Chapter 6

The next morning, Vicky was accompanied during her check-up by Dr. Westcott, who looked me over and ran me through my paces. She had me stand up from the bed and walk around. Sit down in a chair and get back up. She asked me about my recent bathroom activities, and verified that everything was okay on the eating-solid-food front. She asked me about my pain on a scale of one to ten, and was pleased with my three.

"I'm ready to go home, right?" I tried to keep my desperation under wraps, thinking the mature route would serve me better under Dr. Westcott's scrutiny.

"You'll need to continue to take it easy for a few more days, but yes, I think you are. I'll put in orders to start your discharge."

"How long will that take?"

She gave me a gentle smile. "I know you're anxious. It can sometimes take a few hours, depending on what else is going on on the floor. But I promise, you'll be out of here before the end of the day."

I eased back into the bed, sitting with my back against the pillows. Patience is a virtue, I reminded myself. I'd never exactly been the most virtuous person, but there was no time like the present to start practicing. What else did I have to do?

I wondered what exactly 'taking it easy' would entail. Probably tackling FTAs to the ground was out the window, but maybe I could still go after some of the more mellow skips. I'd only get about $150 for bringing in Kate Fitz, but it was a place to start and was better than nothing. I didn't even want to think about the hospital bills that I was racking up. I heard the ka-ching of charges piling on every time a nurse did so much as change my bandage.

Breakfast time came and went. I called my mother to let her know I was being released today, and reassured her once again that I'd be fine staying in my own apartment. Yes, I would be sure to call if I needed anything. No, I definitely didn't need her to sleep on my couch for the first night. Sure, I'd call again if I needed a ride home.

That was something I hadn't thought about yet. Was I allowed to drive? Even if I was, I assumed that my car was still parked in Rangeman's garage, and who knew whether the CR-V was waiting for me in my lot. I called Lula to ask for a ride, but then Morelli showed up. When I told him I was being released, he insisted on driving me home, so I called Lula back with the change of plans.

"How's the blood pressure?" I asked him.

"It's doing a little better now that you're out of the hospital gown."

"Tell me about it." I'd managed to take a very careful shower and shimmy into a pair of black Pilates pants and a black V-neck t-shirt. I was practically a new woman.

"I suppose I don't need to ask where the clothes came from."

"There was a duffel bag in that chair when I woke up this morning. I assumed it was the clothes fairy." Surprisingly, there was no Rangeman logo on any of the articles of clothing. That must mean that someone had actually gone shopping, instead of just raiding Ranger's closet.

"Who's the guy on guard duty?" Morelli asked.

"I didn't know anyone was still out there."

"It's a skinny blond guy with a neck tattoo."

I shrugged. "Don't think I know him."

"Do we have any reason to think that the guys who shot you are going to come back to finish the job?"

"I doubt it. It didn't seem like killing me was high on their agenda. They just wanted me to stop looking for my FTA."

"And you're going to listen to them." Morelli fixed me with his cop stare. "Right?"

"Right. I'm out. She was a low bond anyway. She's not worth the trouble." I shoved down my niggling guilt, because even though skinny guy and gargantuan hadn't exactly meant to shoot me, I wasn't sure that they didn't intend that fate for Gabriella.

"The guys with the guns seemed to have a differing opinion."

I did palms up. For Gabriella's sake, I sort of hoped that Ranger was working out some kind of plan to deal with the people who were after her. In the meantime, I'd focus on rounding up the rest of my FTAs while I made some necessary adjustments to my 3-step plan.

It was almost 2:30 in the afternoon by the time Vicky made her way back around to my room. She went over a litany of discharge instructions. I was not to lift anything heavier than ten pounds for at least a week. I was to call the doctor if my pain level increased, because all it should be doing from here on out was decreasing. That was good to hear. I also wasn't supposed to do any running or other form of intense physical exertion for the next week - no worries there.

"A lot of people tend to have questions about what that means as far as sex." Vicky's face turned pink and she was giving Morelli some intense side-eye. "So I've just started letting people know that it's perfectly okay, as long as you're not doing anything crazy."

"Good to know," Morelli said.

"Thanks, but that really isn't my top concern," I told her.

"If you say so." Vicky clearly thought it should be higher up on my priority list.

I steered things back in a more practical direction before Vicky's blush caught her hair on fire. "Am I allowed to drive?"

"That's no problem, as long as your medication isn't making you feel drowsy." She consulted her notes. "It looks like they've dialed you back to basically extra-strength ibuprofen, so that shouldn't be an issue."

Vicky loaded me up in a wheelchair, which I protested, but she insisted that it was hospital policy. Morelli went ahead to bring the car around to the curb, and I caught Vicky checking out his backside. Couldn't really blame her there - it was a nice view.

The blond guy with the neck tattoo had introduced himself as Arturo, and he hovered behind us.

"Do you need a ride or anything?" I asked him.

"No, ma'am. There's a patrol car around the corner. We're going to follow you back to your apartment."

Great.

Morelli pulled his SUV to the curb and hopped out to help me into the passenger seat. We swung out onto Hamilton and Morelli pointed us toward home. His eyes cut to his rearview mirror. "We've got a tail."

"Rangeman is feeling a little over-protective."

"Rangeman, or Ranger?"

I shrugged.

Morelli sighed. "I suppose I can't blame him. If I was the one who saw you get shot, I don't know how I'd ever let you out of my sight again. I wasn't even there, and I'm still having trouble with it."

It didn't seem like Ranger was having that problem, and Morelli was going to have to get over it.

The black SUV slid to a stop in front of the door to my building while Morelli and I parked, and when we approached the door, Arturo hopped out. "I'm going to clear the apartment, if you don't mind."

Since it wasn't likely to make a difference even if I did mind, the three of us rode the elevator together to the second floor. The two men waited while I unlocked the door, and then Arturo asked us to stay put while he ran through the apartment. Once he'd finished and didn't find any boogeymen, he left us with a nod.

Silly as it may sound, I felt a rush of gratitude when I stepped over the threshold and looked around my apartment. It wasn't much, but it was home. There had been a few minutes there after I'd been shot, when we were on our way to the hospital, that I sincerely thought maybe that was it. Maybe I really was toast. It had put some things in perspective for me, and I'd had plenty of free time over the past couple days to mull things over.

First things first, there was some pressing business to attend do. I went straight to the fridge and pulled out the leftover cake from my mother, grabbed two forks from the silverware drawer, and brought the cake to the couch. Morelli settled in next to me, and we dug in.

"I never would've forgiven those guys who shot me if I'd had to die with leftover pineapple upside-down cake in my fridge."

"That's what you never would have forgiven them for?"

"From now on, I'm eating dessert first if I want. The main course can wait."

"I don't see any problem with that."

I smiled at him over the cake. That was part of the reason I loved Morelli. He knew the importance of dessert. "When do you have to be back at work?"

"I just started a night-shift rotation," he said. "I'll need to leave here by about five to go home and feed Bob before I head back to the station."

My heart clenched a bit at the thought of Bob. I missed him. But I was determined to soak up my next few hours with Morelli. "Want to watch a movie?"

"Sounds perfect."

Morelli took the empty cake plate and our forks back into the kitchen, and then we flipped through the television apps looking for a movie we could agree on. I cuddled into Morelli's side and he moved his arm from the back of the couch to my shoulders, tucking me into him. He was a great cuddler. That was another part of the reason I loved him.

By the time the end credits rolled, I was having a hard time with my emotions. I sniffled, and Morelli looked down at me and tilted my chin up with his fingertips. "Hey, Cupcake, what's wrong?"

His eyes were full of concern, because the movie we'd just watched was an action adventure and shouldn't be producing this kind of response. A tear trickled out of my eye, and I swiped it away.

"Are you in pain? Do you need another pill?" He started to get up, but I held his arm.

"No, I'm okay."

"You don't look okay. What's up?"

"I don't want to do this anymore."

"Get shot? I couldn't agree more."

"No. I mean, I don't want to do that anymore either, but that's not what I'm taking about. I'm talking about this." I gestured between us. "Us."

His eyes softened. "That's all water under the bridge now. I don't even remember what we were arguing about. When I got that call from Tank, I think my heart stopped."

"Exactly." Another tear escaped. "You don't want to keep getting calls like that."

"Hell no, I don't."

"You want to go home at the end of the day to a wife who's waiting for you in your nice, cozy house with a cheery mailbox and 2.5 kids."

Morelli was looking confused. "I don't particularly care about the disposition of my mailbox, and I don't think I want to know what a half of a kid is."

"But you want that picture. You want a wife and kids waiting for you to get home in time for dinner every night. And you don't want to have to worry about that wife getting shot at or her car blowing up or psychos tailing her home."

"Well… yeah," he said softly.

I blinked and the tears overflowed. "That's not my life."

That got me a wry smile while he wiped away a tear with his thumb. "Trust me, I've noticed."

"No, you don't get it. That's not my picture. I can't see it. Maybe one day I will, but right now… I can't."

He stared at me while he processed what I was saying, and I saw his Adam's apple bob. He opened his mouth, then closed it, then sat back. "Okay. So you don't see it right now. But you said it yourself, maybe someday -"

I reached out and put my hand on his arm. "It's not just that I can't see it for me - it's that I don't want to. Right now I don't really know what my 'Someday' looks like, but I know that's not it."

He was quiet again for a long moment, and his gaze was on the blank television. I took the opportunity to rub my fingers under my eyes. I swallowed past the lump in my throat and took a slow, calming breath.

"Is this about Lauren?" he asked finally.

The sting of jealousy joined the rest of the painful emotions clashing in my belly. But I shook my head. "It's about us. Just me and you."

"You can't tell me that you want the car bombings and the psychos in your picture. You hate the car bombings."

"Of course I don't want them in my picture," I said. "And who knows, maybe one day I really will find a new job, or maybe I'll just get better at the one I have. What I do know is that I've tried time and time again to force myself into that other picture, and I just can't do it. And it's only recently that I've realized it's because I don't want to."

He ran his hands through his hair and then over his face. "Why the hell not?"

"Because I can't stop thinking about Gabriella Ayala."

"What?"

I held my palms up, helpless. "I don't think I fully understand it, either. But sometimes when I learn about these problems, like why Gabriella is missing, and worrying about what will happen to her if the bad guys find her before I do… I just have to do something. I have to try to solve the problem."

"That's supposed to be my job," he said. "Why can't you just leave it to the police like normal people do?"

"I just can't. I can't get the Gabriellas out of my head. I have to try to help, to do something."

He stood up and paced to the dining table, where he braced his arms and stood with his head hanging between his shoulders. When he turned back to me, he kept his gaze on the floor in front of him. "My god. You're my Ranger."

I stared at him in a stupor for a moment, then blinked. "Excuse me?"

"You've always been it for me, from the day you followed me into my garage when I was eight years old. I've been following you around ever since, waiting years for us to end up on the same page at the same time."

"Jeez." I was unsure how to respond to that.

"Yeah." He shook his head, and then raised it up to meet my gaze. "Are you sure this has to be it?"

"I don't want to be the reason you have to take blood pressure medication."

He walked back over to the couch, but didn't sit down. "I'd take a pill every morning for the rest of my life, if it meant I were waking up each day next to you."

I choked on a half sob, half hiccup, and wiped at my eyes again.

"But that's not your picture," he said softly.

"It's not," I agreed, my voice breaking. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah. Me, too."

###

Two and a half hours after Morelli left, I was still in my thinking position - spreadeagle on my bed. I'd just blown my F.M.L. plan to smithereens, and all the king's horses and all the king's men weren't going to be able to put it back together again.

I had no money. No boyfriend, 'off again' or otherwise. No new job. No plan or direction for my life. I was feeling pretty banged up, and it had nothing to do with my gunshot wound. I also couldn't shake the guilty feelings I was having about Gabriella - I felt like I should be doing more to find her before skinny guy and gargantuan did. The pillow over my head was doing an okay job at blocking out the world, until I heard a knock at the door.

Who could be knocking at my door after 8pm? I ran through the possibilities, and none of them were appealing. It could be my mother coming to camp out on my couch, determined to nurse me back to health. It could be Donnie Piemonte coming to ask for my statement about the shooting. I supposed it could also be Morelli. Hard to say which option was less attractive.

Whoever it was, it didn't seem like they planned on giving up anytime soon, so I carefully rolled myself off the bed and shuffled to the door. The view from the peephole surprised me, and I opened the door to Ranger.

"What are you doing here?" I asked. "And why are you knocking?"

"I always knock."

He said it with a straight face, and it took me a minute to catch up. "Morelli's not here."

Ranger's gaze darted around the apartment and then settled back on me. "Gone to pick up Pino's?"

"Nope. Just gone."

He absorbed that for a minute. "You okay?"

"I've been better," I admitted. "What about you?"

"About the same."

"Are you ready to share some of those answers you were hunting?"

"Yeah. I need to make a phone call first, though."

He stepped back out into the hall, and my curiosity had me alternately peering at him from the peephole and plastering my ear against the door. His back was to the me, and he had one hand on his hip while he spoke tersely into the phone. I couldn't make out anything he was saying, so eventually I gave up and retreated into the kitchen to scrounge for something to make me feel better. But I had no more cake, no candy, no booze. The best I could do was a Pop-Tart, and I had to carefully weigh the decision to eat it now or save it for breakfast, since it was the last one.

Ranger found me sitting cross-legged on the couch with my Pop-Tart, and he sat down next to me and placed a hand on my knee. "Everything okay?" I asked.

"That's a broad question."

"Your phone call sounded tense."

"I was firing Arturo."

"Blondie with the skull tattoo? Why?"

"He wasn't supposed to leave you alone unless you were under Morelli's care."

My eyes went wide. "Excuse me? Under his care? I'm a grown adult, thank you very much, and I can take care of myself."

"Babe." Ranger's fingers tightened over my knee. "It's been less than 72 hours since I watched you get shot and crumple onto the pavement. I appreciate that you are your own person, but you'll forgive me if I need some extra assurances when it comes to your safety right now."

"Besides, Morelli was here. It's not Arturo's fault that he left, it's mine. You didn't have to fire him."

"He would've gotten an alert texted to him when Morelli's car was on the move."

"You're tracking Morelli's car?"

Ranger just looked at me, and then his gaze moved to my Pop-Tart. "Let me guess. You already finished the cake."

I held out the last quarter of the pastry to him. "Want some?"

His eyes were laughing at me again. "I haven't eaten since 6am, and the answer is still no."

I popped the rest of the pastry in my mouth, wiped my hands on my pants, and gently levered myself off the couch to head toward the kitchen. Ranger followed and watched while I pulled out bread, meat, and cheese and started assembling him a sandwich.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

"That's a broad question," I shot back.

The corners of his mouth twitched. "Touche."

"Tell me what you know about Gabriella."

"First things first," he said. "Where's your bag?"

I pointed to where it hung over a chair, and Ranger picked it up and dumped out the contents across the dining table. He systematically combed through everything, placing each item back in the bag as he went. When he was left with a handful of items in front of him, he waved me over.

"Does any of this not look familiar?" he asked.

I picked up my favorite tube of lip gloss, a pair of cheap sunglasses I'd picked up a few weeks ago, and a pen I'd pilfered from Pino's because it wrote so smooth. "These are all mine."

"This is mine." Ranger plucked up another pen, and then looked grimly at one that remained. "That's someone else's."

I felt heat rising to my face. "It's a GPS tracker?"

"Yeah. I'm thinking that your visit from those two thugs was designed to plant this."

"How do we know it's from them?"

He turned to face me, and he looked pained. "I'm almost afraid to ask, but how many other enemies do you have out there right now who would want to track your movements?"

I gave that some thought. "I mean, I can't think of anyone off the top of my head, but you never know. Right?"

He slipped the mystery pen into his pocket, and dropped his own pen back into my bag. "I'm going to destroy it either way. As long as no one else immediately comes to mind, I think it's safe for us to assume that the tracker is from Los Reyes."

"Who?"

Ranger gestured for me to head back to the couch, and he followed me over after grabbing his sandwich. "Los Reyes de Corazones is the name of a drug cartel. Your two visitors the other night were Reyes."

"Did you find them?"

"Not yet. But it was them. Los Reyes's colors are red. One of the guys who came after you was wearing a red ballcap. It was no coincidence, given the Gabriella connection."

That's when it clicked in my brain. "You said Gabriella's ex was a drug lord."

Ranger nodded, and swallowed a bite of his sandwich before answering. "Nestor Valdez. He rules the cartel. He grew Los Reyes from infancy and has been at the helm for the past twenty years."

"How big-time are these guys?" I asked.

"For the first decade or so, they stuck to South America, but then they started to expand north. They started distributing in the states, and they became a big enough thorn in the side for the DEA to start getting involved. About five years ago, an undercover DEA agent was killed while trying to infiltrate Valdez's inner circle. Things got a little more personal for the US government after that, and Los Reyes have been high on the watch list since then."

"Okay, but none of this explains why I got shot just for trying to find this Big Kahuna's ex girlfriend."

"Don't underestimate yourself, Babe. You have an uncanny ability to walk into sticky situations."

"Gee, thanks," I drawled. "Was it a bad break-up or something?"

"Or something," he said. He finished his sandwich and twisted on the couch to face me more fully. "Eight months ago, Gabriella was captured. Stolen right out from under Valdez's nose. Valdez thinks that a rival gang took her. They assumed she was killed, because no one had seen or heard from her since then."

"Until she showed up in Trenton," I guessed.

"When you were asking around about Gabriella on Stark, I bet you got a lot of cold shoulders, right?"

"It was almost like people were afraid of her. They didn't even want to look at her picture."

He nodded. "It's not very healthy to know Gabriella right now. You probably ran across people from both cartels while you were on the streets. The rival's colors are blue."

Realization dawned, and along with it, a renewed sense of indignation "My car?"

Ranger nodded again. "Yes. Par de Balos, the gang that tagged you. The name means 'Pair of Bullets'."

"Lovely imagery."

One side of his mouth tipped up. "Only you could manage to stumble into this mess from the outside. It gets better. It turns out that a couple weeks ago, Los Reyes had a large shipment go missing."

"I'm guessing it wasn't a shipment of teddy bears or puppies."

"Cocaine. About $20 million worth of cocaine."

I gave a low whistle. "I can see how people would be a little on edge about that. But what's the Gabriella connection?"

"Valdez and Los Reyes are pretty certain that Par de Balos is behind the missing shipment. And the timing with Gabriella is too coincidental - Valdez thinks that Balos turned her somehow, and that she's conspiring with them now."

I sensed doubt in Ranger. "What do you think?"

He shrugged. "I don't know anything about the cocaine. All I know is that everyone is scared - both sides. No one is talking. If Par de Balos is responsible for the missing shipment, I think it was someone who's way above the Trenton pay grade."

"What about Gabriella? Do you think she's in on it? Could she have stolen the shipment for Balos?"

"I don't think so."

"Why?"

"Because I don't think Gabriella even knows Par de Balos."

"Hold on, now I'm lost. You said Balos were the ones who kidnapped her."

"I said Valdez thinks that they kidnapped her. Because that's what I wanted him to think."

I stared at him, but his blank face was in place, and I didn't know how to read past it. I didn't have a Ranger-to-mortal translation guide. "So who did kidnap her?"

"I did."

I absorbed that for a minute. And another. Blinked. Ranger was watching my face, but his was still impassive. "Explain."

"I shouldn't be telling you any of this, but you've got a fresh bullet hole that says I owe it to you. But you never heard any of this."

He looked to me to make sure I understood, and I nodded eagerly.

"I'm connected to an intelligence community that has been gathering evidence on Valdez and Los Reyes for years. They're working on getting a trace on his entire network, so that when we cut off the head of the monster - Valdez himself - the whole cartel goes down with him. They don't want to risk opening up a power vacuum and having someone else step up to lead Los Reyes, spilling more blood in his wake."

Was I getting a glimpse into one of Ranger's other lives? I was torn between intense curiosity and fear, not sure how much I wanted to know or what I could handle.

He continued. "They got some HUMINT from someone embedded in Valdez's organization, and it indicated that Gabriella might be an in-road to Valdez."

"Wait, so like a spy?"

"Yes. An undercover operative. He's still working his way up the ranks, and he isn't in Valdez's inner circle yet, but he managed to make contact with Gabriella. It turned out that the shine had worn off of the life she'd fallen into. He convinced her to come into a witness protection program until she can testify against Valdez and his cronies. But people who have gotten close to Valdez don't tend to just walk away. You're either loyal and at his side, or you're dead."

"So that's where a staged kidnapping comes in?" I guessed.

"Right. The agency didn't want to risk burning their operative if Valdez traced the kidnapping back to them, so we dressed up in Par de Balos colors because we knew it wouldn't be hard for Valdez to imagine that the rival gang would take her."

My brain was working so hard to process all of this that I could practically smell my hair burning. "So shouldn't Gabriella be tucked away in some idyllic coastal town, fixing up her new Victorian house while falling in love with the local handyman? Isn't that what happens in witness protection?"

"Maybe in romance novels and Hallmark movies, but in reality, the WitSec budget is really more third-floor-walk-up apartment, not so much single-family Victorian."

"That's disappointing. Seriously though, what is she doing in Trenton?"

"I have no idea," he said. "Which means now it's my turn to ask the questions. What did you learn when you asked around about her?"

"Practically nothing. Like you said, no one was talking."

"You said she had a roommate."

"Yeah, but I didn't get much from her. Gabriella had only gotten to town a couple weeks ago, and they didn't know each other very well. She did tell me that Gabriella was sober, which was surprising."

Ranger nodded. "Maybe she was. Or maybe she's just had a lot of practice in hiding her habits. What else?"

"I went through the apartment and Gabriella's room. It looked like she'd packed a bag."

"Did the roommate have anything to say about who Gabriella hung out with? Had anyone been coming around the apartment?"

"She said it didn't seem like Gabriella knew many people at all." Then I remembered something else she'd said. "She said that Gabriella told her she'd come to Trenton looking for someone. That she had a message for him."

Ranger's eyebrows rose infinitesimally. "What kind of message?"

"She didn't know." Then I remembered something else, and I silently cursed myself.

"Babe? You trying to shake something loose in there?"

I stopped thunking myself on the forehead. "I have another message, too. It's from the guys who shot me. I didn't tell Morelli, because I wasn't sure what the deal was with the Gabriella situation and what you were playing close to the vest, and I didn't want to mess things up for you in case this message means something."

"I'm listening."

"Before you and Tank pulled up that night, those two guys were walking away, but one of them reminded the other that they were supposed to give me a message. They said 'tell Bravo One to stop looking for Gabriella, and to watch his six'."

Ranger went still. He was still looking at me, but I didn't know if he was seeing me. I would need a mirror to tell whether or not he was still breathing.

"Does that mean something to you?" I prompted.

He was quiet for another moment. "Yeah."

I gave him space to expand, but when it became clear he wasn't going to, I prompted again. "And?"

"It means that this was on me." He used his thumbs to crack the knuckles of each finger, and then flexed his hands into fists and relaxed them. And again. "They came after you because of me."