Title: Eleven on Top
Author: thecrystalkey (aka CK)
Disclaimer: Not mine, but I kinda think Hal's fun and Ranger's just yummy. All the characters are Janet's, only Hal's thoughts are mine.
WARNING: Major spoilers for Eleven on Top. Recommend you not to read this until you've read the book or it WILL completely ruin the ending. And I mean ruin. Read at your own risk.
---
Hal glanced worriedly at the display showing the current position of Stephanie Plum. Well, it showed the position of her vehicle. It hadn't moved in almost two hours and she'd said she wouldn't be gone long. Calls to her cell phone remained unanswered.
He debated with himself for a couple more minutes, and another attempt to contact her. He knew he was being paranoid but he would rather be paranoid than dead because he'd lost the boss'…well, no one was quite sure what she was to him other than important. So, instead of end up dead or injured for losing her, he called Tank.
"Talk."
"We may have a situation with Ms. Plum."
"Shit." The curse was heartfelt. "May have?"
"She left almost two hours ago saying she needed air and wouldn't be gone long. Her vehicle drove almost straight to Stiva's Funeral Parlour and has been parked there ever since. She isn't answering her phone and I'm concerned."
"So am I. She'd have checked in if she intended to be gone longer. She'd be answering her phone, at least. Send someone to check on it. Better yet, I'll go myself. Call all her known addresses. She might have gotten a ride home with someone. We can hope."
That last Hal decided he hadn't been meant to hear, so he ignored it, concentrating instead on looking up the information he needed. He was hoping she was at the funeral home or had gotten a ride with someone, otherwise someone's ass was gonna be in the sling, and Hal was betting it would be his. He did not want to have to tell the boss that he'd lost Ms. Plum. For real this time.
Tank called him back not long after he'd finished his phone calls. "No joy," the other man reported. "She was at Barroni's funeral service, then she wandered off into other viewings and only one person claims to have seen her leave."
"Claims?"
"Constantine Stiva."
The closest relative was the most likely to be harbouring the fugitive. And she had burned the man's funeral home down a couple of years back.
"Anything on your end?" Tank asked.
"Nope. Nobody's answering anywhere except the Bond office."
"No surprise. Her parents are here, Morelli's probably still at work, and her sister's in Disneyland. Alright," Tank continued after a short pause. "Send me anyone who isn't already working on something else. We'll start with this area. When's Ranger due to land?"
"Any minute."
"Call him the second his plane touches down. Keep calling until he picks up. Don't leave a message. Make sure he knows I'm on it before he hangs up."
"Right."
If it had been anyone else who had disappeared, Hal might have asked why. But this was Stephanie Plum, the Bounty Hunter from Hell to her skips, the Bombshell Bounty Hunter to the local newspapers, and the woman the boss seemed to be stuck on. Hal started calling.
The fact that she already had a boyfriend, most of the time, and that that boyfriend was a cop, didn't seem to bother Ranger. It was a weird situation but it wasn't Hal's job to question his boss' love life. He'd been new to the organization when she'd moved in to the seventh floor apartment for a brief time.
When she'd pulled the boss' personal truck up to the entrance to the underground parking garage, he'd called Tank. He'd been told when he came on-shift that Ranger had lent his truck to someone and to keep an eye on it, but he hadn't been sure what to do.
The RangeMan second in command had arrived in time to see her get out of the truck with a Maglite and shine it through the security grate. Tank had laughed softly and shaken his head.
"Only her," he'd said.
"Who is she?"
"Stephanie Plum. The boss' girl. Sort of. I wondered where she was gonna end up tonight."
"Sir?"
"There was a firebomb at Morelli's last night, took out his truck. Word is he tried to lock her in so she walked out on him this afternoon. Her apartment's occupied and odds are there's someone after her so she won't go to her parents for fear of another firebomb."
"Do we call the boss?"
"Let's see what she does," Tank said.
So he and Tank had watched drive off, circle the block twice and come back. Then she'd gone two blocks and parked. Tank had laughed again when she'd turned up at the garage entrance on foot and gone in through there.
"Sir?"
"Leave her be, Hal."
"She has to have realized there are cameras."
"She's not stupid, and she knows this is Ranger's building, so yeah, she probably does realize there are cameras. She probably also knows there's a tracker on the truck. I can understand the reasoning, though. I need to make a call."
Tank had called Ranger from the control room, explained the situation and asked for instructions.
"Sir?" Hal asked as she reached the seventh floor in the elevator.
"Don't do anything for now. Don't interfere with her movements in or out. If she wants help, she has my number. Ranger will deal with her when he gets back. Pass the word to keep an eye and ear on her though."
Tank had chuckled when she remoted the door to the penthouse apartment before trying the key. After watching to be sure she was safely inside, Tank had stood with a slight shake of his head. "Boss'll be back early now," he said. "Pity the poor bastards he's taking down."
"She's pretty important to him, isn't she, sir?"
"Yeah."
"Sir," Hal said as Tank turned to go. "I know it's probably none of my business but…who's Morelli, then?"
"Her boyfriend. Sometimes. It's complicated," he said with a look at Hal's obvious surprise. "He's a cop. Vice. He and Ranger have a working relationship, so it's complicated. The man never could do anything the easy way."
With that comment, Tank had left Hal to watching the video monitors and wondering about the brunette on the seventh floor.
Even after that, Hal still hadn't had a full appreciation of how important she actually was to the boss until the order had come down to stun her if she tried to leave the building. The Trenton Slayers had put a contract out on her head and Ranger wanted her safe while he looked for the man who'd picked up the contract. Hal still hadn't lived down letting her stun him.
In the present situation he knew that it wasn't his fault that she'd disappeared, but Hal couldn't help feeling that Ranger probably wouldn't see it that way if they didn't find her in time.
Hal's thoughts were derailed when Ranger finally answered his phone.
"Yo."
"Sir, it's Hal. Ms. Plum appears to be missing. Tank's on top of the situation, sir. He's organizing search parties now."
One single swear word and the line went dead. Thirty minutes later a very tightly wound Ranger stalked into the control room and straight to Hal. The younger man was standing to one side of the control room, having gone off shift not long after finally getting through to his boss.
"Where?"
"Stiva's Funeral Parlor. H-her bike's still there. The only person to have seen her leave- um, claims to have seen her leave, is Constantine Stiva."
Ranger took a deep breath and let it out, closing his eyes. He looked to Hal like he was counting to ten.
"When?" The boss' eyes were still closed.
"Almost three hours," Hal managed to get out.
"Goddammit Stephanie." It was muttered so quietly Hal nearly didn't hear it. He thought he probably wasn't supposed to so he ignored it. Another second and Ranger's eyes were open, his professional mask back in place. Ranger turned towards the room and Hal breathed a sigh of relief to have the man's attention off of him.
"Do we have any urgent projects?" Ranger asked the room at large.
"No, Sir," Ram answered.
"I want everybody on this," Ranger snapped out. "And as many of the contract people as we can pull in. You all know the background. I don't care how you do it, I don't care who you have to kill. I want her found."
Ranger had attached Hal to his side as everyone on the RangeMan payroll and twenty of the contract workers had been rounded up, briefed, and sent out to search the city.
Since Tank was already organizing a search of the area around the funeral home, Ranger started with Spiro Stiva's known hangouts, friends, acquaintances, and a list of last known addresses. Then he began on people and places connected to Constantine Stiva, who had apparently lied about not knowing his son was back in town. Tank's search of the man's house had turned up a room in the basement with signs of having been recently occupied by someone, probably Spiro.
Ranger was in and out of the control room, chasing down leads and finding new places to search. Hal, perforce, followed him. The only word he could think of for his boss in this situation was 'intense', as though there was nothing more important to him than finding Ms. Plum and finding her alive. Hal concluded that he did not want to be in the shoes of Spiro Stiva when they found him. Especially not if the guy had touched so much as a hair on her head.
Four hours after Ranger had first walked into the control room, he was there again, with Hal in tow. He seemed to be thinking hard.
"There has to be something we're missing," Ram said. "Spiro has to have had someplace to call his own. It's not like he was living with his father before the fire."
"The real estate tax records," Hal said.
"Explain."
"They're all paper, sir. They might have something that isn't in the electronic records," Hal explained. His face fell. "But they're closed until morning."
Ranger just smiled and it wasn't a friendly smile. "Take a vehicle and pick up Tank. Meet me in half an hour at City Hall."
Hal picked up Tank and was at City Hall in the ordered half hour, but only barely. Ranger was only five minutes behind them. He pulled in holding a little old lady at gunpoint. Hal blinked but managed to keep his mouth shut. It was Tank that whispered, "Oh, shit."
The little old lady turned out to have the keys to the records office and the knowledge to find what they needed in the shortest possible time. Hal heard Tank apologizing to the old lady for what Ranger had done and explaining the situation. The woman's eyes had widened and then her lips had pursed and she'd gotten down to business. It still took close to an hour to find the house. It was tied up in the courts and its current ownership was in dispute because Spiro Stiva, its current owner was only missing and not officially dead.
They were at the house twenty minutes later and had split up, each taking an entrance, to search the house. It looked empty from the outside and was clear of bad guys on the inside so they started a room-by-room.
The thump of body hitting body had Tank and Hal both running to the kitchen, only to stop on seeing Ms. Plum being held up by Ranger's vise-like grip on her arms. Hal noted that she'd been bound hand and foot, and judging from the cupboard that was open, had been stuffed into one of the above the counter cupboards.
"…thought you were dead." Hal heard Ranger say as he came in.
"I'm okay," she said immediately. "Just cramped." She looked surprised and relieved to see Ranger and her eyes were only for him. He looked like he still couldn't believe she was really alive and in his arms.
Tank started working on getting her out of the handcuffs as she finally tore her eyes away from Ranger's to look up at the cupboard and make a face. Hal went to work on the shackles around her legs. He'd half-expected her to break down, so her next words surprised him. She got right down to business.
"It's not Spiro," she said. "It's Con, and he's coming back to kill me." She sounded a little shaky but spoke matter-of-factly. Hal began to see what Ranger saw in her besides her looks. "If we hang around we can catch him."
Having gotten the leg shackles undone, Hal stood in time to see his boss do something completely uncharacteristic. Ranger raised her wrist to his mouth and kissed it gently, blood and bruises and all.
"I'm sorry to have to do this to you," and he really did look sorry, as much as he ever looked anything out in the field, "but there's no we. I've just had six really bad hours looking for you. I need to know you're safe. Sitting in this house waiting for a homicidal undertaker doesn't feel safe. You've had enough fun for one day."
Between one sentence and the next, Ranger had her cuffed to Tank. Hal was as surprised as Tank looked, but she only seemed halfway surprised.
"Take her back to the office and have Ella tend her wrists and then take her Morelli," Ranger ordered Tank.
"No way," she protested.
Rather than arguing with her, Ranger addressed Tank again. "I don't care how you do it. Pick her up. Drag her. Whatever. Just get her out of here and keep her safe. And I don't want those bracelets to come off either of you until you turn her over to Morelli."
Tank looked like he'd rather be cuffed to a hungry lion as Ms. Plum glared at him and tried to override Ranger's orders. They were the boss's orders, but this was effectively the boss's girl, and he didn't want either of them pissed at him.
Then Ranger did the truly unexpected. He locked eyes with her and said 'Please.' She blinked in surprise while Hal and Tank tried to keep their own surprise from showing. She almost smiled as she thought about it for a moment and then she nodded and went with them to the car.
Hal wondered whether Ms. Plum had any idea just how deeply this little scene had just exposed Ranger's feelings for her. A man didn't give orders like that about anyone unless he felt that that person's safety was more important even than his own. Cuffing her to Tank would leave him alone in this house, without backup, until he and Tank had dropped her off and returned.