Not mine, but a girl can dream.
Warning: language and and smut.
Thanks so much to Rach for her work as a beta and a partner in crime.
Better Man 21
Storyline borrowed from Lean Mean 13
Just over twelve hours later I found myself returning to the scene of the crime. No, not that crime. That crime scene was scheduled to be cleaned and detailed; kind of hard to be a bad ass picking up skips when your vehicle smells like sex. Plus there was a little damage to the door handle Ranger had cuffed me to. Oops. No, today's featured attraction was the junkyard.
Ranger had originally told Tank we would head back to the junkyard first thing in the morning. But when Ranger and I finally made it back to the apartment last night, we worked through handcuff fantasies two and three. Holy Mother of God. Needless to say we got to bed quite late and "first thing in the morning" was 1:30 in the afternoon. It would have been a little earlier, but we couldn't pass up Sunday morning sex. Or afternoon sex if you want to get all particular about it. Whatever you call it, it was a religious experience, let me tell you.
After our session in the truck last night Ranger mentioned sending Joe a thank you note for cuffing me and spurring his fantasies. I was feeling pretty thankful myself. After fantasy number two he upped his gratitude to a fruit basket of the month. When I regained consciousness after the doomsday orgasm caused by number three, I suggested we just send him cash. Ranger chuckled in that deep sexy laugh, but he didn't argue. Fantasy number four was up tonight, which meant he'd be the one in cuffs. By the time I'm done with him he'll want to send Joe a damn car.
"Babe," Ranger pulled me from my sexual daydreams and back to reality. We were in the middle of the junkyard smelling stuffed squirrel funk. Yummy. My former piece of shit car was now doing an excellent impression of a Rubix cube. Instead of thinking of ways to solve the puzzle, Ranger just gave me a sexy grin, looking as though he'd been reading my mind. He started towards me, but I backed up, putting my hands between us.
"Un uh, no way. You already fucked me stupid last night, you touch me again and I might just forget my own name." I'd heard of being fucked silly, but it felt like he'd permanently scrambled my attention span. I tried to give him the burg glare, but the fact that my nipples were threatening to poke through my shirt kind of defeated the purpose. Luckily I was saved by the buzzing of his cell phone. I took the opportunity to snoop around a bit
It was just Ranger and I. The manager was supposed to have met us here a half an hour ago along with his crane operator, but he had called a few minutes ago and said he wouldn't be able to meet with us until tomorrow and the place was actually officially closed until Tuesday because of a death in the family. The kind of family that didn't appreciate outsiders sticking there noses into their resourceful burial grounds, and I'm sure a junkyard ranked high on that list. Ranger was not happy about the wasted trip or having to wait. He finally convinced the owner to let us stay and take a look around. Ranger can be very persuasive, sometimes it was due his checkbook, other times his looks, but more often than not it was his bad ass persona. Whatever it was this time, it got the job done.
Originally Tank and Lester were supposed to have joined us, but Ranger at the last minute had given them the day off. It worked out okay since now all we could do was a little snooping. But I suppose if we had both Tank and Lester we might have been able to bypass the need for the crane and just given the two of them a crowbar. They had been working extra hours with the Dickie case and needed a day to recoup. I also needed a little time before seeing Lester again to plot my revenge for cuffing me to Ranger's truck. Ranger had already decided on beating the shit out of him on the mats. I planned to fuck with his mind instead, so I needed a little more time to plan.
The scene before us looked like some futuristic movie set, like the world had ended and these were the remains of civilization. There were piles of cars, from clunkers to caddies all perilously perched atop one another. It reminded me of that game Jenga, where if you pull out the wrong piece the whole pile would come undone. There were some that were piles of actual cars and others that resembled modern art, like the stack that held the cube that was my former vehicle. Unfortunately my car was in the middle of a stack and without a crane; we weren't going to get to it today. While Batman may have a lot of skills, I was pretty sure crane operator was not one of them.
I could hear Ranger on his phone with the control room, putting out a small fire, while I toured the yard. I came across one section of the lot that made my spidey sense tingle. Here none of the cars were crushed, nor were they stacked atop one another. In fact they seemed to be neatly if not artfully arranged, almost like a museum. While it may have been the arrangement that first drew my attention to the collection, it was the cars themselves that un-nerved me. There were the singed remains of a formerly happy yellow Ford Escape. Next to it was a purple town car riddled with bullets, and beyond that the remains of a burnt out blue Honda civic and black CRV. Maybe it was just a coincidence, yup, I'm sure that's what it is. Then I saw the last row of cars. There was no mistaking the smooshed black Porche Boxer, bullet ridden Mini Cooper and sooty green Saturn that had brought an end to Mama Macaroni.
Little black dots started to dance in front of my eyes and I was finding it hard to believe. It was a museum, a fucking museum to my bad luck with cars. I knew I had bad luck, but seeing it all lain out before me made me queasy. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths to calm my heart rate and keep myself from passing out. All of these were times I could have, came close to, and nearly died. And that is only the vehicles, to say nothing of the number of shootings, stalking, and kidnappings. As I opened my eyes and looked at the display the queasiness faded and was replaced by anger. I was doing my job. Each and every time I was doing my part to bring criminals back into the system.
Well the old Stephanie was the one who charged off half cocked and unprepared, getting herself in all sorts of trouble. Good thing she's gone. New Stephanie was strong, embracing her inner Wonder Woman. I was currently wearing a gun. And I had a partner with me; he was currently on the phone, but still, I wasn't alone. I wasn't alone. For the first time it really dawned on me that being with Ranger, being a part of Rangeman, I was a part of the team. It felt good, no it felt freakin great! I was even more determined to keep working with Lester and the other guys on my training. Well after I taught Lester a lesson that is. If he celebrated my learning to pick a lock by cuffing me to the truck I wasn't sure I wanted to learn anything about diffusing bombs. Yikes. Sometimes these military guys have sick senses of humor.
I needed to find Ranger. If this was a shrine to the destruction caused by the Bombshell Bounty Hunter, I wanted it destroyed, or at least a cut from the admission fees. It was the least they could do.
Ranger seemed to have disappeared behind a stack of cars. I turned to search for him when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. My head snapped around and standing not ten feet away from me was Simon Diggery. We both just stood and stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity. Knowing my attention span it was probably closer to thirty seconds. He was carrying a duffle bag and was in the process of stuffing a GPS system in it. He looked rough, but no more so than I'd seen him before. His shoes were scuffed and looked too big, the pants looked like they might stand on their own if he took them off it had been so long since they'd seen the inside of a washing machine. But it was the sweatshirt that caught my attention. It was a ratty grey hooded collegiate sweatshirt with a mustard stain on the right side staining the letter D in Douglas College. I knew that sweatshirt. It was my sweatshirt. Fuck. Going FTA was one thing, but stealing a girl's favorite sweatshirt was low.
He looked liked a scared rabbit and he took off as I bolted after him. I followed as he zigged and zagged through the maze of metal. I would have hollered for Ranger, but I was huffing and puffing like Thomas the Tank engine so there was no oxygen left for yelling. Simon caught his shin on the fender of a cab that had seen better days. I started gaining on him which seemed to activate his boosters and he gained ground. He disappeared behind a big piece of equipment, a bulldozer or something. As I rounded the corner and looked for him, I expected to find him hightailing it down the next aisle. He wasn't there. It wasn't until I heard the creaking that I looked up and to my left. The sonofabitch was scaling a tower of junked cars.
The cars in this pile were race cars, some looked more like they were from the demolition derby. But rather than being stacked straight up, they formed some sort of pyramid. They reminded me of an end of the aisle display in a grocery store of toilet paper or soup cans. Shit. I don't know where he thought he was going but he moved pretty fast for an old guy.
Catching my breath at the bottom of the heap, I yelled at him the usual spiel about violation of his bond agreement and taking him in to get rescheduled. Since this wasn't the first time I'd taken him in he didn't even acknowledge me. Fine, be that way. I can climb too. I started scaling the mountain of cars, making it to about the third level when Simon disappeared out of my sight. I hauled my ass up two more cars and then I felt it. The car under me started to shake, but it wasn't just that car, it was all of them. I looked up in time to see Simon catapult himself from the top of the pile and cling to the chain link fence. The fence had barbed wire all the way around the top of it, but it was mysteriously missing in a four foot section right above him.
I tried to maintain my balance as I watched my FTA haul ass up and over the fence and disappear into the street. Unfortunately his jump started a chain reaction as I heard the worst racket of my life. The pile of cars were quaking and screeching as metal scraped against metal. It made fingernails on a chalkboard sound as soothing as Cannon in D. I moved my hands from the car I had a death grip on to cover my ears. Not the smartest move. I could hear myself think now, but was about to fall nearly three stories. So I grabbed onto the remains of the number seven car and screamed like hell.
"Ranger!"