Chapter 12

I don't know what was in worse shape: my butt or my apartment. Valerie and company had finally moved into their three bedroom house and vacated my little one bedroom flat. I was thinking about calling Sally Sweet's ex-roommate, Sugar, to come by and redecorate it for me again with another Molotov cocktail.

It was a disaster area. I kind of knew that two adults (and I use that term loosely) two children and a baby in a one bedroom apartment might be a little bit more than what the architects' original design intended, but until I saw the disaster of my living room, I hadn't really thought about it. Is that a peanut butter and jelly sandwich stuck to the ceiling? How do you get a PBJ stuck on the ceiling?

Scraping PBJ off the ceiling made me think about PJ. She had called me in the hospital from the plane all excited because she had managed to pinch Ranger's cheek before running up the boarding ramp. And not the cheek on his face either. I had laughed so hard that the nurses wanted to sedate me again, they thought I was having a fit of hysteria.

I'm going to miss that kid. It looked like she was going to be alright 'though. It seems that someone had placed a .38 shell into the forehead of the principal instigator of the insurrection. Right in the middle of the Misses Department of Macy's. Go figure.

Add to that, a shootout at the Trenton Mall with the involvement of the infamous Bombshell Bounty Hunter seems to have generated enough publicity to trickle down to Washington. As a result, The ruling Gudang government got enough Federal money to help stabilize their political situation and restore a certain amount of order to their country.

Just another day in the life of Stephanie Plum, Bounty Hunter from Hell.

That's why I didn't feel even remotely guilty about the exceptionally fabulous leather jacket that I received from PJ. Most Glorious! However, I did feel a little weird about the necklace that she had tucked into the pocket. It was that beautiful dark amethyst stone that the horny teenage Ahmed had given her. I called her, threatening to return it to her, but she was insistent.

"Look at it!" she was adamant. "It is shaped a little bit like an 'S'. 'S' for Stephanie! And it is dark purple! Plum! It was meant for you! You must keep it. I want you to!"

How could I argue with reasoning like that? And I really did love it. I decided that I deserved fine gemstones. I had a pair of purple FMPs that matched and I went to Victoria's Secret and bought string bikini undies with a matching skimpy pushup bra in the exact same shade. I modeled them for Morelli.

He agreed that I deserved fine gemstones as well. He then proceeded to share with me his family jewels. A quite righteous evening was had by all.

I thought about our diversions of the prior night as I scrubbed the kitchen counters. I could feel a goofy smile on my face and I was glad that I was alone.

My cell phone rang. It was Morelli, I put my new earpiece in my ear so that I could keep cleaning while we talked. I am so on the cutting edge of technology.

"Plum Scrubbers, Industrial Cleaning Agency. We live to clean."

"Where are you?"

"My apartment. The Kloughns have left the building. Unfortunately, they didn't take all their trash with them." I opened the cabinet doors under the sink and a stench hit me like a two by four in the face. "Omigod!"

"What is it?"

"There's a dirty diaper under here! And it's beyond ripe!" My stomach roiled and I made a gagging sound. Gingerly I carried the atrocity out of the apartment into a large trash bag in the hallway. "Pee-yew! That's got to be one of the most disgusting things I've smelt in my entire life!"

I could hear the laughter in his voice. Not a shred of sympathy, mind you, but a lot of amusement. "What are your plans for today?"

"Well, I still don't have any skips to chase, but since I've got a decent paycheck on the way from RangeMan, I'm not panicking yet. I figure I'll just spend the day here, sentenced to hard labor. I've got panicking about my future scheduled for tomorrow."

"Good." Good? Panicking is good? Is he even hearing me? "Could you do me a favor and give me a call if your plans change and you're not staying at the apartment?"

Okay, my curiosity is up. "Why?"

He sighed. "Nothing to get excited about. There are just a couple of loose ends falling out from the Slayer investigation and until we have more definite intell, I'd just feel more comfortable knowing where you are."

"What kind of loose ends?"

Another sigh. "Nothing definite enough to discuss. If it pans out to be anything even close to being legit, I'll call you. Okay?"

I hate it when he does this to me. Something's up, he knows something's up, and he's not talking. Does he still think I'm going to sit quietly and do nothing? I felt the slow burn coming on.

"Stephanie? Hello? Are you still there?"

"Fine. I'll give you a call when I'm done here. I'm not feeling a hundred percent yet, so I'll probably just go back to the house around three or four and take a nap before dinner."

"Out or in?"

I thought about that for a minute. "In. How 'bout Chinese?"

"Sounds good. I'll pick some up on the way home."

He disconnected and I wasted a few brain cells thinking how we both needed some serious remedial phone etiquette therapy. Ranger too. Then again, I flashed to the way Valerie and Albert played You hang up first, Snug 'ems. No, no, no, Sweetums, you hang up first. Na-huh, you first, lickity lips. No, no, you first.

Ugh!

As I scrubbed down the kitchen cabinets, I entertained myself with visions of Morelli and me playing that game. Then I recast it with Ranger and me and laughed out loud. Then I played it with Morelli and Ranger playing sweetums and snuggles phone tag with each other and laughed so hard that I had to run into the bathroom before I peed my pants.

I do have the gift of knowing how to entertain myself.

I was still giggling to myself as I crawled on my hands and knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor. It probably tells you how brain dead I was becoming that when two black leather boots stepped into my line of vision, I didn't screech or gasp. I just hit the toe with my scrub brush.

"Off my clean floor! It's still wet!"

I heard Ranger chuckle and I pushed my hair off my face with the back of my hand as I looked up at him. I leaned back to sit on my heels, remembering too late what a bad idea that was.

"Ow." I muttered as my butt reminded me why I had slept on my stomach again last night.

I felt a hand grasp my elbow and a strong arm pulled me to my feet.

"I hate to disturb you, I had no idea that scrubbing a floor could be so amusing."

I felt my face heat up and I bit my lip as I remembered what I had been grinning about a moment before. He raised an eyebrow at me.

"You should try it sometime." I am the queen of the snappy comeback.

His hand was still grasping my elbow and he pulled me towards his chest. "When I get on my knees, it won't be to wash the floor."

Yow! Retreat! Runaway! Runaway! I broke away and crossed to the sink, pulling off my sexy yellow Playtex gloves. "Don't knock it until you try it." Okay, how lame was that comeback?

"I could say the same thing." I was so losing this game. Time to change the rules.

I walked over to the fridge and pulled two bottles of Coors out from the six pack that I had just put in there a few hours ago. I slammed the door shut quickly. I had not yet tackled the inside of the fridge. "You come all the way over here to discuss domestic cleaning?" I asked, handing him a bottle.

He ignored my question as he took the beer. He pulled out a white envelope out of his jacket pocket, handing it to me. "How's your butt feeling?"

"How's yours?" I smirked as I turned over the envelope. It was a paycheck from RangeMan.

He gave me the eyebrow thing again, as if to say, I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours. I decided to ignore this little sally and bent my head to open the envelope.

"Yow, Ranger, time to fire your bookkeeper! Slight typo in your payroll department!" Instead of the one thousand dollars that was due for the day that I spent lying on my stomach in the hospital, the check was for eleven thousand dollars!

"Just your portion of a bonus that RangeMan received from the Gudang government. The rest of it we keeping in reserve to offset any future "Code Plum" expenditures."

"Oh? Does this mean that your Entertainment Line Item is in the black?" I gave him the raised eyebrow.

"We'll just leave it that we've got a short-term budget surplus."

"Your confidence in me is underwhelming."

He gave me that little twitch of the cheek almost-smile as he leaned against the kitchen and took a long pull on the bottle. I would have leaned against it as well, but I caught myself in time. My butt was not quite ready for the James Dean Lean. We were quiet for a few long moments. There was something else he wanted to talk about it, but he wasn't ready to bring it up. That's okay. I can be patient.

Not.

"Well?" I said after about four hours. Okay, maybe it was more like forty seconds, but like I said, patience is not one of my life skills.

He took another mouthful of beer and looked at me speculatively. "I need your help bringing in a couple of skips," he said at last.

"What?" I froze with the beer bottle almost to my lips and my mouth open. As far as I knew, The only FTAs that Ranger had were gang members. With all the Merry Men at his disposal, why would he need my help?

He glanced at the beer bottle in front of my gaping mouth and then at my lips. He put his finger on my chin and pushed up on my jaw, giving me a little smirk that told me exactly what was on his mind. I put the bottle back down on the counter.

"Gangbangers?" I asked. He gave me a small nod. I gazed off into space as I grappled with the knot of panic that roiled in my stomach. I didn't really feel ready to go up against the gangs again, but I knew that I would have to face them sometime. It would be better to do it now with Ranger and the Merry Men on one of his orchestrated operations than in a couple of months with Lula and I doing our Abbott and Costello play bounty hunters imitation.

I gave Ranger a faint nod. "Morelli is gonna kill me." I muttered.