rest of the chairs were taken, and everyone was leaning in, listening to Lester tell about one of Steph's misadventures in bounty hunting. She was taking it well and had a smile on her face, but it wasn't reaching her eyes. She loved being around the guys when they were relaxed and having a good time, but nobody liked being laughed at, and this was crossing into that category, even if it was being done with good intensions.
When he finished his story, he was about to jump into another, when Scar spoke up, shocking the hell out of the guys. "I think that's enough, I want to hear about the distraction you did last month, Santos," he said, diverting the attention from Stephanie to Lester.
Everyone laughed when he had to tell about being sent into a gay bar to lead out a skip – a man that preferred his partners to be tall, tan, and male – using the techniques that were usually successful for Steph. The relief on her face was evident, and I walked up just as the story ended with Lester's ass being grabbed and him spinning around to cuff the skip himself, making the guy think he'd just been picked up by a man who was into major kink and being so disappointed to learn he was really going to jail, instead of into his own sexual fantasy.
I stood behind Les and waited until he got the message that I wanted him to move so that I could sit next to my woman. He eventually got the message and complained, "Man, I never get to sit next to Stephanie. She might actually want me beside her, instead of you."
I looked at Steph and raised an eyebrow in question. She grinned and made peace by telling Les she'd love to have him sit across from her so she could look at him as he told us more stories. Having his pride sufficiently stroked, he moved happily.
When the pizza came, Steph ate with her usual gusto, and Scar looked like he'd been stabbed. Stephanie noticed right away and asked what was wrong.
"Do you always sound like that when you eat?" he asked, visibly shaken.
I guess the rest of us were so used to it that we rarely commented on it anymore. This time, Cal spoke up and said, "Nah, man, that's just her pizza noises. If you really want to suffer, you should sit beside her when she's eating dessert."
Scar made a face that said he didn't believe she could sound any more alluring than she did at this moment. I took a drink from my water glass to hide my smile, knowing there were sounds that only I knew about now that blew away even her double chocolate cake noises. This woman was sex in heels, even without intending to be.
An hour after the last slice of pizza was gone, Steph asked if we could head back.
"Are you tired?" I asked, thinking it was strange for her to want to leave a good time like this.
She leaned in, trying to keep other people from listening in, and said, "No, but I need to use the ladies room, and I know that it hasn't been secured here, so I figured it would be easier to just go back to Haywood."
I couldn't get used to this woman thinking of safety first. I put my hand on her leg, and it landed on her side arm strapped to her thigh. I couldn't stop myself from grinning at her again. Yes, the more aware Steph was definitely sex in heels.
I announced that we were leaving, and Scar stood and walked to the door to do an initial sweep of his own, not trusting whoever was assigned that duty. I was mentally patting myself on the back for thinking of bringing him in from Boston. He was the only person that I felt would guard her to the same length I did, and I relaxed a little at that thought.
Scar returned and nodded at Steph that we were set. Most of the guys walked out first, creating a wall of protection in the darkness. She walked between Scar and me, still smiling from some story Hector had shared with her as we were finishing up, and then she stopped in mid step and froze.
"What's wrong, Babe?" I asked her, drawing my glock out of an instinctual habit.
"I feel like we're being watched," she said with a degree of uncertainty.
"From where?" Scar asked, his gun in his hand.
She shut her eyes, and then pointed to the northeast. "There," she admitted, doubting herself.
Tank smiled and nodded, before engaging the com unit at his neck and saying, "Michael step forward."
From the shadows directly in line with where she was pointing came Michael, one of the men we'd brought in from the Miami office. She must have sensed him hiding in the darkness and picked up on it. I was both proud of her skills in sensing a tail, and worried about Michael's stealth abilities. I'd talk to the guys about additional training later. For now, I was more focused on getting Steph back to the safety of Haywood.
She tilted her head as though testing the suggestion that Michael was what she'd sensed. I didn't think she looked convinced, but she shrugged it off and turned to me, indicating I should lead on. Scar got in the driver's side door, and I walked Steph to the other side, where I opened her door and checked out the back to be sure no one was in it. There were guys stationed in the lot, so I doubted anyone had tampered with it, and we'd just gotten it back from Al's this afternoon, where I'd had it fitted with a new alarm and tracking system, so I felt confident it was now as safe as a Ford Taurus could be.
I shut the door after she climbed in and began to move away as Scar turned the key. The car coughed, tried to start, and stalled out. I turned to smile at her, hoping she got my mental message that she really needed to let me give her a car and get rid of this one. But instead of meeting her eyes in humor, there was panic on her face, and she was wildly gesturing for Scar to get out of the car and opening her own door at the same time. He clearly didn't want to get back out into the unprotected parking lot, but her insistence made him move, and they both ran in the direction of where I was standing.
In the four seconds it took her to clear the car, my cell phone rang. Vince announced that the control room had just picked up a warning from the new threat scanning system Al had installed yesterday. I didn't have time to warn anyone, before there was an audible click, and then the boom of an explosion – obviously from a bomb – at the rear of her car.
It wasn't a large bomb, but there is no denying it would have been fatal had Stephanie and Scar remained in the car. As the dust and debris settled, I noticed Scar coming toward me, carrying Stephanie. She was conscious and didn't seem to appreciate not being allowed to walk on her own, which was a relief. If she was whole enough to be irritated, then she was most likely fine.
"Can I stand now?" she asked him, not trying to hide her frustration.
"Babe?" I said, hoping she knew I was asking if she was all right.
"I'm fine. I tripped over my own feet when the explosion happened, and Scar was convinced I was injured, despite me telling him I was fine and he was the one with a bloody gash from the flying license plate," she complained, pointing to the cut on the back of his arm.
Sirens were already sounding in the distance, and I knew, despite wanting nothing more than to take her to the office, she needed to be here to give her statement to the cops about what happened. The two uniforms that arrived first were brought to us by Cal, who must have known I wanted Stephanie's involvement completed as quickly as possible. They took her statement, which was short and simple, since none of us had seen a thing. If she hadn't heard a glitch in the way the car sounded when it choked, she wouldn't be standing in front of us right now.
That thought forced me to pull her against me with her back pressed into my chest.
"I'm okay, Ric, really," she assured me.
"I know that in theory, Babe, but I need to hold you for a while to fully accept it," I replied, hoping that made sense to her.
"Then when they say I'm free to leave, let's go back to seven, and you can hold me as long as you want," she teased.
"Are we finished here?" I asked the cops rather abruptly.
They seemed confused about my outburst, but agreed they had all they needed from Stephanie.
Tank agreed to stay until the scene was cleared, so Scar, Stephanie, and I rode back to Haywood in silence.
"Will you let Bobby take a look at your arm?" she asked the silent man in the back when we pulled into the parking garage.
He glanced down at his blood covered sleeve, and shrugged like it was no big deal.
"Please," she continued, making her voice sound vulnerable and broken. "I won't be able to rest if I'm worried about you," she added, making it damn near impossible to say no.
Scar took a deep, defeated breath and nodded that he'd go to the infirmary for Bobby to take a look. She turned back to face the windshield and grinned like a little girl that had just gotten away with a lie to her father and was trying to silently celebrate her manipulation of the situation. I shook my head, realizing there was a lot more to this woman than I ever thought possible.
When we got up to seven, I grabbed her hand, led her to the bathroom, and removed her clothes carefully, before stripping my own off as quickly as possible. I pulled her into the shower and bathed her myself. I wanted to take care of her, as though recognizing how close I'd come to losing her made me feel the need to remove any reminder of what could have been. I also used the excuse of rubbing the bath sponge on her to closely examine her for any scratch or cut that was a result of the explosion.
We'd often referred to Stephanie as a cat with nine lives, to explain how she'd escaped some circumstances that didn't seem possible. Unfortunately, for that analogy to be true, it would mean accepting her nine lives had to be up, meaning at any point now, her luck could run out. If that had happened tonight, if she had doubted her gut reaction or hesitated in speaking her mind about what was happening, I could have lost her.
It wasn't until she said, "Ric, I promise that I'm okay," that I became aware that I had dropped the sponge while washing her legs. From my position kneeling in front of her on the tile of the shower, I had pressed my face to her stomach and was clinging to her thighs, holding her tightly to me so the heat from her body would reassure me that she was real.
Once I was satisfied that we had gotten rid of the smoke and ash, we put on lounging clothes and relaxed on the sofa. I stretched my legs out onto the coffee table and slouched back on the couch, while Stephanie lay down with her head in my lap and her bare feet up on the arm of the sofa. There was only a soft lamp lighting the room and a comfortable silence between us for ambiance. It was hard to believe in the peace of the moment that I'd come so close to losing her tonight.
I was lost in thought, when the phone rang. I stretched over to answer it on speaker. "Yo."
"We found something at the scene," came Tank's voice. "Do you want to come down and see it?"
I looked down at Stephanie sitting so comfortably in my lap and replied, "Bring it up, and get Scar to come up with you." I disconnected the call and put my hand over her stomach to keep her from getting up just because we were about to have guests.
"Why Scar?" she asked after I hung up.
"So you'd have someone to play tic-tac-toe with if Tank and I start analyzing whatever they found and you get bored," I told her, smiling at the memory of her playing with Scar during the meeting earlier.
"It was crazy squares," she corrected me, trying to keep a straight face.
The truth was that I knew if we were going to be kept up, she'd probably appreciate knowing Scar's arm was all right. For someone who claimed the thought of children gave her the hives, she was certainly a mother hen with my men.
There was a firm knock, and then the door opened, to reveal Scar with his arm bandaged and Tank carrying a now familiar envelope. I took it from him silently and tore it opening, realizing there was no point in being perfectly careful. There wouldn't be any prints on it.
The note inside simply said: There's no one to blame but yourself.
"Where did you find this?" I demanded.
Scar smiled, indicating he already knew the answer.
Tank replied, "It was hanging on a car in the lot behind where Michael was standing."
In essence, whoever had put it there would have been directly in the line Steph pointed out at Shorty's when she felt like she was being watched. Once again, that indisputable spidey sense saved the day.
"So whoever did this apparently believed the bomb would kill the occupants of the car, because the note implies someone was lost, if I am to feel guilt over it. But the fact that this was planted so close means they probably also know that Steph survived."
"I don't understand why no one saw them put this on a car," Steph spoke up.
Tank offered an explanation. "They may have waited until we were all panicked from the explosion itself, and then fled the scene during the confusion. Or they may just be that good."
"But you guys are RangeMen. You're the best of the best. You're better," she defended.
"The only thing we know for sure is that the bomb wasn't put on the car at Shorty's, because we maintained a visual the whole time we were there. That just leaves Al's as the most likely place for it to have been planted," Tank added.
Silence descended into the room like a heavy pall on a casket. "We need an explosions expert," Tank said, stating the obvious. "One that specializes in these types of small, handmade devices."
I knew what he wanted and was hesitant to do it, because I feared it would create an uncomfortable atmosphere for Stephanie. I was already putting her life in danger; it didn't seem right to make it more difficult on top of that. Finally, I realized we had nothing else to go off of, and since keeping her alive was more important to me than anything else, I nodded to Tank and said, "I'll make the call in the morning. If it's possible, I assume we'll have one on site by tomorrow night. See if we can get access to the vehicle in order to have the device examined by our expert, along with the PD."
He nodded that he'd gotten everything I'd said, and then glanced at Stephanie. I knew he was trying to tell me that I needed to tell her what we were discussing, but I didn't want her to worry.
"What are you not telling me?" she asked, making Tank chuckle. Scar let out a low soft whistle.
I closed my eyes, knowing I'd just gotten busted. There was no way I could talk my way out of this one.
"Babe, the best explosives expert RangeMan knows of for these smaller devices is Jeanne Ellen," I told her, watching her face for any reaction.
"And she'll be here tomorrow?" Steph followed up, seeming to be okay with the news.
I nodded that she was right.
She relaxed into me once more and said, nonchalantly, "Good. Maybe she can get somewhere with this, since we seem to only hit blank walls."
We talked for another half hour, until Stephanie yawned. As if she'd written the fact that she was sleepy on a billboard, they both stood up at once and excused themselves so that we could get some sleep.
As we changed once more and settled into bed, I didn't try to hide my smile as Steph scooted over to rest her head on my shoulder and wrap her leg around my hip. I don't know if she did it because she wanted to feel me close to her, or because she recognized I needed to hold her to remind myself that despite the close call, she was fine. It didn't matter what the primary motivator was. All that was important was that we needed each other close tonight. And close was how we'd remain.