Chapter 2

I really needed to stop overestimating my luck. Or maybe I'd underestimated my mother's motivation to get me married off. Morelli had been conspicuously absent from dinners for several weeks in a row, and apparently my mother felt she needed to start hedging her bets. I was keeping my gaze focused on my plate, and I was shoveling in pot roast as quickly as possible.

"What's it like to lead a life of crime?" Grandma Mazur asked.

Lenny Bennett sat to my right, and he answered Grandma's question thoughtfully. "It's more difficult than I expected. You've got to be constantly on alert."

"I could see that. I suppose there are always gonna be people after you, whether it be cops, or the people you steal from."

"Yeah, or bounty hunters," Lenny said.

I ignored the twitching in my eye and reached for another helping of mashed potatoes.

"Take today, for instance," Lenny continued. "I hear a knock on my door and I answer, thinking I'm about to get a delivery, but instead it's Stephanie and she starts chasing me around my house, telling me I'm going to rot in jail."

"That's not what I said."

"I know exactly what that jail is like. I've heard all about it. I'm thinking, no way do I want to go sit in that jail. I don't want to end up being a bitch for some big hunking guy named Billy."

"I've always wondered what it's like in jail," Grandma said. "Like I wonder how they choose who's going to be the bitch and who gets to be the stud."

"Good lord," my mother mumbled. This wasn't going the way she'd envisioned.

I'd taken an extra-long shower, using up all the hot water to try to sterilize myself. I'd used my shirt to mop up as much stew residue as possible before stuffing my clothes into a garbage bag. By the time I'd come back downstairs, my skin was pink but squeaky clean, it was ten minutes till dinner, and Lenny Bennett was watching television with my father.

I'd attempted to sneak back up the stairs, planning on using my tried-and-true escape route out the bathroom window. But my mother had spotted me and held me hostage by threatening to withhold dessert. She'd made my favorite, pineapple upside-down cake with extra whipped cream. I was effectively stuck.

So here I sat next to Lenny, who was dressed up for the occasion in khakis and a button-down shirt. His buttons were misaligned, so one side of his collar sat higher than the other.

"If you didn't want to go to jail, then why didn't you just show up for your court date and pay the fine?" I asked him. "Or for that matter, why steal the hams in the first place?"

"Same answer to both questions. Money. As in, I don't have any. I lost my job last month, and ever since then it's been a real struggle to make ends meet."

I could relate, but it still wasn't adding up. "How was stealing three hams from the market supposed to help you?"

"It was all part of the marketing plan. My partner and I, we have this inventory issue, and my idea was to host a pop-up sale with a catered lunch. We had everything we needed, except for the ham. Only we couldn't afford to pay for the ham, because all we have so far is inventory. We needed the ham to help us convert the inventory to cash."

"You have a partner?" I asked warily.

"Yeah. I used to work in marketing in the manufacturing industry, until I was laid off. So I was looking for a new job, and I saw an ad that The Dealer was looking for a marketing expert. I responded to the ad, and that's how I got hooked up with my partner."

I had a sinking feeling that I knew Lenny's partner. I'd gone to high school with Dougie 'The Dealer' Kruper. Dougie specialized in sales and he did a pretty good trade among the type of crowd who valued a good price and didn't look too closely at where the product came from. He mostly sold stuff that had fallen off a truck somewhere. Maybe he sold some weed occasionally, too, but the ham was something new.

"We got dessert?" My father had cleared his plate and was looking around expectedly. He blinked at Lenny, seeing him for the first time. "Who are you?"

My mother was already hustling into the kitchen, and moments later she set the pineapple upside-down cake on the table and cut off a slice for my father.

"Lenny here was supposed to be Stephanie's date, except I don't think it's gonna work out since she's about to cart him off to jail," Grandma said.

Lenny paled and looked at me. "Oh, jeez. You're not going to try to bring me to jail again, are you?"

"Not tonight," I told him. "All I want to do is eat my cake and then go home. I only just got rid of the beef stew smell."

"Is that the stuff that we got all over us?" Lenny wondered. "That wouldn't have been my first guess."

When I left my parents' house thirty-five minutes later, I had a bag with leftover pot roast and mashed potatoes, a loaf of bread from Italian Peoples, a block of provolone, half a pound each of roast beef and capicola, and a quarter of the pineapple upside-down cake. I was telling myself that it was okay that I didn't make an effort to capture Lenny tonight, because it would have upset my mother and she wouldn't have given me the rest of the cake. I would much rather have the cake.

My car drove itself a few blocks out of my way until I found myself sitting in front of Morelli's house. Morelli had inherited his house from his Aunt Rose and had slowly made it his own. At first I hadn't been able to reconcile Morelli living in this little suburban house that was so much like my parents', but somehow Morelli and the house had adapted to each other and met in the middle. It suited him.

I pictured walking up to the house, letting myself in, and bracing for aggressive adoration from Bob, Morelli's shaggy orange dog. Bob gave the best greetings. Problem was, I wasn't confident in the type of greeting I'd get from Morelli. I wasn't even sure I knew what type of greeting I hoped for.

So instead, I drove home to my red brick apartment building. The lights were off in my unit. There would be no shaggy orange Bob to show me he missed me. No one waiting for me on the couch with a cold beer, ready to hear about my day.

Just as well, I told myself. If I had someone waiting for me at home, then I'd probably have to share my leftovers. That's why my only roommate was Rex, my hamster. He would eat the carrots that came with the pot roast, and I'd get to keep everything else to myself.

Of all the roommates I'd ever had, Rex was the only one who'd stuck. I'd been married once, and that had lasted all of about 15 minutes. Grandma Mazur had moved in briefly, and that was sort of fun. For about 16 hours. Then the snoring started, and the fun was over. Same with Lula - her snoring was like a freight train. And don't even get me started on when Joyce Barnhardt had helped herself to my couch.

I'd also briefly moved in with Ranger on a couple of occasions. Living with Ranger was… well, easy. Maybe too easy. I'd gotten to see how the other half lives. Ranger had a housekeeper who made his life run smoothly. His apartment was always immaculate, the bed made itself, and there was always food in the fridge. Granted, the food wasn't the highlight - the man didn't know much about eating, but he made up for it in other areas.

My most successful roommate relationship to date was with Morrelli. We'd tried living together off and on, and we'd experienced moderate success. We'd get through stretches of a few months when everything seemed like it was going okay, but sooner or later one of us always cracked. We would start arguing over something insignificant, and before we knew it, we were questioning both of our sanity for ever thinking that we could peacefully coexist.

I loved Morelli. I really did. Morelli was fun and sexy and comfortable, and on most days he loved me back. He was a great cop and he'd managed to break out of the cycle of barroom brawling and philandering that the other Morelli men perpetuated. Despite his relatives not always being the brightest crayons in the box, Morelli was also a good son, and brother, and cousin. He was reliable and protective. Morelli was like pot roast - warm and hearty and delicious. Plus he had Bob.

Any girl would be lucky to end up with Morelli. So I wasn't sure why the idea of getting to Step Two in my F.M.L. plan made me feel sort of lightheaded and panicky.

I dropped a carrot and a glob of mashed potatoes into Rex's food dish. He rushed out of his soup can home, blinked his beady eyes at me, and then shoved the potatoes in his cheeks and rushed back into his soup can. That was an effusive welcome home from Rex.

I looked in the refrigerator, just on the off chance that a six-pack of beer had materialized. No such luck, so I sank onto the couch, beer-less, and flipped aimlessly through the channels.

Morelli always had beer. That was another tick in the pro column for living with Morelli. He kept his fridge and pantry well-stocked, and his mother and grandmother tended to drop a casserole off about once a week. Morelli's relatives were a tick in the con column, but then again, who was I to judge his family? My grandma didn't go around cursing people with Italian voodoo, but she could be a little scary in her own right.

There was nothing worthwhile on television. It was a little past nine on a Friday night. I could either haul out my laptop and do some research on my stack of FTAs, or I could go to bed early. I voted for bed.

###

I jerked awake from a nightmare, and then froze. One minute I'd been dreaming about 2.5 little black-haired, blue-eyed bambinos screaming through the house, and then I was back to lying in my blissfully quiet bed. The only problem was the sensation that I wasn't alone.

My bedroom was still pitch black and if I had to guess, I'd say it was at least a few hours until dawn. I fought to keep my breathing steady while I did my best to see into the darkness, but that was a skill that I'd not yet mastered. The warm, tingly feeling on the back of my neck was what kept me from panicking.

"It's me," the darkness told me. "Didn't mean to wake you."

I rolled over toward the familiar voice in time to see a particularly dense spot of shadows rise from the chair across from my bed and become Ranger.

"You're back." My sleep-addled brain couldn't handle anything more than the obvious. I was too tired to yell at him for breaking into my apartment. History had proven that it didn't do me any good, anyway.

"I'm back," he confirmed quietly. Ever the eager conversationalist.

He continued standing there, looking down at me. There was a time when Ranger appearing in my bedroom in the middle of the night meant there was some sort of emergency that required us to spring into action. At some point, though, that had changed. So when he didn't announce a catastrophe that would require me to get out of bed, I relaxed back into my pillows and pulled back the covers next to me. It was a silent invitation, and he took it. I heard the rustle of fabric as he pulled his shirt over his head, and then a muffled clunk when his pants and belt and probably also a gun hit the floor. He must have already kicked off his shoes, because he was easing into the bed beside me.

I couldn't pinpoint when the circumstances of Ranger's late-night visits had shifted. But Ranger wasn't one to volunteer information and I didn't have the energy to play twenty questions in the wee hours of the morning. I curled back onto my side, my eyes already closed again. I felt the warmth of him press against my back, and thought I remembered the weight of an arm settling around me, but then there was blissful sleep.

###

The next time I awoke, sunlight was pushing its way past the curtains. My t-shirt was up around my ribcage and Ranger's hand was splayed across my bare stomach. His pinky finger rested on the lace band of my underwear and his breathing was slow and steady behind me. I peeked over my shoulder to see him still asleep. Just as well, since it would be a really bad idea to act on the fluttery feelings I was getting low in my belly.

Ever so slowly I eased out from under his arm with my eyes shut tight. When I was on my feet I held my breath for a couple seconds before I glanced over my shoulder. Still asleep. Mission accomplished. I took care of business in the bathroom, going so far as to brush my teeth and run my fingers through my hair in deference to current company.

When I emerged, Ranger had rolled over onto his back. The sheets were pooled around his hips, revealing a lot of dark skin and many, many ridges and divots. Ranger had definition in muscles that I didn't even know existed. He also had deep bruises spread across the right side of his ribs. Better than the last time he rode back into town with a knife wound in his thigh, or the time before that when he'd taken a bullet in his shoulder.

This was the third time that he'd shown up at my apartment in the middle of the night after being out of town. Curiosity burned, but Ranger hadn't been in a sharing mood either of the last two times, and I doubted this morning would be any different. Probably it was the kind of thing where if he told me, he'd have to kill me. I was better off not knowing.

That was what I'd almost convinced myself by the time I heard Ranger stirring in the bedroom. When he opened the door, he was dressed again in his standard Rangeman uniform - black cargo pants, black t-shirt, black boots. He set his nylon gun belt with his Glock on the kitchen counter and helped himself to a sip of my coffee.

"I heard that there was a coup in Guyana a couple weeks ago," I told him.

"I hadn't heard."

"Sure. I hope you at least had time to swing by the famous Kaieteur Falls. I've heard it's lovely this time of year."

He looked at me and I got the impression that he was thinking about smiling. Ranger finds my curiosity amusing. It was probably a foreign concept to him. "I wasn't in Guyana."

"So it was the hostage crisis in Bahrain?"

"Colder."

Interesting. He reached for my coffee again but I pulled it away, so he went to the cupboard for a mug of his own.

"Every time you leave town, Lula and Connie start watching CNN," I said. "And I become much more familiar with international affairs."

"The things I do when I leave town aren't usually the kinds of things you see on the news."

And that was a big part of the reason that Ranger's life wasn't suited for the little house with the mailbox and the 2.5 kids. Every once in awhile, Ranger disappears. He'd been doing it for as long as I'd known him. No one knew where he went or what he did, and sometimes he came back with bullet holes.

"Why have I had Rangeman guys tailing me off and on the past couple weeks?"

"I suspect it's because Tank doesn't want to have to tell me that you got injured or blown up on his watch."

I got up to retrieve an envelope that was stuck to the fridge with a magnet. "By the way, this is for Hal. I was going to mail it, but since you're here, you can bring it to him."

"You and Hal are pen pals now?"

"He helped me with one of my captures. This is his percentage of the fee."

"Babe." Ranger's mouth tipped into a smile. "You don't need to do that. Helping you with FTAs is part of the job description."

"Yeah, but this time Hal ended up wearing an extra-large strawberry shake from Cluck-in-a-Bucket, and he got a flat tire. Don't ask."

"Trust me, my men earn enough working for Rangeman. You can keep your capture fee. Judging by the state of your refrigerator, you need it."

"When did you snoop in my fridge?" I accused.

"Last night."

"You didn't eat my cake, did you?"

His eyes were laughing at me. Tough to say what he found more amusing, the idea that I'd think he would eat cake, or my abject panic that the cake was gone.

"I ate half your roast beef and some cheese. Your cake is safe. For now."

Since we both knew Ranger didn't eat dessert, it was clear that he wasn't talking about the cake that was in the fridge. He took the envelope from my hand and leaned around me to tuck it back under the magnet.

"Do your men get hazard pay when they're on Stephanie duty?"

"The incentive has never been necessary. Whenever I add protection shifts for you, my men fight over them."

"Really?" That was sort of flattering. It was true that my life could be sort of exciting sometimes. Now that I had a little distance from yesterday and the garbage incident, I had to admit that I did sort of enjoy certain aspects of my job. The problem-solving pieces and the thrill of figuring it out. I'd have to keep that in mind for my job hunt.

"There's usually more action in a day spent with you than they'd typically see in a month of normal patrols," Ranger said. "And I'm told that you sometimes feed them."

I winced slightly, knowing that was probably a no-no. The kitchen at Rangeman was always well-stocked, but Ranger ran a tight ship. He outlawed sugar and trans fat. For me on the other hand, those were two of the main food groups.

"It seems only fair," I told him. "If someone is going to put their life on the line for me, they deserve a bucket of greasy chicken now and then. No one should have to worry about their last meal being lean turkey and carrot sticks. That's no way to live."

He looked like he was thinking about smiling again, but instead, he grabbed me around my waist and pulled me against him. He kissed me, and when his tongue touched mine and his hand slid to my ass, I started to think that I wouldn't mind if my last meal was Ranger.

When he released me, I slumped back against the counter and tried to catch my breath. If I hadn't just experienced first-hand evidence to the contrary, I would've thought that the kiss had had no effect on Ranger. He wasn't out of breath, and he calmly reached behind me to collect his gun belt.

"I need to head to Rangeman. There'll be some catching up to do," he said. "What's on deck for you today?"

"The usual." Although I was sort of hoping that didn't turn out to be true.

He let himself out, and I hopped into the shower. I kept the water on the cooler side, doing my best to calm my overheated body and to banish the lingering thoughts of Ranger. Best not to think about him in my bed, or against my kitchen counter. I needed to halt that train of thought in its tracks, because there be dragons. There was nothing good for me down that path.

The trouble was, I knew just how good Ranger was. At everything. If Morelli was like pot roast, then Ranger was the pineapple upside-down cake with extra whipped cream. Pot roast is warm and hearty and delicious in its own right, but pineapple upside-down cake is downright sinful. It was an indulgence that I allowed myself when it was available, despite the irrefutable evidence that it wasn't healthy for me.

Forty-five minutes and an extra coat of mascara later, I entered the bonds office. My job wasn't the kind that required me to report in every day, but it was habit. Plus, there were usually doughnuts.

"What's new?" I asked.

"Look at you," Lula said. "You look different. You got a spring in your step."

"I've decided it's going to be a productive day."

"It'd better be!" Vinnie yelled. He pushed open the door from his inner office and stood in the doorway, hands on hips. "You've got five open cases. What the hell are you doing here? You should be out looking for these low-lifes! I'm not running a damn charity!"

He slammed the door closed again, and I gave Connie raised eyebrows.

"Lucille wants to add an in-ground pool," Connie answered. "Vinnie got the contractors' estimates, and it turns out that a twenty-foot pool with waterfall doesn't come cheap."

Lucille was Vinnie's wife, and she was also the daughter of Harry the Hammer. Lucille was used to getting what she wanted. Vinnie did his best to give it to her, and in return, Lucille tended to look the other way when it came to rumors about Vinnie's romantic relationships with barnyard animals. If Lucille wanted a pool, Vinnie was going to find a way to pay for it, and since Vinnie lost money when people skipped out on their bail bonds, that meant he'd be breathing down my neck to bring these skips back into the system so he could recoup his money.

Vinnie was in luck that his goals were the same as mine. I needed to focus on bringing in these skips. Of course, my motivation was a little different than Vinnie's - I was more concerned with paying my rent and electric bill. An in-ground pool was so far outside the realm of my reality that I couldn't even picture it.

"It's a good thing you lost that glass-half-empty attitude," Lula said. "Else this would be a bit of a downer. As it is, I'm excited. This is gonna be a real good day for us. Who've we got to go after today?"

I hauled a handful of files out of my bag and tossed them onto the coffee table in front of Lula. "Take your pick. We have an armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, attempt to purchase, and a disorderly conduct. Plus Lenny Bennett is still at-large."

"It's too early in the day for any of them armed assault people. I don't like when I get shot at before lunch." She picked through the files and extracted one. "Disorderly conduct doesn't sound so bad. Maybe we start with this one."

"That would be Kate Fitz. She was arrested for pulling the fire alarm at the Cheshire Motel off State Street."

"They arresting people for that now?" Lula asked.

"They are when there's not actually a fire."

"Hunh. I guess she didn't know that you're not supposed to stick around after."