Chapter 7

There were no other headlights in front of or behind us while we wove through a maze of residential streets. Seemed this was a neighborhood that worked during the day. Streetlamps and porch lights threw enough light for me to see that the houses were modest and well-kept, the cars parked in driveways were serviceable, and landscaping was a crapshoot. We swung a left onto yet another nearly identical street, but this time, the SUV slowed halfway down and pulled up into one of the driveways.

I sat up straighter in my seat while we eased to a stop in front of a two-car garage. The garage was attached to a single-story brick house. The yard was tended, though non-decorative. A single mature tree stood in the middle of the lawn, casting shadows over a large front window and a small porch.

"Are we there yet?" I asked.

From the driver's seat, Tank threw me an exasperated look. Or maybe it was just his normal look, but it was easy to imagine the exasperation. I'd been peppering him with the same question for the past hour. "This is it."

I unbuckled my seatbelt and was reaching for my door handle when Tank stopped me with a hand on my elbow and another pointed look. He probably couldn't see me roll my eyes in the darkened cab, but I did it anyway. Then I zipped up my Kevlar vest like a good little hostage. And only then was I allowed to exit the car.

Tank let us in through the front door and stopped the low warning beeps of a security system by tapping a code into a keypad in the front entry. He threw a light switch and I stepped further into the house, taking it all in.

A small living room with fireplace was directly off the main entry, and flowed straight back to a kitchen with a small dining table shoved into a corner. The kitchen sported stainless steel and beige granite, and there were two stools situated at the eat-in countertop. Large floor-length curtains hid what I presumed might be a sliding door to a backyard.

I looked around the living room. Couch, large armchair, coffee table, rug, bookcase. Something was missing. "No television?"

Tank shrugged. "If you'll go stand away from any windows, I can do a quick run-through of the place."

"As if you don't know the whole house like the back of your hand?"

He shrugged again. "I don't. This isn't a Rangeman safe house."

I felt myself working up for another fight, and I went hands to hips. "Then what the hell am I doing here? The whole point of this stupid middle-of-the-night whisking-me-away was supposedly to keep me safe. And now you're telling me this isn't a safe house at all? I may as well be in the middle of the Burg!"

He shook his head this time. "I just said it's not a Rangeman safe house. It's still a safe house, but it's just Ranger's."

"Huh." Armed with this new insight, my eyes flitted back over the room, seeing it in a new light. I knew that Ranger owned multiple properties across several cities. The part that had my Spidey senses tingling was that we were in Newark. This was where Ranger had grown up, and where he'd briefly gone to college.

Could this be it? The Batcave?

I wandered over to the bookcase, which was full to bursting. I could recall seeing a couple of books here or there in Ranger's apartment on the 7th floor of the Trenton Rangeman building, but nothing like this. Fiction mingled with nonfiction. I noted everything from a few Tom Clancys, to computer coding textbooks, to what looked like military training manuals. There were drawers at the bottom of the bookshelf, and being nosy, I sank to my knees and pulled them open. More training manuals were lined up neatly.

From there, I made my way down the hall, ignoring Tank tailing me. I thought he was being just a tad bit overprotective with the whole 'standing away from the windows' thing and the following-my-every-move thing, but I couldn't really blame him. With the mood Ranger had been in when he'd shipped me off, I wouldn't want to be the one in charge of guarding my body right now.

One end of the house had a master bedroom - I peered in long enough to see a King-sized bed and not much else. There were doors to what I presumed to be a closet and an en-suite. Tank dropped my bag just inside the door, and then followed me while I continued my exploration. I crossed the living room again to the other side of the house. There was a guest bedroom with a double bed and a chest of drawers. Empty. A full bath with all the standard stuff. And the third and final bedroom was serving as an office.

A large wooden desk occupied the middle of the room. There was a monitor, but no computer. I plopped down into the chair and started combing through the drawers. Blank sticky notes, extra pens, paperclips. The cabinet attached to the desk was empty - no files, no binders, no nothing. I opened the sliding door of a closet and spied a paper shredder. Bin empty. Yep, I was starting to believe that this was Ranger's house.

There was another bookshelf with similar material. Nearly identical to the one in the living room, with two drawers at the bottom. I pulled the first one open and found a bunch of computer paraphernalia and neatly-bundled cords. The second drawer, though, was a jackpot. I sunk to my knees again and stared at the hidden treasure.

I ran my fingers along the spines of two high school yearbooks. 2002 and 2003 - junior and senior year. I pulled them out of the drawer and thumbed through them. There were no signatures or notes or well-wishes scrawled on the inside covers, but they were real, all right. I hugged them to my chest and marveled at what I'd found.

###

The plan had been for Ranger to join me at the safe house as soon as he took care of some business in Trenton. After I'd given him the message for 'Bravo One', he'd sprung into action. He'd insisted that it wasn't safe for me to stay in my apartment. Blame it on my gunshot wound, or my breakup with Morelli, or whatever, but I hadn't actually put up much of a fight on that point. So sue me, I was feeling a little vulnerable. But that was when I'd thought he just meant that I needed to move into Rangeman for a few days.

I had been hastily packing a bag under Ranger's watchful eye while he spoke on the phone with Tank. His side of the conversation was terse, but I'd started to gather that he was making plans for Tank to come pick me up and cart me off somewhere. Then I had a bit of fight in me. But Ranger was having none of it. He'd given me nothing but his blank face, and he hadn't been in the mood to negotiate.

My intention had been to wait up for him. As far as I was concerned, he still owed me a lot of answers. But sometime around two in the morning, exhaustion had finally won out over my determination, and I nodded off. When I awoke, the rumpled covers next to me smelled like Bulgari. I pushed myself up to sit and looked around the master bedroom. It still looked pretty Spartan in the light of day.

I got a jolt of pain when I used my core muscles to swing my legs off the bed, and I realized that I was several hours late for my pain pill. There was a pill and a glass of water waiting for me on the nightstand. After taking care of business in the bathroom and pulling on a pair of Pilates pants, I paused with my hand hovering over the doorknob of the bedroom. I held my breath, but still didn't hear anything coming from the rest of the house.

I emerged slowly, padding quietly down the hallway. I glanced in the living room first - empty. Kitchen, also empty. I was about to continue down the hall toward the office when I caught movement from the corner of my eye.

Ranger was sitting outside on a deck, beyond the sliding glass door that led out of the kitchen at the back of the house. He had a laptop balanced on one arm of his chair and a cup of coffee on the other. His attention was on me when I slid the door open and eased myself down into a chair next to him. "Good morning."

I considered that while I leaned over and snagged his coffee mug from him. "Is it?"

He was eyeing me warily. "You're not still mad about this, are you?"

As a matter of fact, I had planned on being mad, yes. But as I took my first sip of coffee and enjoyed the feel of the already sun-warmed wooden deck beneath my bare feet, I decided to let it go. "How was your night?" I asked instead.

"Frustrating."

I snorted inelegantly. "I can relate."

He cut his eyes to me and his mouth tightened grimly, no doubt preparing for another fight. But I held up my hands in surrender.

"Right, sorry. I'm letting it go."

"Thank you for being agreeable about this."

I detected more than a hint of sarcasm, because I'd been anything but agreeable about being dragged out of my apartment last night. But I also took the thank you seriously, because Ranger didn't tend to dole those out readily.

"Do I get to know what set this off?" I asked. "It seemed like until I gave you the message I got from Los Reyes, I was on track to being able to spend the night in my own bed. What changed?"

Ranger closed his laptop and set it aside, turning to give me his full attention. "The message was for me. That changed things. It meant that Los Reyes somehow made a connection between Gabriella, me, and you."

"What's a 'Bravo One'?" I asked.

"I am. It's my position on the team that I work with."

"They said to 'tell Bravo One to stop sniffing around' for Gabriella," I said. "But you weren't even looking for her. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seemed like you didn't even know she was in town until you heard it from me."

"You're not wrong." He rubbed a hand over his face. "It's a problem that they know who I am, and that they've connected me with Gabriella. I don't know how they would have done that, unless they somehow found out that my team and I are the ones who captured her eight months ago."

"That's not good."

That got me an almost-smile. "No, it's not good. But the bigger problem is that they've connected the dots from me to you."

"How did they do that?"

"I don't know." It was obvious that he didn't appreciate that. "It could be as simple as they followed you to Rangeman after your first visit to the streets. Everyone on upper Stark is on high alert for Gabriella, and you could have picked up a tail as soon as you started asking around. Los Reyes and Balos have been feuding for years, but I added fuel to that fire when I pinned Gabriella's capture on Balos. The missing shipment of coke is new - as far as I can tell, it went missing about three weeks ago."

"The same time that Gabriella popped up in Trenton."

Ranger nodded. "Word on the street is that Balos stole the shipment, and they're using Gabriella's presence and the missing coke to lure Valdez to the states."

"Why would they want to do that?"

"They think getting him off of his home turf would make it easier to take him out."

"What do you think?"

He shrugged one shoulder. "Valdez has only left Colombia a handful of times in the past two decades, that we know of. I don't see him coming to Trenton. But I expect there are already a few higher-level Reyes in place in the city, looking for both the coke and Gabriella."

That thought made my stomach feel a little squishy. "What do you think they're going to do to Gabriella when they find her?"

Ranger gave me a pointed look. "Remember what I told you about Valdez's inner circle? Either loyal and at his side, or…"

"Dead." I took another sip of coffee to distract me. "Jeez."

"Babe," he warned. "This isn't one of your lost puppy causes."

"Her roommate is worried about her."

"She probably should be. But it's still not your problem."

"I've been thinking," I began.

"Oh shit," Ranger deadpanned.

I ignored him. "Suppose the person that Gabriella came to see in Trenton was you?"

He considered that for a few beats. "I don't see how she would know who I really am, let alone where to find me."

"You could say the same for Los Reyes, but they figured it out. Maybe Gabriella did, too."

"When I found out that Gabriella was in Trenton, I reached out to the US Marshals service to try to find out what was going on. I wasn't privvy to where she'd ended up after I turned her over to WitSec, but obviously I knew it wasn't Trenton. I had a hell of a time getting through to anyone who knew anything, so I called in a meeting with the Commander of my team. I had to go to DC to meet with him while you were in the hospital."

"And?"

"And nothing." He leaned over to pluck his coffee mug out of my hands and take another sip, then gave it back. "He confirmed that the Marshals had reported Gabriella missing about a week before she got arrested in Trenton. But nothing else helpful. She had a job and had seemed to be integrating well into her cover. The Marshals who were responsible for her confirmed that she was clean and sober - they had her doing drug tests, and she was going to AA meetings regularly."

"Could she have run away to start using again?"

"Maybe, but from what I hear, I doubt it. She seemed happy in her new life."

"I'm sticking with the theory that she came to see you."

"Why?"

"Her roommate said that she was looking for someone to give him a message." I took another gulp of coffee to warm the cold pit that had grown in my stomach. "Sounds ominous."

"I'm not convinced, but it's still more information than anyone else has. The Marshals don't have any idea where she is. We also don't know why she's using her real name, instead of the alias she got in WitSec. My Commander suggested that maybe she ran away back to Colombia."

"Why come to Trenton first?"

"He didn't have an answer to that one, either." He stood from his chair and took my cup of coffee again. "Refill?"

"Thanks." I stayed in my chair, legs stretched out in front of me, enjoying the morning sun. The deck took up about half of the back yard. The rest was surrounded by a wooden privacy fence which backed up to about 25 yards of open space, and beyond that, more houses. The open space was peppered with trees, giving some illusion of privacy. There were mature trees lining both sides of the yard, which shielded me from the neighbors. Still, I was a little surprised that Ranger was letting me hang out back here, alone, and without Kevlar. I could only hope that he'd cooled down some over the past ten hours or so, and leveler heads had prevailed.

Ranger reemerged with two fresh mugs and handed one to me before he sat back down.

"Where's Tank?" I asked. He'd been sitting sentry in the living room when I dozed off.

"He drove home last night after I got in."

I frowned at him. "It must have been really late. Are you sure he was okay to drive all that way?"

An almost-smile hid behind the weariness in Ranger's eyes. "He was fine. We've been through sleep deprivation training. A late night isn't enough to bother Tank."

"Still. Did you check in to make sure he made it home okay?"

"His GPS tracker is right where it's supposed to be," he assured me.

"How worried do I need to be about Los Reyes coming after me?" I'd been debating whether I wanted to know, but ultimately I'd decided that denial hadn't been serving me well, so maybe I needed to change tack.

Ranger looked at me over his coffee. "You don't need to be worried. That's my job."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that, until we find Gabriella and get to the bottom of things with Los Reyes, you've got yourself a full-time bodyguard."

Uh-oh. "And you're the one who's going to guard my body?"

That got me another smile. "Can you think of anyone more qualified?"

No. I couldn't. But even with the most qualified bodyguard in the world, I wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea. "Don't you have more important things to focus on? Like tracking down the guys who shot me, and finding Gabriella and figuring out why she seems to be at the top of multiple Most Wanted lists?"

"There is nothing more important to me right now than your safety," he said. Then the smile returned. "And you know that your body is always important to me."

It was starting to get a little warm out here, under the direct morning sun and Ranger's undivided attention. I rolled my eyes as much at my own reaction as at him.

"As for the rest, there are Rangeman teams working around the clock on both fronts. We're staking out Stark, tracking known members of both Los Reyes and Par de Balos, and searching for Gabriella."

"So what do we do while your teams are out there? Kick back here and eat bonbons?"

"I'm working things from my own side," he said. "I'm coordinating with the Marshals, the Trenton PD, and a few others. You're scheduled to speak with Donnie Piemonte at 10 this morning, by the way. He still needs your statement about the shooting."

I grabbed Ranger's hand off the arm of his chair and twisted it to look at his watch. "Shouldn't we get going, then? It's already past 9. I'm going to be late."

"It's a video call," he clarified. "I don't want you going back to Trenton until this situation is better contained."

My eyebrows went straight up to my hairline. "Excuse me?"

"It's not safe there."

I executed a perfectly chilling Burg death glare, even knowing that Ranger was utterly immune. "And it is here?"

"Reasonably so. I picked this house purposefully. It's not tied to Rangeman in any way, in case Los Reyes somehow has access to our records. Only a handful of people know that it exists. Tank spent half an hour driving around in a maze last night before he brought you here, just to be sure you wouldn't have a tail. No one will think to look for you here."

"Or you," I added. "We have to assume Los Reyes will be looking for you, too, right?"

"It's not me I'm worried about."

"What's the point of a bodyguard if I'm going to be cooped up in the Batcave?"

"I thought you'd decided to let it go and be a willing participant in your safety."

"That was before I knew I really was a hostage! Who knows how long it's going to take to find those guys, or to find Gabriella? Heck, you just said she might be back in Colombia by now. I can't hide out here forever. I can't even hide out here for a few days. I need to get back to Trenton!"

"Why?"

I made a sound of exasperation. "Because it's where my life is! I have work to do. I have five skips I need to find. I need to find a minivan to bring in Kate Fitz and I need to go to Dougie's freaking flash sale this weekend!"

Ranger's blank face was in place, and he watched me deflate after my small fit. I sank back into my chair and couldn't help a small wince when my stitches pulled awkwardly. I squirmed in my seat to get more comfortable.

Ranger took my hand and pulled it over to rest on top of his on the arm of his chair. "How are you feeling?"

I decided to go with near total honesty. "I'd be feeling a lot better if I weren't so worried about being able to pay my rent next week."

He studied me for couple moments. "If I can manage a couple trips back to Trenton for us this week, so you can haul in your FTAs… that will make you feel better?"

"Yes." The part I left out was that the light circles he was tracing on the back of my hand with his thumb were also making some progress on the feel-good front.

"I'll see what I can do," he said. "If we do this, you'll be careful?"

"I always try to be careful."

His eyebrow rose infinitesimally.

"I'll try harder," I promised.

He gave me a small nod. He lifted our joined hands, pressed his lips to the back of my hand, and released me. Then he gathered up his laptop and coffee mug and he was gone.