A/N: I loved all the versions of 'poor dumb bastard' in the reviews of last chapter. He really is, but we love him anyway. Back to Stephanie.

I spent the month of June preparing my life for a daily commute. I got a small glimpse of what it might be like when Mike sent me to both the Vineland and Camden offices for a couple of days to check them out and see how they were running. Both offices were doing for the time being, but I knew I'd be back to check on them again after my time in Newark. There were things that could be done differently, but they would take longer to straighten out than I had before I needed to be in Newark.

Unlike the old E.E. Martin building, the JM Construction office wasn't within walking distance of the train station, and I didn't want to wait around for buses or cabs, so I decided I would drive every day. Was it going to be an enormous pain in the ass? Yes. But it would give me more freedom of movement. Accounting had informed me that the mileage to and from Newark was a reimbursable expense. I knew once the Newark office was set up, I would likely be visiting the other Kowalski offices from time to time because of my new role as office manager. Knowing that life could be unpredictable, I filled an overnight bag with extra clothes, shoes, toiletries, and a phone charger, which would be left in the trunk of my car in case I got stranded out of town. I already kept a hard hat, safety goggles, work gloves, and my steel-toed boots in there for when I had to go out to build sites. OSHA, you know. I got into the habit of never letting Veronica's food or water bowl get less than halfway down the canister before refilling it, so that I wouldn't be worried about her running out of food or water if I couldn't get back for a day or two.

I was focused on life in Trenton so intensely because I was nervous about going up to the Newark office. A week after the sale was finalized, Mike had given me the employee list to start reviewing. I would need to help Pete get things like email addresses, iPads, and network logins set up. I had been startled to see the name of the former owner of JM Construction, who would now be the Head Project Manager of the Newark office: Javier Manoso. I didn't know how common the name Manoso was, but the fact that he was a Manoso and he lived in Newark made it feel very likely that he was a relative of Ranger's. My hope was that he was an uncle or a distant cousin and not Ranger's father. I had googled Javier Manoso, but didn't find any pictures of him. He didn't appear to have any social media accounts. I didn't have access to the background check services any longer because I had been using the bonds office's system. I knew Ranger had talked about me to his family because he had talked about how his mother always asked about me after I helped find his kidnapped daughter. So if this was his father, he would know who I was. And I didn't want to be stuck in Newark with his father and awkward interactions for weeks on end. I didn't need him asking me why I didn't talk to his son any longer or pressuring me to reach out to him. Even worse would be him luring Ranger to the office and surprising both of us. I told myself not to worry about it, that the likelihood of him being Ranger's father was slim and that I was probably getting myself worked up over nothing.

I arrived at the Newark office of Kowalski & Sons Construction on July first at eight in the morning, frazzled and annoyed by commuters on the Turnpike. I took a minute to pull myself together before getting out of the car. Pete would be arriving at ten, so I would have the first couple of hours to work on getting settled into the office and talking to the employees. Mike had said that the three-story building had been purchased as part of the deal and he had ordered that the Construction office be condensed to the first floor. He intended to rent out the second and third floors to other businesses. As I looked at the building in front of me, I knew that wasn't going to be easy. It wasn't a large building, despite having three floors. It felt like it had been afterthought in the construction of the neighborhood, squeezed into an area far too small for both the building and the parking lot it owned. Maybe if they had sacrificed the parking lot, it would have allowed the building to be normal-sized. The lot was located on the east side of the building and had about fifteen spaces spanning the length of the property. There were only two other cars in the lot. I walked around to the front of the building and a chime announced my presence in a small, but welcoming reception area. There were a couple of chairs, a loveseat, a table with design magazines, and a water cooler located by the large front window. There was a reception desk located a few feet away in direct line from the front door, with an opening that led to a long hallway to the right of the desk. A woman around my age sat at the desk, flipping through magazine and chewing gum. I was pretty sure her name was Mara.

"Hello," I said, since she hadn't bothered to look up when I'd entered. "I'm Stephanie Plum. I'm the office manager from Trenton."

Mara looked up at me over the edge of her magazine, her expression making it very clear she had no time for me. She reached for the phone and hit a button.

"Yeah, the woman from Trenton is here," she said into the receiver. She listened for a second, then put the phone back down on the cradle.

"Down the hall, third door on the left," she said, her attention going directly back to her magazine.

"Thanks," I said. I was not in for a warm welcome. Sara had already warned me that the employees hadn't been happy about the sale of the business. Javier Manoso had been forced to lay off eight people, mostly office staff that were already in place in Trenton and not needed in the branches.

I walked down the hall, glancing where I could into other rooms. There was a small kitchen and break room on the left directly behind the reception area. Two single-occupant bathrooms were across the hall. The second door on the left was closed, but the sign on the door was labeled conference room. There was another closed door opposite it that had an empty sign holder, meaning it had probably been the office of someone who no longer worked here. The third door on the left was closed and had the name Javier Manoso, Owner on the sign. The door across the hall was closed and the name on that sign read Tomás Carrillo, Project Manager. It looked like there might be two more offices left on the floor, based on the doors I could see. A metal door with an exit sign above it was directly at the end of the hall. Yikes. It was going to be a tight squeeze down here.

I knocked on Javier's door and was told to enter. I felt my stomach do a flip as I saw the man sitting behind the desk. If he wasn't Ranger's father, I would eat my own arm. There was such a strong resemblance between them that they had to be closely related. I could easily see Ranger looking like this man in thirty years. Javier stood up and smiled at me, reaching a large hand across the desk.

"Stephanie, it's nice to meet you," he said. "I'm Javier. I guess now I'm the Head Project Manager up here."

"It's a pleasure to meet you," I said, grasping his hand.

Javier was probably about six feet tall and stockier than his son. I could tell he was strong, but not from hours spent at the gym. This was the type of strength that came from years of hard, physical labor. He didn't strike me as someone who had been content to sit behind the desk and direct his men. He was likely out at job sites, helping where needed. It reminded me of Ranger, not wanting to be chained to a desk, but out in the action with his men. Oddly, it was also a lot like Mike's approach to the job. Maybe they weren't as different as I had been expecting.

"Please, have a seat," he said, indicating the chair directly across from him. I sat down and put my work bag at my feet, trying my best not to let my knees bounce. I kept waiting for him to bring up Ranger, my time working in bond enforcement, and his granddaughter, Julie. I didn't exactly know what I was going to say, but the goal was to keep us focused on the work.

"I want to apologize in advance for my employees," he told me seriously. "None of them are happy about this, and they will probably want to make it very clear that they resent Kowalski coming in and making changes to the way we've done things. I've told them not to take it out on you, but they might. Mike told me that he hired you because you can put up with him, so I feel like you can handle it, but you shouldn't have to."

I shrugged. "It's not a big deal. I understand that this will be hard on everyone. I'm just here to try to make it as smooth a transition as possible. I haven't been at Kowalski very long, but I've been trying to make life easier for everyone by streamlining documents and I recently convinced Mike to go paperless and buy iPads for everyone. I don't know how well you've gotten to know him, but he hates technology, so it's a big deal."

"I remember him telling me towards the end of our negotiations that his assistant had been pressuring him to go paperless. He made it sound like you had been asking him to sell his organs on the black market," Javier said with a grin. "But I'm glad you did. We were already paperless around here and one thing I had dreaded was going backwards. But we used laptops, not tablets, so there will be some adjustment."

I had only spent a few minutes with him, but I was blown away by the warmth and kindness that he emitted. I had been so used to Mike with his hard ass attitude, and the other men in the Trenton office who gave off varying levels of misogyny, that I had almost forgotten that being an asshole wasn't a mandate to work here. He also gave off a sense of calm leadership. You knew without a doubt that this man was in charge, and he wouldn't have to say a word about it. Another trait his son appeared to have inherited.

"Did Mike mention that he wants everyone on the first floor so he can rent out the other two?" I asked, wincing as I did so.

Javier nodded. "Yes, he did. I've been trying to figure it out, but honestly, it wasn't at the top of my list."

"I understand," I told him. "I personally think Mike's being unreasonable and plan to tell him so when I talk to him later. I really don't know how to fit everyone in down here without working in shifts or sitting in each other's laps."

Javier chuckled. "I like you. I think you'll fit in well here."

I smiled. I couldn't help it. "Thanks, I appreciate that."

Javier showed me the remaining two offices on the first floor. They were equal sized to Javier's, which wasn't large. Definitely not large enough for two people to use.

"I haven't had anyone else move yet," he told me. "Julio and Jack, who are the estimators, are up on the second floor with our expeditor, Mike. My two supervisors, Darren and Tony, are up on the third floor. The foreman also have an office up there to use if they need to be in the office for very long and we have a couple of storage rooms up there."

I grimaced. I hadn't even thought about extra space for people like foremen or contractors who might have extended time here.

"Will you show me the second floor?" I asked, and Javier led me to a staircase.

I followed him and ended up on a floor very similar to the one below it. The only difference was that where the lobby was on the first floor there was another conference room. I was told the third floor had the exact same layout.

"Okay, so Mike is just going to have to kiss my ass because there is no way to fit everyone onto the first floor," I told Javier. "We can condense the office to the first two floors and he can rent out the third."

Javier let out a booming laugh. "He said he hired you to put up with him, but you're more than I was expecting. Good for you. Between you and me, he's an absolute asshole and I want to spend as little time with him as possible."

"Same," I said, raising my hand. "I usually have headphones in just so I don't have to listen to him."

We made our way back downstairs and began discussing the layout of the office spread out over the two floors. I called Mike on my cell phone and put him on speaker.

"There's no way we can condense everything to the first floor," I told him. "The floors are way too small. We can condense to the first two and you can rent out the third."

"No way," Mike said. "I'm renting out the top two floors. You make it work."

"Have you even been in the building?" I asked him.

"No."

"Exactly, you don't know the dimensions or the layout," I said. "It's impossible. Okay, that means the opposite of possible. Not possible."

"I told you what I wanted, Stephanie. It's your job to make it work."

"And I've told you it can't, so if you're so hellbent on making this office fit onto one floor, then you're going to have to come up here and do it yourself. Otherwise, I'm making it two floors."

"You're a real pain in the ass," he told me.

"Did you hear that sound, Mike?" I asked him.

"What sound?"

"It was the sound of your glass house shattering from that stone you just threw," I said, disconnecting the call before he could respond.

Javier burst into laughter once the called ended. "This is going to be a lot better than I was expecting." He wiped a tear from his eye and pulled himself together. "Do you think he'll come up here and try to make it work?"

I shook my head. "No, because he is pathologically incapable of admitting he's wrong. He'll just complain to anyone who will listen that I couldn't do it and he didn't have the time to come up here to fix things, so he just left it. Anyone who works with him knows he's full of crap, so they won't buy it."

There was a knock on the doorframe behind me and I turned to see a Latino man in his forties standing there. He was about my height with stocky build.

"I just went to the Henderson site," he told Javier, not even bothering to acknowledge me. "It looks like they will be done a day early."

"Good," Javier said. "Tomás, this is Stephanie Plum. She's the office manager from Trenton. She's here to help us get the office set up."

Tomás gave me a look that said he didn't care who I was. "Whatever."

Javier said something fast and angry in Spanish. I had no clue what he said, but it changed Tomás's demeanor quickly.

"Hi," he said, before head back to his own office across the hall.

"Sorry," Javier said quietly.

"You don't need to apologize for them," I told him. "It's fine. Really. They will get used to me and by the time I leave they'll begging me to stay."

Javier gave me a scrutinizing look, and for a second I thought he was finally going to bring up my connection to Ranger. "Are you always this optimistic?"

"I try to be. Pessimism doesn't usually get much done."

We spent the remainder of the morning looking over the layout of the first and second floors and determining the office situation. Pete had arrived at ten to start getting the computer system set up, and we explained which rooms would need connections. Once he had gotten started, Javier told Mara to make sure Pete had anything he needed and said that he and I were going out.

"I want to take you to some of the job sites," he explained. "I know you'll have to get them converted as well."

His vehicle was a dark blue GMC Sierra truck with a large interior that included a backseat. His vehicle, unlike mine, was spotless. I was grateful he had wanted to drive. I had grabbed my worksite gear out of the trunk of my car and it was resting at my feet along with my messenger bag.

We headed through the city towards the largest project they had going at the moment, which was the remodeling of a five-story apartment building. They had torn the building down to the frame and had been rebuilding it. Javier explained that it had formerly been low-income housing that had been in such bad disrepair that it had been condemned and ordered for demolition. A new company had offered to buy the building and completely remodel it to turn it into a senior living complex. Leaving the frame would reduce the costs and complications with meeting new zoning codes, so the city had allowed it, and JM Construction, now Kowalski & Sons Construction, had been the ones contracted to do the job.

"We started this back in March," Javier said as we got out of his truck. "We're making good progress on it. It's easier when you are taking everything down to the bones." We both donned our hats and googles and sat on his back bumper pulling on our steel-toed boots. His were standard light brown Timberlands that you could buy at Home Depot. Mine were brown leather from L.L Bean and intentionally didn't look like they were work boots.

"Are you sure those are steel-toed?" Javier asked, gesturing towards my boots.

"Should I kick you in the knee so you can find out?" I asked. The grin he gave me was so much like Ranger it made me want to cry.

"I'll take your word for it," he said, leading me towards the site.

I was introduced to Darren Freeman, who was one of the construction supervisors. The supervisors were the go-betweens from the foreman to the office. It allowed the foreman to focus solely on their people and the work at hand while letting someone else advocate and problem-solve off-site. Darren shook my hand and introduced me to the foreman. Javier explained my role and what I would be doing over the next few weeks to help them transition. The foreman didn't seem like he cared much about the changes, but I could see Darren tense up. The tensions seemed to be more with administration than the workers on the ground.

We spent an hour at the site before Javier took me to a residential build. They had been contracted by a developer to work on a new subdivision in one of the nearby suburbs. The area where they were building had once been the location of a large factory. The area had been left undisturbed for over twenty-five years due to ground contamination. Once the ground had been deemed safe for habitation, the developer bought it and began making plans. There was enough space for twenty-five houses that included garages and yards. They had just started building the first houses a month ago. They worked on five houses at a time. It blew my mind just how many builders he likely employed.

"These two are the largest projects we have going on," Javier told me. "What we do when we have big jobs like these is hire people for a contracted period of time. People who live in the area may be contracted to work until the project is done. If people travel from elsewhere to work, they usually have a three-to-six month contract with an option to renew. It just depends on how they like the work."

I knew that was how Mike did things as well but hadn't been sure if that was an industry standard, or just him being a tight ass.

"We would never have enough work to keep this many people employed full-time," Javier said, reading my mind. "Outside of these two projects, we usually have anywhere from forty to sixty smaller jobs going on at any given time. We rarely have more than one large-scale commercial and one-large scale residential project going on at the same time. The main jobs can be things as small as building a deck onto someone's house or putting on a new roof to building additions or gutting for remodels. We stay busy since we expand into all of North Jersey. I think Mike is wanting us to start getting over into New York. I've always said no because I didn't want to do all the paperwork. That can be his problem now."

"That's the spirit," I said, punching him in the arm. "You'll be telling him to fuck off in no time."

Javier took us back to the office shortly before five so that I could grab my stuff. Pete had just left, according to Mara, who had been extra annoyed at having someone at her computer all day.

"She'll get over it," I reminded Javier as we went back to his office. I could see the strain on his face again. He sat down in his chair and looked out the window behind his desk. He had seemed pretty jovial all day, but I could tell that this part of him was always underneath.

"They just don't get it," he said. "I nearly lost this place back in 2008 when the Recession hit. I cashed out all of my retirement and investments, what was left anyway, and took out a second mortgage on my house to help pay the bills. We came back from that, but there's another recession coming, and I don't want to be responsible for putting my people out of work when it does. I used the money from selling the company to pay off that second mortgage. Do you know much about the stock market, Stephanie?"

"Do you think if I did I'd be working for Mike?" I asked. "I can pay my own bills and sometimes even that's questionable."

"Well, I do know the market, and the signs are there. But they don't believe me," he said, gesturing towards Tomás' office with his chin.

"They'll see one day that you were right. You just have to be patient," I said, slinging my bag over my shoulder. "Are you done for the day?"

Javier chuckled. "I work until seven every day. I go home in time to eat dinner with my wife while we watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy."

"That sounds like fun," I told him. "Does your wife mind you working so late?"

"She wanted me to retire when I sold the business, so I'll let you figure out the answer to that."

I waved goodbye and headed out the front door. Mara was packing up her own things and headed towards the door as well.

"See you tomorrow," I said. I thought I heard her mutter fuck off under her breath.

I reflected on my day as I fought rush hour traffic back to Trenton. Javier had never once given any indication that he knew of my connection to Ranger. Maybe he hadn't known my name or had forgotten it. Maybe Ranger's conversations about me had been more limited to his mother, or maybe Javier was like my father and didn't pay attention if he didn't consider something important. I was pretty sure my father couldn't identify a single friend of mine by name but could give a vague description of them if they were memorable enough. It wasn't like Ranger and I had grown up knowing each other. We had met as adults, and we lived an hour away. So it was very likely Javier didn't realize I knew his son. Unless he mentioned me to his wife, who probably did know my name, I may be able to work up there the entire time without talking about Ranger.