Chapter 36

SPOV

I was surprised when I woke that it seemed so light outside and that I was actually wide awake. I turned carefully onto my back to find Ranger was fast asleep and that he'd slept with his front to my back, one arm under my pillow and the other laid across my hips. He didn't show any sign of waking up and to be honest I had no idea of when he had joined me last night. Deciding he obviously needed his sleep I very carefully slipped from the bed. I found some jeans and a sweater, underwear and socks and went into the bathroom to change. My hair was thankfully behaving so maybe I'd not moved much in my sleep, with it tied back into a ponytail I washed and then went downstairs.

It was really quiet in the house but as I looked out on the decking, I realized that maybe the guys would be late getting up judging by the number of empty beer bottles and was that an empty bottle of tequila? I was surprised though when I looked at the clock on the wall and realized it was only 6am. I found some yoghurt and fruit and went out into the sunroom opening up my laptop thinking through what I needed to do to find out more about Buckley, Gannon and maybe even Gauge and Dolby.

I decided to start with Buckley because there was something about him that drew me to him. Buckley was slightly younger than the other men but then I remembered he'd been a prodigy, he'd attended university at a young age, so maybe that's where I needed to start.

I knew the search we'd done had found nothing so went to a site for Harvard University finding the year that Buckley had started. I looked through anything that mentioned students but found very little, hell there were very few photographs from that time frame, I suppose this was way before digital cameras, so any photos tended to be of sports teams. I skipped some years and focused on when he had graduated pleased to find a lot more information so settled down to look through what had been recorded. There was a whole section devoted to the awards ceremony. Here there were lots of photos and I came across one of Adrian Buckley. He looked so young as he stood there receiving his certificates and he had been a good-looking guy. That made me wonder why he'd never been married. There was still not very much information to be found so on a whim I closed that site down and went into a program that would scour events from newspapers and put in the names of Buckley, Gauge and Dolby within the years they'd been at university and sat back and waited.

I went through to the kitchen to get a bottle of water noting that the house was still very quiet. Going back to the laptop I was surprised when the search program indicated it had finished and that there were two reports found. I quickly opened the first and started reading, then sat back as I tried to internalize what I was seeing. It was an obituary in a local paper for a young woman, Josie Gauge, who had died at the age of 22. That was all the information it gave other than that the funeral would be in two days' time. I felt a bit stupid really because there must be a lot of people with the name Gauge, but my spidey senses were tingling and telling me that just maybe, this was important. The second report was after the funeral, almost a thank you from her parents and brother for all of the support the family had received. I input her name and the year that she would have been born to have the results come up quickly on the screen. There was more detail here, so I sent that to the printer and then decided to go outside onto the decking while it printed.

It was a really beautiful day with a few white clouds in a sky of blue, so I just carried on walking until I came to the pier and then lay down just staring up at the clouds and listening to the sound that the birds were making. I'm sure my eyes closed, and I started to doze, I was even dreaming of Ranger, hearing him call out my name, but hell it seemed so far away and if possible, seemed to be getting louder. Why was I dreaming of him shouting for me? I suddenly sat up when I realized it wasn't a dream and I saw Ranger running toward me and he didn't look as though he was slowing down. I know I was staring wide eyed at him, what the hell was he going to do, stupid question really because as soon as he reached me he literally wrapped his arm around my waist and before I could ask we were rolling sideways off the pier falling into the water below. I didn't have chance to say anything as I sank into the water, it was so cold, and I know I was panicking but Ranger had his arms around me pulling me down.

I could feel my heart rate increasing and an intense cold seeping through my body, I fought to not take in a breath and then felt Rangers mouth over mine, his hand behind my head pulling me closer, and then warm air as he breathed his breath into my mouth and lungs. I opened my eyes to look at him, his face was full of concern, what the hell was happening for him to do this to me? Oh shit had someone found us? I felt us moving back to the surface, but we were underneath the pier now and I watched as Ranger literally bent his neck back to bring his mouth to the surface and take in some air. Then he was once again breathing air from his lungs into mine. I may have felt calmer in my mind, but my body had other ideas. My heart was hammering inside my chest and my arms and legs felt heavy making it really difficult to move. I was so glad when Ranger started to move me up toward the surface and as my face broke the surface of the water, I gulped air in through my mouth.

I felt myself being lifted and something being wrapped around me and was aware of being carried. All I could do was shake and shiver; every muscle I had was doing it causing my teeth to clash noisily together. I knew I was inside the house and felt my clothes being removed and then the splash of water around me that almost seemed to burn my skin. I felt Ranger wrapped around me, our skin touching from my shoulders down to my thighs.

"I'm sorry Babe, I had to get us out of sight"

"Out of sight?"

"Ash picked up some droids heading our way"

"Did they see us?"

"I don't know Babe"

I felt the water warming up on my skin and thankfully the shaking had stopped but shivered again at the thought that maybe someone was close by. I knew we'd both been in the water and Ranger must have felt the cold as much as me but even thinking of the situation we were in I felt lost as he moved his body away from mine. As the water stopped, he wrapped a towel around me, rubbing my arms and legs, I suppose to make sure I was dry and warm. With a towel around my head we left the bathroom and sorted out clean clothes to wear.

"Babe, are you okay?"
"Yes"
"I'm sorry, I know it was a shock to end up in the water, but I needed to get you out of sight"
"I understand, don't worry about it"

Once dressed in jeans and a sweater we headed downstairs to find Ash and Zeph packing things away.

"Ash?"

"We can't stay here Ranger, I'm sure they picked up your heat signatures, one of those drones stayed hovering above you for a minute or so"

I watched as the expression on Ranger's face changed, he was mad, but not to the point of losing control, he was thinking things through and he was going into mercenary mode.