Chapter 17

The amount of information and access I had to the lives of several men who were previously complete strangers was crazy scary. When Ranger had told me we'd be reviewing his team's personnel files, I'd imagined a file folder that would maybe include a resume and their service history. But in reality, the flash drive that Ranger had procured from Cordero gave us so much more.

We had access to everything from detailed background checks, to school transcripts, to marriage licenses, to bank statements, to satellite images of all known residences. The flash drive was the key that unlocked it all, and Ranger used the super special secret programs on his laptop to decrypt the information. He put all of the information on an iPad for me, promising that it was secure.

The files contained information on all team members, including not only the five who were in the field with Ranger, but also Cordero, the three specialists who worked in command with him, and for Margeaux Dennison, Intelligence Sergeant.

The folder labeled 'Ricardo Carlos Manoso' taunted me. It felt sneaky to use the opportunity to look through Ranger's background, but the curiosity was nearly overwhelming. I'd opened it to the first page while I fought the urge to look any further.

The top of the page read: Ricardo Carlos Manoso, aka Carlos Manoso, aka Ranger, aka Juan Valencia, aka The Undertaker, aka Marc Pardo, aka Diego Serrano, aka Rodrigo Vergara. My eyes nearly fell out of my head and I quickly closed out of the file. Probably there were things in there that Ranger didn't want me to know, and maybe they were things I also wasn't ready to know. Like why he was apparently sometimes known as The Undertaker.

I was almost done reviewing the last of the five files we were focused on when Ranger pushed his chair back from the desk and scrubbed his hands over his face.

"Ready to compare notes?" I asked.

"If we must." He was in a foul mood, and I couldn't blame him. He'd grown increasingly restless over the past several hours. I couldn't imagine how it must feel to be hunting for a traitor among a group of men he'd placed trust in. Perhaps even considered friends.

"Who wants to go first?"

"I want to hear from you."

I took a steady, bracing breath. "From an outsider's perspective, it's not really that hard to believe that any of these guys could take a turn to the dark side. Some of them have already been there."

Ranger didn't seem surprised by that assessment. "The missions you get in Special Forces don't exactly bring out the best in anyone."

I wanted to ask him about what they'd brought out in him, but I managed to control myself. Just. "But then again, their military careers are impeccable. Even though a lot of the reports have pieces redacted, I don't need the missing pieces to be able to tell that each of these guys are basically heroes in their own right."

"The military takes great care to weed out the ones who are in it for nothing more than the chance to legally blow shit up." He stretched his arms behind his head. "These men have all proven themselves. If you'd asked me a week ago, I would've said there was no way in hell that any of them would ever betray the team."

"I'm sorry," I said again.

He just gestured for me to continue. "What do you think?"

I sighed. "My top pick would be Dante."

Ranger nodded. He didn't say anything else, but I could see that his jaw was clenched tight.

"The way I see it, there have been two incidents over the past three years that, in hindsight, could be attributable to a mole passing team information onto Valdez. And that's not including the Palmira op."

He ran his hand over his face again. "Yes. Esquivel and Saavedra. I agree, it's very likely that both of those were situations where Los Reyes was tipped off ahead of time. And I never saw it."

"You couldn't have," I assured him. "There's nothing about either scenario that couldn't just as easily have had other explanations. They still could - we don't know for sure."

"Tell me what you see."

"The report from the night Frederico Esquivel died in custody indicates that Dante was scheduled for guard duty at Esquivel's holding cell from 21:00 to 05:00. But at 23:17, a small team of Los Reyes infiltrated the compound, managed to get the drop on Dante and knock him out cold, and kill Esquivel," I recapped. "I'm assuming Esquivel must have had some information that Valdez and Los Reyes really didn't want you to have."

"You assume right."

"The part of the report explaining how Esquivel died was one of the pieces that was redacted."

"He was discovered hanging in his cell by a noose made of his bedsheets."

I winced. Probably I hadn't needed to know that. "And no one was ever able to definitively say how it happened?"

Ranger shook his head. "We know that at least two men from Los Reyes broke into the compound. They weren't discovered until they were on their way out. They refused to drop their weapons, so they were killed. By that time, Esquivel was already dead, and Dante was out cold on the floor. Brunt force trauma to the head. They were quiet about it."

The report had mostly said the same thing, and unfortunately the added context from Ranger didn't do anything to alleviate my suspicion. "Esquivel and Los Reyes all knew that having Esquivel in the hands of the US government was too risky. He knew too much. So they arranged for Esquivel to have the opportunity to do his duty to the cartel and make sure they would never get any information from him. And there's no evidence that rules out the possibility that the whole thing was staged by Dante."

"Agreed." It was obvious that he loathed to agree with the theory, but there was no denying its plausibility. "What else?"

"The Saavedra operation is a lot less clear to me. It seems like anyone could have spilled the beans on that one, based on the way things turned out."

"Saavedra was small potatoes compared to Esquivel, but he was in charge of Los Reyes's distribution networks. A successful capture would've effectively crippled their drug sales, at least for a short time while a replacement emerged. We got intel about his routes, and we made a plan to cut his vehicle off and snatch him. It was supposed to be a quick, clean capture."

It hadn't turned out that way. Apparently Saavedra's vehicle didn't take the expected route, despite the fact that all of the intelligence gathered over the course of several months indicated that he always followed the same path, at the same time. Like clockwork. Except for that night.

"In hindsight, it seems obvious that he was tipped off," I said. "But it's not obvious to me who could have done it."

"What if I told you that every man on the team advocated to scrap the operation, except for Alex?"

I weighed that. Slowly nodded. "Alex was already my number two suspect. Far behind Dante, but maybe this moves him up in the pack."

"What else did you pick up on?"

"Nothing, really. That was only based on the fact that he was the newest member of the team, and that he joined only a couple months before the Esquivel thing."

"I thought about that, too. You saw in the report that I recommended we scrap the Saavedra mission, once we realized that he wasn't following his typical routine. I wanted to regroup and try again later. Saw it as an unnecessary risk - if he was supposedly so reliable, then we could get him on another night. No need to go in on the one night that he wasn't being consistent."

"And Alex disagreed?"

"At the time, I chalked it up to eagerness and adrenaline. Newer guys can be like that. They get a little blood lust going on, or tunnel vision. They want to finish the mission at all costs. The rest of us were more seasoned. Ultimately, Cordero called for us to proceed. You know what happened from there."

The new route wasn't the only thing different about Saavedra's car that night. He also had twice as many men with him as usual, and they attacked Ranger and the team when they attempted the capture. Ultimately, Bravo team had had to retreat. Ranger and Pedro had both taken hits.

"There was also a thing with Alex during the Gabriella op," Ranger said.

"What sort of 'thing'?"

"He went dark. He'd gone in alone to scout the location, and he was off of his comms for about ten minutes."

"What does that mean?"

He shrugged one shoulder. "Maybe nothing. As we know, the Gabriella capture was still successful. There were no signs that Valdez or any of the guards were tipped off ahead of time."

"What do you think?" I asked him. "Who's on your short list?"

"My list is the same as yours."

"What happens now?"

Ranger expelled a breath and closed his laptop. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. "Kirsch will get back to us with some options for a revised capture opportunity for Valdez, and we'll need to pull together a new team to execute it."

"Will that be difficult to do? The new team part?"

"Not necessarily. I've been in touch with Margeaux, the Intelligence Sergeant that we work with. She has a lot of connections in various branches of the military and the alphabet agencies. She's going to help pull some people together."

"What does she have to say about this whole situation?"

"She's working things from her side. For now, we've decided the best path forward is to lay low. We don't want word to get back to the traitor that we're onto him, so we're keeping it quiet. As far as the rest of the team is concerned, we're still going to Palmira in three weeks."

Even though I knew it wasn't true, the little ball of worry in the pit of my stomach still didn't like that idea. "Intelligence, aka spying, is supposed to be her specialty. Isn't there anything else she can do to hurry this along? Shouldn't all of this be her job? Flushing out the traitor and dealing with them?"

"She's working on it. The mission - Valdez - is still the priority. I told her that Cordero is reaching out to Kirsch. She has some inroads with locals in Cali and the surrounding cities who can also be working behind the scenes. Even if Kirsch can't get us anything, Margeaux's sources might be able to."

He looked tired and frustrated. Not that I blamed him, but it was hard to see him that way. I scooted off the bed where I'd been reclining and made my way over to the desk. Ranger watched me while I sat down straddling his lap, and his hands landed on my hips to help balance me. There wasn't much room in the desk chair for both of us, but I didn't care. I wanted to be close to him.

"I'm sorry," I mumbled into his ear.

He pulled back to look at me. "You keep saying that. You don't need to apologize, Babe. I should be the one who's sorry for dragging you into all of this."

My hands kneaded his shoulders, responding to the tension under my fingers. "I just can't imagine how much it sucks to have to know that someone you trusted has betrayed you. Someone you probably considered a friend."

He tilted his head, giving me better access to the right side of his neck. I brought both my hands over to focus on the knot there. "Dante has always been my number two, and not just in title. I'm closer to him than any of the others. But I still wouldn't consider us friends. Comrades, yes. But we don't really know each other that well outside of the team. I trusted him in a way, yeah. And it sucks that now I can't. You're right about that."

Somehow that didn't make me feel much better. "If you're not close with your team, then who are you close with?"

His thumbs had found their way underneath my tshirt and were tracing circles on the bare skin at my waist. "Very few people."

That was pretty much what I'd expected. I was trying to come up with a way of articulating what I wanted to know without just coming right out and asking him whether he had friends. It felt important for me to know whether he had people in his life that he was close with, could share with, and who supported him. But it felt rude to ask.

"That seems like it could be a lonely way to live."

"Sometimes it has been," he admitted. "But that was years ago. It's better now. It's been awhile since I felt lonely."

Unable to help myself, I leaned down to brush my lips against his. "Good."

The kiss spurred Ranger into action. His hands slid down to my thighs. He stood, lifting me effortlessly. I clung to him while he took the few steps to the bed, where he set me back down. We untangled our limbs and he climbed onto the bed next to me. Then he turned his back to me and grabbed my wrist, bringing my hand back up to his shoulder.

"Could you keep doing that?" he asked softly.

I was only too happy to oblige. Although I'd been glad to help review the Bravo team personnel files, I was back to feeling pretty useless in this scenario. There was so much that was out of my hands. I knew Ranger was feeling the same, and it was a much more unusual situation for him to find himself in. While I may be used to feeling useless, Ranger definitely was not. He was accustomed to being in control, which made the circumstances we found ourselves in so much more frustrating for him.

This was one small thing I could do to alleviate some of his stress. Starting at the base of his neck, I slowly worked at his knotted muscles. When I made my way to his shoulders, I realized I could use more leverage. I grabbed the hem of his tshirt and pulled it over his head before urging him to lay down on his stomach.

Straddling his hips, I kneaded at the muscles of his shoulders, leaning some of my weight into it when I came across a particularly stubborn knot. Slowly but surely Ranger relaxed beneath me. I worked my way all the way down his back. All that expanse of warm skin and hard muscle had me squirming a little. His exhalations were getting to me, too.

Finally, when I couldn't hold back any longer, I lowered myself over his back and pressed my mouth to his skin. My lips traced the same path made by my hands; across his shoulder, to the back of his neck, and down the other side. When I nipped him at the juncture of his neck and shoulder and then soothed my tongue over the spot, that was the last straw for Ranger.

In an impressive feat of physics or engineering or magic, he somehow managed to flip over underneath me. He wasted no time in grasping the back of my neck and pulling my mouth to his. The kiss started languorously, but it stoked the flames of my desire regardless. I squirmed again, craving some friction against the part of Ranger that was the opposite of relaxed. His fingers tightened in my hair while his other hand cupped my butt, pressing me tighter against him.

In that moment, there was no such thing as Los Reyes. Valdez didn't exist, and there definitely wasn't a Special Forces-trained traitor running loose within the US military. I made a conscious decision to push all of those things from my mind and focus only on the here and now. With Ranger. It wasn't denial; it was simply appreciation.

While we stripped each other of our clothes, I couldn't help but think about the other ways we'd been lain bare over the past few days. Events had been unfolding one after another at a rapid-fire pace, and I'd hardly had a chance to stop and think about what had transpired. Only three days after I'd called it quits with Morelli, I'd basically handed Ranger an engraved invitation to audition for the role of Mr. Stephanie Plum. The biggest shock of the entire week was when he hadn't run for the hills.

And all of that was nothing compared to the revelations of the past several hours. Ranger was giving me unprecedented access to areas of his life that had previously been completely off-limits. Obviously I wondered about the catalyst for his new propensity for sharing information, but I wasn't about to question him. Although there were surely still things in his past that would shock me, I was loving the opportunity to unwrap more and more of him, like a present. The best kinds of gifts were unexpected and out-of-the-blue.

Looking up into his eyes as he pushed me down to he mattress and covered my body with his own, I had a fleeting thought of how long his transparency would last. But then he was kissing me again, so I shoved that thought into a dark corner and resolved to stick to my here-and-now philosophy.

###

We ordered room service for a late dinner. After the orgasms and then the cheeseburger, I was completely sated. I was pretty much a pile of goo. There was an old western movie playing on the television, but it wasn't enough for me to keep my eyes open. Ranger was sitting up with his back to the headboard, scrolling through emails on his phone. My head was in his lap, and his free hand was stroking up and down my bare arm, occasionally detouring to run through my hair. I was struggling to hold on to consciousness for a few more minutes just so I could continue to enjoy this.

"Did you read my file?"

Ranger's question pulled me back from the brink of sleep. "Hmm?"

"My personnel file. Did you read it?"

I dragged my eyelids open and blinked a few times to get my vision to focus. Then I realized that I was looking at his feet, so I turned my head so I could see him looking down at me. It took me a couple more seconds to process his question before I could answer. "No."

"Why not?" His fingertips were continuing their unhurried path up and down my arm. Spreading goosebumps and then chasing them away with each pass.

I took in a breath to answer and it came back out in a sigh. A pile of goo shouldn't be expected to answer such complicated questions, but I tried. "It didn't seem right."

He remained quiet. Contemplating. His unyielding gaze on me was both comforting and disconcerting.

"You've told me before that there are things I don't know about you," I reminded him. "I know that's true. But I also assume that if you want me to know those things, you'll tell me yourself. Someday. And that's how I'd prefer to learn about them. Not from some cold, clinical dossier."

He considered my answer for a few more beats. "Did Anita or anyone say anything to you when we were at my parents' house?"

"About what?"

"Me. My past."

I shook my head, and then realized that it was hard to have this conversation when looking at him upside down, so I sat up. "No. There was a moment in the kitchen when your mom seemed like she was alluding to something, but nothing specific. And there were a couple times when I felt like Anita was being a little coy. But no one said anything in particular about you."

"Anita has been pestering me via text for the past couple of days," he said. "She thinks I need to tell you the story of when I went to live with my grandmother."

"When you stole a car, went to juvie, and then moved to Miami?"

He nodded.

"Isn't… that the story?" I asked, confused.

He shook his head.

Okay. Was this going to be a game of twenty questions? "Why does Anita think you need to tell me about it?"

Ranger thought about that for a minute. "Because she realizes that we love each other."

My heart did a little pitter-pat. I had an almost overwhelming urge to say those words to him again, but I refrained. I didn't want to deter him from the path he was headed down.

"So what do you think I need to know?" I asked instead.

He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me into him. Although I couldn't see his face anymore, I had a feeling that may be intentional, so I went willingly.

"Her name was Ana," he began, and my breath immediately caught in my throat. "She was my first girlfriend. Possibly my only girlfriend. We'd grown up together, and we started 'dating', such as it were, when we were twelve."

He paused, but I didn't dare say anything. I was still holding my breath. The moment felt fragile, as if the air between us was about to crack into a million fragments.

"She had a brother who was two years older. He helped take care of her, since her parents weren't always around. She idolized him, and I did, too. He was a member of a two-bit local gang that called themselves Lobos. I wanted to impress him. Back then I was small. I was still learning how to be scrappy, but I had sneaky mastered. So I played to my strengths, and started stealing a couple cars."

There was a heavy feeling growing in my chest. I dreaded where this was going. I knew about the stolen car and the fact that Ranger had ended up in juvenile detention, but I was unsure where Ana or her brother fit into it all. I wasn't sure I wanted to find out.

But Ranger forged on anyway. "There was a rival gang called the Z's. There was some personal beef between Ana's brother and this specific Z named Troy. I don't think I ever knew what it was; I don't remember. But somehow I found out that Troy hung out at a local gang house every Friday night, and I hatched a plan to steal his car while he was occupied.

"I took Ana with me, because I wanted to show off. We got caught, and I pulled into an alley long enough for us to ditch the car and run. But the cop was catching up, so I sent Ana ahead and I stayed behind to face him."

"You took the fall."

"It was my idea. I'd pulled her into it."

Pulled her into it… that sounded familiar. My heart sank a little more. "What happened?"

"I got a few months in juvie. I thought that made me pretty tough shit." He gave a laugh and shook his head. "The center was full of wannabe gang bangers, and I bragged to every one of them I could find. There were these three Lobos who were about sixteen to seventeen. They asked me how I'd managed to snatch Troy's car, and I told them about the house. A week later, those guys were out. I hadn't realized they were coming up on parole. A week after that, on a Friday night, Lobos executed a drive-by shooting of that house. Seven people - kids - died that night."

I took a slow, shallow breath. "Troy?"

Ranger nodded and shifted me in his arms again so he could look at me. "And Ana."

My heart plummeted like a stone into the pit of my stomach. "What? How?"

"Apparently she'd taken up with dating one of the Z's when I was put away. A sixteen-year-old kid named Mikhail. He took a bullet in the leg that night, but he lived."

I had no words. They were all so young, and it was so awful. It didn't take a genius to understand that Ranger would have blamed himself. Perhaps a part of him still did. Since I had nothing better to say, I gave him the words that were as cliche as they were true. "It wasn't your fault."

He took in a breath and let it out, slow and controlled. "I know. There wasn't a gun in my hand that night. It wasn't my idea. I just presented them with the opportunity."

"You were just a kid."

"We all were," he agreed. "I was a dumb kid who compensated for my size by mouthing off. I had no sense of the weight or impact of my words. Until that night. When six kids, plus Ana, paid the price for my words and for the people I associated with."

My hands wrapped around Ranger's bicep. I just needed to be touching him. Puzzle pieces were clicking all over the place. I swallowed hard, unsure what to say.

"I blamed myself for a long time," he continued. "I'd like to say that I cleaned up my act after that, but the reality is that I spiraled for a few more years. My abuela did her best to keep me on the straight and narrow, but ultimately all she really accomplished was keeping me out of jail and ensuring I graduated high school. Both of which were minor miracles on their own. I'd realized by my senior year of high school that I didn't love the trajectory my life was on, so I started to straighten out enough to get into college. When it turned out that wasn't for me, the Army seemed like a solid option."

"I'm grateful that you told me this," I started, not wanting to give him the wrong impression. I had my suspicions, but I needed to know. "But why? Why now?"

"I needed you to understand why it's hard for me to get close to people." He reached up to tuck an errant curl behind my ear. "And why I'm occasionally an overbearing asshole when it comes to things that I think are dangerous to your wellbeing."

"I can understand that," I said carefully.

"I don't know if you do." He paused to read something on my face. "It would break me if anything ever happened to you. Especially if it were because of me and the shit I've chosen for my life."

"But you also have to understand that everyone makes their own choices," I argued. "Myself included. And you don't have the luxury of controlling those choices, or their consequences."

"I know that. But I -"

I placed my hand over his mouth. "I'm not done."

He raised his eyebrows at me for a moment, but finally nodded. I removed my hand.

"I've thought a lot about this over the past couple of days, and while I somehow doubt this will be surprising to you, I've decided that I'm going to keep working for Vinnie. For now."

"I figured."

"We all know I'm not the world's best bounty hunter." Ranger opened his mouth, whether to agree or to argue was anyone's guess, but I didn't let him do either. I cut him off with a pointed look. "But I've decided to put a little more effort into it. I assume the offer of Rangeman training resources still stands?"

"You know it does."

"Good. I've made a promise to myself that I'm going to work harder at getting a little better, both for my safety and for my sanity. And now I'm making that same promise to you."

"Babe, you're a better bounty hunter than you give yourself credit for."

"And you're way less responsible for any danger I find myself in than you give yourself credit for."

"You say that as we're sitting in a strange city, up to our ears in shit from my line of work."

"I need to know that I can trust you to trust me. Trust me to take care of myself. If I stick with this, then I'm still going to wander into some trouble now and again. I can guarantee it."

"No doubt," he agreed.

"I need to know if you can handle that." I studied him carefully, looking for the answer on his face. Of course, I didn't find it. "It's taken me awhile to realize that, in my picture of 'Someday', I need for there to be a trade-off. I don't want to be the one who's always waiting at home to greet my person at the end of the day. Sometimes I might want someone waiting for me. Whether it was a great day or a shitty one, I want someone to share that with, and for it to be a partnership. No one person always does the waiting. We share."

"Seems fair."

A little ball of worry inside me unclenched a bit. Not everyone thought that was a fair arrangement. I was unreasonably relieved that Ranger did. "So what do you say?"

He leaned his head back against the headboard and studied the ceiling for answers before he returned his gaze to me. "It's never been you that I don't trust. It's that I don't trust myself not to lead danger to you."

I opened my mouth to argue, but he put his hand over my mouth.

A small smile played over his lips. "I'm not done."

"Sorry," I mumbled around his hand.

"I'll work on it. Okay? I could use your help, though. I assume that I can count on you to point out to me when my protective instincts are going into overdrive?"

"I think I can manage that," I promised. "But are you sure that will be enough? You won't lock me up and throw away the key at the first sign of potential danger?"

"I'll want to," he admitted. "But I know that you won't let me get away with that, so I'll do my best to overcome the urge. And I'll probably need some therapy."

He must have seen the surprise on my face.

"I've met with several therapists over the years. Military-ordered. There was one I liked, and I continued to see him occasionally after our mandated sessions were over. He's helped me identify my trust issues, and he's offered to help me work on them. I think I'll take him up on it."

"That sounds great," I told him. My heart was back in its rightful place in my chest, and it was beating fast and steady. A warm, satisfied feeling seeped from my solar plexus and traveled through my veins.

"Consider it a deal," he said. And sealed it with a kiss.