Here we have a slightly longer chapter than normal which would have been WAY longer, but the muse said to cut it in two. Blame her, not me.
Chapter 52
The phone was ringing. Of that I was acutely aware as I waded through the layers of fog that had encased me as I slept. Reaching out blindly, I somehow managed to locate the offensive devices and accept the call without opening my eyes, all but dropping the phone onto the side of my face as my energy, already critically low from the interrupted sleep, waned. "'Lo?" I croaked.
"We have a problem," the male voice on the other end of the line said, forgoing pleasantries and skipping straight to the point. It wasn't the best way to start off a conversation when I was barely awake. I needed time to adjust to the waking world before I could process statements and their meanings.
"Watimesit?" I mumbled, dragging a hand over my face to try and wake up even as I attempted to burrow further under the sheets.
"It's oh-two-hundred," the guy informed me efficiently, and started to launch into what was probably an explanation for why he was calling, but I wasn't ready for that yet.
"Tha's a fake time," I informed him. "Call me at a real time."
"Bomber," he said evenly. "I need you to focus. We have a problem."
I must have finally been connecting some of the synapses in my brain, because this time when he spoke, I recognised his voice. "Vince?"
"Are you paying attention?" he asked, sounding somewhat annoyed. "We need to get in contact with Tank, Bobby and Lester. There's been a-"
I shook my head, returning a hand to grip the phone to my ear as I rolled onto my back. "They're not here right now," I said. And I was fairly certain that statement was correct, because it was their mini vacation weekend and I hadn't seen any of them since Friday morning when I went for my usual weekday run with Bobby. I assumed they were off doing guy things like fishing, or camping, or something else out in the wilderness.
"I don't have time for your monologue right now, Steph," Vince cut across my thoughts. Oops, must have been thinking out loud. "I know they're not with you. I can see their phone trackers on my screen."
Squinting my eyes shut against the pervasive darkness I was surrounded by, I flopped my hand over to the pillow to turn on the bedside lamp since this conversation didn't appear to be ending any time soon. Once the light was stabbing me through my eyelids, I slowly started to open them, taking my time to ease through the transition from pitch black to bright white. "Why are you calling me, then?" I asked.
Vince sighed. That would have been enough to wake me up on it's own – the Merry Men almost never sighed out loud – but when combined with his next words, I was suddenly alert and upright. "Because I need your help."
No way was I going to be able to slip back into the land of nod now. "What's wrong?" I demanded throwing the covers to the side and swinging my legs over the side of the bed, barely flinching as they touched the cold floor below.
"There's a situation that requires the core team's immediate attention," Vince explained, speaking a little faster now that it was clear he had my full and undivided attention. "But because of Hector's inhibitor chips, we can't get in contact with them."
I shook my head, scanning the floor for the pants I'd discarded before crawling into bed. "Lester and Bobby live on the fourth floor," I pointed out. "Can't you just-"
Vince didn't allow me to finish. He'd clearly already thought of my solution. "They're not home right now," he said in clipped tones.
Grabbing up the jeans that probably should have been put straight in the hamper based on the stains I could see darkening the knees, I braced the phone on my shoulder and started pulling them on. "What about Tank?" I asked. "Can't you send a-"
"All patrols are tied up at the moment," he cut me off again. "I need you to get in contact with them and get their asses back here now." After a beat he added in a much softer tone, "Please."
"Okay," I nodded, shoving my feet into my dying sneakers without taking the time to put socks on first. This was clearly an emergency. Sacrifices needed to be made, and my first sacrifice was future foot odour. "What do I tell them it's about?"
"Rangeman level six event," Vince said, relief at my willingness to leap into action clear in his voice.
"Level six," I repeated. "Got it." But the line was already dead. I allowed a brief thought for the lack of phone manners but figured in a state of emergency you couldn't exactly waste time on saying goodbye.
My first objective, as I made my way out to the kitchen, was to call Tank. The Big Guy was in charge of the whole Trenton branch of the company and if there was a situation going down, he needed to be aware.
He answered on the third ring. "Yo?"
"You need to get to Rangeman," I said without preamble, knowing that all the guys in my life were much better at processing information when they'd just been woken up than I was. "There's-"
The dial tone sounded in my ear. I frowned at my phone, wondering if I'd accidentally touched a button with the side of my face while I was talking. Shaking my head, I hit the button to call him again and he answered on the first ring this time.
"Steph?"
"Vince called and said that there's a level six event going down," I explained, picking up the conversation where we'd left off rather than wasting time on repeating things he already knew. "You need to get to Rangeman and-"
The call disconnected again and I let out a growl of frustration. What the fuck was wrong? It wasn't like I had bad reception; the bar was full! Before I could get too much further into troubleshooting my connection issues, though, Tank was calling me back.
"Tank?" I said to let him know I was there.
"I took the chip out," he explained, solving the problem I'd been trying to nut out. "On my way to Rangeman. I'll call Vince on the way. Are Lester and Bobby -?"
"They're both MIA," I said, knowing where the question was going.
Tank let out a single, elegantly formed swear word under his breath. "Can you-?"
"I'll find them," I assured him. "Get Vince to send me their tracker locations.
"Thanks," Tank said, and this time when the call disconnected I was pretty sure it was a deliberate move on his part. It wasn't the best phone manners, but it was more than I would have gotten in the past, so I called it a win and proceeded to scroll through to Bobby's name in my contact lists.
Connecting the call, I paced to the kitchen cabinets and pulled out my last butterscotch krimpet, biting half of it off while I prepared for at least two rings before I'd have to speak, plenty of time to chew and swallow. This was not how thing occurred, though. Rather than ringing, Bobby's voice was in my ear immediately calmly rattling off a very standard voicemail greeting. The beep sounded and I barely suppressed a groan. "Call me," I requested. "ASAP." And disconnected once more.
If Bobby's phone went straight to voicemail, that probably meant it was turned off, so there was no point in immediately trying him again, so I pulled up Lester's number and hit call, relieved when it showed the common courtesy of ringing before kicking me over to the voicemail system. I left the same message before hanging up and stuffing the rest of the krimpet in my mouth. Of all the times for the guys to not answer their phones!
Carrying the phone with me, I made a pit stop in the bathroom to void my bladder while I waited on the information from Vince. At this point, without knowing where Lester and Bobby were, there wasn't a whole lot else I could do for the cause apart from continually calling them, and that didn't seem very productive to me.
I grabbed my purse and keys and was on my way out the door when my phone – which was still in my hand – chimed with a message. From Vince, thank god. Two addresses were displayed on my screen as I hastily descended the two flights of stares to the lobby. The first, listed for Lester, was in Hamilton Township a little over ten minutes away. The second, listed for Bobby, was in the Bronx. An hour and a half away.
Letting out a groan at the rotten luck we all must have to be interrupting a peaceful weekend with this high priority case, I slid behind the wheel of my grandmother's Buick and pointed it in the direction of Lester's location. Probably, he was with a woman. Probably, this was going to be a super awkward encounter. Probably, there were going to be a lot less clothes than I wanted there to be. Don't get me wrong, all the guys were aesthetically pleasing with their well-defined muscles and rippling abs, and I didn't mind ogling them a little when they happened to take their shirt off or whatever, but there was a stark difference between taking your shirt off use it to stem a bleed, and being mostly naked because you were literally just in bed with someone a second ago.
Ten minutes later, I pulled into a driveway, double checking the address I'd been given with the address I'd arrived at to be sure they matched – I didn't want to accidentally interrupt the wrong person's sleep for no reason – and made my way up the stairs to porch. There was a doorbell, which I rang, but when several seconds passed and I could hear neither movement, nor voices from within indicating a reaction to my call, I started pounding a fist against the door instead. Time was of the essence here, after all.
A minute later a woman in a frilly pink robe wrenched the door open, staring out at me from beneath thoroughly sexed up hair. "Can I help you?" she questioned, eyeing me up and down.
"I'm looking for Lester Santos," I announced, trying to peer into the dim hallway behind her, sure the man would never have allowed the woman to answer the door in the middle of the night without him being close by to head off any threat that may be present.
"And?" she retorted, shifting her weight to her other foot and crossing her arms under her bosom in such a way that the two sides of her robe drifted apart, dangerously close to revealing her nipples. I tried to remain focused on the task at hand, but the threat of her exposure was distracting.
"I know he's here," I explained. "I need to speak to him."
"Steph?" Lester's voice reached me from a dark doorway behind the woman. "What are you doing here?" he asked, emerging from the shadows to stand behind the woman's shoulder. I noted absently that he wore only a pare of boxes in a colour so dark it was indeterminable in the currently lighting.
"You weren't answering your phone," I explained apologetically. "Rangeman emergency. Level six." He let out a few curse words while the glared from me to Lester and back, probably wondering who I thought I was that I could just waltz up to her door in the middle of the night and drag this man away from her bed. "You need to take the chip out of your phone and check in with control," I instructed, recalling how many times Tank and I had been cut off before he'd thought to do so.
Nodding, Lester turned to disappear back into the house, probably to find his clothes, but I called him back. "Do you know why Bobby would be in the Bronx?" I asked.
He thought for a moment while the woman beside him seemed to get even angrier. Lester wrapped an arm around her, dragging her to his side so that she fairly melted against his chest, clearly sending her the message to stand down, that I wasn't a threat to whatever they had going on here. "I think that's where his mother lives," he said eventually.
"Do you have her number?" I pressed hopefully. If I could get an alternate number to contact him maybe I could avoid a long drive in the middle of the night. I was a hundred times more alert than I had been when Vince had first woken me up, but that didn't mean that driving long distance was a good idea right now. I didn't want to fall asleep at the wheel and cause even more chaos for my friends on this already stressful night.
A shake of the head from Lester dashed away my hopes in one small movement. "No."
"You have your car here?" I asked, making sure he had a way of getting to Rangeman before I left. He nodded. "Get yourself to Rangeman, I'll handle Bobby."
"Thanks, Beautiful," Lester said, reaching to close the door with the woman still plastered to his side. As it clicked shut, I could have sworn I heard Lester quietly explaining that I was just a friend from work, more of a sister than anything, and that she shouldn't worry about me in that way, but I didn't stick around to hear the woman's response.
Back in my car, I tried calling Bobby again, but when it connected straight to voicemail again, I hung up, putting the car in gear and backing out of driveway. There had to be a way of getting in contact with Bobby that did not require me to drive all the way to New York. I would if I had to, because he'd done much more for me when I was in need, but the as a yawn forced it's way out of my chest, I couldn't help but recall Bobby's own lectures about microsleep and the dangers of driving while tired. The thought of needlessly putting myself and others in danger did not sit well with me, not after all the progress I'd made this year with being conscious of my choices and doing the right thing for my safety.
I drove a few blocks to a service station, figuring I may was well fill up Big Blue's tank while I was contemplating my next move just in case I did end up driving to the next state before the night was through. I grabbed a sub-par coffee when I went in to pay the disinterested night clerk and returned to the car to think through my options while I sipped what could only be described as caffeinated dirt water. I needed a plan.
What would I do if Bobby was a skip I was trying to locate? I thought to myself, hoping that by reframing the problem into something I was intimately familiar with I'd be able to come up with a solution easier.
"Contact relatives," I replied out loud, my tone dripping with sarcasm. That'd be a whole lot easier if I had a file with contact numbers like I would for an FTA. But I didn't. I could probably call Rangeman and get a number for Bobby's mother from control, but they were dealing with their own issues at the moment, so I discounted that as an option immediately. I didn't have a way of contacting Bobby's mother, and the only things I knew about his siblings were that Katie worked at the clinic, which was definitely closed at this hour, and Michael drew a web comic about tacos.
I paused with the coffee lid pressed to my lips, about to take a sip. "Michael's web comic," I said to no one in particular. I set my drink down on the dash, the Buick being too old to have cupholders, and snatched up my phone from the passenger seat. "There was a contact the artist option on the website," I reminded myself. "If I can message him, maybe there's a slim chance he's awake and I can get Bobby's mom's number that way."
Tapping on the shortcut icon I'd created to keep up to date on the comic once I'd read everything he'd posted so far, I selected the "Contact the Artist" option in the drop down menu at the top and quickly set to work typing out a message that gave as much information as possible while also trying not to alarm Bobby's brother at the same time.
Hi. My name is Stephanie Plum. You don't know me, but I'm friends with your brother Bobby. There's been a situation and I need to get in contact with him, but his phone is turned off, so I can't reach him. I think he's visiting your mom, but I don't have her number either. I know this is a long shot, but can you please either give me her number so that I can hopefully get in contact with Bobby via her, or call her yourself and let Bobby know that he needs to return to Trenton ASAP?
Cringing at the wording, but unable to think of a better way to put it in my current sleep deprived state, I hit send, hoping that the fact that I was much better at communicating verbally than in writing didn't work to my disadvantage in this particular circumstance. There was a lot riding on my being able to get Bobby back to Rangeman. I didn't know what a level six emergency was, but I could be damn sure that it was serious if Vince was willing to cut short the Work-Free Weekend we'd put so much effort into organising for the guys.
I waited ten minutes, sipping the coffee in the hopes that it was just an acquired taste and once I'd acquired it, it wouldn't be so bitter to the tongue while constantly checking and refreshing both my email inbox and the private message screen on the web comic site. But when the coffee – which refused to make itself more appealing – was gone, I couldn't wait any longer. I needed action. Sitting in the service station parking lot wasn't getting Bobby any closer to returning, so I steeled myself for the long drive I had ahead of me, turned the car back on and turned the dial on the radio all the way up in the hopes that it would keep me awake.
"Here I come," I muttered under my breath as I pulled out of the lot.
I'll be back with more in approximately 24 hours.
In the mean time, tell your mother figures you love them in honour of Australia's Mothers Day tomorrow.