A short one, let me know what you think! - Heather

'The boys and I were sparring this morning,' Ranger said blandly, 'I wonder why she wanted to know where I was?'

'Probably she was just curious.'

'Yeah.' Ranger agreed, smiling. 'Curious.'

Chapter 5

Hector and Ranger spoke rapidly in Spanish, and then Ranger explained my new security system to me. It's pretty much the same as last time, but apparently it's more user friendly.

I have a keypad; on the keypad is a green LED and a red LED.

When the green one is lit; I'm good to go. When the red one is lit; I cower in the hall.

Simple.

It's all to do with motion detectors and yadda yadda yadda. I accidentally stopped listening; I have the attention span of a gnat.

To activate the motion detectors I push the little button; to activate the ones in the living room only, I push it once. To activate them all, I push it twice. To disarm the motion detectors I push the button three times.

Hector also installed three more locks on my doors; two of which were deadbolts. If I put on all my locks then hopefully I'd be safe.

At least that was the plan.

Unfortunately, plans seem to fall apart around me; I try not to take it personally.

A thought occurred to me, 'hey, does that mean you're not going to be able to break in?' I asked Ranger.

He smiled, 'I have very advanced B&E skills Babe, I can still break in, but if you're not here then I'll set off the motion detectors and a silent alarm will be sent to Rangeman headquarters.'

'Wait, you didn't mention that! So if the light goes red then an alarm is triggered?'

'Yeah, and the nearest Rangeman team will come to investigate.'

I was dumbfounded.

I bit my lip, 'You're bleeding money again aren't you?'

'Don't worry about it Babe.'

'Shit.' I sighed.

There was a knock on my door and we all paused. I went to the door and looked through the little spy-hole.

'It's the guy whose boss wanted to talk to me about you.' I informed Ranger. 'The one with the bad hair.'

Ranger gently nudged me to one side and undid all the locks, and then opened the door.

'Ranger.' Said the man, surprised.

'Cuellos.' Ranger replied, I guess that's Bad Hair's name.

'I've come to apologise to Miss Plum for accosting her.' Cuellos said.

Ranger raised an eyebrow and stepped aside, letting Cuellos in. Tank, Lester and Hector were fanned out, hands near their guns; ready.

'Miss Plum,' Cuellos said, 'I sincerely apologise if I scared you the other day, it was rude of me, I should have just asked you to come with me.'

'I wouldn't have come even if you'd said pretty please with a cherry on top. So don't worry about it, probably if you want me to co-operate guns are the way to go.' I said honestly.

'Babe.' Said Ranger, 'you're not supposed to say that.'

'Oh. I haven't read the handbook on what-to-say-when-mercenary-guy-who-waylaid-you-apologises.'

'Wiseass.' Ranger said. 'Rule one: Don't encourage people to use guns – people get shot that way.'

'I thought rule one was 'always be aware of your surroundings.''

Ranger paused, 'that's rule zero.' He said.

'Oops, my bad.' I sounded like Buffy.

'Have you been watching Buffy again?'

Damn Esp.

'Angel's hot.' I shrugged.

'Hotter than me?'

'Don't be stupid!' I said before I could stop myself.

Ranger grinned.

I rolled my eyes, and Ranger's grin widened.

Hector was grinning too, hey, wait a second – 'You're not supposed to be able to understand! I thought you only spoke Spanish?'

Hector shrugged, 'I been learning.'

'I've been learning.' I corrected.

'I've been learning.' Hector repeated it, nodding his thanks.

'So what was with the whole 'bang/smash' thing?' I asked.

'It was fun.'

I rolled my eyes again, uhn mental head thunk…fun.

'Excuse me?' said Cuellos, 'Can I go now?'

'Are you going to threaten me again?' I asked.

'No, I don't think so.' He said, touching his black eye gingerly.

'Ok. You can go.'

'Thank you ma'am.' He said, then he left.

'He seemed nice.' I said, 'very polite. But then Mrs Bestler thought Ramirez was polite, so maybe politeness doesn't count for shit.'

'Babe.' Ranger said, then him and his Merry Men made like bananas and split.

I watched TV for an hour and a half, then I made skid marks to my parent's house. I arrived with five minutes to dinner. Perfect. I went in and sat down in front of the TV, turning it up loud and invoking watcher's privilege to ignore anything else going on.

At six I sat up at the table and started shovelling food in my mouth; if my mouth was full then I couldn't answer questions, right?

Maybe I couldn't answer them, but it turns out my Mom and Grandma Mazur could still ask them, and eventually I'm going to run out of food.

Finally I gave up. 'Grandma, I don't know for sure but Mary Lou heard that they're fake. The bounty hunter with the excellent package is called Ranger and I expect he's too busy to come to dinner. I don't know anything about Joe falling down the stairs.' Ok, so the last thing was a lie – I'll say some Hail Mary's later.

I took a deep breath, 'Mom, Joe was screwing around behind my back, I'm not getting back with him and I'm not marrying him. Ever. Joe's screwing around has nothing to do with my job, and I am not going to work at the button factory.'

Silence descended upon our table.

'What's for dessert?' asked my Dad.