By the time our exceptional chicken-bacon-ranch wraps had been consumed and I had licked my fingers clean, we had identified our first location that we wanted to check for Eli and Brett. While we were eating, we had discussed many options. However, I had encouraged people to focus on Roscoe. To me, it made sense that he was the person that had taken Brett. He was the president and Richard's best friend. In support of the theory that he was behind the abduction and the exchange attempts, I had called Sandy at six-thirty, apologized for getting her out of bed, and played the tape for her. Sandy was, not only Richard's sister and Roscoe's cousin and Todd's mother, but she was the person that Richard had unfairly put in jail four years before and was the person that Rangeman had helped get released ten months before. She was a good person and we were glad that we'd been able to help her. She confirmed that it was Roscoe's voice and told us that, if we wanted any information about him, she would be willing to come to our office and help out. I thanked her and told her that we might take her up on that, depending upon the results of our investigation that morning. Her comment was that she owed her happiness to us, and would be thrilled to do whatever she could to aid in the search.

Hector left after breakfast to stake out Roscoe's house. He got there at seven, said that lights came on in the basement, so he snuck up to the house and peeked through the windows. Someone was lying on the concrete floor. His leg was twisted at an unnatural angle and his face was beaten to the point that Hector could not tell if it was Brett. However, he looked alive and that was really all that mattered, and Hector figured that if it wasn't Brett it was someone who needed saving as well. He snuck back to the car and reported in. "Just keep staking out the location", said Ranger, "until the ERT team arrives."

It happened fast from that point on. Ranger called the ERT and gave them ten minutes until muster. Ten minutes later, the team was congregated in the Equipment Room. Ranger gave them an overview of the case. "From the best that we can tell, someone is in the basement of Roscoe's house. He has a broken leg and has been viciously assaulted, but we cannot tell if there are any other serious injuries, nor can we tell if it is Brett. We also think there is a little boy somewhere on the premises. We do not know where the little boy will be found. From what Brett has written in his case notes, we believe that he is regularly being sexually, physically and verbally assaulted by Roscoe. He will also be the key to the investigation. Eli, by the nature of his menial position in the household, has a lot of information according to how the household and the gang works. He needs to be captured, but you need to be gentle with him. If we are going to earn his trust, we need to treat him with all the respect due to a child."

Joe walked into the room. "I am no longer lead on this case", he said. "As soon as Eli is captured, I will be switching from lead to offering witness protection. My sergeant will be taking over lead on the investigation. Drew is a good guy though, and an excellent officer."

"Thanks for letting us know", said Ranger. "When shooting, aim to injure rather than kill. This is a TPD mission and should be treated as such. As many survivors as possible are important, and only shoot if the person has a gun or it looks like you or someone else is in danger. As much as I think Roscoe the Asshole should go down, I don't really feel like filling out paperwork today." The men chuckled at that as they suited up. Tank handed out earbuds. He was going along to be the unit commander, and Ranger would be in the control room and monitoring the channel. Dirk and Miguel and Nick and I planned to be in the control room with Ranger as he listened to the feed.

The control room was a very quiet room. There were two command stations and three monitoring stations. There used to be many monitoring stations, but Ranger decided that it was impossible to keep up to the monitoring demands. He contracted out our monitoring needs to another company, and sold them our monitoring stations. The room was fairly empty now and Ranger said that it would become an office at some point. However, in the meantime it was a good room to do the mission commands from. It had enough space to hold several observers, and it was a quiet location that made it suitable to hear the conversations.

There were only three monitoring stations left in the room, not including the mission command stations. Those three monitoring stations were staffed by dedicated personnel. They monitored all Rangeman buildings, cars and people on a 24/7 basis. Most of Rangeman didn't need this service, but I had found it to be helpful in the past. Ranger was a little protective of me, so I had a watch with a GPS tracker in it and a panic button that let the control room know when I needed help, a phone with its standard GPS in it, another tracker in my purse, and a tracker in my car. Ranger used to plant them in my clothing and other accessories on a regular basis. I had found it irritating and removed them just as often. However, when he got me my watch, the ultimate in tracking devices, and I promised to wear it at all times, he relaxed a bit. I couldn't wait until the kids were ready for school. I rather thought that Ranger would be back to buying trackers and hiding them in various articles of clothing again. After Tia had been kidnapped as an infant and Julie had been kidnapped as an eleven-year old, Ranger was a little overprotective of his children. While to some people it might be considered silly, for Ranger and me it was what let us sleep at night.

There weren't many people who had tracking watches with panic buttons in the company. Ranger and Julie and I did. Tank and his wife Amelia did. Hal and the Vice-President of Administration, Nate, did. And Tracy did. We also offered that service to a select few clients who were willing to pay a lot of money for it. We didn't have many clients who were signed up for the service. Of course, it wasn't a service that we advertised. It was the kind of service that, if we offered it to too many people, we wouldn't be able to keep up with the demand or the quality of service. Most of the people that used this program were high-ranking government officials, although we also had a handful of Hollywood stars and another handful of dot com billionaires on our client list. The Secret Service was our main client for the personal tracking function, and we had an agreement that, when we saw a SOS from one of those government officials who had a watch, we would contact the Secret Service immediately for follow-up. It was interesting to see the people on the client list that the government deemed worthy of that level of protection. One of those people, of course, was the President. Like Ranger, I had met the President when he was elected the last time. He had wanted to see our offices and the monitoring stations before he was willing to wear the watch. He seemed like an ordinary guy. I guess I had expected a glow to emanate from his body just because he was the President, and I was disappointed when it didn't. Of course, he wasn't the President that I had voted for. If he had been, I'm sure I would have seen a glow.

As we waited for the men to start transmitting details of their mission, Ranger checked in with the four of us. "I'm okay", said Nick. "That four-hour sleep really helped and, in all honesty, I normally don't sleep more than six. If I have time, I will have an afternoon nap. Otherwise, I will be good until the evening and will just go to bed shortly after the kids."

"I'm about the same", said Dirk. "If the work is done, I will go home early and have a nap. Then I'll be good for the rest of the day."

"I don't normally get more than five hours of sleep", said Miguel. "I slept well last night and, being at the apartment here meant that I got a much longer sleep than if I'd had to drive home. I'm fine."

The four men turned and looked at me. I made a face. "Fucking show-offs", I said under my breath.

Ranger laughed, and so did Nick. When Nick first moved to Trenton, he and his kids had lived with us for two months, until Nick had recovered enough from his PTSD that he no longer needed the extra support to look after his kids. During that time we became good friends and got to know each other well. One of the things that Nick learned about me was that I liked my sleep and needed more than the average bear to be alert and functional.

"Are you a little sleepy, babe?" said Ranger. He looked softly at me, but I could also feel his worry. He didn't like it when I didn't get enough sleep. With having battled depression in the past, he knew that not getting enough sleep was a trigger for me.

"I have to say that I am almost tired enough to fall asleep standing up", I said with a grimace.

"Damn, I'd better get my bets in then", said Dirk.

"Me too", said Miguel. "I'm redoing my kitchen and could use the money."

I laughed.

"Bets?" said Nick.

"You know the betting books at White's in London during the Georgian era?" I said.

"Sure", said Nick. "They were the books that bets were recorded in. Men would bet over just about anything, silly or serious."

"That's right. Rangeman has reproduced this practice. I think Hal is the owner of the books, and people will bet over just about anything. As Ranger says, a lot of what we do is mundane and boring. Having diversions such as betting on things is good for people and adds a little spice to the job. People are never mean about their betting – Hal would never let that happen – but they do have a good time. And no one, it seems, is as popular to bet over than I am. Since I was the first woman to be hired by the company, many of the guys in Operations think of me as their little sister and they like to tease me as such. One of the bets on the books is based from the time when Dirk and Miguel had just started as researchers, I was working another full-time job as a bounty hunter in addition to the job as researcher, and we were backlogged up the yin-yang. Like Miguel and Dirk, I was working hundred-hour work weeks and was exhausted. The first time I fell asleep only the control room knew. That wasn't so embarrassing. They saw me leaning against Ranger in the elevator and then they saw him pick me up and carry me into the apartment. It was pretty innocuous. However, a few months later I was still working hell-bent for leather and I fell asleep leaning into Ranger as I waited for an elevator. Unfortunately, it was in the afternoon, I was in HR, I was pregnant, and Ranger had to carry me up to the apartment. I was incredibly embarrassed – especially since I worried about Ranger's back and he told me that was why he was so dedicated to lifting weights in the gym. I hated the idea that he had to train to lift my pregnant body up."

"Ranger!" said Nick with a snort. "You didn't!"

"In my defense, that wasn't quite what I meant", said Ranger with a small smile. "I just meant that I was exceptionally strong and she shouldn't have to worry about her pregnant weight." I turned my squinty eye at him. "I think I'm getting myself in hot water again."

"You're getting yourself in something, but I don't think hot water is it", I said.

Nick laughed.

"Anyway, lots of people had been around me at the time and had commented that they didn't even know that people could fall asleep standing up. My niece informed me that horses fell asleep standing up as well, and on top of the comment that Ranger needed to train to lift me up, I wasn't very happy. However, staff thought it was a lot of fun, and so the bet was developed. From what I understand, it isn't such a popular bet now that I'm no longer pregnant. Most people think that without the pregnancy I'm not as tired, and they don't understand that the pregnancy didn't make me tired. That's my natural state."

Nick laughed again. "That makes sense", he said. "When you are awake, you are thinking so intensely and using far more of your brain than the average person. You find connections that elude most others, and you are incredibly analytical and able to put together reams of information, yet creative enough to think outside the box and come up with theories that prove to be correct. What you do is not easy, and most people in this world would not be able to do it."

"I think I love you, Nick. Marry me?"

"Hey!", said Ranger. "What about me?"

"Hmm. Need to train to lift me up, or incredibly smart and analytical and creative? Nope. Nick's compliment wins over yours."

Ranger smiled. "Do I have to write you a poem like Adam?"

I looked at Nick, and he looked confused. However, Miguel and Dirk just looked pissed. I turned back to Nick. "A few years ago, we had a man in Sales who became criminally obsessed with me. Ranger and I were just starting to date but Adam didn't know that there was any association between us. We were trying to keep it quiet, since I hadn't broken up with Joe too many weeks before. Anyway, Adam was a real nuisance. He had to work with me and often brought up the sales requests by hand. This was before it was all automated and done over the computer rather than in paper copies and in person."

"It is actually the reason why it is all automated now", said Miguel.

I smiled. "Anyway, he would come up and interrupt me in what I was doing, walk behind me and massage my shoulders, and tell me that I worked too hard and needed to go out on a date with him. He would wait in the parking lot for me to go home at night but, because I was camping out in Ranger's apartment, he just ended up spending the night in his car in the parking lot. The final day that he was here, he created a poem for me. It was terrible and cinched my belief that he was a jerk."

"You weren't sure before that point?" said Ranger with a grin.

"No, he was pretty annoying. I just wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and, until that last day, I kept thinking it was something I had done wrong rather than a character flaw in Adam."

"Do you remember the poetry?" said Miguel. "All I remember was that it was terrible."

I laughed. "Let's see if I can remember some of it. 'Splendid Stephanie with eyes like the sea, I really don't understand why you won't go out with me. Sexy Stephanie, your mouth says no, when I know it really wants to give me a blow.'"

Ranger choked. "Luckily it wasn't that bad."

I laughed. "No, it wasn't, thank God. However, it was almost that bad."

Nick smiled. "I get the idea. If it was like that, I'm surprised that Ranger let him live."

"So am I", said Ranger.

I laughed again. "I think it was close."

"For that matter", said Miguel, "the rest of the guys wanted to set up a lynching party, and when he was fired and still didn't leave you alone, the guys who were chosen to arrest him felt like they had won the lottery. There were a lot of upset people in the building. We were all glad that Steph was staying at Ranger's apartment and, when she moved back to her own place again, we had someone follow her home every day for a while to make sure she was okay."

I stared at Miguel, then looked at Ranger. He was also looking at Miguel in surprise. I leaned over and gave Miguel a hug. "Thank you", I said.

Miguel turned red, but he smiled and shrugged his shoulders. "Rangeman is a family, and nobody fucks with our family."

"You know", said Ranger, "if I had arranged that with the guys, you wouldn't be hugging and thanking me. You'd be fighting mad and spitting in anger."

I smiled. "You're not Miguel."

"Crap. I'm going to have to take lessons from my staff. First you want to marry Nick, then you are hugging Miguel." His face was serious but his eyes were dancing, and I knew that he wasn't really upset.

I leaned over and kissed his cheek. "I love you?" I said.

Ranger kissed my nose. "That's more like it."