The indomitable Janet Evanovich created the base characters of this story. I have tweaked them, rearranged their frontal lobes, redefined their splines and am using them to tell my own tale with some of my original characters thrown in just to make it more interesting. Neither Ms. Evanovich nor I will make a red cent off this story.

The rest of the day was a flurry of activity. Amanda wasn't at home. She didn't show up for work. As a matter of fact, none of the three showed up for work. I wasn't surprised.

Kate grimly confirmed Ranger's suspicions that it was unlikely that whoever lost that much blood in Joanna's house was still alive. Manuel informed everyone that the blood was Joanna's in the late afternoon and with a glimmer of who he allegedly used to be in his eyes, he let us know that the unknown donor in the middle of our pile was Brady. He'd also left DNA at the scene of what could only be Joanna's murder as well. He was in big trouble.

Jack Margolis sat in the corner most of the afternoon with a cup of coffee that I kept refilling for him, his cell phone to his ear and a look of grim resignation on his face. The higher ups at Disney were unhappy about these murders. And even though it hadn't made the paper, Jack's back was against the wall. He didn't like it there so much. I could tell.

"You okay Jack," I asked and dropped into the chair beside his.

"This whole thing is taking its toll on everyone who knows about it," he glanced over at the magnetic board. "How do you do this all the time? How did you wake up and say, you know…I think I want to solve crime as my life's work?"

I laughed, "I didn't. I don't know many people who did. Most of us just sort of ended up here because we started on another path and met someone who thought this would be a fun path. I definitely didn't think I'd ever be doing this."

"No," he raised a brow and sipped his coffee.

"I went to college and went to work at a lingerie company as a sales rep."

"No way," he laughed.

"Way," I nodded with a smile. "And it wasn't one of those cool lingerie companies either. It was more utilitarian third world lingerie. You know, stuff your grandma should wear," I sighed. "Not that mine would be caught dead in the stuff."

"That bad," he grinned.

"Way worse," I shook my head with a rueful smile. "They had a little trouble with the feds and everyone lost their jobs including me. I had a little nest egg, but when it ran out I was getting desperate because all I'd been able to find was temp work. Nobody really wants to hire someone who worked for a company being investigated by the feds even if you've been cleared of all wrong doing."

"I guess not," he nodded.

"So my cousin Vinny owned this bail bond company and I sort of blackmailed him into letting me try it."

"And you were good at it," he smiled.

"Oh hell no," I laughed. "I was…well, I wasn't the worst…, maybe, I was pretty bad," I laughed. "But I was really good at finding the skip and if they were local, I could bring them in. But my follow through was bad and most of the time I ended up in some scrape or another."

"What kind of scrape," he asked.

"It usually involved me being covered in some sort of…biological substance or garbage and probably a broken down, vandalized or destroyed vehicle."

"Really, they destroyed your cars," he said wide-eyed.

"She destroyed 13 vehicles," Ranger said dropping beside me with a tray with three sandwiches, chips, drinks and cookies.

"How did you do that," he asked in shock.

I shrugged and meted out the food, "sometimes they caught fire."

"Sometimes they blew up," Ranger added.

"One was crushed by a piano," I grinned.

"That was mine Babe," Ranger raised a brow.

"Another was rolled over by one of those street flattener things."

"Also mine," Ranger raised a brow at Jack.

"It was a Porsche," I grinned.

"They were both Porsches," Ranger reminded me.

"Oh dear God," he blinked. "And you still married her?"

"She keeps things interesting," he grinned.

"Ha," I rolled my eyes. "He didn't marry me until I started getting things together personally."

"I loved you then," he reminded me.

"You were afraid of commitment," I reminded him.

"Pot," he raised a brow.

"Kettle," I grinned back.

Jack laughed, "all right. You were a disaster. What happened then?"

"Connie asked Ranger to take me under his wing and teach me some skills…at the beginning," I grinned. "So he comes along like a cross between Professor Higgins and Zorro and tried to teach me some skills."

"Wait…I have a mental picture," Jack grinned and then burst out laughing. "Good one," he grinned and high fived me.

Ranger just rolled his eyes and shook his head.

"I didn't really want to learn though, so I failed," I laughed. "He still continued to help me and try to get me to train and be better, but for some reason, I just fought it like there was no tomorrow. I suppose there was a part of me that rebelled at learning skills to do it because in my mind that meant that was what I would be doing as a career. At the time, my mother couldn't have been more opposed. She kept trying to get me to go work at the button factory, or even the tampon factory. I fought that too."

"So what happened," he asked and bit into his sandwich.

"Something big was dropped into my lap," I smiled. "After that something big I just sort of woke up and smelled the coffee. One day, things just started to click inside of me and I started getting it right and doing more things to ensure I would get it right."

"And you started accepting my help and the help of the guys," he nodded.

"I even took cooking classes," I smiled. "I even went to therapy. It was a big help."

"And you two were dating that entire time," he asked.

"Oh no," I laughed. "I was seeing someone else until just before that something big went down. I was attracted to Ric, but he gave me this line about loving me in his own way and he'd do anything for me, but he'd never be in a committed relationship. His life didn't lend itself to relationships."

Ranger rolled his eyes.

"But…"

"But, we somehow found our way to each other," I smiled.

"With a shitload of help," Manuel said as he joined us at the table.

"You didn't help," Ranger said pointedly.

"Hermano, you wound me," Manuel grinned and bit into his sandwich.

I laughed, "And the rest is history."

"With a few DBs and such thrown in on the side," Mitch agreed dropping beside Jack.

"You didn't work for Rangeman then though, right," Jack asked me.

"Sometimes," I grinned. "I did some computer searches and helped out with an occasional distraction."

"Which she excelled at," Cal dropped down too.

"What is a distraction?"

"A sexy woman in few clothes," Cal waggled his brow at Jack.

Jack gaped and burst out laughing.

"So you see Jack, I evolved into a successful crime solver."

"She's the brains, we're the muscle," Tank said and sat down on the other side of Ranger.

"And the rest of these lovely ladies," Jack waved his hand around the room.

"That one's my wife," Cal pointed to Natalie sitting gossiping with Lula and Padma. "She works for Ranger and Tank's other company. She's runs Sizzlin'."

"The lingerie company," he said wide eyed. "Oh wait, I remember Veronique had a little issue with a warrant in Paris and sold the company."

"She had more issues than that," I grumbled.

Ranger rubbed my back with a grin.

"Yea," Cal nodded. "So they bought it and its thriving."

"And that one," Tank pointed to Lula, "is my wife. She and Steph used to work together."

"She was a bounty hunter," Jack said wide-eyed.

"More of a file clerk," Tank grinned.

"And my sidekick," I beamed.

Jack laughed. "What does she do now?"

"She's a radio personality."

"Oh shit…I've heard of her," he nodded thoughtfully, "Lula Thibodeaux?"

Tank nodded with a grin.

"That one," Manuel pointed to Jenna sitting in the corner with Connie reading while they ate, "works for Rangeman. She trains dogs to do search and rescue, evidence sniffers…that sort of thing."

"Have you had to use dogs," he asked.

"Not yet," Ranger shook his head, "but it's good to be prepared."

"Yea," he nodded grimly.

"That one," I pointed to Padma who was being kissed by Gabe before he ran back out.

"Padma," he nodded. "I know who she is. I am guessing the man who kissed her is her husband and he works for you?"

"Good detecting," Ranger smiled.

"I'm a natural," Jack shrugged.

"With Jenna is Connie, she's Woody's fiancée and we used to work together at the bonds office," I smiled.

"What does she do now?"

"She's between positions," Ranger said with a smile, "she helps Lula out now and then, but she's about to have her hands full."

"Really full," I agreed wide-eyed.

"Last are Kate and Ali…almost like the TV show," I grinned.

"Not quite," Cal laughed. "Kate is Padma and Stephanie's obstetrician. Ali is Steph's cousin."

"But…"

"I knew you wanted us to blend in with the tourists, so I called in some favors. A bunch of big ex-military guys wouldn't blend in well. But add pretty girls to the mix and voila, you have vacationers."

"Good move," he nodded.

"We have our afternoon meeting after this," Ranger said. "Would you like to sit in and see where we are with everything?"

"I would really appreciate it. Connie has done a great job of keeping me apprised, but I'd like to see the flow."

Ranger nodded, "you're welcome."

"We'll even try to behave," Cal grinned and waggled his brows at me.

"Not on my behalf," Jack laughed.

I giggled.

The afternoon meeting began late and nobody was surprised. With the local police behaving more or less frantically and our team's willingness and ability to assist them, we were busy and the phones were ringing off the hook.

"Is everyone here," Ranger looked around the room. "Gabe?"

"I put Jake in 2B for the duration of our meeting," Gabe said.

"Good man," Ranger nodded. "I know everyone realizes that we're at that point in the investigation or journey that things are hitting the fan hard core and we have to move now and resolve it or we're going to be shit out of luck."

Voices murmured in agreement.

"I'm going to turn the floor over to Manuel for a few minutes. He's got the DNA back from all the kits and he's going to get us up to speed. After that I'd like Kate to take the floor and let us know what we're looking at."

Manuel got to his feet and Ranger walked over to lounge against the wall.

"We got a lot more than we expected. Seminole Sherriff's department was very generous in allowing us a look at their evidence and allowing us to collect some. They are aware of Rangeman's reputation and knew we could get the results back faster. I have passed the results on to my contact at SSD." He took a deep breath. "The majority of the blood evidence belonged to Joanna or Sleeping Beauty. I couldn't get a good read on the size of the blood pool, but it appeared to be approximately 1.5 to 2 liters, which doesn't bode well for Joanna. Besides the blood evidence, our friend Brady left a sticky contribution."

"Ewww," Lula made a face.

Manuel fought a grin, "we believe it was prior to her death and Kate will probably be able to tell us if it was consensual at some point. I was able to isolate it enough to know it was a recent contribution and was combined with a contribution from Joanna. However," he raised a brow and stepped aside popping a couple of magnetized photos up on the board. "There were a couple of sticky contributions. The first was Brady combined with Joanna. The second was Brady combined with a previously unpresented donor. Female."

"Any ID on that," Ranger asked.

"I have a sample running now that should give us a clue," he said smugly. "I will tell you that it wasn't Sandy's DNA and that contribution occurred within half an hour of the one with Joanna."

"Interesting," Ranger said. "Do you have anything else?"

"Not at this time, but I'll let you know when I have a conclusion. I have it set to alert my phone."

Jack blinked at Manuel and then Ranger.

Ranger just grinned at Jack. "Thanks Manuel. Kate, you're up."

Kate got to her feet. "I can tell you without question that the amount of blood on the floor leads to death. Manuel is right, there was almost 2 liters of blood on the floor. The average adult male weighing 160lbs only has 4.7 liters. Joanna was 5.7 and weighed in at about 120. That means she probably had about 3.5 liters of blood. There's no possible way for her to survive. She had to exsanguinate." She took a deep breath. "I have studied the sample contribution containing Joanna and Brady's DNA and I concur that she was alive when the donation occurred. However, I can say with some certainty that it was not consensual. There was blood tissue in that sample. There was none in the second sample with the unknown female donor."

"Thank you Kate," Ranger straightened. "This means we have two murders on our hands and we know they're sloppy. This one was even sloppier than the last. They left DNA. They either don't think they will be caught or they believe they won't be prosecuted. We have to assume that we're dealing with extremely unstable personalities at this point. We also have to assume that Joanna will not be their last victim. We have to assume that they have their eye on someone else, either another female, or if Stephanie is right…they're looking for Jake."

"One more thing," Tank said. "SSD let me know they had the probable murder weapon. It was a kitchen knife. This murder wasn't planned. We don't believe Sandy's murder was planned either. I cannot say enough to convince you that these two suspects are highly unstable. We cannot begin to imagine what they're going to do next." He grinned at me. "Well, Stephanie probably can. It's what she does."

"Babe," Ranger raised a brow at me.

I got to my feet, "I know it's been a long day. And I know everyone is tired. Nap if you get a chance. Eat if you get a chance. Relax if you get a chance. It's only a matter of time before they find Joanna's body. I believe it will be on Disney property. Jack's people are currently searching those out of the way places all over the campus. Because I believe there is another cast member involved, the body drop could even been within the parks, but I doubt it." I sighed. "I still believe they're trying to find Jake. To them…for some reason, he represents something that kept them from being happy…or perhaps he was what they…" My voice trailed off. "I didn't see that. I friggin didn't see that."

"See what," Ranger frowned.

"The obsession wasn't Sandy," I shuffled through my notes. "Yes, he raped her. Yes he tried to ruin her life. But it wasn't about her. It was so they could get to Jake. Jake is the one they've been after all along."

"Whoa," Jack blinked, "slow down."

"What's standing in the way of Amanda being with Jake?"

"He was in love with Sandy," Ali said seriously.

"Right," I began to pace. "Sandy was in the way. What better way to get her out of the picture than to terrorize her. That's why he only raped her those two times and spent so much time terrorizing her. He was threatening Jake. We knew she was trying to protect him, we just didn't know to what extent. She probably did tell the girls that Jake was a problem. She wanted them to believe that she wasn't interested. She wanted him to come off as being a bad guy. She was trying to change Amanda's view of what she believed Jake was."

"Joanna has to be involved somehow," Natalie said seriously. "Sandy lied to both of them. She tried to convince both of them. She removed both of them from her MySpace account so they wouldn't know about Jake and she removed herself from his Facebook and him from hers."

I nodded, "you're right.?"

"But how deep in could she be if she's dead somewhere by the hand of the other two," Padma frowned.

"That's the $64,000 question, isn't it," I said thoughtfully.