Chapter 21

SPOV

Back in the conference room my head was arguing with itself. I knew a few weeks ago what Joe had done and to be honest when I realized fully the lengths that he had gone to I was going to confront him with what I knew and hope that would deter him from bothering me again. I'd been surprised when Ranger had told me what he'd found out about Draven Laxby but at the time I was feeling so mixed up in my head about the whole being arrested and everything else going on that I hadn't wanted to tell him anymore.

When Ranger had mentioned that it had been my gun that had shot Charlie, I couldn't work out how that was possible. At first, I thought that maybe someone had broken into my apartment and stolen it, not unbelievable seeing as how anyone but me could open the door without a key. Then I remembered how Joe had taunted me about not carrying my gun with me. That if I was serious about my job then I should be better prepared and carry it with me.

Maybe it was me wanting to do things my way, but maybe I should have told Ranger when I spoke to him all those weeks ago and that's what had been worrying me. I sure messed up that conversation with Ranger by not trying to involve him too much but then when he said to sort it out myself, I took that to heart. I thought that was Ranger's way of making me stand on my own two feet and not drag him into every incident that went wrong for me. It did make me wonder what the hell Ranger thought I was trying to say to him though.

It wasn't that I didn't trust Ranger, I did, but maybe I was also thinking that he'd sort out Morelli in his own way. That was something that I didn't want to happen. Firstly, I knew Joe, he'd have had Ranger arrested for assault and Ranger had enough problems already. Secondly, I needed to do something for me, to stand up for myself against Morelli and to show him that it was me who had seen through what he'd done, that I wasn't stupid at solving problems and thirdly. That he couldn't control me, I controlled me.

After a lunch in the breakroom with Les and Ranger, there was no way Les was going to let me forget that he'd been watching the monitors and seen everything with Joe, I decided to go back to what I was working on. I'd seen the look that Ranger had given to Les when he asked what they were going to do about Manning and how Ranger had avoided the question. Something was up and I wanted to know what it was.

Manning could identify who had shot Charlie and that was what I needed to know to prove my innocence. The only person who I knew who wouldn't try to avoid me asking was Hector. Not Ranger you might you ask? No, he was really good in that he never lied to me, but he had a bad habit of omitting to tell me something, especially if he thought it would upset me.

I closed the laptop and went out into the hallway, taking the elevator down to the floor where Hector had his office. I should have known that Hector would know that I was coming, I was pretty sure he had cameras outside of his office. He opened the door just as I was about to knock on it and stood to one side as an invitation to go in.

"Estefania?"

I was a bit nervous now that I was here and was struggling to say what I wanted to ask.

"Estefania, you came here"

I allowed Hector to sit me down and waited until he was sat opposite me before I started to talk.

"I know that something's happened and I know that Ranger knows and Les knows but I think that I should know but I know Ranger knows or thinks he knows that I'll be upset"

Hector just looked at me, so I wasn't too sure what to say now to find out what was going on. Eventually he opened his mouth once and then shut it again.

"Estefania, say that again"

I wasn't sure that I could, and I was starting to feel embarrassed that I'd come here. I looked past Hector trying to think of how I could find information about something when I didn't know what it was about, when the screen behind Hector caught my attention. On the right of the screen was a photo of Manning and on the left of the screen were lots of cameras. Each time a face came into view of the camera it froze and dots and lines appeared across their face.

"Is that a face recognition program running?"

Hector turned to look at the screen in question and nodded his head. I had my answer, without anyone having to avoid talking to me. Somehow Manning was missing.

"Err, it's okay Hector"

I left Hector's office rather quickly, no doubt he was confused as to why I had been there, but I was on a mission now. As soon as the elevator doors slid open on five, I marched to the door that I needed and without knocking I slammed it open. Ranger looked up surprised, but I think he saw how annoyed I was.

"Babe?"

"Were you going to tell me?"

"Babe?"

This was one of the times when I hated him using that name instead of using words.

"Don't Babe me. When were you going to tell me that you'd lost Manning?"

I watched as he stood up and walked past me to close the door. His face was blank which was also annoying me. Why the hell did he do that? As he came back to me, he surprised me by taking my hand and leading me to the couch, almost having to push me down into the seat. He stayed in front of me, my hand still in his, and crouched down so that he was level with me.

"I was going to tell you but then Morelli turned up. I'd hoped that maybe we would have found him by now. I'm sorry Babe"

Looking at his face the blankness had disappeared and in its place I could swear that he looked, maybe regretful? Maybe he used the blank face to cover up his emotions out of habit and me being annoyed at him meant that he didn't want me to see him looking sorry for what had happened.

"Babe, are you going to shout at me again?"

I smiled because I could never be annoyed at Ranger for very long and let's face it, he hadn't lost Manning, someone else had.

"No. We need to find him. Where was he when he gave someone the slip?"

"You'll like this, Quaker Bridge mall"

That actually had me frowning. Why would he go there? It usually took a lot to get a man into that place and didn't they have lots of surveillance cameras there?

"He disappeared. Hector couldn't find him on any of the cameras"

"Back entrances?"

I asked knowing from chasing skips that there were corridors that serviced the shops and led to the loading bays.

"Nothing"

I couldn't believe that, it seemed impossible.

"Can I have a look?"

"Of course. Maybe with your search you might work out where or who he would go to"

"Sure"

I felt calmer as I returned to my working place considering that Manning had disappeared. I should have been as mad as hell, but something was stopping me. I mean the men that I knew would never lose a man like that. Was Manning that good, or did he have help? That had me thinking about the photos that I'd emailed to that account. I'd skirted around the details of what I had and how I'd come across them when I'd spoken to Ranger. Why was I feeling so reticent about downloading them and printing them out? Maybe it was the same reason that had me asking Hector to have a laptop that wasn't connected to the normal Rangeman systems. Something just didn't feel right to me, which was weird given how comfortable I normally felt here. Tonight, after I spent time with Mylo I should have that conversation with Ranger.

I spent ages going through the report on Manning, looking through family and his past history. Nothing stood out to me and I could understand why he'd been employed here at Rangeman. He was ex army, who had left when his time came and there wasn't anything in the references that Tank had received that would have given rise to any doubts as to how good he might be working here. So what was the connection that veered him to be working for those people? The only other piece of his life that I hadn't really found out much about were friends and acquaintances.

I realized quite soon that finding out from looking through school photographs that I had no idea if one of these friends was someone that we needed to be aware of. Anything from his time in the army wasn't available for me to see which left me looking through social media sites. Nothing, nada, zilch. It seemed that Manning didn't appear on any of the sites. I felt disappointed that I couldn't find anything that would be useful and decided to call it a day. I closed down the laptop and took it with me, heading up to seven. I was looking forward to spending some time with Mylo.

RPOV

I was annoyed with myself for not getting to Steph sooner to tell her about Manning. I couldn't remember that Santos had said anything that implied that Manning was missing so I was curious as to how she had found out. Looking at my notes there was one outstanding report still to come through and for that I needed to see Hector.

As I went to open Hector's door it opened with Hector stood there, inviting me into his office.

"Fue mi culpa"

Was the first thing that Hector said to me.

"What was your fault?"

Because I had no idea what he was talking about.

"Estefania, she came to see me, though I have no idea why. She was looking at the screen over there when she just got up and left"

Looking over to the screen that Hector had pointed to I was seeing an image of Manning and the facial recognition program working alongside it. If Steph had seen those images, then she would have known that we were looking for Manning.

"Not your fault Hector"

I watched as Hector went to his desk and removed a file before handing it to me. I opened it and immediately saw the photo that had been in the apartment that Manning had been at.

"Did you manage to identify who the other men were?"

"Si"

I placed the photo onto the desk so that we could both look at it and watched as Hector pointed to the oldest man in the group.

"Captain Michael Garner, who I assume was the officer in charge. That one looks like Manning and these two are Harry Millar and Emma Beckett"

I had no idea how Hector had managed to identify the people from the photo, and I wasn't about to ask. It looked to have been taken somewhere in the middle east judging from the uniform that they were wearing. I knew from the report on Manning that he'd done two tours in Afghanistan and had then transferred to finish his service as an MP at Fort Bragg. I picked up the photo and report from the table before starting to head toward the door. At the door I turned facing Hector again.

"Jayce and Tali?"

"Looking. Jayce is keeping surveillance of the Anansi building while Tali is covering the apartment"

"I don't think Manning will go to either of those places"

"I'll tell them to widen their search to some of the buildings that we identified"

Nodding I left the room and decided that it was probably time for me to head upstairs. Steph would be there with Mylo and to be honest, I liked the kid.

It was quiet as I opened the door to my apartment so toeing off my boots and placing my keys and the file from Hector on the table, I made my way through into the lounge area. I stopped at the entrance taking in the view of Steph and Mylo sat on the floor. They were both sat cross legged looking down at the board between them, focused on the chess pieces in front of them. From watching Steph's face and looking at the pieces on the board it seemed to me that she was being beaten by Mylo.

A loud sigh came from Steph as Mylo maneuvered his knight into a position that would win him the game. I watched as Steph launched herself forward, taking Mylo with her and as she started to tickle him. I was surprised as the sound of giggles reached me from both of them, I had only ever heard Mylo growl before. It made me wonder what the reason for his silence was. Obviously, it wasn't a physical issue so maybe Ella had been right in asking for him to be seen by a psychologist. It was Mylo who saw me first and his reaction was to go quiet as he stilled, looking at me. Steph knew immediately that he felt threatened and turned to look at me, a smile appearing on her face.

"Mylo, it's okay, it's just Ranger"

As Steph got to her feet, she removed the tie that was hanging lose from her hair and swept her hair back into a ponytail. She looked relaxed and at this moment in time so beautiful as her eyes sparkled and with her cheeks flushed. Mylo was by Steph's side as she walked up to me and raising herself on her tip toes, she softly kissed my cheek making me wonder what she was up to.

"See, he doesn't bite"

It seemed strange that Mylo was suddenly fearful of me when only a few days ago he'd let me sit with him while he read and had allowed me to talk to him.

"He has issues. I think he's afraid to commit to someone especially if he hasn't seen them for a while"

That made sense especially from what we had found out about his mother.

After a quiet dinner, yeah, it seemed having both Steph and Mylo here meant that Ella was preparing meals that they both enjoyed and tonight she had made them lasagne so neither said a word as they ate. I decided to challenge Mylo to a game of chess. For a kid his age he was good, but I'd been playing this game for years. I was a little bit worried how he would react to losing but going back through the moves that we'd both made he seemed keen to learn from his mistakes.

It seemed that Mylo felt happy enough to stay with us for the night so we settled him into the bed in my office, confident that after he read for a while that he would go to sleep. It didn't stop Steph from checking up on him 40 minutes later.

"He asleep?"

I asked as Steph came and sat next to me on the couch. I poured her a glass of wine as she nodded her head, and then sat back with my own glass in my hand.

"Did you find out anything about Manning Babe?"

She sighed as she took a large mouthful of wine, reminding me to limit how much she drank knowing that she was a total lightweight when it came to alcohol.

"No. I think I need to find out who he was friends with when he was in the army"

Without a word I stood up and went to the table in the hallway where I had the file from Hector and returned with it to the couch. Removing the photo, I handed it over to Steph who sat and stared at it. She seemed to be studying it closely which surprised me.

"Ranger, I never really told you exactly what Charlie gave to me. I'm sorry, but I didn't want that information going up on the boards"

"Is that why you asked Hector to give you access to a different system other than the normal Rangeman one?"

Her biting her bottom lip gave me the answer that I needed so I leant toward her and pulled her lip down.

"Babe, are you worried?"

"Maybe, I don't know. It's just a feeling"

I could tell that she felt embarrassed at admitting that and saw no point in pushing any further. Steph's spidey sense, as she called it, was something that she couldn't explain and something that she never always trusted. I was of a differing opinion, gut reaction was something that all the men had learnt to rely upon and it had saved my life a few times in the past. It was something that Steph needed to embrace and nurture, and I would do my best to help her realize that it was something to trust.

"Those feelings are important Babe, there'll be a reason for you feeling that way"

I felt her shrug her shoulders as though to dismiss the idea so changed the direction of my conversation.

"This information from Charlie?"

As she sat back, I could tell this was going to be a long explanation.

"Charlie was expecting it to be me who found him. He wanted to get me to help him with trying to sort out the mess he had got caught up in. He left me a book that he'd written explaining the history of how he got involved. Anyway, there was an old man in the railway tunnel who passed on some photos. I discovered some of the places were clues to where he'd hidden more photos"

"Where are they Babe?"

Because I knew that she hadn't had them on her when we'd found her.

"I photographed them and sent them to an email address that I set up and then hid them"

"Clever"

I wrapped an arm around her and pulled her toward me, hell, this woman was constantly surprising me.

"I'm sure that I recognize one of these men"

I looked at where she was pointing to and noted that it was the Captain.

"Captain Michael Garner. I'd say he was their platoon leader out in Afghanistan"

"How old would he be now?"

"Mid forties"

I knew that men moved up the ranks quickly, hell I had. It should be simple enough to find some history on him from his time in service, though I wasn't too sure how much that might help.

"Maybe you could find me somewhere less public to work in and then I can look at those soldiers and start downloading the photos from the email address"

I wasn't too sure where Steph could work that would provide that level of privacy. Unless she worked from here.

"You could work up here. I can get Hector to bring up a printer"

I was surprised that Steph seemed hesitant in replying, and her eventual reply puzzled me.

"Are you sure?"

"Babe, this apartment is as much yours as it is mine. No one will disturb you here because they're not allowed up here unless I invite them"

I seemed to have said the right thing because Steph leant over and kissed the side of my jaw. Who was I to ignore her being so close to me, so I pulled her closer to me so that my lips could nip and caress her neck. As my mouth passed her ear on the way to her cheek, I was happy to remind her of the previous morning and how we were disturbed.

"I think we need to finish what we started yesterday"

I felt her pulse quicken and her breathing hitch, taking her silence as an answer I carefully lifted her into my arms, pleased when I felt her legs wrap around my waist and her arms go around my neck.