Tank didn't know what he was doing in Stephanie's apartment.
He felt even more out of place than usual in the sparsely furnished and dusty room, waiting up against an ugly coloured wall.
He had been trained to blend (as much as a man like Tank could) in, trained to wait, patient for his targets. He had been trained to deal with anything and everything that could happen.
No one prepared him for Stephanie Plum.
Oh sure, she wasn't really his to be prepared for, but she was the next best thing.
Ranger had been his friend for as long as Tank cared to remember. He'd never resented his friend once; for all Tank's considerable talents, Ranger was just always more.
So he'd been envious occasionally, Ranger had a habit of attracting good looking women like moths to a flame. But so rarely had they been anything special, built like Barbie or Beyoncé sure, but special? Not so much.
Tank had never expected anybody to turn his best friend's head for longer than a night. He could never have been more wrong.
His first experience of Stephanie Plum had been interesting. In the beginning, he and most of Rangeman believed she was just a fling, a wham bam thank you ma'am and Ranger would soon let her down, gently, if he was being kind. Otherwise he'd just vanish and so would the curly haired conservative woman.
He might have once called her meek. He couldn't help but smile at the thought, shaking his head in the still darkness. He couldn't have possibly guessed that he'd be here now, waiting for a woman that had his best friend in the palm of her dainty hand.
Tank dwarfed Stephanie in size, but no one could match her for balls and sheer force of character.
He'd seen men who were so withdrawn into themselves for what they'd had to do they couldn't even face calling their own mother light up like a fucking light bulb when she walked in the room.
When she smiled at them and took the time out of her chaotic day to sit down and ask them how they were, what they thought of the football or hockey match, hell whatever took their fancy, somehow she remembered.
She treated them like they were heroes.
He couldn't deny most people were right in their assessments; you wouldn't want to meet a Rangeman down a dark alley. He could inflict the kind of pain no one could recover from without a second thought and he'd done it.
But Stephanie looked at him like every time he helped her he'd hung the stars in the fucking sky.
Of course, it was nothing compared to the way she looked at Ranger.
As he heard the locks tumble, he told himself he'd do anything to keep Stephanie Plum safe. Not just for his brother in arms, but for the woman whose smile kept them all going.