Ruining You – Chapter 5
Not My Characters, just borrowing them from JE.
Stephanie
The next day was exhausting. We had a lucky break in our second case, with an informant coming through and sent out a team to pick up our man. One case down, one incredibly complicated case to go. That evening, I trudged into the studio apartment after a marathon meeting going over next steps and game plans for trying to find our FTA. The biggest concern, of course, was that we would be unable to receive a body receipt for the apprehension, because whichever triplet we brought in – even if it was the correct one – could easily claim he was someone else, and we weren't entirely sure how reasonable doubt would come into play. We had the search team and legal team researching to see if there were ANY identifying marks like tattoos or birthmarks that might help us. It was a fucking mess, and I was completely mentally spent. I wanted to get some sleep tonight, because Fuller had planned the damn team building day for tomorrow, and I thought it would be important for me to be there. I also thought Ace and Zach needed to be there too. Sometimes taking a break helps you look at things from a different angle. I decided a shower and some binge-watching was a good plan for the rest of the evening. I'd just pulled off my Rangeman polo and tossed it into the hamper when I phone rang. I made my way across the apartment wearing my cargoes and a red Wonderbra to the phone plugged in to the charger.
"Yo," I said, smiling when I thought of all the times Ranger had greeted me that way.
"Um, Ms. Plum, this is Rogg, down at the Front Desk, ma'am." I frowned. While I knew there was a street entrance with a reception desk in the few days I'd been here, I hadn't actually made it down there yet.
"Hey, Rogg, what's up?" I said, genuinely curious.
"Um, well, we need you to come downstairs. There's a… uh… delivery… or um um… a package? Yeah, a package here for you," Rogg said. He was stuttering so badly I honestly couldn't tell if it was a speech impediment or if he was just really nervous.
"Ok, I'll be down in a sec," I said, fishing my shirt back out of the hamper and tucking it back into my pants. I slid the phone back into my pocket and took the elevator to the first floor. The elevator doors opened and the two men who were supposed to be working the desk were standing right outside the elevator.
"What's up?" I said, wondering why they'd stepped away from the desk.
"Ack! Rangeman Stephanie!" a familiar voice called.
I quickly stepped around the two men, who were clearly freaking out and to my astonishment saw Adrian sitting on the front desk. He spotted me and flapped his wings.
"Pretty Girl! Rangeman Stephanie!" Adrian said.
"He was sitting on the bench on the sidewalk for the past 2 hours," Rogg said, with no hint of a stutter. "Then he moved to the door handle and sat there for an hour. Sam tried to shoo him away, and about ten minutes ago he started pressing the call button incessantly."
"So, you let him in?" I asked, half amused, half incredulous.
"We didn't really have a choice," Sam said. "He was pressing the button and screaming Rangeman Stephanie so we figured you might have ordered him or something."
"And you thought wherever I ordered him from would send him to ring the doorbell? No, I didn't order him; I met him yesterday at a shop outside of the city," I said. "Following up on the Sanders case." They both nodded. Everyone knew about that case by now.
"I guess you want to take him on back then," Sam said. I looked at my watch. Definitely outside of Bird Fever hours. I pulled out my phone and called them just in case. No answer.
"Looks like he's hanging here until tomorrow," I said, disconnecting the call. "Take him up to the Control Room. He can hang with the guys on the monitors until the morning." Rogg looked horrified.
"Take him, how? I don't have any gloves or a box or anything. Maybe we should call animal control," Rogg said. Sam snorted.
"We're not calling animal control for a domesticated bird! For Christ sakes!" I rolled my eyes.
"Ok, then do you want to take him up?" Sam asked. What a twat.
Truth be told, I didn't have the first idea how to get the bird to go upstairs. But I wasn't about to let these two idiots know that. So, I did the first thing that came to mind, turning to look at the bird.
"Adrian. Let's go upstairs," I said, walking to the elevator. There was a soft rustle of feathers and Adrian flew smoothly to the elevator, landing on the floor by my feet. The doors opened and I walked in, with Adrian hopping along behind me. "See you later, boys," I said as the doors slid closed.
The guys on the Control Room floor were much more interested in the prospect of bird-sitting than Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dumb downstairs. I found a spare chair in the breakroom that Adrian could perch on the back of and dragged it over to the Monitor station. One of the two men working the monitors had already set up a little water dish and a bowl of shelled nuts. I raised an eyebrow in question.
"I figured he could shell them, and it would keep him entertained and feed him at the same time," he said. "I'm Big Joe." He shook my hand. "It's nice to meet you Ms. Plum."
"Stephanie, please. Thanks, Big Joe. He'll probably talk your ear off, just don't let him eat the cords or ruin anything." He nodded. I looked at Adrian who was happily shelling a peanut. "Adrian. I'm going to bed. I'll take you back to Jon in the morning," I said.
"Jon sucks," Adrian said. "Rangeman Adrian!" Big Joe and his partner burst out laughing.
"You all have a good night," I said as I made my way to the elevator.
The next morning, I made my way back to the Control Room floor before I went to the gym. Big Joe was still on duty, but his partner and Adrian were both MIA.
"Morning," I said.
"Morning, Stephanie," Big Joe said. "Adrian did just fine last night. Slept a few hours, and you were right, talked more than Matt usually does."
"Great, thanks for keeping an eye on him. I just wanted to check in before you went off shift. Can you give the dayshift a rundown, and let them know I'll be around to take him home after breakfast?" I asked.
"Sure, no sweat," Big Joe said. I turned to leave and saw Matt walking toward the monitors with Adrian on his shoulder. But instead of Adrian's light grey feathers, he appeared to be mostly black. What the hell? I waited as they got closer and realized Adrian was wearing a tiny black bird hoodie.
"Does that say Rangeman?" I asked on a laugh.
Matt smiled sheepishly. "I figured if he was hanging on the floor all night, he needed a uniform."
"Do I even want to know how you made it?"
"Big Joe here is pretty handle with a needle. We used some of the old cleaning cloths," Matt informed me as Ace walked up, dressed for the gym.
"Hey, Adrian!" Ace said. "I heard he was back. I would have kept him last night," he said to me. "You should have called."
"Sorry, I didn't think he should go to the apartments. It seemed smarter to leave him with people who could keep an eye on him all night," I said.
"Can I bring him down to the gym?" Ace asked. I hesitated.
"We've been taking him all over the building," Big Joe supplied. "He's got very nice manners."
"Gym!" Adrian said.
"I guess it wouldn't hurt anything," I said. "But you take him with you, you're on cleanup duty."
Ace nodded. "Come on dude!" he said holding his arm out. Adrian jumped off Matt's shoulder and fluttered over to Ace's outstretched arm. He landed on his forearm and then scrambled his way up the bicep and settled on Ace's right shoulder.
"Let's go," Adrian said, and Ace, Adrian and I took the elevator down to the gym.
I didn't feel like running this morning, and since I wasn't allowed to spar with anyone here, I taped up my hands the way Lester taught me and spent some time with the heavy bag. I stopped to take a drink of water and saw Adrian perched on the center of the bar while Ace was spotting someone who was doing an impressive bench press.
"Pussy!" Adrian said the guys roared with laughter.
"Shut up bird!" the guy said, placing the bar back on its rest and sitting up. He looked at Ace. "Is this fucker serious?"
"He's a trip, right?" Ace said.
The guy was adding another weight to each side of the bar, locking them into place. "I mean, he's convinced me to do another round with 20 pounds more, so he'd make a pretty good trainer." He gently stroked a finger down Adrian's back and took his place on the bench.
Just then Adrian flew from the bench over to a treadmill. "Hey!" said the Rangeman who was running on it.
"Run, Grandma," Adrian said. The guys nearby laughed again, and I went back to my heavy bag. I was pouring sweat by the time I finished, but when I went to pick up my towel, it wasn't by my water bottle where I'd left it. Instead, it was sitting about 15 feet away, with Adrian burrowed into it like a nest. "Pretty Stephanie," Adrian said, when he saw me approach.
"I want my towel," I said, surprised at how natural it was to talk to a bird. "Then we have to take you back home." Adrian reluctantly got up and drug the towel across the floor to me. "Rangeman Adrian!" he said.
"I'm glad you had a good time," I said. "Let's go get some breakfast."
"Bagels!" Adrian said, as Ace came over holding out his arm. Adrian jumped up onto his shoulder and they left the gym together. I shook my head and took the stairs to my apartment to get a little more cardio since I'd skipped the treadmill today.
Two hours later we were idling in front of Bird Fever and, to put it mildly, Adrian was freaking the fuck out. He had been fine until Ace took off the tiny Rangeman sweatshirt, and then all hell had broken loose in the car. I walked inside and found Jon stocking bags of birdseed. He hadn't noticed Adrian's empty cage yet, so I quickly explained the situation. He grabbed a carrier from beside the register and came out to the Explorer with me, apologizing the whole way. He bravely crawled into the backseat, and after some swearing and rocking, Jon opened the door and came out with Adrian inside the carrier, cussing up a storm.
"Sorry about all this," Jon said. "He's escaped before, but he usually comes back in an hour or two."
"He might have if we hadn't brought him inside, maybe," I said. "I'm sorry."
"Not your fault," Jon said. "I told you he's a wiley one."
"Speaking of wiley, has Ethan been around?" I asked.
"Funny you should ask. He was in this morning early. Had to go to the Bank and the DMV today since his wallet was stolen last night."
I glanced at Ace and he already has his phone to his ear.
"Do me a favor," I said, climbing into the car. "Can you tell Ethan to call me if you see him again?" I passed him another card. Jon nodded and waved, and Ace left half the rubber from our tires on the asphalt as he squealed out of the parking lot.
"Zach's 5 minutes out from the DMV. We're heading to the Bank, but there are 3 possibilities, so we're hoping we can grab him at the DMV," Ace said. I nodded. "And we probably gotta be done in less than 2 hours so Fuller doesn't tear us a new asshole for being late to Team Day."
I smiled. I was glad to see at least Ace had somewhat prioritized the fun planned for today. We slid to a stop in front of the first bank 10 minutes later. My phone buzzed with an email from Jason.
"Yes!" I said as I scrolled through. "Ethan has a birthmark on his left forearm. And looks like the third brother, Evan, has a large tribal tat on his shoulder and chest."
"So, we can actually identify Sanders, if we can find him," Ace summarized. "Nice."
"I'm still not sure if his brothers are actually involved or not."
Ace nodded. He started to say something else but stopped abruptly when we saw Ethan, at least I thought it was Ethan – and one of his lookalike brothers – walking briskly into the bank together. A tingle ran down my spine. We'd just stumbled into two of the three brothers, and now we could at least get some answers. Hopefully. Ace radioed a nearby patrol for backup, just in case we needed help persuading the brothers to talk to us. I confidently approached the men on the sidewalk, while Ace came around behind them.
"Hey, Ethan? Ohmigod what a small world! I can't believe I'm running into you again," I said, using my best distraction voice and giving the men my biggest smile. "And who's this, he looks just like your twin! I always thought twins were so cool," I babbled, trying to buy Ace more time to get into place. I extended my hand. "Hi, I'm Stephanie. I met Ethan on the plane."
I was starting to get excited now, because neither of the men had spoken yet, and I was pretty sure if one WAS Ethan, that he would have said something by now. Which meant most likely, one of these guys was Emmett, and we could put this damn case to bed! Ace was about ten paces back, and I saw two additional guys about a block away, trying to come up as inconspicuously as possible.
"Can you believe the way the game ended the other night?" I pressed. "I can't believe I lost your card; did you still want to get drinks?"
"Oh, yeah. The Celtics are something else, the game was great." GOTCHA, ASSHOLE! You're not Ethan. " I'm free tonight. This is my brother, Evan," he said, gesturing to the doppelganger to his right. Evan shifted to shake my hand I saw the unmistakable lines of a tattoo peeking out from the neckline of his t-shirt. I shook hands with Evan and looked over his shoulder, locking eyes with Ace.
"Ace, on your left," I said, as he swiftly executed a takedown, while Evan backed away slowly, bumping into two more Rangemen who kept him from taking off.
"What the fuck is going on, Em?" Evan said. "Oh, shit, you did it again, didn't you? You son of a bitch! You swore you'd go back to court!" Ace pulled a wallet out from Emmett's back pocket and confirmed the ID said Emmett Sanders.
"I'm so sorry to bother you, but can I see your ID?" I asked Evan, who easily complied. "I hate to be forward, but just to confirm it's you, can I see your tattoo?"
Evan pulled the neck of his shirt to the side, where I saw the rest of the tattoo in question. We pulled Sanders to his feet and checked his forearm for the birthmark (none) and also for a shoulder tattoo and found nothing. ID confirmed, this was our guy! Hell yes!
"Jesus. I feel like I need to get EVAN tattooed across my fucking forehead. This ass keeps dragging us through the mud. Throw away the key, if you want," Evan called as we loaded Emmett into the SUV. He walked away and into the bank.
It took less than an hour to make a quick trip to Boston PD and picked up our long-overdue body receipt for Emmett Sanders. Then we headed over to the Team Building day – only half an hour late. The guys had already broken into teams and were on the paintball field, playing a large-scale version of capture the flag. Fuller had left instructions with the owner to make sure any late arrivals suited up and came out – wearing special orange vests. We were informed we weren't on any team but had to retrieve our own special flag from the far side of the field. If we failed to return with the flag before another team captured their flag, whoever was late would be on monitor on-call duty for two months, meaning when anyone had to call off work, they'd get stuck on monitors. Game on. Not that monitor duty bothered me, since I'd be heading back to Trenton tomorrow, but I didn't want Ace and Zach getting stuck if I had anything to do about it. We suited up, donning the hideously bright hunting vests, and I wished I'd had the foresight to wear extra layers. This was going to hurt like a bitch.
We huddled up and Ace gave us orders. "Steph and I will head left, Zach and Alex go right, and Pete and John can go right up the middle." Everyone nodded, and I adjusted my ski goggles. No way was I going to get hit in the face with one of these suckers. We took off and made it about 25 feet before I felt a fierce sting in my left ass cheek.
"Shit!"
"You ok, Plum?" Ace asked, grimacing as a bright green splotch appeared on his shoulder. "Duck and run, let's move!" We quickly advanced and took cover behind a tree.
"That fucking hurts almost as much as getting shot for real," I said, twisting around to see the neon blue splotch on my rear end.
Ace looked shocked. "You got shot in the ass? Sounds like I need to hear that story tonight over beers, before you head back to Trenton." He motioned for me to follow up. We ambushed a group from the back, moving quickly along before we noticed Zach and Alex were closing in on our flag.
"We got to give them a distraction," I said. Ace nodded, and I saw him signal to Pete. Hopefully they could cover Zach and Alex as they grabbed the flag. Ace ran across the field, yelling lines from Mel Gibson's famous Braveheart scene. I laughed out loud and followed, shooting back to give him some protection. I cursed when I got hit in the right breast. Shit, it should be against the rules to hit me in the boobs. You don't see me aiming for crotches. Maybe I should.
We took cover again and covered Zach and Alex as they ran back, waving the flag and taking a smattering of paintballs. I guess they didn't care how much they were shot now that they had the flag and avoided monitor on-call. I shrugged but took a more conservative route to make my way back to the field entrance, only getting shot three more times. The game was officially over 15 minutes later, and Fuller's team had lost. Everyone debriefed the game jovially as they shared a buffet of nachos, wings, and miniature pizzas. A little over an hour later, the party was winding down, and the men began making their way back to the office. Fuller let me know the day shift men would be arriving in about an hour. I nodded and caught up on my emails, noticing a Core Team meeting had been scheduled for the day after tomorrow. I switched to the airline app and bought a ticket flying out of Boston Logan tomorrow afternoon. I'd be home to have dinner with Ranger, which gave me a little thrill. I'd checked with Hector and found that certain encryptions existed on the servers for select communication devices, including mine and Ranger's. I sent him a quick update about the paintball game and was surprised when he texted right back.
Ranger: Yeah? How did it go?
Stephanie: We accomplished the mission, but I got shot in the ass.
Ranger: Poor Babe.
Stephanie: Maybe you can kiss it better.
Ranger: Playing with fire.
I didn't have a good answer to that, so I scrolled though the camera roll from the previous evening, selected what I hoped was the most erotic photo that I'd taken in the shower the night before (good thing the new iPhone is waterproof!) and sent it to Ranger with a couple of fire emojis. Game, set, match, Batman. I basked in the glory of winning the exchange for all of 20 seconds until my phone pinged with a closeup shot of my favorite part of Ranger's body. Holy hot flash. He wasn't kidding when he said he's ruin me for all other men. I texted back a heart-eye emoji and a tongue and then quickly put my phone away when the next set of Rangemen rolled into the room.
The second round of capture the flag paintball was a little more fun than the first, mostly because I was able to assign myself to a defensive position, and only got shot once more in the shoulder. After the guys finished eating, I hitched a ride in an SUV full of guys from IT that I hadn't met yet. They were surprisingly chatty for IT people, and it was nice to learn more about why they came to Rangeman. We were just pulling into the garage when my phone rang. I swiped at the screen.
"Hello?"
"Steph. It's Sam. Can you come down here? You have a visitor."
"I just pulled in, I'll be right down," I said and disconnected, wondering who would be coming to see me. I took the stairs and popped out of the door into the lobby and stopped short.
"Rangeman Stephanie!" Adrian said.