On with the show, I hope you like it. Thank you so much for your reviews, you guys are awesome!
Spoilers: None. It's its own universe, I blame it all on the gin
Rating: Could be anywhere from PG13 to R. Who knows anymore?
Disclaimer: I wish I were making some money on this, but unlike JE, I don't own the characters
Out of my Mind Chapter 17
A part of me expected Ranger to reach out and hold me back, or to follow me, or to at least call my name or something.
Nothing.
When I unlocked the front door and glanced back over my shoulder, he still hadn't moved.
If I was honest with myself, I had to admit my response and subsequent exit were only meant to provoke him, I didn't think he would just let me leave.
Keys in hand, I exited the stairwell and froze: The door to my apartment was open, an inch or two, and I could hear noise in the apartment.
Surely, no one could have slipped by Ranger. But what if he had never been up here, had just waited for me outside? That didn't seem likely.
So I went with the approach that always gets blonde girls in trouble in the movies: I pushed the door open and called "Hello?"
My instincts had been right, it was Tank in the apartment.
"Security breech." He said when I entered and he saw the question mark on my face.
As if that told me everything there was to know.
"What happened?"
He pointed to the coffee table.
A large glass vase containing at least three dozen yellow roses stood on top of it.
I was pretty sure I'd remember if it had been there before.
OK, I thought, let's not panic.
Someone came in, put flowers on the table, and left. Except the someone had to break in, but still, in the grand scheme of things? I could think of worse things than flowers.
Tank wrote a few things on a clipboard and looked at me.
"Do you want to see the note?"
Oh, there was a one of those as well. If he had to ask, I was guessing I didn't want to see it.
"No, she doesn't." Ranger said from behind me.
Tank almost-nodded. "I'm done here. Good to see you. I'll talk to you at the next checkpoint."
He walked past me and left. I didn't turn around, but I had a feeling Ranger was still there.
So it hadn't been a social call. The 'security breech' had brought him here. And silly me had thought…never mind.
I sighed and walked into the kitchen. There was always room for one more beer.
And the act of walking into the kitchen gave me the perfect excuse not to look at Ranger, I was afraid of what I'd see in his eyes. Anger, I could handle. What I never want to see again was the matter-of-fact face of that afternoon, the one that would tell a drive-thru clerk he wanted a burger. If Ranger ate such things.
I got a beer out of the fridge, opened it, and closed the fridge door by leaning against it.
Ranger had followed me and was leaning against the kitchen wall with his shoulder.
I really hated the fact that he looked so incredibly sexy when I was trying to stay cool and detached.
Taking a long pull from my beer, I finally mustered up the courage to look him in the eye.
I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the Ranger that had hugged me the day before, or the one that had stolen my covers that morning, but he just wasn't there.
"So there was a note?" I asked, peeling the label off the bottle and lowering my eyes to it.
"You don't want to know." Ranger said.
"But I already know, I just don't know why I don't want to know." Oh wow, that made a lot of sense. Ranger raised one eyebrow. I didn't know how he did that, I could only ever raise both my eyebrows, but I was happy to see any expression on his face.
"I mean…" and I gestured towards the coffee table.
"I know what you meant." Ranger simply said. "The note said 'The wait is over', but that's not what Tank was referring to."
"There were pictures?" I guessed, and Ranger almost-nodded.
So Ranger didn't want me to see the pictures, probably to protect me. Of course, my mind didn't work that way. Now the pictures had become forbidden fruit and I had to see them, in particular because Ranger didn't want me to.
"Where were you tonight?" Ranger asked.
"Out and about, like you requested."
I didn't know why I was being so secretive, I had nothing to hide. Maybe I just wanted Ranger to care and didn't think the truth was interesting?
"With a cop?"
"Yes." Or was he referring to my ride home? "No."
I was treated to a raised eyebrow again, and I thought I saw the very faint beginnings of a smile.
Oh, for Ted's sake, why should I feel bad about any of it?
I took another sip from my beer.
"I was out with Joe, but then there was shooting and mayhem and Joe sent me home in the cop car."
"You were out with Morelli?"
See, I knew he'd pick that detail!
"Yes."
"And someone shot at you?"
How did he manage to not move for such a long time? And would he have moved if I jumped his bones?
I pushed those beer-happy thoughts aside to remain calm.
"No at me. Just…in general. There was shooting."
"Where the hell were you?"
"A bar…"
Ranger let out a sigh and flipped his cell phone open. At last, movement, I noted.
He instructed whoever had picked up to get him a report on bar fights that night and didn't say any more for a minute or two.
"And it's a match?" He then wanted to know.
He closed his phone and turned away from me. I jumped when I heard the loud crash, and I knew what it was before I saw it: Ranger had thrown the vase against the nearest wall and it had shattered all over the floor. Roses were lying everywhere.
"Feel better?" I asked a lot calmer than I felt. An outburst from Ranger scared the shit out of me.
"No." He admitted, raking a hand through his hair.
OK, I got the picture, Ranger clearly thought I was on a need-to-know basis, and what he thought I needed to know was very little.
I on the other hand was now very anxious to learn what had provoked Ranger to lose his temper. I mean, I hadn't thought that was even possible!
"Do you want a beer?"
OK, so when in doubt, I drank or ate. It's how I solved problems. In any case, a beer couldn't hurt.
He surprised me by nodding. "Yes, I do."
I hurried back into the kitchen to fulfill his request. It never crossed my mind to ask him if he wanted a glass.
I handed the open bottle to Ranger and took a seat on a spot on the couch that had stayed relatively dry when water had splashed everywhere from the broken vase.
Then I counted the seconds. I was going to give him one minute to tell me more details or I was going to burst, I was sure of it.
"Is there anything you want to tell me?" I asked when he remained silent. He had emptied half his beer with one sip.
"Nothing you want to hear." He finally said.
I threw my hands up in the air. "Probably not, but it seems to me like I'm missing a big part of the picture. And when I get flowers, I at least want to know who to send the thank-you-note to!"
Although I was pretty sure there was no card to be written.
Ranger's silence was annoying me, not knowing what was going on was annoying me more.
"Tell me!" I urged.
Ranger sat down on the coffee table, facing me. He seemed totally composed, but I could still see the frown line, and now I noticed how tired his eyes looked.
"We thought you were dead."
And he finally pulled a stack of photos out of one of his pockets and gave them to me.
The first thing I noticed was the blood. A pool of blood on the floor. The next picture still showed the blood, but now there was blond hair in it, as if a head was lying in a pool of blood.
It was hard not to let imagination jump in because the pictures were fuzzy and unfocused. As if they had been taken in a hurry.
There was a mangled body lying in the blood in another picture, and I could tell it was a woman's body dressed in black, but her face wasn't visible.
With the right mindset, the assumption was clear: These could be pictures of my dead body. "You could have called me." I said, my voice barely above a whisper "I could have told you I wasn't dead."
"I did." Ranger replied "There was no answer."
I looked down to my waist and unclipped the cell phone. It was switched off. I had called Tank from the bar, but had not looked at it since. Maybe the battery had died, or it had gotten switched off somehow during the brawl.
"So…" I needed to know the whole story so I was thinking out loud "You get the alarm from someone entering my apartment. When you get here, you find the flowers and the pictures. You call me, but I don't answer. You assume I am dead and when you see me alive you think I shouldn't know."
"No." Ranger shook his head slightly.
No,
that wasn't how the story went or no, he didn't think I needed to
know?
He was driving me crazy!
I emptied my beer and stood up, my knees brushing Ranger's. What I really wanted to do was shake him until he told me the whole story, but I settled for another beer, although the room was slowly starting to spin.
When I got back with two new beers, Ranger was on the couch.
"Then tell me your version." I said, handing him the new bottle, sitting down on the second couch.
And if he refused, I'd throw him out.
Only figuratively, of course, since there was no way I could make Ranger do anything he didn't want and it was his apartment. But it felt good to have a plan.
To my surprise, Ranger smiled a little.
"Boy, you are persistent." He took a deep pull of his beer and put it on the table.
I shrugged, hoping it expressed that it was part of my job or something.
"The alarm came in at 21:47," he motioned towards the front door "Your car showed up parked outside, and when you didn't answer the landline, Tank called your cell phone."
As best as I could remember, the shooting at the bar had started around ten. So I could have been trying to make it out of the bar at the time Tank called.
"What about the cameras?"
Ranger followed my stare to the security camera over the bookshelf.
"We are not listening to you and we are not watching you on our monitors. It is being recorded. We'd have to have someone sitting outside the building to listen in. There was no indication of immediate threat, hence the scheduled phone calls."
I remembered Tank calling when I had just gotten in. Why would he have to call if he could see me on the monitor? Mental head slap.
"So then you came here to see what had tripped the alarm?"
"No, Tank and Cal came over to check on you. They called me when they didn't find you, only the presents."
"What did you learn about the brawl?"
"That no one was killed at the bar, but police found a body in the restrooms when they searched the place." My guess was that it was a blond woman's body.
"I thought my phone was a tracking device, too?"
I still didn't understand how they had assumed the worst right away. It seemed a little drastic.
"Only when it's on, babe."
Oh, OK.
"No cell phone on the belt." He pointed to one of the pictures now lying on the coffee table.
I put my beer next to Ranger's, picked up the photo and studied it more carefully.
"That's not my belly button."
My hand flew up to my mouth. I hadn't meant for that to come out loud.
"I'll keep that in mind next time." Ranger said.
I looked from the picture to him. Was he being sarcastic? Was 'my' Ranger back?
"Did you really think I was dead?" I asked.
He nodded "It was a possibility."
"You didn't seem all too happy to see me alive when I got out of the car earlier."
Probably, I should have been focusing on the pictures and who had sent them or whatnot. The only thing I wanted to know was why he had been so cold to me when I had gotten dropped off.
Female logic. It wasn't derogatory if I thought it about myself, was it?
"I was."
"Could have fooled me."
Ranger's eyes bored into mine. I knew it was a challenge and I should have known better, but I was almost drunk and frustrated.
"I'm glad you're alive." He said.
I scoffed. "Once more with less feeling."
In a blur of motion, the ground moved and a split-second later, I was on Ranger's lap where I had been sitting by myself before. Either he was superman-fast or I was slow.
He took my face in both his hands and kissed me. Lightning-force electricity shot through me and set my toenails on fire as his tongue touched mine and his left hand slid down from my jaw line to my neck. He intensified his kiss and used his right hand to press me against him.
Heat pooled up in my midsection and spread south, and I moaned into his mouth.
He released me and stood up, pulling me with him. I was breathing heavily.
"I'm glad you're alive."
He said, turned, and was out the door before I had fully realized I was standing on my own two feet.
Yet again, I was staring at the door after him as if that could make him come back.
Only this time, I was trying to get my heart rate back into the vicinity of normal and make my brain form actual thoughts.
'Shit!' Okay, that was a thought.
Ranger had kissed me!
Actually, I didn't have a word for what he had done to me, but a kiss was the closest thing to it that I knew. My lips were still humming, and other parts of me weren't ready to let me forget what had just happened any time soon.
Ranger had kissed me!
'I said…and then he said…and then I…but he…huh.' Was about the extend of my thought process. I just stood motionless where Ranger had put me.
Hours seemed to have passed when I finally sat back down on the couch.
The photos lay forgotten on the coffee table. Why would Ranger leave them behind?
Roses were strewn all around me, giving the apartment a surreal quality.
What were the flowers for, anyway?
If someone wanted Ranger to think I was dead, why would he add flowers to the mix? That seemed an unnecessary gesture.
But then I realized that maybe the flower guy hadn't meant to impress Ranger, but me. Maybe they weren't as aware of Ranger's involvement as I had thought.
So he had included the flowers as a sign of intimacy?
It didn't make much sense.
But the more I looked at the pictures, the more I was convinced that they were meant for me. Sort of a 'look what we're capable of' statement. The first note had come with a photo-shopped image, the new ones were real.
The roses were probably just someone's idea of a joke.
But Ranger had kissed me!
I couldn't get over that, it was every other thought.
First Joe…then Ranger…in the same night! I was a slut! Well, technically, I was only a slut if I slept with two men in the same night, but it felt slutty. Mostly because I had WANTED to kiss them both.
I downed the remainder of both beers and took the empty bottles back to the kitchen.
It was past midnight, and I decided to continue the inner debate in bed.
I ran into a wall on my way to the kitchen and into a couch on my way to the bedroom, I was wasted.
It seemed way too much of an effort to detour to the bathroom, so I fell facedown on the bed, fully clothed. After a minute, I had to turn to lie on my back, because I had to place a foot on the floor to stop the room from spinning.
When I closed my eyes, scary images came up; my panic at being smushed at the bar, smashing glass, spraying blood, distorted faces.
My mind was replaying all the emotions of the past few hours.
I was trying to think about Joe or Ranger, but I only succeeded in thinking about the kisses.
And I couldn't decide whether or not I should feel guilty about kissing one or the other.
At some point during this emotional rollercoaster, I fell asleep.
I woke up when the phone ring, as was quickly becoming normality.
The sound I uttered when I picked up the receiver was close to "Hrrmph?"
It was dark in the bedroom, still nighttime.
"Are you alone?" A man asked, I didn't recognize the voice.
"Mmmm." Was my response.
"We're keeping your boyfriend quite busy, you know." And there was cackled laughter.
"You may spend many nights without him. Would you like me to keep you company?"
Now I was awake. It had taken me longer because I had been asleep and drunk, but now I knew who I was talking to. Whoever was going around killing people had my number. Cheery thought.
I didn't know if I should hang up or keep the conversation going because RangeMan could trace the call. That hadn't come up in the instructions!
"He's not my boyfriend." What kind of response was that? It wasn't any of his business who was or wasn't my boyfriend! And for that matter, who was he talking about?
"Are you saving yourself for me?" And he laughed again. Okay, scary.
He had never tried direct contact before, and he had never made personal threats. Apart from the killing me stuff, but I was thinking really personal stuff, like the icky conversation we were having.
"Go to hell." And I slammed down the receiver. Not original, but I was freaked.
I felt the need to throw up, and I didn't know if it was from the alcohol or from the scare.
The phone rang again, but I couldn't bring myself to pick it up.
I hugged my knees and slowly rocked back and forth, willing the phone to stop ringing.
The urge to barf subsided finally, but the phone kept ringing. It would stop for a beat or two, then resume.
I jumped up and pulled its cord out of the wall.
Then I stared at the cord in disbelief. They had succeeded in freaking me out, I was acting erratic, not thinking about my actions.
If I kept it up, I was as good as dead.
I remembered my gun, which I had left clipped to my cargo pants. Maybe I wouldn't be able to shoot it, but it would give me a sense of security. It took me some time to gather up the guts to get up, find my discarded pants on the floor and get the gun off them.
I got back into bed and curled up in a fetal position, the gun on the nightstand. If only I was able to fall back asleep, everything would be right in the morning.
Everybody knew that nighttime terrors looked half as bad by the light of day!
I had almost convinced myself that everything was going to be okay and there was nothing to be scared of, when I heard the unmistakable sound of the front door lock tumble.
Had Ranger locked it when he had left? Was there a deadbolt in addition to the one lock?
I broke out into a sweat.
