AN: Hello, everyone! Sorry for the wait on the next chapter! I had a little bit of difficulty with this one because I was trying to figure out how I wanted to do things. I actually deleted the first version of this chapter since I didn't like the way it was going. I like this one (which I'm sure you can tell since I'm posting it, lol). I finally gave Kazarra's father a name. I couldn't come up with one I liked so for a long time he was just the nameless man who spoke. Now he has a name, yay! I hope you guys enjoy the chapter!
As usual, I don't own them, I just like to play with them...especially Ranger. Please read and review! :-D
Rediscovery
Chapter 28
"Well?"
"They shot up the Plum's bond office when they saw Thayer enter with Lester Santos." Came the report.
"Good." He nodded satisfied. "I assume she's been taken care of."
"Not exactly, sir." Dwayne Kazarra shifted nervously as he avoided his father's eyes. "Thayer is alive. Apparently Stephanie Plum has her Power of Attorney and told the doctors to do whatever they had to in order to keep her alive."
"And she wasn't convinced to do otherwise?"
"No sir." Dwayne rocked back and forth on his heels. He had done everything he could in order to make sure Penelope was taken care of but that stupid bitch had chosen to keep her alive. If he could get his hands on her…
"That is extremely disappointing." His father's voice was cold, emotionless. As a child, Dwayne had feared it. As a teen, he'd come to see the wisdom in his father's attitude. As an adult, he'd done what he could to cultivate a similar approach. Clearly, from the look on his father's face, he had failed to do so. If he had even half the carriage his father did he would never have been arrested by the cops and RangeMan.
"Father, I will continue to do what I can in order to get Thayer out of the picture." Dwayne hastened to reassure him. "But since she's no longer the prosecutor, I don't see why we even bother. I'm not on trial anymore."
Everett Kazarra stared at his son. He brought a glass of whiskey to his lips and sipped before setting it down on the arm of his chair. He had expected so much more from Dwayne as the years had gone by. How had he failed? He had never been arrested by the police or captured by RangeMan (although, he did acknowledge in Dwayne's defense of that, RangeMan was nonexistent when Everett had been in his prime of life). He still exuded the unyielding strength he had had when he first began his business. Dwayne simply did not seem to get that from him, no matter how hard he tried. Everett blamed his wife. She was too soft on their son, even after he had given her a good beating.
"Thayer may not be prosecuting your case any longer, but she is still a threat." He finally said, eying the glass in his hand as though it contained something fascinating. "If you manage to avoid being arrested again for something else, do not doubt for a second that Penelope Thayer will not hesitate to try getting that case so she can put you away."
"Your lawyer will keep me out of jail." Dwayne said over confidently.
Everett's eyes traveled back to him. They narrowed until they saw Dwayne squirm. When he had him where he wanted he said, "Our lawyer is good, and has kept many of our men out of jail. Thayer is better. Make no mistake about that."
"But you only hire the best!" Came the sputtered replied.
"Believe me, son, if I had any inkling that Thayer would work for me, I would have bought her services the moment she was done with law school." Everett retorted. His voice coiled with disdain as he continued speaking, "As it is she developed her father's sense of morality. Damn man was a pain in my ass when he was alive and his daughter will be a pain in the ass if she's not taken care of."
"I'll find a way into the hospital…" Dwayne began earnestly.
"No." Everett interrupted. "Don't be foolish."
"Father, if she's in the hospital, she's clearly not going to move!"
"Exactly!" He snapped. "Do you honestly believe Ranger will not have men on her keeping her safe and alive?"
Dwayne glared at his father. Damn him, he was right. There was no way to get to Penelope while she was in the hospital. Ranger would have men on her 24/7. Fuck. If she wasn't connected to Stephanie Plum, he would have been able to get in and gotten to her and killed her. It would have been glorious too, he thought with a sickening glee.
"Dwayne!" Everett barked. "Need I remind you that we have other business to attend to?"
"But you said Thayer is a threat." Dwayne said sounding like a petulant child.
It took everything Everett had not to reach across his desk and beat the hell out of his son. "Yes I did."
"Then killing her will get rid of the threat."
"Son," Everett smiled slowly. Dwayne hated that smiled. It had always promised punishment. Cruel punishment that had been delivered to him over the years until he'd learned not to question his father. "There are always worse things than death. When the time is right, Penelope Thayer will wish for death."
/\/\/\/\/\
Stephanie sat at her cubicle working on searches for Rodriguez. She may want to focus on Kaylee's murder more than anything, but she still had a job to do so she could pay her bills. And while she loved Ranger for allowing her to utilize RangeMan resources, she didn't want to shirk her other duties. So she spent the majority of her morning sitting in front of her computer working on said searches.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Lester walk toward the control room where there were monitors. Normally, he would wave at her and give her some funny quip on his way to the Land of Boredom as it was being referenced but in the last four days he had steadfastly refused to make any contact with her.
It confused her because he had never treated her like that before, but she found out from Tank that Lester had been put on monitor duty because of his injuries. That didn't really surprise her because it was normal for men to be taken off fieldwork after an injury. The only thing she could think of was that he was probably afraid to hear if something had changed with Penelope.
Which it hadn't. Penelope was stuck in the hospital for at least another week. The doctors had decided that she was going to stay where they could keep an eye on her. This decision came after they realized she was a friend of Stephanie's and decided that they weren't going to risk her behaving in the same manner that Steph was prone to do when she was let out of the hospital earlier than she should be.
Stephanie usually went to visit her after lunch for a few hours to keep her company. Penelope had managed to sweet talk her into getting her laptop so she could do something while she was stuck at the hospital. Usually, she only got through one or two rousing games of Solitaire before her meds would kick in and she would fall back asleep. So far the doctors were extremely pleased with Penelope's recovery. Her injuries were healing nicely. There would be scars, but Penelope waved those off saying, "Better to have a few scars than to have no life."
Penelope did insist on Stephanie going back to work. She loved her friend, but they both knew they got restless sitting in one place too long and of the two, Penelope handled it better. To make sure Stephanie would go back to work with little fuss, she had called Ranger and made him come get her. It had been an amusing sight indeed when Stephanie refused to go and Ranger simply threw her over his shoulder and carted her out of the hospital like a sack of potatoes.
Stephanie smiled as she thought of that moment. While she hadn't liked the way she had been handled initially, it had definitely led to some interesting moments in the SUV on the way home. Once they had gotten back to RangeMan, Ranger had promptly taken them to Steph's apartment on four because it was the quickest room they could get to.
Stephanie had been pleasantly surprised when she saw Henry working at RangeMan. She had seen him in the gym getting the tour of the building from Cal. They hadn't really had the chance to speak yet, but she knew they would soon.
"Hey, Steph."
Speak of the devil, she thought smiling as she turned around to face Henry. "Hey, Henry, how's it going?"
"Good." Henry nodded. "Ranger's a good boss. I like it here so far."
"Awesome." Steph said.
"Hey, listen, I heard about Penelope. Is she okay?" Henry asked leaning back on the desk of her cubicle.
"She's fine. The surgery was touch and go because of where one of the bullets impacted and got itself lodged, but she came through with flying colors."
"That's good. Real good." He sighed. Stephanie thought it sounded like a relieved sigh, not that she could blame him. They had all been relieved when the doctor came out with the news. She could imagine he thought of Kaylee the same way they had all been thinking of Kaylee.
"You should go visit her." Stephanie said. "She'd enjoy the company. I'm beginning to think she might be getting sick of me."
"You're the only one visiting?" He chuckled.
"No!" She exclaimed. "Mary Lou and Sheila go over frequently, In fact most days she has all of us there throughout the whole day. It works out seeing as how her mother keeps trying to get in to see her."
"Ahh." Henry nodded. He had met Diane once and the moment they had met he wanted to run the other way. He didn't trust her or like her.
"I'm going by later if you want to come with." Stephanie told him.
"Yeah, sure. I'll see when I get off." Henry nodded and stood straight so he could leave. Before he did he hesitated, "Uh, Steph? About that time…"
"What time?" Stephanie looked up.
He cleared his throat. "You know."
"It never happened." She said with a smirk and almost laughed at the look of relief on his face. "Henry, I love Ranger, but I'm not stupid. I'd hate to see you meeting him on the mats at five-thirty every morning for something that never happened." She winked and turned back to her computer.
She continued to work in a blissful silence for another hour, nearly emptying her inbox. Then she opened it again to send some information back to Rodriguez and she saw it full again. She let out a low growl.
"Babe."
Stephanie jumped at Ranger's voice and turned around to glare at him. "Wear a bell!" She told him.
"Gotta be aware of your surroundings, Babe." Ranger said leaning down to kiss her. "I have something to show you." He grabbed her hand and pulled her up, leading her to the elevators. He hit a button and they began their descent down into the bottom of RangeMan.
"You have a basement?" Stephanie asked with surprise.
"Yes."
"What's down there?" Please, don't let it be dead bodies that they've had to hide, she prayed.
"Babe!"
"Oops." She knew she had said it out loud. She gave him a sheepish smile.
The elevator stopped and they stepped out. Stephanie's jaw dropped at the sight in front of her.
In front of her lay a complete gym full of gymnastics equipment. Everything she could need or just plain want to practice on was laid out in front of her, calling her name. In a thunderstruck awed trance she walked through the gym, stopping at the mats to automatically kick off her shoes. She touched the trampoline lovingly, caressed her fingers along the balance beam, grinned when she saw the uneven balance beams farther down the way. The vaulting board and table called to her.
There were weight machines, as well as a stationary bike and treadmill, along with a tread climber so she could work on her muscle strength when she wasn't moving across the floors.
Turning back to Ranger, she smiled. "Carlos, you made me a gym."
He couldn't help the grin that came to his face at the look of awe and love that shined brightly in her eyes. "Yeah, Babe."
"You're the sweetest man." She said as she hopped up on a balance beam. With expert moves she moved along the balance beam. When she saw Ranger about to step on the mats, she stopped and pointed at him. "No shoes on my mats!"
"Babe."
"No," She shook her head and easily did a flip off the beam. Stephanie bounded over to him, launching herself into his arms. "Thank you, Carlos, I love it!"
He kissed her. "Glad you love it, Babe." He set her down and put something in her hand. "This is your fob. There are only a few with access to this area. You, me, Bobby, Tank, Lester, Ella and Luis, so he can help fix any equipment. There are cameras set to monitor the entire gym so if anything happens and you need someone to get down to you, you'll be seen right away." She looked to where he pointed and nodded. She could live with that. It made sense. "Bobby made a medical station for you over here. According to him since you did gymnastics for so long you'll know how to treat injuries related to it, if you don't need anyone else to help. There are grips and chalk ready for you as well."
The station he indicated also had a phone attached to the wall, which she could figure out was if she needed someone to come help her if she wasn't stuck on the floor with an injury.
Stephanie just continued to look awed. Her very own gym. "Batman, you're really determined to make me fly."
"Babe." Ranger turned her and cupped her face with his hands. "You need to fly, and if gymnastics is how you fly, then you will fly and I'll do everything I'm capable of making it so you can. The gym on three is for my men, and you don't have enough room to do as much as you want. And since I require my employees to have gym time this is a good way to make sure you get yours."
"I'm not getting up at five thirty." She stuck her tongue out at him.
"Good." Ranger kissed her, sucking her tongue into his mouth, "Because then I'd be inclined to come down here to work out so I can watch your hot little ass move across those mats."
"Don't you plan on doing that anyway?" Stephanie asked sweetly.
Ranger laughed. "Yeah, Babe, I do."
They sat there holding one another, just savoring the feel of being together. Stephanie couldn't believe Ranger had gym built for her. She couldn't wait to get busy in it. She knew she always teased Ranger about having his zone, but she knew she had her own when she was working out and doing gymnastics. Everything that was bothering her just fell away and when she was finished she could think clearly. It was a wonderful feeling.
"Carlos." She tipped her head back. "Why is Lester avoiding me?"
"He's on monitor duty, Babe." Ranger answered, wanting to avoid the question. He really didn't want to answer that.
"Carlos, it's not monitor duty. He's been going out of his way to avoid me. He hasn't gone to the hospital to see Penelope…everything is just off." She said, frustrated.
"You know I put injured men on Monitor duty."
"I know, I know, but like I said, it's not just at work."
Ranger went to war briefly internally. On the one hand, telling Stephanie why Lester was avoiding her and Penelope went against the brotherhood they had created while serving together and while growing up. On the other hand, he didn't agree with Lester's attitude, having done the same thing and knowing he was stronger now that he was with Steph versus apart from her.
He went with the latter. "He's avoiding both of you because he doesn't feel he can protect Penelope soundly. He let his emotions get in the way and he's punishing himself for it."
"What a load of shit!" Stephanie burst out.
"Babe. I did the same thing."
"Yeah, and look how that went." She marched out of his arms and stomped around for a minute before stopping to pick up her shoes and shove her feet in them. "What an idiot! He's the perfect person to protect her. Can't believe he's gotten his head shoved up his ass. I should take him to the mats for being such a dunderhead!" She let out a frustrated sound, which came off suspiciously like a growl.
Ranger decided it was wise just to let her continue to rant. "Does he have any idea how much she's hurting? No, I bet he doesn't." Stephanie continued. "Both of them are idiots. No strings attached my ass. Those two were bound to become attached from almost the moment they met. And now they both pull this. Him with his macho attitude and her with her love em and leave em-tude. And Kaylee gave me shit!"
"Tell me how you really feel, Babe." Ranger said unable to repress the smile any more. Damn, he thought she was pretty cute when she got worked up like that.
She whirled around and tapped her foot as one of her hands went to her hip. "Do you agree with what he's doing?"
"No, but I understand where he's coming from." Ranger replied coming closer to her. He held out his hands and she slid hers into them and let him pull her to him. She sighed and closed her eyes. He felt good.
"Then you won't mind if I go ahead and deal with them my way?" Stephanie asked.
"Babe, I was hoping you would."
Hm...what possible way could Steph deal with them? Oh the ways...
