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Chapter 16

"Since I'm asking for your help with this shitstorm, there are probably some things you need to know."

Ranger's voice startled me out of my own quiet contemplations, and I perked up instantly. A sense of eagerness washed over me, not unlike the feeling of waking up on Christmas morning when I was six. But I tried to show some restraint. "I'd be happy to hear whatever you think I should know."

"There are six men on Bravo team, including me. I've worked with most of these guys for years, in various capacities. Even the newest guy has been with us for three years."

He kept his eyes straight ahead, on the road, but I could hear the meaning in his pause. It hurt for him to know that one of the men he'd worked alongside for so long was likely a traitor.

"We report to Commander Cordero. He used to be in my spot before he was promoted."

"And that's the guy we're going to meet?"

"I'm going to meet," he corrected. Yeah, yeah. We'd fight more about that later. "I moved up to One when Cordero joined the Tactical Operations Command. There are three other specialists attached to the team, who all work with TOC. Granger and Buchanan are our Logistics Specialists and DiGeorgio is our Engineer. And for the most part, we work with the same Intelligence Sergeant - Margeaux. She's our liaison to the CIA."

I decided to gloss over the CIA part for now. We'd come back to that. "And she's the only woman?"

"Yes."

"Great. So that narrows our suspect pool by one." I'd take it. One was better than nothing.

"I don't see our mole being anyone in TOC. The Specialists are supportive roles. They have a much more limited access to classified information, and often they don't know the details of an op until we're spun up. Cordero is validating this, but we don't think any of them have any knowledge of the Palmira capture mission yet."

"Obviously they can't tell Valdez what they don't know themselves." So that made things easier on the one hand, but harder on the other. That meant that the mole was one of the men that Ranger was closer to. "What about Cordero? Why isn't he on the the suspect list?"

"He has too much access to classified intel. He and I are often the first to know about any mission. We plan them together, and we usually develop the prelim before we bring in the rest of the team. For example, he was the first to know when our agent inside Los Reyes made contact with Gabriella and learned that she wanted out. We planned the staged kidnapping together."

"And if the traitor and Valdez were planning to ambush Bravo team, that would've been just as good an opportunity to do so as the Palmira mission."

Ranger nodded. "And that didn't happen."

A little ball of stress and worry clenched tight inside me. It had been there ever since the meeting with Gabriella. Every time I had to think about the fact that Ranger very well could have walked into a death trap in three weeks, the little ball grew spikes and got stabby. Sometimes it took me a second to catch my breath, and I had to remind myself that this was Ranger. He'd figure it out. And at least for the moment, he was letting me help a little.

"So you figure it's one of the six."

"I'm pretty confident that it's not me."

I rolled my eyes. "One of the five. Give me a break, math isn't my strong suit. So sue me."

"Don't worry. You have other strong suits."

I peered over at him and found him almost-smiling. That alone helped my ball of worry unclench a little.

I took a sip of my coffee and found it to be room temperature. Still serviceable. We'd been driving for nearly three hours already, and the coffee was two hours old. We'd left Newark at the crack of dawn, so it was still only 9 AM. Thank god it was Sunday, otherwise the traffic would've made me want to stick a fork in my eye. As it was, I only wanted to bang my head against a brick wall.

Ranger transcended traffic. He was beyond the ability to be upset by such trivial matters. He had one hand draped over the steering wheel while while the other arm rested on the middle console. The picture of ease. His posture conveyed his usual state of driving zen, only this time, he was talking.

Not sure where this newfound amenability and sharing of information was coming from, but I was going to push my luck and ask for more. "I've been wondering about something."

"Uh-oh."

"What uh-oh?" I demanded.

"You're either about to have a flash of genius that will make me feel like an idiot for not picking up on something sooner, or you're going to try to unpack more of my emotional baggage and I'll end up distracted and unable to focus on this meeting."

"Oh boy." The answer was maybe both. And I couldn't decide whether Ranger referencing his own emotional baggage, and therein recognizing that he had some, was refreshing or disconcerting.

"Out with it."

"I've been thinking about what Gabriella told us about Valdez's plan for Palmira," I started. "Why does he think that he could stand to gain anything by capturing some of you, rather than killing? Would Uncle Sam really negotiate with Los Reyes to win back a couple of hostages?"

Ranger was quiet for a minute, and then he let out a slow, measured breath. "For civilians, probably not."

"But you're not civilian."

His silence was answer enough. I could practically hear a click as one more piece of the puzzle slid into place. Why hadn't I put it together sooner? I'd always thought of Ranger as ex-military. I'd thought of his extracurricular activities as mercenary, and not necessarily government-sanctioned. Turned out, I was wrong.

"So it was a little of both," Ranger mused.

"I don't think it took any particular genius on my part to put that together. And are you saying that you have emotional baggage related to being in the military?"

He laughed, dry and humorless. "Anyone who's been where I've been and doesn't have emotional baggage about it would be a psychopath."

My curiosity was nearly boiling over, but I doubted he'd let me push it much further. "What flavor of military are you?"

"Mystery flavor."

My eyebrows crept up. "Was that a joke?"

"A little one." He had tensed during our conversation, but I saw him making an effort to relax his jaw, his shoulders, and loosen his grip on the steering wheel. He reached over with his free hand to squeeze my knee.

I laid my hand on top of his. "Is this your way of saying that you're not going to answer?"

He flipped his hand underneath mine and tangled our fingers together. He was quiet for long enough that I thought that was the end of the conversation and was all I was going to get.

Then he surprised me. "Right now I'm National Guard."

My eyebrows shot up that time. "The National Guard?"

"Yes." He eyed me warily, no doubt trying to process my disbelief.

"My cousin Corey is in the National Guard. He's also a satellite dish technician and lives in the suburbs." My frame of reference may not be relevant, but this was not computing for me. The National Guard seemed so far removed from the shadowy underground mercenary persona that I'd built up for Ranger in my mind.

"I haven't always been National Guard, but that's what I am now. I'm in the 20th Group. We're still Special Forces. We just do it part-time."

"So why all the cloak and dagger bullshit?" I burst. "This whole time, I thought you were some kind of top-secret ghost operative or something. Or at least a shady contractor."

"Does it matter?"

"Of course it matters!"

"Whether it's government-sanctioned or not, the dangers of what I do are still the same. Getting you dragged into this whole situation with Valdez proves that."

"Sorry to break it to you, but you don't get the credit for this one. If anything, I pulled you into this. I'm the one who went after Gabriella. I would have been dead already if it wasn't for you. And I don't just mean last week when I got shot."

He chewed on that for a minute. "I'd say we're about even in this one."

I was reflecting back on all the conversations I'd had with Ranger about his 'other work'. The times he'd gone out of town, or into the wind. Had he played into my beliefs about who he was? Or had he just never corrected my assumption?

"Next thing I know, you'll be telling me that all those easy-come-easy-go black cars of yours are obtained through perfectly legal channels."

He tried to squash it, but I saw the smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

"Ohmigod," I groaned. "Don't tell me you pay out of pocket for those. I must've racked up over a million dollars in losses by now."

The smile turned full 200-watt. "One of Rangeman's first commercial security clients was a car dealership. He offered to pay for our services in trade - free vehicles whenever we needed them. Six months after I met you, I started to worry that I was going to drag his business under, so we renegotiated the deal. Now we just get the vehicles with a generous discount, rather than gratis."

"And now you're single-handedly keeping the business afloat!"

"My accountant considers you his arch-nemesis."

Great. That was just great. I turned to watch the scenery and heaved a sigh. Ranger was chuckling under his breath. Glad I could amuse him. Despite my best attempt at being grumpy, there was a little warm spot somewhere in my chest that was happy to hear him laugh.

I couldn't help but wonder about the catalyst for the influx of new information I'd been receiving. Why was Ranger suddenly in a chatty mood? Was Mercury in retrograde? Did he feel that he owed me answers, since he believed he'd gotten me involved in the mess with Gabriella and Valdez?

At his parents' house, I'd asked him why he never talked about his family, and his simple reply was that I'd never asked. Could that be true? Was it possible that I had just never dared to ask the right questions? Maybe because maintaining the mystery that surrounded Ranger helped me keep our relationship more neatly confined to the box I'd put it in?

The past week had been a whirlwind in a lot of ways, and I'd had to keep putting one foot in front of the other. There wasn't a lot of time for mulling things over, and therefore not a lot of time to linger in Denial Land when things were too scary to dwell on. I could admit that I was sometimes less-than-honest with myself about my own thoughts and feelings. My newfound philosophy, along with eating dessert first, was that sometimes it was easiest to just rip the bandaid off. Now that I was being more honest with myself, I suppose I was expecting more honesty from others, too. And so I was asking for it. And in Ranger's case, he was doing his best to give it to me.

Ask, and you shall receive. Huh. Go figure. Who knew it might be so simple?

###

"May I please come with you?" I'd already tried bullying my way into Ranger's meeting with Cordero, so I figured I'd try the polite route.

"No." Ranger shrugged into a perfectly-tailored black blazer.

There goes the power of ask and receive. I tried a guilt trip instead. "You said I could help."

"You can. By looking over the team's files and reviewing their histories."

"I can do more than that."

He took a seat at the edge of the bed that I was reclining on. "I know you can. But I also don't want to pull you further into this than you already are. It's a needless risk."

"You said that you trust your commander. He's not on the list of suspects. Where's the risk?"

"I trust him professionally, but that doesn't mean I trust him with my… you."

I didn't bother pointing out that, for someone in Ranger's line of work, putting professional trust in someone meant trusting them with his life. Surely he understood the dynamics, but he also apparently saw some sort of invisible line that I was unaware of.

"But I don't even have a babysit- I mean, bodyguard. You're suddenly okay with leaving me all alone in a strange city?"

I could tell by Ranger's raised eyebrow that I'd gone a step too far. I'd laid on the guilt trip too thick, and he was onto me. "It's the strange city part that I'm fine with. Los Reyes aren't going to find you here."

"You really expect me to just kick back in this swanky hotel and gorge myself on room service?"

"What you do while you're here is your choice. All I ask is that you stay. Here." He punctuated his words with a hard stare that did its best to pin me to the headboard.

The thought of being pinned to the headboard by Ranger had me slightly distracted. He must have read me like a book, as usual, because he gave me a small smile and leaned down for a kiss. I slid my hand to the back of his neck and deepened it.

When he finally drew away, I had the satisfaction of hearing him pull in a slightly unsteady breath. But then it was right back to business. "We're meeting nearby. I'm walking, so you'll have the car in the unlikely event anything does go wrong and you need it."

I kept up a charade of reluctant obedience while Ranger said his goodbyes. This might be a really stupid plan, but my curiosity could not be denied. I also had an insatiable need to be useful. The little ball of worry in the pit of my stomach didn't love the idea of Ranger being alone in this.

We'd checked into a nice hotel in the heart of the city and were assigned to the seventh floor. Our room was five rooms down from the elevator. Once Ranger closed the door behind him, I counted to thirty in my head and then I leaped off the bed. I slung my messenger bag over my shoulder, making sure it contained my stun gun and my new can of defense spray. I left the baby Glock in the room's safe, figuring the last thing I needed was to be arrested for illegally carrying a gun that I had no realistic plans to use.

Once I verified that the coast was clear, I hurried to the elevator. The tricky part was going to be to time this right so Ranger didn't get too far ahead of me, but was far enough that he didn't spot me.

Luck was on my side. The elevator doors opened into the lobby right in time for me to glimpse Ranger exiting through the main door. I followed at an unhurried pace and made it to the front sidewalk as he turned the corner at the end of the block. Perfect.

I trailed him at a distance for a few blocks before I ran into trouble. It was the lunch hour, and the streets of DC were flooded with bureaucrats and politicos and various other worker bees. A gaggle of suits walked out of a building right in front of me and flooded my field of vision. By the time I emerged on the other side of the crowd, Ranger was nowhere in sight.

Damn. Lost him. The street was lined with restaurants, bars, and cafes. Probably he'd ducked inside one of them right when I wasn't looking. I decided I'd continue down the street and peer inside the windows. If I could spot him, I still stood a chance of getting a look at Cordero. That was really my primary goal - getting a look at the guy, and being there for Ranger in case he ended up needing backup. I was no Tank, and the kind of backup I offered was more along the lines of corroborative witness rather than extra gun. Still, I felt better about Ranger having me as backup versus having no one.

I'd almost reached the end of the block and hadn't been able to spot him inside any of the buildings. It was probably a longshot anyway, but I was at least going to try. I was about to cross the street and do the same reconnaissance on the other side while I headed back in the direction of the hotel. But right before I peeled away from the building to head toward the crosswalk, a hand wrapped around my wrist and I was pulled off my path.

My assailant nearly pulled me off my feet, but I came to land with my back against the wall of an alley, pinned by a hard body. I opened my mouth to scream and simultaneously jerked my knee up, aiming for the groin. The body turned so my knee glanced off their hip, and a hand pressed over my mouth. I would've screamed anyway, except when I drew in my breath, I caught the scent of Bulgari. That was at the same time that my assailant praised me. "Nice try, Babe."

Okay, so it was sort of backhanded praise. I'd still take it.

Ranger backed off enough to look down at me and shake his head. Tough to say whether he was amused or exasperated. Probably a little of column A and a lot of column B.

"This is your fault, you know," I told him.

He crossed his arms over his chest and cocked his head. Ready to be enlightened.

"You should know by now that you can't tell me things like 'stay put'. You had to expect that I was going to do the opposite." I knew I was being petulant. My pride was a little wounded. Not only at being caught, but at being caught off-guard and nearly yanked off my feet. He could've called me out a little less dramatically.

He tried giving me a hard stare, but I only shook in my boots for about ten seconds until I noticed his mouth twitching at the corners. "You're right. I do sometimes underestimate you."

"I want to be your backup. I can be sneaky," I insisted. "And I'm good at playing dumb."

"Sneaky, maybe. But you're not as good as you think you are at acting dumb. You're too observant for your own good. It tips people off. Especially a man like Cordero."

"Just let me observe from a distance, then. I'll sit in a corner and have a muffin. You won't even know I'm there."

"Doubtful."

"Try me."

Twenty minutes later, I was sitting at a corner table with a half-eaten blueberry muffin and a quickly-melting caramel mocha iced latte. The lunch of champions.

Ranger had positioned himself so that he could keep me and the door visible at the same time. He sat four tables away, across the cafe. The man sitting with him was about the same height as Ranger, and about thirty pounds heavier. Not fat, but definitely sturdy. His skin was a shade or two lighter than Ranger's, and his hair was shorter. He carried himself with purpose and kept his movements efficient. He'd arrived about ten minutes ago, shaken Ranger's hand brusquely, and pulled his chair to the side of the table so the main entrance wasn't at his back.

I was feeling a little silly for elbowing my way in. Obviously, Ranger was completely capable of taking care of himself. The entire situation was out of my depth. I knew I wasn't going to be helpful in replanning the capture mission or taking down Valdez. I suppose I just wanted to feel as valuable as possible, in whatever way I could. And since I was there, I figured I may as well -

Uh-oh.

Cordero was looking at me.

My gaze collided with his for one awful moment before I quickly looked away. Then I sneaked a peek back at him to see if - yep, still looking at me.

I glanced behind me to see if there might be something that had caught his attention. Not unless he was enamored with the painting of the coffee bean roasting process.

My eyes flew to Ranger's, and he was shaking his head again. He lifted his hand and crooked his fingers at me, waving me over.

Slowly, somewhat unsteadily, I got to my feet. I quickly decided it would be more embarrassing to walk over there with my muffin, so I left it on the table. With my messenger bag over my shoulder and my melting latte in my hand, I approached. Ranger nudged an empty chair next to him with his foot, and I took a seat.

"You've been made," he told me.

In the absence of appropriate etiquette for this scenario, I stuck out my hand to Cordero. "Hi. I'm Stephanie. It's nice to meet you."

He cracked a smile and accepted my handshake. His grip made my bones creak. "Tim Cordero."

"Stephanie is the Bond Enforcement Agent who stumbled over Gabriella when she got herself arrested in Trenton," Ranger explained. "She's also currently working as a contractor with Rangeman. I'm going to have her review the team's personnel files. She has a sharp eye for fleshing out motive and opportunity."

Cordero's eyebrows creeped up. "She has the required clearance for that?"

"Yes."

All of that was news to me, but probably it was best to go with the flow. Cordero scrutinized me with a shrewd gaze for several beats. I felt a little like a deer in headlights but forced myself to maintain eye contact. Finally he visibly relaxed, apparently having deemed me not a threat. This was one of those times when I was glad to be filed in the 'non-threatening' category.

He offered another smile that warmed his eyes to the shade of honey. "Hell, we'd be stupid to turn down the extra pair of eyes. Keep me posted on what you find."

"Will do," Ranger said. "And you'll make contact with Kirsch?"

"Sure hope the kid can pull off a miracle."

"He'll give us something we can work with."

"You seem pretty confident," he told Ranger. Then he leaned toward me conspiratorially. "Guess I shouldn't expect anything less from this guy, right?"

Ranger crossed his arms, leaning back in his chair. "I worked with Kirsch once before. Briefly, but it was enough. When he knows what's at stake, he'll find a way to make it happen."

"When did you work with him?"

"Classified."

Cordero leaned back to mimic Ranger's posture. He gave him a 'get real' look. "You know my clearance."

"Yes. Still classified."

Cordero's eyes narrowed ever so slightly while he silently considered Ranger. Then he shrugged. "Okay. So you know Kirsch. How long will it take him to identify an alternate opportunity for us?"

"I expect you'll have a couple of options in-hand within the week of when you make contact."

He leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Want to put your money where your mouth is?"

Ranger smiled. "Sure. Fifty bucks?"

"What's wrong, is private security not paying well these days?"

"Fine. A hundred."

"Deal." Cordero pushed his chair back and stood. Ranger stayed seating, so I did, too. "I'll plan to connect with Kirsch ASAP. Let me know what you come up with on your side."

"Roger that."

Cordero nodded to me. "Stephanie. Next time we meet, I hope it's under better circumstances."

"Likewise," I told him.

Although I watched him walk out the door of the cafe, he immediately blended into the crowded sidewalks. He was gone.

"You got what you needed?" I asked Ranger.

"Got it." He touched his chest, over his inside jacket pocket.

Ranger steered me out of the cafe and down the sidewalk with a hand at my back. I wondered if we did the cool disappearing act, too. I had questions, but I took my cue from Ranger and Cordero, who had seemed to carefully avoid any mention of Valdez or other easily identifiable discussion topics while we were in public. When we got back to the room, though, all bets were off.

Ranger kicked off his boots and removed his gun, adding it to the safe next to mine. His and hers. How nice.

"Who is Kirsch?" I asked.

He shrugged off his jacket and hung it in the closet, but not before fishing the little flash drive he'd gotten from Cordero out of the pocket. "Zack Kirsch. He's the man we have embedded in Los Reyes who's working his way up to Valdez's inner circle."

"The spy?"

"We prefer the term Human Intelligence."

"I forgot about him," I admitted. "If you have a spy in Los Reyes, then why did we have to learn about the this ambush plan from Gabriella? Why didn't this Kirsch guy tell us? Could he be the traitor?"

Ranger shook his head. "He's not the mole. He doesn't have enough intel. For the most part, he's not filled in on Bravo team's missions. We're working on the same goal - to take down Valdez - but we're coming at it from different angles. He knew about the Gabriella op, but he doesn't know yet about Palmira."

I was starting to see the benefit of some of this classified intel stuff. It was easy to rule someone out as a potential mole when they didn't have access to the information that was leaked.

"Besides, Kirsch isn't in Valdez's inner circle yet," Ranger continued. "He's essentially middle management in the Reyes's hierarchy. He didn't warn us about the ambush that Valdez is inviting all his best people to, which means he must not have been invited. Valdez doesn't trust him yet. He's only been embedded for a couple of years."

"So what is Cordero contacting him about?"

"We need him to help us find a new time and location to capture Valdez. Sometime in the next couple weeks, before he leaves for Palmira."

I tried to choose my words carefully. "How likely is that to happen?"

"Valdez is a ghost. A shadow. Over the years, he's gotten so good at hiding that it's become second nature to him. You saw how good Gabriella was at not being found, and that was after just a few years of living with Valdez. It's going to be nearly impossible," Ranger confirmed. "Luckily, that's what our team specializes in."

I took a seat on the edge of the bed while Ranger sat in the chair at the desk and booted up his laptop. "Cordero apparently doesn't think he can do it. He bet against him."

"That's just Cordero. He bets on everything."

"Even against the people who are supposed to be on his side?"

"It's nothing personal against Kirsch," Ranger said. "Cordero may be a gambler, and he's impulsive, but that also makes him a good leader for a team like Bravo. He's decisive, and he doesn't shy away from taking calculated risks."

"You respect him."

"Yeah. I do."

Ranger's respect had to be earned, so I figured there was a story there. I wasn't confident that he'd be willing to share it, but then again, he'd been surprisingly forthcoming lately. Couldn't hurt to ask.

"Why?"

He stuck the flash drive into his laptop and pulled up the folder on his screen. He glanced through the contents and I was about to believe that the conversation was effectively over, but then he turned back to me. "I told you that Cordero used to be in my place."

"So he was Bravo One and you were, what? Bravo Two?" I wasn't sure if that was how it worked, but Ranger nodded.

"I joined Bravo team about five years ago. I'd just come off some other contracts that were… well, as you would put it, more of the 'cloak and dagger bullshit'. The first mission I ever worked with Cordero was a recovery. Do you remember me telling you that things heated up between the US government and Los Reyes when they killed an undercover DEA agent?"

I suppose I had a vague recollection of something to that effect, but I'd learned an awful lot over the past week, and that wasn't something that stuck out. I nodded anyway.

"The agent's handler was captured, too. His name was Jason Delgado. Los Reyes had him in their clutches, and they wanted to negotiate. They'd already killed one US agent, which they felt justified in because he was a spy. They knew they'd be in even deeper shit if they killed another. So they agreed to hand him back over, but we had to send one man and one man only to retrieve him."

"You went in alone?"

"Not me. Cordero. He insisted that it was him or no one. He refused to let any of his men go in alone. Nevermind the fact that I'd done this sort of thing a dozen times or more in my past. He wouldn't hear of it."

I had to admit that Cordero was starting to earn some of my respect, too. I had hated to think of Ranger going to the damn coffee shop this afternoon without backup. The thought of him walking into a drug lord's lions den alone didn't sit well with me.

"Los Reyes even used a device that jammed our comms systems. Cordero had no way to communicate with us, or us with him, once he went in. But he got the job done. He recovered Delgado and we all lived to see another day."

"It must suck for him to know that one of the men he went out on a limb for, one of the men he refused to put in harm's way, is now selling out the team to the enemy."

Ranger expelled a breath. "It sucks for all of us."

"I'm sorry," I said again.

"There's something I must be missing. Right now, I can't picture any one of those men being willing to stab the rest of us in the back."

"We'll find him," I promised. "Let me at those files. Money, jealousy, revenge - someone will have a motive. It'll lead us to our guy."

"That's part of what I'm struggling with. No one is in this for the money," he explained. "Military careers don't pay that well. We do what we do because we can. You have to believe in the cause, and you have to believe that you are uniquely capable of doing whatever needs to be done. And for those of us in Special Forces, it usually runs deeper than that. It's a compulsion. You do this work because there's no way you could see yourself doing anything else."

"Then why are you leaving?" I was almost afraid to ask, because I didn't want him to question his decision. I was looking forward to that conversation on December first. But I had to know, because my picture of 'someday' didn't involve hitching myself to someone whose passion lay elsewhere.

I listened to his deep, slow breaths for nearly a minute before he answered. "I started seeing myself doing something else. Wanting to be something else. But some areas of the military, when you're as deep as I was… it's not a job that you can just up and quit."

"How so?"

"It takes time and effort and a lot of willpower to extricate yourself. I've had to do some bargaining, make some deals. This National Guard contract was the last of many that I didn't have the luxury of saying no to. The last stepping stone on my way out. December first is the first opportunity I'll have to say no, and I'm going to. It's been a long time coming."

"How long have you been working your way out?"

Another few beats of silence greeted me. I didn't know if he was counting the months or avoiding an answer, until he spoke. "Since Scrog."

I absorbed that. Edward Scog was a very scary, very screwed up guy who had kidnapped Ranger's daughter, and then me, and then ultimately had shot Ranger and nearly killed him. And that was several years ago.

"That's when you started wanting to be something else?"

"Scrog made me take stock of my priorities. And I realized that they weren't the same as they used to be."

I could understand where he was coming from, since I'd recently reevaluated my own life choices. And I couldn't pretend that I wasn't glad to hear that Ranger's priorities may not be as far off from mine as I'd originally thought.