So, the work year started today. Boy was I not prepared for the 5am wake up after sleeping till ten all last week. Have fun with this extra long chapter.

Steph's POV

I couldn't sleep Friday night. It wasn't that I wasn't comfortable. The couch was ridiculously luxurious, even when being used as a bed. No. My problem was the familiar, Ranger-centric surroundings. The apartment that was as much a part of him as he was a part of it. I still hadn't brought myself to enter the bedroom by midnight and finally admitted to myself that I wasn't ready to do it as I snagged a spare pillow and blanket from the hall closet and proceeded to make the couch up for sleeping.

But sleep, I could not.

I lay there an hour, two, three. At the three and half mark I got up and relieved myself in the tiny, little-used powder room between the storage closet and Julie's room, then I stood in the hall outside the master bedroom, a soft glow emitting from the lamp I'd left on in the living room down the hall. I can't tell you how long I stared at the black space of the doorway, willing myself to at least reach in and turn on the light, before a yawn escaped my throat and I slid my back down the wall, somehow falling asleep sitting there.

Inevitably, the nightmares came. I stood on the street, staring up at the tall building, at the shadow of a man in the window of one of the upper floors. Whoever it was moved slowly, deliberately, carefully, as though they were trying to not draw attention to themselves. I saw him reach behind his back, presumably to retrieve a gun, but before he could loose it from the back of his pants, three loud cracks split the air – the unmistakeable sound of gunshots – and a rain of glass fell all around me.

Holding up my hand, I managed to shield my eyes from the shards as I watched the figure fall in agonising slow motion, almost frame by frame, to the ground. I let out a belated cry of shock as the body slammed into the pavement several feet away and sprinted across the short distance to see if the man was okay.

But it wasn't a man.

There, lying broken on the ground in a pool of their own blood, was a woman. A woman I knew all to well. It was me. My own vacant eyes staring up at me.

I jerked awake as I had so many nights in the last year, a scream on my lips. Blindly, I scrambled to my feet, knowing I was not in my bed, not even in comfort of my own home. As my frantic gaze adjusted to the dark, it fell on the pitch black rectangle before me. The doorway that had tormented me before I'd finally succumbed to sleep, and then continued to torment me as I dreamed. I backed away from it, down the hall to the bathroom where I splashed water on my face, but then decided I really wasn't coping and proceeded to vomit into the toilet.

When I was done, I splashed my face once more, brushed my teeth and avoided looking at the darkened bedroom doorway as I made my way through the apartment to the kitchen.

I drank a bottle of water and ate an apple I found in the crisper to settle my stomach and noted that it was already five AM. I may as well go for a run to clear my head before I had to pretend to be my old, merry self again for the weekend.

*0*

By seven thirty, I was showered and dressed and in the kitchen baking mini chocolate chip muffins when there was a knock on the door.

"Let yourself in!" I called, knowing there was a very limited number of people it could be as I retrieved one tray of cooked muffins from the oven while balancing the next to go in my other hand. It was a familiar act after months of trial and error (Making sure I used the gloved hand for the hot tray) and I was doing well, until an alarmed voice cried out from behind me.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Startled, I dropped both trays, narrowly avoiding burning myself as they fell with a clatter. Hot, fresh muffins rolled over the kitchen floor while gooey batter splattered over the lower cupboards.

"Shit," I uttered, hopping back out of the way and almost falling against the still open oven door.

"Fuck," Bobby agreed as he rounded the bench to survey the damage. "Sorry," he added. "I freaked out. Not used to seeing you wielding oven trays." He leaned down to pick one up, clearly intending to start the clean up process, but let out a hiss of pain instead, quickly straightening empty handed.

"Hot oven trays," I said with a slight eye roll as he picked he way over to the sink to run his burnt hand under the tap. "As in fresh from the hot oven." I closed the oven door and flipped the dials until everything was turned off. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," he assured me, pulling his appendage from the stream of cold water to examine it. "What are you doing?" he asked again, though his tone was much milder than a minute ago.

"I was baking mini muffins," I informed him, using my still gloved hand to move the hot tray from the floor to the counter before he could attempt to injure himself on it again. "They're ruined now."

"Sorry," he repeated, gingerly picking up the other, cooler tray and dumping it in the sink that was now filling with warm soapy water.

I shook my head, lifting the only muffin that had managed to maintain its place from the tray and breaking it half. "It's fine," I told him shoving one half into my mouth and chewing slowly. "I don't think I added enough cocoa powder anyway. You probably saved me some embarrassment."

Not convinced, Bobby picked up a muffin from the ground and stuffed it in his mouth. "You made these yourself?" he questioned, eye widening in disbelief. "From scratch?"

I nodded.

"They're good."

"They're dry," I countered with a roll of my eyes as I began tossing the cakes into the trash can under the counter.

"A little frosting would help with that," Bobby suggested. Unravelling a wad of paper towels from the roll and getting to work on the batter mess. "All sorts of sins can be hidden by frosting. My mom used to pass off raisin loaf as choc-chip cake with frosting. I always thought the choc-chips were a little chewy, but I was none the wiser until I was about thirteen."

I paused, crouched on the floor with one hand on the counter to keep me from toppling over as I contemplated this information. "Something tells me you're the kind of guy who would eat raisin loaf anyway," I informed him, merely thinking out loud.

This caused a bark of laughter. "You're right," he said good-naturedly. "I am."

"So to what do I owe this mess of a visit?" I asked.

"I was intending on checking to see if you'd eaten or if you wanted to stop by McDonalds for some breakfast on the way to the airport," Bobby explained. He dumped the chocolate coated towels in the bin and grabbed some more, soaking them in some water before returning to scrub at the smudges that were left. "Tank's wanting to leave soon. Traffic."

Before I could answer, there was another knock on the door and Lester's voice called out, "What's taking so long?"

"Bobby freaked out and caused a mess," I called back, summarising the happenings into one sentence. "We're just cleaning up and then we'll be down."

The door opened and Lester's head poked around the corner, one eyebrow raised out of curiosity. "Freaked out?" he asked.

"Steph was baking," Bobby explained. "I'd never seen her that close to an oven without supervision."

"Baking?" Les asked, perking up a bit. "I like baked goods, what were you making?"

"It doesn't matter," I said, shaking my head as Bobby finished off. "They're in the bin now, and they were dry anyway." I looked between the two and added. "I'll go get my purse so we can go."

"Chocolate mini muffins, bro," Bobby said in a hushed tone. "From scratch. They weren't bad."

"How come you got some?" Les asked just as quietly.

"I picked it up off the floor," Bobby explained.

*o*

Three hours later we were in Lester's apartment, a place I'd always tried to avoid. Wasn't there a saying about dirty minds and dirty houses or something? Maybe? I don't know, but it my head, because of the way Lester sprouted his inappropriateness at every opportunity, I thought his living space would reflect that in some way. Think about it. I was always disorganised and it showed in my apartment. Ranger was very zen and minimalist and the apartment reflected that (until I'd moved in and add my disorganisation to the mix). My mother was very anal, so everything in my parents' house was always exactly where it was supposed to be. It wasn't like I'd just plucked this theory from nowhere. I had evidence.

As it turns out, though, Lester's apartment on the fourth floor was kind of like a cross between a military bunk house and a geek cave. There was the element of routine and order that had dominated Ranger's apartment before it became our apartment, which was obviously a holdover from his days in the military. But there was a very sophisticated looking gaming set up, a bunch of superhero figures on the shelf on the wall, a box of comic books under the coffee table. And board games.

Apparently, the men have a monthly game night, and Lester was the main provider of the games, he had everything from Dungeons and Dragons (even just trying to picture the big burly men sitting around pretending to be elves and wizards made me crack up), to snakes and ladders, to Cards Against Humanity and a game that I was pretty sure was called "Poo" but I might have misread it.

Julie had mentioned being super tired from school and just wanting to hang out and chill, so we'd all trooped into Lester's domain to find a game to play. She picked Cards Against Humanity. I'd never played, but I'd heard a lot about it from Veronica at work, so I was okay with that. Tank, on the other hand, completely freaked out, insisting she was too young to play it, that we should find something else to play. Eventually, Lester and Bobby convinced him it would be alright, they'd all be on their best behaviour. Tank still wasn't convinced, probably because he knew how foul Lester's mind could be without any effort at all, but it worked out okay. There were a few questionable card choices but nothing a sixteen year old girl of the world wouldn't know about or understand. In fact, I'm pretty sure Julie was the one making most of the inappropriate plays. Which, of course, had Tank's eye twitching double time within ten minutes.

Not long after, Tank couldn't take it anymore. He threw his cards down on the table, scattering the draw and discard piles in the process and pushed himself to his feet. "That's it," he insisted. "We're done with this game. I can't take it anymore. We're gonna play Go Fish instead."

Julie just rolled her eyes at that. "I'm not nine anymore, Tank," she retorted. "I don't play Go Fish."

"What about Snap, then?" Tank tried. I'd never seen him so out of sorts.

"Poker?" Julie suggested.

"What about Monopoly?" I said, noting the way Tank's dark complexion seemed to be turning purple.

Lester scoffed. "We're not play Monopoly, Bobby always wins."

I looked to Bobby, who shrugged in a 'what can you do?' kind of way and started gathering up the cards from the table. "How about video games?" he suggested. "We could go down to the common room and see what takes your fancy?"

I'd never really been into video games, but Julie's eyes started to twinkle at the prospect and was interested to see what kind of damage she could do when given a controller and set up against Lester, so I agreed with no hesitation.

The game she picked was some kind of superhero thing, where the characters fight each other either one on one or two on two, but they weren't the superheroes I was familiar with. No Batman, Superman, or Wonder Woman. These were Hulk, and Iron Man, and Captain America. I let them play two on two first, not just because I'd never played a video game and wanted to get a feel for what had to happen before I jumped in with both feet. I needed a chance to just sit back and watch and figure out my place in the group again. I'd hung out with Julie and the guys plenty of times over the years, but Ranger had always been present, and I'd found it easy to just slip into whatever was going on, because I liked the way Ranger would let his eyes smile when I did. Without Ranger there I didn't have a ready explanation of all the in jokes and old gags that they guys had with Julie and I wasn't exactly sure of my place. I wasn't Dad's girlfriend, or Dad's fiancée. It was just Steph. And being Just Steph was different to Dad's Girlfriend, because Julie and I had no real connection anymore. The reason we'd spent time together in the past wasn't around anymore.

I watched Julie and Bobby slaughtering Lester and Tank for a while. Tank was actually doing pretty well, considering his prosthetic didn't have the full range of motion that a normal hand did, but Lester was blaming their losing streak on the dead weight and insisted I take over for the man. I still had no idea what my role was in the group, but I figured playing a little video game couldn't hurt.

As it turns out I'm horrible at video games and soon Lester was calling for a one on one match with Julie to prove he was actually better than her. Bobby and I gladly set down our controllers, the both of us had been the brunt of a few harsh criticisms in the last twenty minutes and were happy to step out of the line of fire. Julie was more judgemental of Bobby's video game skills than Cal was of my shooting skills on the odd occasion that I was actually forced into the gun range.

At some point, while I was distracted by the massive screen in front of me, and Lester's unhelpful words, a crowd had started to gather in the room behind us. A big crowd. There were more men in the room than I thought even worked at Rangeman, but then again, despite the amount of time I'd spent here in the past,, my exposure to all aspects of the business were pretty limited. I knew that they did more than just skip tracing and security surveillance, but I wasn't entirely sure what the rest of it was, or how big the sectors were. Apparently they were pretty large, judging by the amount of people squeezing up against each other trying to get a good view of the fight.

They weren't all on Lester's side, but the majority of them were. It was like Lester was their nominated tribute in this battle and he was representing all their honour. The fact that he was still losing to a sixteen year old girl was not pleasing them.

"You call yourself a champion?" someone complained loudly from the crowd.

"Use your special attack!" someone else suggested.

"Throw him off the roof!" the guy right behind me called when Lester started getting the upper hand. The crowd erupted, not for the first time, in cheers and shouting as they protested of encouraged their victors, but I was no longer paying attention. Those words, called so innocently from the mouth of a merry man I had never officially met, had stuck in my head, in a place where I knew they weren't going to do any good.

Throw him off the roof.

Unbidden, images of a man falling through the air like a ragdoll, entered my mind. Not just any man, but the man. The love of my life. Ranger. The scene I'd replayed in my head a thousand times a week. The image I could never quite erase from my mind because it always came back. The whipping his hair out of the leather tie that held it. His arms and legs flailing and being shoved in weird angles. And ultimately, the landing. That sickening, gut wrenching landing.

I took a deep breath, trying to calm my pulse, and ran a hand over my face to get rid of the cold sweat that had sprung up. I couldn't sit here in this room any longer. I couldn't quietly go insane while men yelled at a screen. I needed to get out of there. I needed time to calm down and deal with this sudden onslaught of emotion.

Leaning over to Tank, I informed him that I was just going to the bathroom, keeping my voice and my expression as level as I could. I'd thought it would be difficult to push through the men, there was barely enough room for a playing card between some of them, but as I made my way around the couch, a path opened up. It was like parting the black sea. As soon as I'd moved past, the gap would close back up, like it had never been there to begin with.

Once out of the room, I made a beeline for the bathroom I'd seen on my way past earlier. It was a women's bathroom, like in public places, which, I guess, is why it stuck in my mind. The only woman I'd seen working in the building was Ella. I suppose other women had at some point. Like that Diana woman, perhaps, but I wasn't up to thinking too much about it at the moment. I just needed to get to a place where I could be alone for a few minutes and calm down. Hopefully it wouldn't take any longer than a few minutes, because I knew that if I didn't return within a reasonable amount of time, they'd come looking for me.

Letting the door close behind me, I crossed to one of three sinks along the wall to the left and spun the cold tap, thanking God, or whoever was in charge of maintaining the plumbing, that the building had not been upgraded to those ridiculous push button taps with a timer that shut off before you'd even managed to do anything. I splashed the water on my face a bit, but it didn't help. It only increased my feeling of discomfort. It reminded me of the day Ranger died and the sticky wetness of his blood all over my body. So I grabbed a handful of paper towels from the dispenser and was attempting to dry my face and hands when the door opened.

I was gearing up to tell whatever Merry Man had come looking for me to go away, that I was fine, when lifted my head and spotted none other than the woman who had tackled me to the wall a week ago just for standing to close to the man who was possibly her boyfriend. (I still had not managed to clarify the vague facts Tank had given me with Halfred, since he hadn't been back at Yoga this week and I didn't know how to get in touch with him short of asking Tank for his number, and I thought that might give the wrong impression).

"Go away," I sniffed, leaning against the wall between to sinks as I rubbed at the back of my hands with the towel.

"It's a free bathroom," she retorted with a raised brow.

"Whatever," I said. I was in no mood for witty repartee. Especially not with this irritating woman. I tossed my paper towels in the bin and ran hand through my hair, avoiding looking at her as I waited for her to use the facilities or get out. Unfortunately, she did neither.

"You're having a meltdown," she observed. Apparently she didn't know what the word sensitivity meant.

"No shit, Sherlock," I muttered, but as I drew my hand away from my face I noted how wobbly it was. For some reason, the thought of this woman - this unconcerned, irrational woman – seeing the extent of my break down, did not appeal to me. Fisting my hands tightly, I shoved them into my armpits to hide their tremors.

"Sometimes talking helps," she said, drawing my attention back to her.

I wanted to scoff – the thought of spilling my guts to her, of all people, seemed ludicrous – but the only sound that managed to escape my throat was a slight sob. How could Ranger have hired this awful woman?

"Hey," she said more gently, stepping closer to me with her hands held out. It was though she was approaching a baby deer in the wild. She was trying to show that she wasn't a threat, but after the way she'd introduced herself to me, I wasn't sure I could trust her. "Hey, calm it," she said. "Is this about Ranger?"

My eyes snapped up to hers in an instant. How dare she! Did she really think I was going to open my heart to her? From the comments the guys had made as we left the hospital the week before, I doubted Diana was even capable of love. There was no way I was going to let myself be victim to her ridicule.

"Of course it's about Ranger," she murmured. "Everything always comes back to Ranger these days, right? Everything reminds you of him. Being in this building must be agonising."

I didn't say anything. I couldn't say anything. For a start, she was right. And secondly, there was the fact that she appeared to be trying to be nice, and that put me on edge. I mean, she'd punched her supposed boyfriend in the balls for suggested he and I get coffee some time. I'm pretty sure she didn't really have a nice side.

She sighed heavily and pulled herself up onto the edge of one of the sinks, balancing there as easily as if she were sitting on a regular chair. She even had the audacity to cross one leg over the other. "Look, I understand if you don't like me," she said casually. "It's not like I've been the perfect pupil of pleasantries to you. But I've been where you are. I've lost someone close to me. I've had that struggle to face the world without them. I've endured the constant nightmares, the feeling of helplessness, the debilitating grief. I know it all too well." Her tone grew darker the more she spoke, her eyes focused solely on the cubicle door across from her. "I still battle with it from time to time."

This sudden vulnerability she was showing intrigued me. The character I had made her out to be in my head, given the few tidbits of information I'd received, was not the type to share personal moments with anyone. At all. But there she was, letting her emotions show. It was as shocking as the first time I'd seen one of the men cry.

I slid down the wall to the floor, not entirely sure what to do, so I just let my curiosity rule my actions and asked, "Who was it?"

"My dad," she said wistfully. "I was eleven."

"You were close?" I asked. Maybe focusing on her story would distract from my own pain.

A soft laugh fell from her lips, but the mirth didn't reach her eyes. "We were like this," she explained, glancing down at me and holding up a single finger. I didn't get it, and she must have seen the confusion on my face, because she said, "Most people say they're like this –" she held up a second finger, twined together with the first. "- with their best friend. Which they think is about as close as you can get to another person. But my dad and I were like this." She held up the single finger again. "We were practically one person. We did everything together."

I couldn't quite imagine how two people could be represented by a single finger, even if they were really close, but I had to keep her talking to stay away from the gaping dark hole inside myself. So I asked another question. The question I hated being asked the most. But it was a logical one. "How did he die?"

"Drunk driver," she replied without missing a beat, staring at the door again. Her hazel gaze was dull. Her expression slack. "He was picking me up from ballet practice." She shook her head. "I hated ballet practice, but I had to go because all my sisters learned ballet, so I did too. Mom insisted. Except my class was a different night, because I younger. A lower grade. A worse dancer. So I was alone outside the studio, my bag on my back. The crisp air turning my nose red. Waiting. Dad wasn't late. I'd walked out of class early. Anything to get out of prancing around like a fool in a leotard. I spotted his truck at the end of the street and started across the parking lot. We'd worked out that if I met him at the street we cut out anywhere up to ten minutes of our commute and we could get ice cream on the way home without raising the suspicions of Mom and my sisters."

She took a deep breath before continuing. It was like she was in a trance. The calm that had come over her body was almost eery. "So I was standing on the sidewalk when a car going the opposite direction veered over the lines and hit his truck head on. They both died instantly. Directly in front of me. The crash louder than anything I'd ever heard before. My ears were ringing for weeks afterwards. The police said it was a miracle I wasn't hurt."

"You watched your dad die?" I asked, utterly in awe of how such a strong woman could have had such a devastating past. "You were eleven."

"Yes," she agreed shortly. "And I never really recovered from it. Not fully. Oh, I put on a brave face, a domineering façade, but underneath it all, in the quiet parts of my brain, I still replay that moment. I wonder what would have happened if I'd put my foot down and refused to do ballet. I wasn't any good at it, and I hated it to boot. What if I'd somehow gotten them to agree to let me do Tae Kwon Do instead? Would Dad still be alive?"

"I know that feeling," I admitted, suddenly transported back to an earlier time on the same day Ranger died. "I'd had a bad feeling about the call they were responding do. I begged him not to go. But in the end I couldn't convince him and as a result he-" I almost choked on the lump in my throat. "He plummeted six stories to his death. What if- What if I'd managed to keep him here at Rangeman? Safe. Where I could see him."

"You'll never know," Diana said softly. "Just like I'll never know. It's just something we have to live with. It never stops hurting, but it does get easier." She paused for a moment, looked down at me with a peculiar expression and announced, "But this isn't just about Ranger being dead. It's about you feeling like a fish out of water because you've avoided these men for the better part of a year."

"I-," I started, but there was nothing to protest. She was right. I was struggling to slot myself back into Rangeman life and it wasn't working. Possibly because it was RCM Security now. A name change could change dynamics, right?

Diana scooted off the edge of the sink, checked her appearance – which was flawless, by the way – in the mirror and held out a hand. "Come with me. There's some stuff you need to know."

I let her pull me to my feet. "Are you the ghost of Christmas past, present or future?" I asked, only half joking.

"It's not Christmas," she said flatly as she dragged me out the door. "But I guess all three. Now are you going to walk on your own? I'm not sure the Steph-Loyalists would approve if they saw me hauling you through the halls. They may or may not be intimidated by me, which may or may not set off their protective instincts toward you. I know you don't like being tackled to walls – trust me, Halfred has admonished me as many times as he could over that incident and I am contractually obliged to apologise for my behaviour – but you're not the only one, and I can't guarantee I'll be able to stop myself from tackling the foolish men if they do try to stop me."

I nodded dumbly, slipping my hand from her loosened grip and fell into step beside her as we reached the hall that lead to the elevator and stair well. She was back to being intimidating, and for some reason, I thought that was easier to deal with, all of a sudden. She had a don't-mess-with-me kind of attitude that was off putting, but I figured she had to put up that front to be respected in this male-driven business. And it was no wonder she was so abrasive if she'd been with the company as long as Tank said she had been.

We took the stairs up one floor, which didn't seem as bad as it used to, and came out on the comm floor. Yet another place I'd been avoiding since I'd arrived yesterday evening. The moment I stepped out the door at least three sets of familiar eyes locked on me. I gave them a little finger wave before hurrying to catch up to Diana who hadn't even paused as she emerged. Within a few moments I found myself in Tank's massive office, staring at Diana sitting behind Tank's massive desk in Tank's massive chair. She was eyeing me with a look of contemplation as she gestured for me to sit down. I felt like I'd been called to the principal's office, except the principal of my school had been a push over compared to this woman.

"Look," she stared, shifting the special computer keyboard aside so she could lay her hands on the desk. "I get that Ranger's death tipped your world upside down and you're on some kind of vision quest to find who you are without him." Almost all the sympathy she'd shared back in the bathroom was gone from her tone now. She must mean serious business. "But you've got to realise something: there's an entire building full of men whose lives were also turned upside down because their boss, their friend, their cousin, their brother-in-arms died. And from what I understand, the only reason they've held it together so far is you."

I opened my mouth to protest, but she help up a hand, cutting me off.

"You're the glue that holds this place together, Stephanie," she informed me. "Have been for years. These men were and are willing to defy direct orders to ensure your safety. Take Lester ignoring orders to stand down just so he could try one more time to get you to come back." Her face split into a grin so unexpected that I thought fangs would shoot out and she'd attack me. "He and Greg were both sufficiently punished for that, by the way. You should watch the footage. Hilarious!" And then she was back to serious Diana. "Each and every single one of those men out there made a vow to Ranger to always look out for you. Hell, I'm pretty sure he wrote it into their employee contracts. That kind of thing doesn't just go away because Ranger died. It's a life sentence. And whether you like it or not, those men need you. They need to know you're okay."

"But I'm not okay," I admitted softly. The words surprised me. I'd been pretending for a while and I'd gotten pretty good at it, but when it came down to it, I was still a mess. If only I could shake those nightmares.

"They know," Diana said firmly. "Believe me, they know." When I raised my gaze to meet hers she asked, "Why do think they tried so hard to get you to talk to them, to come back and let them help?"

I just shrugged. Of course I hadn't fooled them. No one who is completely fine runs out of a grocery store to get away from the man saying hi to them. And even the more recent interactions had pointed to nothing but a lack of coping. They were highly trained professionals. Noticing things was eighty percent of their job description. The other twenty was made up of fire arms, hand to hand combat and coming to my rescue. I guess I'd been thwarting their efforts on that last one.

"I guess I've been a bit selfish," I said, staring down at the colourful stripes on my shoes. "I didn't stop to consider how they might be affected by Ranger's death and my actions. I was too wrapped up in my own grief."

"It hasn't been easy," she assured me. "I thought I was going to have to fly up here and kick some asses at one stage." Then, under her breath she added, "I did fly up and kick some asses at one stage."

"You should have started with mine," I muttered, and she surprised me by letting out a bark of laughter.

"Ain't no way they would have let me anywhere near you in that kind of situation," she explained. "I'd have been in traction if I'd even thought about laying a finger on you. Which is not to say I wasn't tempted to think about it, but I like my bones unbroken, don't you?"

There was no denying that. I'd seen the end result of skips who thought it was okay to knock me around and it wasn't pretty. "Wise," I told her.

She smiled then, and I was shocked anew by how gorgeous she was with her goddess-like tan and glowing eyes and gentle, wavy hair. "I'm glad you can recognise it. Now, word of warning. If you don't want to end up in traction, keep you mitts off Halfred."

I nodded my understanding. Pretty sure I'd learned that lesson already, and I hadn't even touched him. "Not a problem," I said. "He's not my type."

Diana shook her head then, but the eye roll and the expression on her face let me know that it wasn't an aggressive gesture. "Yeah, well," she muttered. "I didn't think so either, but here we are."

Silence filled the room for several long minutes during which I attempted to scratch off some paint that had ended up on my jeans at some point and obviously hadn't washed out. Diana had taken to fiddling with the special one-handed keyboard while staring at the computer.

"Can I go now?" I asked, thinking of all the men down the hall and downstairs that I owed an apology to.

"Not yet," she said. "I've got one last thing I think you should be aware of." She glanced over at me and beckoned me around her side of the desk. I obliged quickly, not wanting to get on her bad side – again – and she pointed to the screen.

"What's this?" I asked, confused by the presence of my name.

"RCM Security database," she explained off hand. "This is the chain of command."

I looked closer, still not understanding. My name was right at the top "This isn't right," I told her, still staying at the screen under which was written Owner/CEO. "I signed the company over to Tank, Bobby and Lester months ago."

"No you didn't," she countered coolly.

"I did," I insisted. "I got the forms from the lawyers and everything."

"Well clearly something went wrong in the process because a) I never got an email to inform me of a change of own, and b) you are still owner and CEO of RCM Security. Didn't you notice all that money coming into your bank account?"

I shook my head. "It probably goes straight to my savings account. I don't touch that. After I finally got the saving thing down pat, I didn't want to go back to living hand to mouth, so I only use that account in dire emergencies."

"And Tank would have known this?"

My reply was not so much a confirmation as it was a curse. "Tank," I seethed.

"He's the most likely suspect," she agreed. "Would you like me to beat him to a pulp for you?"

"Not…not right yet," I said slowly. "What does this mean for me?"

Diana shrugged. "Ultimately, you're in charge. You have the power."

"I can't do that," I stated.

Diana's smile was unnerving as she turned on the chair to face me head on. "I can train you," she offered. "Like I did Ranger and Tank."

Fun fact: That last conversation has been written (As in written written, not script written like my conversations-in-advance usually are) since about March last year. Which when I first decided to include Diana in the story. It is a scene that I have been looking forward to revealing to you ever since, but I needed to lay the ground work first. How does this bit of information affect your opinion of Dear Diana?