Author – PinPin
Rating – R : strong language, eventually some violent and sexually suggestive content (no smut)
Disclaimer – I do not own the characters, etc. I am only borrowing them from Janet. (some originals will pop-up later) This is not for profit, just for kicks.
Notes – post EoT, directly following book 11. Babe, but Cupcake respectful. Citations with an asterisk are non-essential.

Stephanie Redux – Chapter 25

Stephanie wasn't outright stomping as she entered the house, but her quick, jerky movements and the way she lobbed her things into a heavy heap on the floor sent up a flare that any man who isn't brain dead recognizes as a critical warning sign; 'this woman is pissed.'

"I heard there was a change in this evening's progr – ," she stopped short at the sight that greeted her. The recording devices were shut off and the monitors dark. Half empty packs sat open, waiting to be filled. "What's going on?"

"We're pulling up stakes here," Vince answered as he joined Manny in his task.

Stephanie turned to Manny for more explanation. "The system's already off. We're uninstalling tonight," he supplied.

"Why?" She watched them pull plugs and coil cords for a moment, still confused. "We can't."

"Have to," Manny rebutted. "Boss was with Papa G all afternoon. He wants this wrapped up. The divorce isn't going to be a problem with what we've got, so we're just after the money now. We're putting surveillance on Paulie Bedolla, one of Mancini's cousins. Turns out he has some money in the electronics outfit you were looking at last night and he uses the same accounting firm run by an old college buddy. The skimming might go so far that the financial lawyer has a piece of it."

She hadn't been expecting it, but as she considered the idea that eventually they'd have to stop watching the house despite all that they'd learned about the ways in which it was used, she felt helpless and cheated somehow. "So one of Galucci's goons gets caught red-handed and that's it; he shuts us down?"

"Not us," Manny corrected her. "This doesn't have anything to do with us. Surveillance just isn't necessary anymore. He's found a better, and cheaper, way to get the rest of what he's after. We," he gestured between them, "don't figure into it."

"And they'll keep using the house? It was set up as a… those men, they use it…" she was so appalled she was having trouble finding the words for it, "for women they don't want anyone to know about. It's… he's enabling depravity."

They both saw her irresolution, eyes pleading for some kind of answer that she could believe. Vince hesitated before speaking, unsure that he knew the right thing to say. "Someone somewhere is being victimized every second of every day. We do our part where we can and have to live with the rest, just like anyone else. For something like this we turn over what we know to the police and let them handle it from there."

Stephanie didn't know what to say to that. The Rangemen had a way of making arguments that sounded right but felt wrong. She clicked her slack jaw shut and dropped the subject to focus on the work. For an hour she quietly learned, hands-on, how to dismantle a fully equipped surveillance post, forgetting momentarily her dismay at the assignment.

When the model home was once again generically void of life, they locked the door behind them and moved across the street to Galucci's. The house had been transformed in Stephanie's eye. No longer a common, dime-a-dozen, cookie cutter, mini-mansion; it now stood out among the rest, like a haunted palace, phantasmic in its degeneracy. She shivered as she followed the others inside. The acrid scents of liquor and sick didn't linger from the night before, but they were permanently fixed in her memory. She itched with the urge to break out some disinfectant and cleanse every visible inch of the building. It felt like a year, not a day, since she'd held back Dinah's hair, counting the minutes until help arrived. The thought that it was by mere chance that Rangemen had been there expecting to wire a car on the same night the girl had been dragged into that house, lodged itself in Stephanie's pharynx and swelled as she tapped down all the horrifying 'what if's' that were threatening to choke her.

Manny watched her closely, noting her deep distraction, the way she avoided looking in the direction of the sofa, and her startled reaction as she was forced out of her thoughts and back into the present by the call of her name.

"Plum, listen up," Vince commenced, as they got to work. "This residential system is kind of like the one in your apartment." He went into a detailed explanation of how to integrate the wiring of a RangeMan security system into a home's electrical specifications, which was then quickly followed by his reassurance that Stephanie wasn't ever likely to be required to install a system on her own. It was more important for her to know the process in reverse and be able to identify correctly any tampering with the electrical components.

Recognizing the significance of the lesson and grateful that she was finally being trained in something rather than being expected to magically know it via Ranger-osmosis, Stephanie struggled again to push back her darker thoughts about what they were doing and focus on learning how to do it.

She moved with them from room to room, observing carefully and assisting when needed, like a nurse in an operating room. She inquired about parts that resembled the alarm systems at the commercial properties she'd inspected with Bobby and Hector, surprising Vince with her retention and understanding of the intricate assemblage. It wasn't until they'd reached the exterior sensor she'd disabled with Woody's knife that the specter of the previous night returned to creep over her and shift her focus back to questioning the prudence behind terminating the surveillance on the house.

"Okay," she spoke up, unable to keep her peace any longer, "I understand what you're saying about the job you were hired to do versus some personal, impulsive crusade for justice, but it feels like there has to be something we could do that's a happy medium and that whatever that is, we should be doing it. Bond enforcement is always an 'after the fact' reckoning, but this could be different. I mean, don't you get tired of watching all the shit people inflict on each other?" They both stopped to stare, but neither had an answer for her. "Well, I want to help and this place seems like the perfect place to start doesn't it?"

"To start?" Manny asked. "So you're talking about going beyond that, to a middle and even an end? Because that fight would have to be a crusade, and it would be about as drawn out, bloody, and ineffective as they were." He looked up from where he was crouched beside the house's exterior power source. "Thinking like that will pull you under. Today is hard enough without dreading tomorrow's problems and obsessing over events that haven't happened yet."

Stephanie scowled at him, her anger from her morning conversation with Bobby suddenly revived, and demanded, "tell me you aren't serious."

Vince could see Stephanie's mood shift into a darker place. "Oh boy, here we go again with the amateur history lessons and armchair psychology," he rolled his eyes at Manny from where he was dismantling a motion detector above the garage door. "Was that meant to be advice for her? Because it's asinine," he gibed.

They leveled a firm, challenging glare at each other for several beats and came to a kind of unspoken agreement that was lost on Stephanie but would have made any of the other Rangemen groan and retreat as quickly as they could manage. Manny and Vince were an odd pair and didn't often work together for good reason. They had an unhelpful habit of losing focus around each other.

Manny straightened his shoulders a bit and said, "Those who reproach humanity with always gaping towards the future and who teach us to grasp present goods and to be satisfied with them since we have no hold over what is to come – less hold, even, than we have over the past – touch upon the most common of human aberrations. … We are never 'at home': we are always outside ourselves. Fear, desire, hope, impel us towards the future; they rob us of feelings and concern for what now is, in order to spend time over what will be – even when we ourselves shall be no more." [*1]

Stephanie blinked at him a few times, wondering whether she'd heard him correctly or started hallucinating. "That's your memory thing again, right?" she asked uncertainly. "You're doing your thing now, like last night?"

Vince groaned, making a simulated retching sound. "Don't listen to him. Once he starts with all the quotations, he stops making any sense. It's hogwash, especially in this case, because as useless and depressing as it is to dwell on what the future may hold for the women who might end up here, you can just as easily argue that the circumstances of 'right now' aren't any cheerier since it includes both the aftermath that the past women are currently experiencing and some sicko presently plotting his next twisted weekend in this house. It's faulty reasoning."

Stephanie blinked again, just as dumbfounded by Vince's reaction as Manny's quotation. Where the hell was all of this coming from?

"See, now it's my turn to call bullshit," Manny huffed. "That is a total unknown, no more or less true than what I said."

"What you said was egocentric casuistry," Vince countered.

"You are just determined to be irritable," Manny accused.

"Well, you're irritating," Vince shot back. "You're intentionally neglecting relative contexts."

"And you're intentionally anathematic without reason. 'Every man is sufficiently discontented with some circumstances of his present state, to suffer his imagination to range more or less in quest of future happiness, and to fix upon some point of time, in which, by the removal of the inconvenience which now perplexes him, or acquisition of the advantage which he at present wants, he shall find the condition of his life very much improved. When this time, which is too often expected with great impatience, at last arrives, it generally comes without the blessing for which it was desired; but we solace ourselves with some new prospect, and press forward again with equal eagerness. It is lucky for a man, in whom this temper prevails when he turns his hopes upon things wholly out of his own power; since he forbears then to precipitate his affairs, for the sake of the great event that is to complete his felicity, and waits for the blissful hour, with less neglect of the measures necessary to be taken in the mean time'." [*2]

Stephanie felt a headache rapidly approaching. She was confused and out of breath just listening to him.

But Vince certainly followed every word and found them laughable. "So, what then," he derided, "you want us to turn our frowns upside down and whistle as we work?"

Undaunted, Manny persisted, "One of the prevailing sources of misery and crime is in the generally accepted assumption, that because things have been wrong a long time, it is impossible they will ever be right." [*3]

"I'm not looking for a full blown philosophical debate here, Man. Nor do I want to suffer through one of your pseudo-seminars in literature. You've lost sight of the whole point."

"And the point would be..?"

Vince cleared his throat and mockingly affected Manny's mannerism of tone, "As an enduring attribute, it isn't intrinsically positive or negative that she looks ahead to a posited version of the future and is unsatisfied with what she discerns."

Stephanie listened to them contradict each other, unclear on neither her own feelings about the fact that she seemed to be a central theme in their verbal sparring nor what exactly they were debating in the first place.

"Well, maybe she disagrees with you about that," Manny suggested. "And maybe you shouldn't be presuming to speak for her on the matter."

"Geez, Manny, doesn't lugging that soapbox around get exhausting? We have to operate on the assumption that everything might go wrong in the future. We work in security."

"You're rationalizing your misanthropy."

"Cataloging and preparing for all of the terrible scenarios possible is what we get paid to do. Pessimism can be an asset."

"My point is that we can't let it eat at us."

"Oh, how wise of you," Vince deadpanned. "Do tell us, how does one achieve such felicity and peace of mind?"

Manny smiled wickedly, "Come, read to me some poem, / Some simple and heartfelt lay, / That shall soothe this restless feeling, / And banish the thoughts of day." [*4]

"No, absolutely not," Vince declared gathering up a load of the newly uninstalled equipment and heading back inside the house, "no more poetry! That's where I'm drawing the line."

Stephanie followed him, leaving Manny behind and carrying another load of cameras and wires. "I kind of like the poems. It's better than whatever the hell that other stuff was."

"We'll see how you feel about it once you have an out of town assignment together and have to ride around in a car with him all day long," Vince said as he pulled zippers to and fro, packing wire, lens, and battery with practiced hands. "If the shift is long enough, maybe he'll narrate a medieval epic for you."

"Such songs have power to quiet / The restless pulse of care," Manny said as he finally followed them back inside with the last of the outdoor equipment, passing through the room with a cheshire grin, "and come like the benediction / That follows after prayer." [*4]

"Who wrote that?" Stephanie asked, amused at how exuberant Manny was at Vince's annoyance.

"Longfellow," Vince answered for him.

Stephanie planted her hands on her hips in a show of contrary disbelief, "you just said you don't like poetry."

"No, I never said that. I'm partial to Blake, actually," Vince offered in a conciliatory tone.

"You would be," sounded out from several rooms away. Manny's tone was much more accusatory.

Stephanie gave her head a shake and sighed.

"What?" asked Vince, secretly congratulating himself that she'd stopped glaring indiscriminately and closing doors harder than was necessary.

"Is there going to be a lot more of this weird bickering tonight? It's like attending a scholastic debate."

"Manny never shuts up. No one ever has any other choice than to talk about something when he's around. I figure it might as well be a subject that can make him as equally frustrated with the conversation as we are. "

"You're pointing the finger at me for your bore-a-thon?" Manny asked incredulously as he rejoined them.

Vince's lips twisted smugly. "Are you really going to stand there with a straight face and deny that you're happiest when you're being excessively pedantic?"

"We're both pedantic, but while you're sour and clubbish, I'm pleasantly gregarious," Manny declared as he mimed a thorough preening. "So of course, you pin me with the blame. You're full of youth-envy. It happens to men you're age…"

Stephanie's gasp indicated exactly how low that remark had been aimed.

"What happens," Vince scowled, "we actually develop ideas and opinions of our own to share with others?"

It was clear to Stephanie that Vince had landed an as equally low blow as Manny had. "Well," she interjected in a rush to keep the peace, "why don't you share yours then instead of cutting down his?"

"Yeah," Manny gloated, "what she said."

Stephanie chuckled lightly, "or I know, why don't you tell another joke, Dangerfield? Your last one was so amusing. Maybe you've got one about boobs or farts this time? Manny would love to hear it."

Manny looked back and forth between them in confusion for a second. "Dude, I never said that."

"Fine," Vince responded to the challenge, a playful spark in his eye. "There was a cucumber, a pickle, and a penis sitting around talking about how their lives sucked. The cucumber said, 'Man, my life sucks. When I get big, fat, and juicy, they cut me up and stick me on a salad.' The pickle looks at him and says, 'You think you have it bad? When I get big, fat, and juicy, they stick me in vinegar, put spices on me, cram me in a jar, and leave me in the dark for a week.' The penis looks at him and says, 'You think you have it rough? When I get big, fat, and juicy, they wrap a rubber tarp around me, shove me in a dark room, and bang my head against the wall until I throw up and pass out'."

Despite herself, Stephanie released an involuntary titter, but Manny wasn't amused. "It's a good thing your day job pays well."

Vince raised a challenging eyebrow in Manny's direction.

Manny smirked and said, "Okay, I have one." He cleared his throat and began, "I grew up on a farm, and the next farm over had one of those classic, hot, farmer's daughters." His genuine smile belied his elevated chin and confident tone and told Stephanie that what was happening here wasn't genuine contempt at all. It seemed the two men had some kind of competitive rapport in which they thoroughly enjoyed – and more than likely only pretended – abhorring each other.

"This farmer's daughter had a donkey that she had raised from birth," Manny continued. "She used it to help her with the heavy work around the farm, but it was really abnormal and was always behaving strangely. It was more like a pet than livestock, and she loved it to pieces. Then one day our rooster got loose and ended up on their neighboring farm. That crazy donkey went berserk and attacked it. It ate our rooster whole and got really sick. They thought it might die. She was beyond distraught, heartbroken even. Every day for a week, people could hear her screaming and moaning all night long because my cock was in her ass."

Stephanie rolled her eyes. That was a long set up for virtually no pay-off. She wore a humorless smile and asked, "If your parents were farmers and you were a kid at the time, then technically it was your father's cock, wasn't it?"

Manny's jaw fell. "That is so wrong." He waved his tool-filled hands in a flashy, hazardous show of perturbation. "How exactly does a person come up with a thought that makes that joke sound wholesome in comparison and then decide it's a good idea to voice it aloud?"

Vince scoffed with a pretentious humor, "I don't ever want to find out how you define wholesome."

"It's not as hard as you'd expect," Stephanie ignored Vince's commentary and answered Manny's question, beginning to settle into the flow of their repartee. However temporary it turned out to be, she was comforted by the relative simplicity of her hands' task combined with the easy, inconsequential banter.

"Yeah, well," Manny said, "whatever dirty comment you have to follow up that thought, just keep it to yourself." He pointed at her with a Phillips head. "You're well on your way to being as bad as Santos."

"Criticism from the walking audio book?" she taunted.

Manny and Vince halted their work and faced Stephanie. "Your turn now," Manny declared.

Stephanie actually took a step backwards. "My turn for what?" she asked, her curiosity struggling with her trepidation.

"A joke," Vince answered.

"Mm-hmm," Manny concurred, "let's hear what you've got."

Stephanie racked her brain, rather nervous that somehow she'd jumped from observer to participant in their strange contest. "Umm…" She only knew bad jokes, and not many of those. "Why are men bad drivers?" she offered. "Because they never check to see if anyone else is coming before they pull out."

Vince grinned and returned with, "What's the difference between sin and shame? It's a sin to push it in. And it's a shame to slip it out."

Stephanie chuckled, "I suddenly have the oddest feeling that I've been transported back in time to junior high school."

"What do a gynecologist and a pizza boy have in common?" Manny countered. "They can smell it but they can't eat it."

"Ugh," Stephanie groaned with a wrinkled nose, "that is so perverse."

"Then why are you smiling?" he asked with a satisfied quirk to his brow.

The men fell quiet and regarded Stephanie expectantly. She realized they were waiting for another joke from her. "The only others I know are children's jokes from my niece, one about parrots and all of the rest are about horses."

Vince curled his lip in disgust. "I hate parrots."

Her head tilted quizzically. "What could you possibly have against parrots?"

"You'd be surprised," was the sum total of Vince's explanation.

"A horse joke then…" Manny said, waving a hand at her to get on with it.

"Fine, fine, but then we're done with this," Stephanie insisted and waited for their nods of agreement. "What did the horse say when it fell? I've fallen and I can't giddy up. Okay, now? That's the end. Whatever this was, you won." Both men chuckled at her peevishness. "You can recite the encyclopedia from memory and I get my jokes from little girls' used popsicle sticks. No contest."

In deference to an obviously still tense Stephanie, Vince and Manny abandoned their excessive verbiage in favor of diligent progress and straight forward instructions. With their focus back on the job, they were finished and packing up the SUV in no time.

Manny was doing the rounds of the property and the final checks of the house while Vince and Stephanie waited outside, leaning against the SUV, arms folded in the classic RangeMan pose. Feeling every minute of the day catch up with her, Stephanie's attention turned to the sleep she desperately needed and her indecision about where she should go to find it. The idea of returning to RangeMan gave her pause for several reasons that tore at her relentlessly.

Vince saw her wince slightly when she unwittingly bit her lip with too much force. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"I need sleep," she hesitated before adding, "…and sugar."

He didn't know what to say to that.

"Is Colt staying on the fourth floor at Haywood?" she asked.

"Yeah." Vince was caught off guard by the question, but not her response.

"He's a jackass."

"I know," Vince agreed, "he isn't shy about it."

"Has he been permanently reassigned to Trenton?" she asked trying to sound unconcerned.

Vince heard her concern anyway. "Don't know, but it's a good bet that if he has, he won't keep Haywood as his permanent address for very long."

Stephanie was too tired to decode what that meant. She tried to focus on something positive instead, but had only half-achieved it when her thoughts landed upon the fact that she'd never have to return to Papa G's debased clubhouse ever again. "Galucci's only waiting on us, you know," she said. "He doesn't want to get rid of Mancini until he finds the money. We're helping one man surmount the last obstacle stopping him from killing another man and we're turning a blind eye to the rest of this in order to do it."

Vince openned his mouth to speak twice with no result before his third attempt finally coalesced into a response. "That's one way to look at it. You could also say that we're helping someone recover his losses from a thief."

"Money that was ill-gotten by ill men with ill deeds."

Vince sighed and turned to face her. "If you want to look at it in black and white, right and wrong, then you have to consider who Mancini is too. Galucci isn't the only bad guy," he threw air quotes around the words. "Mancini is cheating on his wife and stealing from her."

Stephanie studied his face. "Is that how you look at it?"

Vince's frown deepened. He didn't think that his opinion should have any bearing on how she developed her own. "For jobs like this, RangeMan charges large fees. What we're doing here is earning the money for the resources we'll need when honest, decent people ask for our help to protect their homes and families. Security is an expensive business. Sure, RangeMan could pass on clients like Galucci and rely instead on corporate or government jobs to finance operations. They pay better. But those jobs have their own downsides."

"And this house?" she asked, trying to force him to divulge his thoughts about Galucci in particular, rather than the field of security in general.

"We're letting the proper authorities build their own case around what goes on here, one that will stand up in court."

She smiled at his talent for responding to simple questions with generalities as if she were making sweeping, topical inquiries. "So, the theme we keep coming up against is that in the interest of a greater good we occupy a vast expanse of grey? That's what I'm hearing." She was curious about his thoughts on this. He was older, more seasoned than most of the other Rangemen. While she'd heard Ranger vaguely describe his work from time to time, always couching it in mysterious terms that didn't truly define anything at all, what she had taken away from it was that the work was legally grey, but morally was always in the right. Now that she was officially invited to the party, she found that she was a wee bit more interested in hearing the details than she used to be.

Vince let out a harried groan. "You've already spent way too much time with Manny."

"I even know a quote," she laughed as he dodged yet another question and allowed him to steer the conversation in the direction of less weighty subjects. She gestured in Manny's direction, "is there a name for what's wrong with him?"

"He's a good kid, but he's weird." Vince playfully tsked, "he has the potential to be a really bad influence, Steph. Don't let him get to you."

"I only have the one quote," she recalled with a smile. "I remember it from an old map my grandfather had. I used to look at it with him when I was a kid and he'd make up stories about different faraway places."

Manny returned at that moment, "what about faraway places?"

She waved her hand signaling the unimportance of that part and recited, "'Anguish of suspense made men even desire the arrival of enemies'. [*5] That's the only one I got." They both stared at her with an intensity Stephanie wasn't used to, couldn't begin to decipher, and made her uncomfortable. So she tried to ignore it. "Can I ask to go my own way from here? Can you let me have one of the trucks and log out for me when you get back to Haywood?"

They both nodded. Stephanie felt a wash of relief that her decision about returning to Haywood could be postponed a while longer. She said goodnight and made to leave, only to be stopped by Vince at the last second before pulling away. "Stephanie," he called out, "Galucci wouldn't risk wiring this house so that we could find grounds for divorce if he was just going to off the guy." And on that note, they parted company.

As the Rangemen headed off in the opposite direction, Manny asked, "what was that about?"

Vince was quiet for a moment, contemplating the night's conversations with Stephanie. He had been hesitant about working with her. Originally, he'd wagered that it wouldn't go well at all. She'd be capable enough, but not entirely up to snuff for RangeMan work. There would be general disruption and stress at the company for some time while everyone came to terms with that fact, and then she'd go back to doing client searches and working for her cousin. But now that he had one of their scheduled shifts together under his belt, he had a better understanding of what Tank's reasons might have been for hiring her. She was a thinker, both instinctually perceptive and unconventionally intelligent. More intriguing than anything else, though, was his realization that she was even more unsure about the entire situation than the Rangemen were. "She can't decide if we're the good guys or not," he answered.

Manny frowned angrily at Vince for voicing that thought. "You aren't helping anything," he said testily.

A/N: Thank you for reading! Despite this story's longevity, it's still a WIP. (I work on it when I can.) Please R&R.

[*1 - Michel De Montaigne, Our emotions get carried away beyond us ] [*2 - Samuel Johnson, The Rambler No. 5 ] [*3 - John Ruskin ] [*4 - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Day Is Done ] [*5 - Guy de Maupassant, Boule de Suif ]

** A/N: This chapter was utterly self-indulgent. I know. I considered cutting it entirely for a very long time and then finally decided that I just liked it too much. It's long-winded and offers barely an inch of plot movement, but it was also my favorite to write. So I decided to keep it, even if it turns out that I am the only one who likes it. **