Disclaimer: This a Stephanie Plum FanFiction Story. All recognizable characters belong to the fabulous Janet Evanovich. I am just borrowing her amazing characters for a while. I'm grateful she allows us to play with her characters.
Warning: Adult language, adult situations, violence, and some smut
A/N: This story picks-up at the conclusion of For Fate and Future.
Straight shooter US Marshal Rafe Montero is on the run, accused of a crime he didn't commit. He has to rely on his mercenary ex-girlfriend (Steph), her mercenary husband (Ranger), a hacker, and an underworld crime boss to help clear his name. He learns a little about the difference between the rule of law and actual justice. He learns the ties that bind go way beyond blood.
When I think of this story, I think of the song Short Change Hero by The Heavy
For Blood and Justice
Chapter One
Rafe Montero shook his head trying to clear the fog from his brain. He had no idea what had happened. All he knew was that things were not looking good. Things had gone from bad to worse.
It wasn't like his life had been particularly grand lately. In fact, it hadn't been particularly grand since he'd met Stephanie Plum almost three years ago. Not that he blamed her really. There was plenty of that to go around.
He'd met Stephanie when they were both undercover pursuing the leader of the Vega cartel. Montero believed Vega was responsible for the death of his fiancée, Lillian Beckett. Stephanie believed Vega was responsible for Ricardo Carlos Manoso, otherwise known as Ranger's, death.
Turns out neither of them were dead, and that is where things actually got interesting. It had been almost two years since their respective fiancées had disappeared. Both working on the same operation. Both outed by the same mole. Both presumed dead. Montero and Stephanie were both looking for answers. Maybe even vengeance cloaked in justice.
Montero was a US Marshal that worked primarily in the witness security program. He'd gone undercover with Kincaid Securities in an effort to lure Vega into making a deal with the US government. Vegas' operation had been severely compromised. His drug facilities blown up, his networks taken out, courtesy of Ranger. Vega had lost power and the wolves were circling. Vega was a smart man. He knew the other cartel leaders would take him out, so he offered to become a cooperating witness in exchange for protection.
Montero met Stephanie at a party where he was meeting Vega. She had been posing as an escort. Something about her had caught Montero's eye. She looked like she still had a soul, so he had tried to save her from what he thought was a life of prostitution with some very dangerous men. Turns out, Stephanie wasn't the one that needed saving. It had been Montero. Stephanie had saved his life that night. And so, their relationship began. She'd let him think she was just a RangeMan employee.
She'd introduced herself as Stephanie Plum to him, even though in her professional life she went by Manoso at the time. Ironically, she went by Manoso when she wasn't married to Ranger and Plum now that she actually was. He guessed it made some sense. Stephanie had built a thriving business of her own after she turned RangeMan back to Ranger. Maybe it was that little piece of her that she kept. Reminding herself not to be completely consumed by all things Ranger ever again.
When they met, Stephanie didn't tell him she headed up RangeMan and she didn't tell him the real reason she was at the party. RangeMan was the security company that Ranger had started. When he had gone missing and was presumed dead, she took the helm. If he had known she was Stephanie Manoso he would have never gotten involved, and he definitely wouldn't have slept with her, because Montero knew Ranger was very much alive and deep undercover. Something Ranger had kept from his beautiful fiancée in an effort to keep her safe.
Montero and Stephanie had barreled down the relationship path full speed ahead, neither aware of the impending danger. Montero had fallen quick and deep. Then they hit the wall and everything was shattered. His heart had been splintered into a thousand fragments, and he'd spent a few years gluing it back together. Stephanie had started her own company, married Ranger and had twins. Montero had been largely stuck in neutral chalking up a couple of failed relationships, and pouring his heart out to some faceless voice over a speaker.
In all fairness she hadn't actually lied. He had just never asked. All the signs had been there, he'd just been so enamored with her that he'd overlooked them. Tank had called her boss that night and she had clearly been on the one in charge, but Montero, for all his years of observation and interrogation, had failed miserably at figuring out the truth. Maybe it had been his own bias driving his blindness. She'd been dressed in some tiny slip of a dress. Perhaps it had addled his brain.
It wasn't until much later that he learned her true identity. After they had fallen in love. Or maybe rather after he had fallen in love. Whether Stephanie ever loved him or not was a bit of a mystery to him. He wasn't really so sure. He more or less figured these days he had just been a poor substitute for Ranger. Certainly, after Ranger was resurrected, she'd run back to him fast enough. Of course, it wasn't like Montero hadn't had his own resurrected fiancée to deal with. It had been a truly messed up time in their lives. They had all been in uncharted territory.
Ranger had rescued Lillian and convinced her to stay dead for almost two years while he went about systematically dismantling the Vega cartel. On one hand, that really pissed off Montero, on the other hand he understood it. He tried to focus on the fact that Ranger had saved Lillian's life. He had no doubt she would have died in that hellhole if it weren't for Ranger. As it was, she had been brutally raped and tortured.
After she returned, Montero and Lillian tried to make a go of it, but just never could. Lillian struggled with PTSD and no matter what Montero did, he just never could get it right. He also knew what he felt for Lillian wasn't what he had felt for Stephanie. Montero didn't really think that was fair to either one of them. He thought they both deserved to find someone that made their heart flutter. In retrospect, that fluttering had probably been a warning of impending doom, but at the time he thought he'd found something special.
And, if he was honest, his relationship with Lillian hadn't been working even before she went undercover. They'd spent a decade trying to get it right and get down the aisle. They just never could manage it, which should have been a sure sign. They kept staying in it because they didn't know any better. In the end, their breakup was probably for the best.
Montero had thought Lillian and Antonio Reyes were going to be a thing for a while, and he had been good with that. Reyes worked at Kincaid. He as a good man. A crazy bastard sometimes, but a very good man. Montero had seen Reyes pull off feats that defied what a body should physically be able to do. He was wicked smart and one of the bravest bastards Montero had ever seen. If there was a poster child for a natural born hero, Reyes would have been the guy. In the end though, Reyes had taken up with Natasha Valentine.
Natasha was every bit as brave and skilled as Reyes and twice as smart as anyone he knew. She'd never met a computer or a security system she couldn't hack. She'd been in Montero's life for a while now. He'd known her as the hacker by the name of Sparrow. She' helped him through his darkest times after Stephanie went back to Ranger. She had been the faceless voice on the speaker he had poured his heart out to. She was a good friend. Even so, Montero didn't know that much about her, and what he did know should have scared the shit out of him. She was a bit of an enigma. Her past was cloaked in secrecy and government firewalls.
And, as far as Montero was concerned, she might actually be in business with Satan. Nikko was her business partner and he was dangerous, ruthless, and extremely well connected. Together they ran NNS Global. As far as Montero knew that was the only business they were in together, and the rest of Nikko's enterprises were his own, but he figured Natasha helped Nikko out with whatever Nikko needed.
Montero knew Natasha's relationship with Nikko went far beyond business. Nikko had rescued Natasha from a sex trafficking ring and basically raised her. It was even possible, the phrase in bed with the devil, might have had a literal meaning with those two at one point. They were hard to get a read on. Not that he would hold that against either one of them. He certainly understood taking comfort where one could find it. Whatever was between them was unbreakable. It seemed Natasha was the only one that could tame the beast in Nikko. Nikko made Montero nervous, although as crazy as it sounded Montero would trust Nikko over the FBI or the DOJ any day. He might be ruthless, but at least he was honest, which was more than he could say for a lot of the agents he worked with.
Natasha was also Ranger's ex-wife. He tried not to hold that against her. All of that should have made Montero run for the hills, but what he had found over the last three years was that he was gravitating more and more towards people that operated just left of the law. He'd always considered the rule of law to be sacrosanct. He'd spent his entire career defending his country and upholding the law, but all of that had started to change. His orderly world had started to crumble after Stephanie and Reyes had outed a corrupt FBI agent as the government mole that had compromised the Vega operation.
Agent Wyland was a feckless piece of shit as far as Montero was concerned. He'd sold out his honor, his badge, and his country for money. He'd compromised countless operations and gotten innocent people killed. After he had been identified as the mole, Montero believed the FBI had a duty to review his cases. There were dozens of people in prison that had claimed Wyland lied or made-up evidence. Most of which were probably telling the truth. Yet the DOJ had turned out not to be the Department of Justice, but rather the Department of Injustice, and chose to let those people rot.
The fact that Wyland was dirty should have warranted a review, but instead the brass had simply lied. They had pretended like he was killed in the line of duty and covered up the whole thing up. Wyland was still fucking people over from the grave as far as Montero was concerned. Those people deserved justice, but what he had learned was justice wasn't what was being handed out these days. Everyone was more focused on their careers and checkmarks in the win column than the truth. Destroying lives was just an unfortunate byproduct of their ambition. Truth was just an inconvenience.
Montero had raised holy hell, and basically been told to shut-up or suffer the consequences. His belief in justice had faltered. No, that wasn't true. Montero still believed in justice. It was his belief in the system that had broken. He had found himself more and more drawn to a rag-tag bunch of mercenaries and the lord of the underworld. These people at least believed in justice, even if their brand of justice sat outside the law sometimes.
Montero had become an outsider in his own profession. While he didn't advertise his connections, people knew. And, people talked. He had become a liability in his own organization because he believed corrupt agents should be prosecuted and their victims should get justice. He believed if you wore a badge you should be held to a higher standard, not given a free pass.
So, he figured that might be one the reasons he was in his current predicament. Stephanie had invited him to Christmas dinner. He'd said yes mainly because most of the people he liked, and he had made an effort to remain friends with Stephanie, as stupid as that might have been.
It wasn't her fault she was hopelessly in love with Ranger, and it wasn't really her fault that she had tried to move on and Montero had been caught in the cross-fire. Really, they both had. Lillian and Ranger had both been resurrected from the grave.
He'd gone back to Lillian out of duty. He thought maybe Stephanie had gone back to Ranger for the same reason, but over time it became clear, as pissed as she might have been, it was always going to be Ranger. As far as Montero was concerned, Ranger was a lucky guy. He'd had the love of two great women, and frankly Montero wasn't all that convinced he had ever deserved either one of them.
Montero didn't know what had happened between Ranger and Natasha but he knew their relationship hadn't ended because Ranger had fallen out of love with her. That much was clear. He just hoped for Reyes and Stephanie's sake, whatever was still burning between Ranger and Natasha stayed contained.
To Ranger's credit, he seemed to have finally settled into married family life. He and Stephanie seemed to be happy, and Ranger was devoted to those two kids. Ranger and kids were not two words Montero would have put in the same sentence a year ago. Ranger seemed different. More relaxed, less guarded. Maybe this was Ranger's new normal, maybe not. Montero could feel that jungle cat energy sometimes coming off of Ranger in waves. He knew that kind of restlessness could spell trouble.
Ranger had always done whatever he had to for the job and to protect Stephanie. Montero figured that part hadn't really changed, but Ranger seemed to see Stephanie now. Like really see her. It seemed he did less dictating and more discussing with her. Maybe Ranger saw what Montero had years ago. Stephanie was smart and capable and she needed a partner, not a protector. Whatever it was, it wasn't Montero's problem. Not anymore.
He currently had much bigger issues. He'd stopped off at the Regis hotel bar for a quick drink before heading to Stephanie's. He had wrapped up some work and he was early. He just stopped in to kill a little time. One drink by himself. That is where things got hazy. How one drink by himself had turned into this nightmare was a mystery. He literally had no memory of what happened.
He'd woken up in a hotel room with a raging headache, naked, covered in blood, with a very dead hooker. One that had been stabbed and slashed with a knife. His knife. The room was littered with empty bottles and lines of cocaine on the coffee table.
Montero knew he'd been drugged, and he was pretty sure it was a set-up. Apparently, whomever drugged him had miscalculated and he'd woken up early. He grabbed his clothes and quickly pulled them on, thankful they were dark colored and hid some of the blood. He felt his stomach roil as he pulled the knife out with a wet squishing sound. The woman's body was still warm. He grabbed his phone and took a quick photo of the woman and the various angles around the room. He quickly sent them to Natasha.
He would have to ditch his phone quickly. He used the custom app that Natasha had given him to send the kill command to his phone. Within seconds his phone was completely wiped. It was little more than an expensive and very useless paperweight at this point. He'd ditch it some where away from the hotel. One less thing to link him to this disaster, not that he didn't figure there weren't about a thousand things linking him to this murder.
He knew his prints and DNA were probably all over the room, but he cleaned up as quickly as he could. He had just made it to the stairwell when the cops showed up with the hotel manager. He was guessing some well-timed anonymous tip had sent them his way.
They spotted him and gave chase. And here he was running for his life. Somehow, he knew if he had stayed and been arrested, he wouldn't be living through the night. Someone wanted him disgraced and eliminated. The facts wouldn't matter, his side of the story would fall on deaf ears. His years of exemplary service wouldn't buy him one ounce of goodwill or benefit of the doubt.
The fact he'd never killed anyone in cold blood, paid for sex, or done drugs would be irrelevant. His entire career wouldn't matter because some law enforcement goon said so. He realized that is how the victims of Wyland must have felt when he took the stand and lied about them, robbing them of their good name, their freedom, and their future.
He figured either he had made too much noise to the wrong people about the Wyland issue, or more likely someone wanted one of his witnesses dead. Either way the odds of him living through the night were dwindling and the likelihood of him coming out of this with was approaching zero.
If he was arrested, his cases would transfer making them vulnerable. Montero was very good at his job, and the reason Montero was good is because he didn't trust anyone. For his established protectees only one other person knew the details. For the high value witnesses, he was the only one. Protocols were in place so if he died it would trigger the release of information to one other person he trusted. Hopefully that didn't put them in danger as well. Montero was going to do everything he could to make sure the doomsday clock didn't get triggered. Montero figured the odds weren't in his favor.
Montero thought about his current witnesses. One stood out in his mind. Sasha Luciano, the steel spined mafia princess. The mafia princess with the waves of gorgeous auburn hair, sinfully lush lips, and curves that should have warning signs. The mafia princess that hated his guts.
Not that he blamed her. She was a woman that had been groomed her whole life to take over her father's empire, but she had rejected the life. She had left and gone to college to study robotics. In particular nanorobotics. Developing tiny spy drones and drones that could be used to deliver medicine or poison. Not surprisingly the military had an interest, and she had been working with a number of research projects with government funding. Given her history it was a bit of an uneasy alliance, but the backers didn't much care that her daddy was a kingpin and trafficked in guns and drugs.
All that had changed when her father had been gunned down by his own brother in a family coup. Her Uncle Franco wasn't satisfied with current operations. He saw the opportunity for something much bigger and much more lucrative. Franco lacked any moral compass. His only concern was money and power. Franco wanted to expand the business and that included bioweapons.
Franco had tried to kidnap Sasha to leverage her knowledge and sell her to terrorists. Montero had no doubt since that failed, her uncle would just have her killed. Afterall, she had been groomed to take over for her father. As far as the syndicate was concerned, she was the rightful heir. And, as far as her uncle was concerned, she knew too many secrets about the operation to keep on living.
The force of the US government had come down on Sasha. She had been forced to help them take down her uncle in exchange for protection. She'd helped build a case against her uncle, but had staunchly refused to sell out the rest of the syndicate. She was after all a mafia princess and the syndicate was her family. She'd been little more than a prisoner for months. Montero had essentially been her jailer.
With her uncle's trial on the horizon, he figured her uncle was trying to kill her. Killing her would almost guarantee that the charges against him would be dismissed. Someone in the US Marshals was definitely leaking. The fact that Montero even had the case should have been a well-guarded secret, but it was clear someone had sold them both out. The problem was Montero had learned the hard way to keep information out of the system, and the only way to flush out Sasha was to take out Montero. Her uncle definitely had the resources to pull something like this off.
Montero jumped the chain link fence and slide down the gravel embankment into the canal tearing a hole in his jeans, and scraping his hands. He hoped like hell the water would throw the dogs off, otherwise he had just drenched himself in icy cold for nothing.
He could hear the dogs barking and men shouting. He could see the distant gleam of their flashlights sweeping back and forth through the dark. So, he thought, this is what it is like to be a hunted fugitive.
Montero made his way down the canal. He hoped he'd gone far enough for the dogs to lose the scent because he needed to get out of the canal. It was like being in a shooting gallery and he knew he was rapidly approaching the river so he was running out of real estate anyway. The last thing he needed to do was get any wetter or colder.
He needed to get someplace and warm-up. Figure out what to do. He knew he needed to move Sasha. Maybe he should have sent her the run code from the hotel, but he figured they were monitoring his phone and his communication. Counting on him to do just that. Like leading a lamb to slaughter. He'd taken a big enough chance just using the app that Natasha had installed to send the photos, but he figured Natasha's security was far too sophisticated for Franco.
Montero was almost to the top of the concrete stairs when he felt the bullet slice through his side. Searing pain ripped through him as he fell to the ground. He could feel a warm gush as his blood poured out of his side staining the ground red. He figured the next bullet would probably blow off his head. He absently wondered if he would even know he'd been shot before his brain stem stopped sending signals.
Montero heard shouting in the distance. Apparently, they wanted him alive. They would be on him in a flash and would probably torture him until he gave up Sasha. He was no more than twenty feet from the river. He figured he would probably die of hypothermia, blood loss or drowning, but he figured he liked those options better than being tortured to death. At least if he went into the river there was a chance. A small one, but still a chance. If they took him, he was for sure a dead man, and so was Sasha.
Sasha didn't deserve to die because Montero had been careless. Sasha didn't deserve to be in this mess at all. It wasn't her fault she'd been born into the mafia. She just had the damn bad luck of having a fucked-up family. One that dealt in guns and drugs as opposed to the usual family drama of catty cousins and drunk uncles. She'd tried like hell to distance herself, only to be sucked back in. Forced really by the US government itself.
Montero had been a willing participant. Somehow, he thought the greater good was served by taking out Franco, never spending enough time thinking about the people's lives that would be wrecked doing so. In particular Sasha. Her work was valuable and had far reaching benefits beyond the military application. But Montero had to admit even if her work didn't have merit, Sasha was funny, smart, and sexy as hell. Montero liked her. A lot.
About a month ago they'd been arguing about her security protocols, and she'd kissed him. Full on kissed him in the middle of the heated exchange. She had reached out and pulled him to her and kissed him. Instead of doing the smart thing. The professional thing, he'd kissed her back. He'd pulled her into his arms and devoured her. Things had gone from hot to scorching in seconds. He had no doubt if a phone call hadn't interrupted them, he would have taken her right there. Her touch had electrified him and turned off all rational thought.
Ultimately the phone call had been from his higher-ups, and Montero had increased her security protocols, cutting her off further from everything that mattered to her. The government was trying to punish her for not cooperating. Break her really by breaking her spirit, and Montero had gone along with it because it was his job. She'd looked at him with such betrayal in her eyes it still haunted him.
After that Sasha had pretty much hated him on sight. He figured she recognized him for what he was. A man that followed orders regardless of the consequences. Whatever spark had been there had been ruthlessly extinguished. Whatever happened from here on out, he had to at least try and save her. He owed her that much.
Montero crawled to the edge of the river, rolled down the embankment and into the river. The icy cold water stole his breath. He knew he was too weak and shocky to swim so he just let the current take him. At least the cold did have the benefit of slowing the blood loss and helping to clear his head from the drugs. His body was almost instantly numb, dulling the pain from the gunshot.
Montero could feel the inky blackness pulling at him, trying to take him. If it hadn't been for Sasha he might have just given in and let it take him. He fought for consciousness and forced his numb limbs to start working, pushing him away from danger and to the shore.
After what felt like forever, Montero pushed ashore near the Wharf district. It was an area of revitalization that combined abandoned warehouses and thriving restaurants and night clubs.
Montero was soaking wet, but figured nobody would be paying much attention. Not many people were out and most businesses were closed. It was Christmas after all. Montero edged up to the Torch, a 14-foot gas-powered flame, that served as the Wharf's official beacon. It provided some warmth and an opportunity to nick a cell phone.
Montero spotted two love birds and bumped into them like he was drunk. His blood loss and hypothermia were making him woozy and uncoordinated so looking drunk wasn't a stretch. He managed to lift a cell phone right before the guy pushed him away and started cussing at him. He mumbled an apology and stumbled off.
Natasha had given him a number to call if he were ever in trouble. He had scoffed at the idea, but she had insisted that he learn the number. He was irrationally grateful for that fact now. Montero punched in the number and waited. His call went to an automated system where a mechanical voice said leave a message.
"Sparrow this is shamus. I've been winged. I need a pick up." Montero rattled off an address of what looked to be an abandoned warehouse. Montero doubted Franco could even figure out let along track some random cell phone, but he threw it in the back of a passing truck anyway. Besides it wasn't like he was going to give it back to the prick he'd taken it from.
Montero busted the lock on the side door to the warehouse. He went in and sat down. Blood loss and fatigue were weighing heavily on him. He figured either Natasha would come to get him or someone would eventually find him dead. At the moment, he really didn't care and let the inky blackness take him.
A/N: Shamus is slang for lawman.