I got the call at two in the morning, after having just returned back to Trenton less than two hours ago and made it to bed less than one hour ago. It was Manny on the line and what I was hearing wasn't really what I wanted to hear in all fairness. But then again few calls that reach you at that time are good.

I found some clothes that weren't stained or wrinkled too much and made my way half-conscious towards the carpark and get my ass over to where my guys were. When I arrived at the scene it was not really what I was expecting. No visible damage or chaos, just a bunch of guys looking like they were locked in a standoff. And of course one of them had to be Joseph Morelli. Of fucking course!

"Gentleman, what seems to be the problem?" I asked as I approached, pulling the windbreaker tighter in the rather icy air.

"Stephanie, what are you doing here?" Morelli asked confused.

"One of my men called me and mentioned there might be a problem. What are you doing here?" I asked back, looking around and noticing nothing seemed out of place or on fire or anything that mayhem and chaos usually came with.

"The guy your men have captured is a wanted fugitive. And linked to several investigations on my desk. I have questions and want him. Yet your people refuse to cooperate!"

One of the Merry Men had managed to hand me the file on the guy Joe was talking about and after a quick read I was up to date. Not that I really would have needed the read. I was fully aware who it was we had managed to capture.

"The guy RangeMan captured is wanted by the Feds. I find it somewhat hard to believe that the guy is subject to any of your investigations. I have seen the file on him and know the cases he is supposedly linked to. He hasn't operated anywhere close to the east coast and we were just alerted because he is visiting some conquest. So how exactly is he linked to any of your investigations?"

"Is this how things will go? You just thinking you got it all and can go, hide behind your thug-friends?"

"Right now I don't hide behind anyone as I am standing right in front of you," I said confused. "I honestly have no idea what you are talking about Morelli," I said calmly yet annoyed. "This was a RangeMan mission. For the Feds. From where I'm standing you don't even have jurisdiction."

"Jurisdiction? Are you for fucking real, Cupcake? I'm the police, of course I have jurisdiction!"

Out of the corner of my eye I could see a couple of men from the PD I knew or at least recognized. All of them looked warily at us, seeming not so sure themselves.

"From where I'm standing you don't. We were here on official business. For the Feds, bringing in one of their guys. Everything went down smoothly and there were no complications until you showed up. As a matter of fact, there was no reason for you to be here. Nothing happened, nothing went down that would rouse any police activity. No one was shot, hurt or even mishandled. You most likely weren't even aware of the guy up until now. So… what exactly did bring you here, Morelli? Other than your massive ego and the fact that you probably felt the need to push your way into something that isn't any of your business."

"My … my business?!" Morelli yelled and I noticed Binkie and Ram moving their rather solid stand. I shook my head slightly, knowing if they interfered this all would just become a problem and Morelli would use every little opportunity to make my life a little bit harder. And the paperwork on my desk never-ending.

"Yes," I said strained. I could be in bed right now! "Again, we are here on official business for the Feds. We have the papers. I don't see anything burning, exploding, yelling, bleeding or dead. It was my guys and our FTA. Everything went smoothly, giving no need for police involvement. So why exactly are you here? And who alerted you? And more importantly, what charges are you thinking off?"

"It is my job to make sure no one ends up dead."

"Well, no one is dead and your damn job is to arrive when something bad is going down or you get alerted to something from a concerned citizen. Neither has happened from where I'm standing. The reason why I'm standing here is just because you feel the need for some power game or whatever shit it is that has you going these days. I don't have time for that, Joe. I just got back from our office in Denver about two hours ago and have to be up again in four for a meeting. If you feel you want to play power games can you maybe do it at a more reasonable time?"

"Power games? POWERGAMES? What the fuck, Stephanie. You think I'm here to show of some power?" he yelled and I saw every single pair of eyes turn towards us.

"Actually, Morelli. I do. That's exactly what I think why you are here…"

Before he could answer I noticed an off movement out of the corner of my eye and a moment later I heard a voice I really didn't need to hear right now.

"Plum, what the hell is this all about?"

"Cameron, I … was just getting up to speed myself. Detective Morelli was about to explain to me why he was stepping into our operation," I explained to the man next to me. Dexter Cameron, head of the FBI office in New Jersey. On a good day he was bearable and only mildly irritating and I had the odd feeling he was giving me mostly a hard time because I was female. He was never sexist or straight out obvious about it, but I had my suspicions. We got along somewhat okay but I made it my business to not having to interact with him too much if I could avoid it.

"Detective Morelli?" Cameron asked annoyed, turning towards Joe. Cameron might have been sort of an ass but he was often enough correct when it came to the job. As long as you delivered results that made him look good he didn't care about of lot of things. And right now, Joseph Morelli was standing between him and the success of our latest capture. "Care to explain what exactly you are doing here? I'm going to file a complaint with your superiors if your answer isn't to my satisfaction…"

"I…um… leave you to it," I just said, turning towards Binkie and Ram and making my way to our guy. I could hear Morelli sort of stuttering his way through an explanation which I knew wouldn't satisfy Cameron and heard only Cameron's even more annoyed voice when I remained right.

"Any other problem?" I asked none of the five RangeMan guys in particular. All just shook their head.

"None whatsoever. Smooth sailing really. Papers are in the car, our guy as well. We figured we'll keep him away from Morelli before the detective gets the idea of booking him for whatever reason and then fucks everything up."

"Did anything happen that could explain why Morelli was here? Neighbors that saw something? Him putting up a big fight? Someone firing of their gun? Anything at all?"

"No," Junior said. "It really was smooth sailing. We didn't even have to break in to the place since the door was unlocked and before he was even able to do anything stupid, three of us had him already down on the floor. There aren't any neighbors in the radius of a mile as you can see. No clue what got Morelli here."

"Great, none of this makes sense and I guess the paperwork for that case will-," I started before I heard Cameron yell my name while approaching us.

"Plum," he said and I turned towards him. "Where is our guy?"

"In the car," I said, pointing towards the two SUVs parked slightly away from us. "Is Morelli still alive?"

"Barely," Cameron said annoyed. "I hate fucking smalltown politics. Some guy who thinks he's the hottest shit comes in to my operation and thinks he can run things? I don't fucking think so."

For a moment I thought of correcting him and explaining that Trenton wasn't really a smalltown but figured I wanted my bed more urgently than correcting the head of New Jersey's FBI offices.

"Well, I guess the night is coming to an end and we all can go and do more pleasant things in just a few moments," I offered and retrieved the paperwork. Three of the guys helped the FBI in transferring our FTA into their care and I collected my signature from Cameron. And then all of us left. I followed the two RangeMan SUVs in the Porsche and decided on entertaining Tank by letting him drive with me.

"Can I say something?" he asked after a few quiet moment and I was confused why he'd ask. He usually never had to ask before and I wouldn't ever require for him to ask for permission. So I just nodded and smiled oddly at him.

"Never in my life did I ever think I'd see the day when you stand up to Morelli the way you just did. You handed that guy his balls."

At his almost awed expression I needed to laugh. "You wanna know something? It felt incredibly good and to a certain way liberating as well. Like it had been coming for a long time."

"Ranger would most likely say," Tank started, before stopping for a short second and then continuing in a much lower voice "Proud of you, Babe."

"Was that your impression of Ranger? If so, keep practicing," I laughed and Tank laughed with me.

For a few traffic lights we were silent again, before Tank decided on speaking up once more.

"I… I know about your phone calls to his old number."

I took a few breaths, bracing myself for whatever he would say next but nothing came. So I figured he either just wanted to say it loud or was waiting for my reaction and reply. I went with the second options and just nodded for a moment. "Do you think I lost it?" I asked carefully while navigating the car through the empty streets. I knew I had asked Cal the same question when he had remarked the same 'place-a-call' habit a while back.

"Not really. I guess we all need someone occasionally to talk to. I talk to my cats. Lester talks to hookups, Bobby talks to an actual professional, Cal as far as I know talks to Army buddies. All of us have someone to help them deal with whatever we need help dealing with. I just worry about what happens when you run out of storage on his mailbox. Since no one listens to the messages, they just clog up space and eventually… there is nothing left. What do you do then?"

"I guess I'll think about it when it comes to that part. Maybe he has managed to get his ass back by then and I will never have to worry about it," I joked, like I always did.

The stark silence that followed after my joke told me that we were about to hit a bit of a very serious debate. Usually Tank and the others joined in when I made that joke and it hardly ever turned very serious, especially since all of us knew how little the chances were that I was right.

"Have you ever seen it?" Tank asked after several long moment and I was confused.

"Seen what?" I asked, keeping my eyes on the road.

"The video of Ranger's last… moments."

Ramos had mentioned that a while ago. He somehow had managed to track down an old army buddy who was now working for the higher ups of one of the agencies. That buddy of his had been able to somehow get his hands on video material from a traffic cam or something similar opposite of the place where Ranger had supposedly spent his last moments.

I shook my head at Tank's question. "I… I couldn't bring myself to do it. Have you seen it?"

Tank nodded briefly. "Yeah, I just… I don't know, I guess I needed to know what happened in a way."

I knew that almost every one of the Merry Men had seen the video so I knew it wasn't easy to look at. But then again, it wasn't supposed to. According to Binkie it doesn't show a lot and you actually don't really see much other than Ranger walking into a building and a moment later that building exploding and going up in flames burning down to the ground and being just rubbles and mountains of collapsed building.

"Has it helped?"

"Yeah. In a way it gave me closure I guess. It wasn't easy to watch, knowing I would see my best friend's final moments but… I helped with the accepting."

"So you think he's gone?" I had never really asked any of the others what they thought, whether they figured he could somehow still be amongst us somehow. Tank was the first one I actually really asked. Maybe it had been my kind of denial until now.

"Little Girl, I… I have seen the video. And I have seen what he walked in on. How that building burned and collapsed after a bomb had been detonated. I wish there was a different outcome, but… there is no way he could have survived this. No one in the building actually did. I checked the reports. The city declared every person in that building dead after two weeks of extensive search and rescue. Just that there… wasn't anyone left to rescue. I'm sorry Stephanie."

"What are you apologizing for? It isn't like you are breaking news to me that I wasn't to some degree aware of before."

"Are you sure you aren't living in some sort of… denial?" Tank asked carefully. And to a degree I understood where he was coming from. I refused watching the video or talking about anything Ranger-related in a way. I was calling his mailbox often enough and was babbling monologues on it as if I was expecting him to listen to them at some point and walk through the door sometime in the future.

"I'm not entirely sure how to answer that question. Especially since both of us probably know the answer to some extend without me admitting to it."

"Stephanie, I'm… it isn't like I don't understand your point and your situation and that you have no real way of overcoming your loss, but, once more, what do you think will happen when you run out of space on that mailbox? When you are more or less forced to come to terms with things and that you can't 'talk' to him that way anymore? You wanna dial his number and listen to his voice telling you to leave a message after the beep until eternity?"

Instead of answering right away I took another deep breath and we stopped at the right light. The streets were empty at that hour of day, yet here we were, waiting on an empty street with us being the only car around for the traffic lights to turn to green.

"Do you know what my last words to him were?" I asked Tank once we moved again. Tank just shook his head and looked at me.

"What?" he finally asked and I sort of shrugged.

"I don't know. I can't remember what the last conversation we had was about. I don't recall what could possibly be the last words I ever said to him. But I can tell you it weren't things of encouragement or to come back safely. With my luck it probably was something along the lines of bitching about Morelli or my family or my latest FTA. There are so many things I could have said, so many things I had said on previous missions of his. But for the one that would change everything and would become his last? I probably said something meaningless and stupid."

"Ranger loved you, Bomber. I'm sure he didn't need you to say something he already knew anyway."

"Ranger's love came with … a lot of buts and qualifiers and maybes. And a hell of a lot of somedays. That was the way it was supposed to be, how things had to be. And it isn't as if I don't understand why. He wasn't living the sort of live that lend itself to relationships in the more traditional sense. I was okay with that, but to some degree I keep wondering, what would have happened if he had been able to… offer all that. Would I still have stuck with Morelli? Or was I just with Morelli because Ranger wasn't able to … provide me with the one thing I might have wanted the most from him?"

"I've known Ranger since we both enlisted for the Army Rangers all these years ago. I have been his best friend since what feels like forever. I would think out of everyone I was probably the one that knew him best – next to his mother maybe. I can tell you, he loved you wholeheartedly and with everything he had, though he might have had an odd way of showing it. I've never seen Ranger being the way he was with you with anyone else. He had odd arguments why things couldn't be different between the two of you and personally I never understood his arguments. I mean, he is gone now and despite the fact that you hadn't been in a relationship per se it isn't like you are feeling less sad about his passing."

"I think there are things that made perfect sense to the man himself but not much to any of us," I laughed despite the seriousness of our discussion.

Ten minutes later we pulled into the underground parking of RangeMan and our seemingly endless car ride came to an end.