Chapter 36

It was so simple that no one would guess it unless of course you'd seen it and then understood those words.

"She said that it was safe and there's only one place that she knew would be safe"

I turned to Ranger expecting him to have understood where I was thinking of, but then again, he hadn't been with me when I'd visited grandma's grave. I'd had to clear away some old flowers so knew that they must have been ones that had been left there and judging from how decayed they were it had been a long time ago.

"She hid it in the angel's hands on my grandpa's tomb stone"

I turned the sheet so that Ranger could read the two quotes that the couple had wanted and then waited.

"I can see why you would think of that place. How about me and a team retrieve it for you. We'll go in under the cover of dark so no one will suspect anything"

I had wanted to go myself but being in the cemetery and when it was dark? Maybe not the best idea, besides Ranger and his men could be in and out so much quicker without me.

"Okay. I wanted to go but can understand why it would be a bad idea"

If nothing else, I was rewarded with a long deep kiss that had me wanting us both to stay here for the day. As I came up for air and felt his forehead resting against mine, I was pretty sure that he was maybe thinking the same as me.

"I have that information that you wanted on Zeneman down in my office, maybe you can look through that while I brief a team"

I suppose that he was right, we both had things that needed to be done, though I have to admit to feeling some disappointment.

"Where can I put these?"

I asked looking down at the papers, envelopes and jewelry bags. I wanted them to be somewhere safe where no one could find them.

"Put the papers back into their envelope and you can keep them in the safe in the bedroom"

I knew about that safe, I'd seen Ranger open it and retrieve guns from there but had no idea what else he kept inside it.

"I'll give you the combination so that you can look at them whenever you want to"

Having tidied everything away I followed Ranger into the bedroom and stood watching as he opened the closet doors. He moved some clothes to one side of a rail revealing what to me looked like an enormous safe.

"88911021"

I had to repeat that several times to be sure that I could remember it, I never had been that good at remembering numbers. As I stood there trying to do that, I felt my face being lifted with a hand underneath my chin to be looking up at Ranger's amused face.

"Your birthday, backwards"

"Oh"

Well, why didn't he just say that? Wait, hang on a minute, why was he using my birthday as the combination to his safe? I wasn't going to ask that question as I watched him open the safe door. There were the guns and ammo as I'd expected on a shelf near to the door and then shelves with boxes on that reminded me of the storage room at Jenson's office. The black bag went inside on a shelf at the back before he closed the door and twirled the lock. I knew that I wouldn't open up the safe unless Ranger was with me, to me it seemed to contain a lot of personal stuff and I didn't want Ranger to think that I was being nosey.

As Ranger met with Les and a couple of the other men, I was sat in the conference room holding the sheets of paper that Ranger had given to me. No electronic copy so I wasn't sure how Ranger had come across this information on Zeneman. Plus there were words and sections that had been blacked out making it hard to read. I could only assume that those blacked out sections were confidential to the people or person who had provided the information. I ended up having to make notes in order to get a context for who this man was.

William Zeneman, approximately 45 years old but I had no place of birth or date. The synopsis of his life was brief, basically he had an unspectacular school history and gone straight into the army. He'd served time abroad with units in Afghanistan and Iran and steadily moved up the ranks from Second Lieutenant to Captain and looked to have led teams on special operational assignments. He was heading for the rank of Major when he suddenly resigned his commission. He was forty years old at the time and that was when he started his own company. The company was based out of New York City, and he tended to employ ex soldiers.

Not exactly a lot to go on but there were ways of researching someone without actually using their name. I started with the school that he had attended and pulled up the names of other pupils in his year group. It wasn't long before I had a photo of our Mr Zeneman as he posed with the football team. I had to admit that he'd been a good looking guy in his time, having a body that showed off his well defined muscles. He was as tall as the other men on the team and carried a head of hair that was so blonde that it was almost white.

So now that I had a starting point of men who could be friends of his I followed their histories instead. By coincidence one those friends enrolled into the army at the same time as Zeneman had. I followed the history of that man, Marc Sterling, as he served his country. He served one tour at the end of the troubles in Bosnia and was then based stateside training before two tours in Afghanistan and a final tour in Iraq in 2016. Apparently, Sterling had been a Special Warfare Officer, whatever that was, but a year later he was charged with murder, attempted murder, and other war crimes in Mosul, Iraq, including stabbing to death a wounded Daesh prisoner of war. it surprised me that was found guilty on only a single charge, appearing in an inappropriate photo, and was then released from custody. It was after that that Sterling was taken on by Zeneman.

I wasn't sure that the information that I'd found bore any significance to what I was looking for. I mean how on earth would that tie into the Peralta family or the secret that I was trying to find. All that it did was to clarify the type of men that Zeneman employed, okay so maybe Sterling had been an old schoolfriend but it didn't prove anything else to me. I was about to discard that line of thought and look elsewhere when a news article caught my attention. It was part of the search on Sterling but what caught my attention was the focus of this reporter's article.

"That Marc Sterling has been released and there is talk of him receiving a Silver Star commendation for battlefield heroism is nothing more than a fallacy. Had the esteemed publisher of the New York Times not printed misleading information then the jurors would never have had any doubts about Sterling's guilt"

That piqued my interest and I think my spidey senses as well, though I wasn't sure why. I ran another search but this time on the New York Times with the search values looking at a past publisher in 2016 to 2017. The name that came back was Adelle Sterling which to me was one hell of a coincidence. She'd obviously printed an article defending her husband. I rested my elbows on the desk and debated where to go next. Was I chasing a dead end just because I thought that it was right? Ah what the hell, I had nowhere else to go without going back to the beginning so input Adelle Sterling into a search just to find out what type of woman she was that deserved the insult from another paper.

I skipped the early years and went for her employment history noting that she had worked her way up within the New York Times. She had time out when she got married, lucky girl, but went back to work as the new publisher. That was when I backtracked on myself, because Sterling was her married name and I had totally missed what her maiden name was.

"Oh shit"

"Come across a problem Babe?"

Man, would he stop sneaking up on me. I was too busy wondering whether her maiden name was a coincidence but knew that I'd have to find out more now that I'd unearthed it. I had never noticed a close relative when I'd done a search on the man in question before but then I hadn't really looked once I'd found the connection that concerned me the most.

"Babe?"

I ignored Ranger who was now stood behind me and continued to backtrack her history. It was the same as Jackson Hennley's had been, with little detail in the information and certainly no family connections were there to be found. I never had liked the feel of Hennley when I'd been trying to locate Robert. I was soon closing down that program and maximizing the news articles search and inputting her name, reducing the parameters to photos of the woman, Adelle Sterling, publisher of the New York Times and marriage.

"Tell me who you're chasing Babe?"

I turned as the program ran not sure whether or not to tell him of my concerns but if I took what I was thinking as true then pieces were starting to fall into place.

"I think that Jackson Hennley hired Zeneman"

"The Jackson Hennley, newspaper mogul?"

I suppose that it sounded stupid when he said it like that. Why would Hennley be interested in Chiconi or Peralta? Money from what he found or maybe a block busting story?

"He, err, knows Robert, Jenson's son in law. I came across him when I was trying to locate Robert"

Ranger moved to lean against the desk, I'm sure trying to put some logic into what I had said. If I was right then Hennley would know Zeneman through Adelle's husband, so why not ask Zeneman to do this job as a paid favor for a friend? It would also account for why they were looking for a woman named Chloe because that was the only name that Robert had known me by. Hadn't Zander said that Robert was helping out at Jenson's office? I heard the program ping as it completed its search so turned to look at the screen. The fourth photo said it all. Jackson Hennley had walked his sister down the aisle and Bill Zeneman was Sterling's best man.

I felt Ranger looking at the screen, reading through the announcement underneath the photo. When he didn't say anything, I was so worried that I'd got it wrong, that he thought that I was way off base with my thinking. As he walked toward the door, I was in a quandary whether to save the searches that I'd done or just delete them. I could start again tomorrow from a different direction. I looked at the bottle of water as it appeared on my desk next to me but didn't dare look at Ranger.

"That is one hell of a result Babe. I'm just not sure what Hennley's angle is"

I looked up frowning because those words implied that he believed me.

"You believe me?"

I asked almost as a whisper. His answer was to bend over and softly sweep his lips across mine as he whispered his response.

"Yes, of course I believe you. Everything is there just in that wedding photo, though I know that you would have worked hard and followed an unusual route to get there"

I was sure that I was smiling as he pulled away and went through the door. I saved all of my work with the intention of printing them tomorrow because it was too late now, and I was sure that there was an amazing smell coming from the kitchen. As I stood I stretched my arms above my head to get rid of the stiffness from my muscles after sitting for so long and was soon lifting a dome to see what Ella had brought for us.

At 1 in the morning, I was pacing back and forth across the lounge. Ranger had left not long after we had finished our meal because he wanted to carry out surveillance on the cemetery. Yeah he was being extra cautious visiting the cemetry but then who could blame him after what had the last time that he'd been now I was really worried, not understanding why he wouldn't be back unless something had gone wrong. I'd worried to start with that my idea of where the pin could be hidden was wrong. Then I'd worried in case there might be people hanging around the cemetery. Now I was worried in case someone had been watching Ranger and the men, waiting to see what they were doing and attacking them as they left.

Ranger had told me to go to bed but there was no way that I could sleep, so I continued to pace. Half an hour later I stopped and listened, sure that I could hear the door opening. I waited in the near darkness trying to work out who it was, but I knew straight away when I saw Ranger's silhouette in the open doorway. I ran, sure that he would see me and was lifted off my feet as I reached him.

"Are you okay, was anyone hurt?"

Even as he walked with me into the room, I was trying to judge if there was anything unusual with his clothes. Dirt from the ground, blood on his clothes or bruises on his face.

"Everyone is fine. We didn't come across any problems"

So the tie pin hadn't been there. I felt so stupid for even thinking that it would be and so disappointed that I'd sent Ranger and the men on a wild goose chase. They put themselves in danger and all because of me, hell they could have been hurt and for what? Nothing.

"I put the tie pin in the safe in my office because I thought that you would be asleep"

We were in the bedroom by now and I felt as I was dropped onto the bed on my back but was just staring up at Ranger.

"It was there, it was where I thought it would be?"

Ranger stopped to look at me, his shirt already on the floor.

"Of course it was. I never doubted that you were right"

I wanted to see it right now, but I could see that Ranger was tired and that wasn't going to be happening. Instead, as he bent down to remove his trousers I moved to my knees. Maybe I was still running on adrenaline or maybe seeing Ranger undressing aroused me, but I knew what I wanted as I wrapped my hands around his hips. If Ranger was surprised then he didn't show it and as I slowly moved my lips down his flat chiseled chest, to the curls of hair at his pelvis I was aware that he was reacting to me. My lips found their intended target, stood tall and thick just waiting for my mouth to slide over and down it.

I'd never been a great fan of giving blow jobs, maybe because Joe ended up being so rough with me. The way that he would force my head down had me struggling not to gag. With Ranger it was different and where my mouth couldn't reach then I used my hands, firmly holding and rubbing his erection as my teeth and tongue worked their magic.

Who knew it would be such a turn on for me? I could feel the sensations within me, so hot and so ready.

"I need to be inside you Babe"

Was all that I heard before I was looking up into his face. His eyes were jet black as he held my gaze, as he pulled me toward him until I was sat on the edge of the bed astride his hips as he knelt down. I felt so sensitive as he slowly entered me, and I knew that he was hanging onto his control as he brought me higher and higher. For once it was his orgasm that pulled me over the edge, and I marveled at the intensity of the feelings erupting inside of me. I was aware as he collapsed on top of me and then as he pulled me up the bed. Snuggling into his side with my head on his chest was when I eventually allowed the sleep to take over.

I would have thought that I would have been so excited to actually see and hold that tie pin that I would have woken up early. It seemed that hadn't happened as I turned to find an empty bed beside me. I was close to being annoyed that Ranger hadn't woken me when I saw him step out of the bathroom fully dressed his hair wet from a shower. Of course, he noticed straight away that I was awake.

"Ella has the morning off today so I was going to make us some scrambled egg for breakfast"

Okay so maybe I'd forgive him if he was going to be cooking breakfast. I quickly showered and chose jeans and a thin sweater before going through to see what he was doing. I must have timed it just right because he was just scooping out the eggs from the pan onto two plates. I ate mine quickly, finishing before Ranger and moved my plate to the sink.

"Anyone would think that you're in a hurry to go somewhere"

Was all that he said as he started to wash the dishes and pan. I rolled my eyes knowing what he was doing, that he was making me wait until everything was clean. I was that eager to get downstairs I even took the stairs so keen to see what was so special about that piece of jewelry. Once in Ranger's office with the door closed, I stood and watched as he opened his safe and brought out a small package wrapped up in brown paper. As he placed it on his desk and started to slowly remove the paper, I was almost hopping from foot to foot.

"I think that maybe this somehow got tangled in your grandmother's hair. There were strands of what looked like pink hair caught up in the fastening"

At last, the paper disappeared, and I was looking at the oblong gold shaped tie pin. It looked ordinary really, nothing special except it had three ridges dividing it into four. Picking it up I turned it over and that was when I realized that there were inscriptions.

"Here use this"

I took the magnifying glass from Ranger and used it to get a clearer image trying to work out what it could mean.

"I think that maybe they are locations"

Came from Ranger, but I couldn't see how that was possible. There were numbers but not enough of them to give longitude and latitude.

"Where?"

I asked now totally confused.

"I don't know. Maybe plot numbers, property numbers?"

Without more information the numbers were meaningless, So how would Lawrence decipher them, did he know something that would help to make sense of it? Was each set of numbers specific to a person? I watched as Ranger wrote down the numbers and then as he carefully rewrapped the pin and replaced it back into the safe. Was there something else that Chiconi had that would help to make sense of it, that he must have passed on to Trevor? Were there habits or routines that only those men knew about? No this had to be about Chiconi or the three other men could have just taken everything. He was the one who controlled the payout each year.

"Babe, that was reception. Detective Willoughby called, requesting that you go down to the station for you to read and sign your statement"

I hadn't noticed that the phone had rang as Ranger replaced the handset, I'm sure that I was in shock, just staring back at him. Was Willoughby mad? Did he really think that I could walk into that station with everyone watching me? And what if Joe was there? Could I face him again?

"You can do it Babe. You've done nothing wrong, remember that. When everything comes out people will see that. Hold your head up high and ignore everyone, I'll be there with you"

Ranger's hands on either side of my face and the intensity of his voice and the look that he was giving me had the desired effect. He believed in me and so did the men here, they were the ones who counted. I took a deep breath and as he'd said straightened my back trying to instill some courage into myself.

"I'll go get some boots on and get a jacket"

I didn't want to put this off and let myself overthink the impending visit.

Half an hour later I was sat with Ranger in the back of an SUV. I was pretty sure that whoever was watching the cars leave the garage might be suspicious and consider that I was in one of them. As before each car pulled away taking a different route to act as decoys. I knew though that as soon as I stepped into that station phones would be out and messages of where I was would be hitting the airways, maybe even with photos.

I watched as a black SUV pulled out of a parking space in front of the main entrance to the station just in time for Les to take its place. My idea of the Merry Men having parking karma was just shattered as I realized how organized Ranger was. I was pretty sure that I caught a glimpse of Cal driving away. My courage stayed with me as I got out of the car and even as I walked up to the door but then it totally abandoned me. If Ranger hadn't been holding my hand, I think that I would have turned around and ran. At least this wasn't the area where I would have brought my FTAs into and was relieved at how quiet it was when I stepped inside a large reception area.

I stood slightly behind Ranger as he spoke to the officer at the desk, looking around so as not to be surprised by anyone approaching me. It was Detective Darrow who appeared and indicated for us to follow him, taking us through a door and into a hallway. Chairs were placed along our route, like those I saw outside a doctor's surgery, and that was when I saw two people sat in the end two chairs. I looked up to Ranger, who made sure that he would be between me and them because seeing my parents sat there had every nerve in my body on edge, to the point that sweat was forming on my hands and at the back of my neck.

I was surprised when Darrow walked us past my parents but not at what I heard.

"Why is that slut here. She should have stayed under the rock that she crawled under and died"

Deep breaths, deep breaths, they mean nothing to you, ignore them.

"Ellen, quieten down"

Came from my father.

"Why is she going in first, we were here first, we should be seen by that detective, not her"

That had a small smile want to appear on my face. Yes mother, I'm going to be seen first before you, so take that. What I wasn't expecting was for Darrow to block Ranger from following me into a small room, a room that was bare and only contained a table and some chairs. To me it had the feel of an interrogation room, not what I had been expecting. At least Willoughby sensed my unease because he was soon stood up and taking my arm, leading me to a seat.

"I'm sorry for the accommodation Miss Plum but this has to be done officially.

I sat down opposite Willoughby with Darrow stood behind me and watched as Willoughby brought out some papers from the file that he had sat in front of him.

"I'd like you to read through this, point out any mistakes. If something is missing or worded badly then let me know. When you're happy with the statement then please sign and date it"

Ranger had told me that I had to read through every word before I agreed with the statement, so that was what I did. Willoughby had taken what I'd said to him and written up the statement formally and in full sentences. Paragraphs indicated a change of subject, though I wasn't sure of how relevant some would be but I signed and dated the papers before sliding them back across the table.

"What now, did you learn anything new?"

I had to ask because this investigation that they were doing seemed to be taking so long.

"We have two witness statements that need signing and then all of the evidence and my summary and recommendations will be presented to an independent board for review. When they have made their decision, depending on what that is, then I'll put in place the necessary actions. I'm sorry Miss Plum but that's the way it has to be"

I nodded my head because I did understand, even if I didn't like it, all that I wanted to know was what they'd found out. Standing up Darrow opened the door for me and led me into the hallway. Ranger was next to me in an instant leading me down the hallway, in the opposite direction to how we had come in. At least I didn't have to walk past my parents again. At the corner I turned to see my father still sat in his chair but there was no sign of my mother. I assumed that Detective Willoughby would see each one of them individually. I couldn't help but see the look that my father was giving me, not menacing or angry, almost sad, which totally confused me. He'd been right there backing up my mother after grandma had died and had caused me so much pain.

I walked in silence as we came to another door that led us back to the reception area and breathed a sigh of relief at leaving that building and getting back into the car. I chastised myself because it hadn't been as bad as I thought it would be, in fact it had been pretty low key. I could cross off my list the fear of seeing my parents again because fear hadn't been what I'd felt. I suppose the feeling at the sight of them had been disgust, not anger, not panic. They had no hold over me anymore, because parents didn't treat their children like they had me, not if they loved them, they were nothing to me now.

I was thankful for the time to mull things over and with Ranger's arm around me as we drove, assuring me that he was there when I needed him. The sound of tires screeching and then a sudden jolt had me looking beyond the window. Metal jarred against metal with cars at precarious angles around us. I had no idea what had just happened to cause us to be caught up in the middle of a pile up.

Ranger pulled me away from the car as Les and Ram inspected the damage to it. It was sideways across the lane with other cars in a far worse state than ours. People were struggling to open doors or were sat on the ground in shock. It was carnage and as one woman began screaming from inside her car Les and Ram rushed over to help free her. I could hear the distant sound of sirens making their way to us and then it happened. As if in slow motion I was watching the smoke billowing from beneath the car that the woman had been trapped inside.

"They got her out, didn't they?"

I screamed as I took a step toward it, images of that day when my car had been engulfed with flames assaulting my senses. I felt sheer panic rip through me before arms were holding me back.

"No one's in there luv. Let's get you looked at"

I didn't need looking at so turning with the intention of saying that, I found myself looking at the clothes of a man wearing the paramedic uniform. I must have moved away from Ranger or he from me because I could see him heading toward me, concern written all over his face. That was when somehow a fire engine drove between us, and I lost sight of him, and it was also when my world went totally black.