A/n: I don't know what's going on, but I'm only getting sporadic alerts when I get a review and an email notice didn't go out until 9 hours after I posted the last chapter. I also got a review email and it didn't show up on the story, so I'm calling it 90 reviews even and posting today. Thanks for taking the time to review, they are all very much appreciated.
(A recap: after murdering Myra Costanza, the KDC targeted Hector as their next trophy kill, a fact that was discovered first by TPD and then Rangeman. What Rangeman and TPD didn't know was Stephanie was also a target whose kidnapping was intended to show both Hector and Ranger that they were vulnerable. Stephanie managed to escape; Giana was not so lucky.)
One hour after the kidnapping…
To the untrained observer, the men of Rangeman were efficient to an astonishing degree. The speed with which they debriefed, pooled resources and mobilized would have most Army commanders salivating and dreaming up new drills. Today was no exception, and as the men rushed around silently, tensely, suiting up for the field, they were the very epitome of cool and collected.
However.
The familiar, skilled observer could detect the cracks forming. They might notice the bruise developing around their leader's eye, or the thunderous look on his wife's face. They might also glean some insight into the undercurrent of emotion coursing through Rangeman if they could meet the homicidal glint in Hector's eyes as he plotted the demise of the men who stole one of the two women he'd ever loved, or the fierce warrior's stance that Lester assumed as he stood over the only lead they had – the baby banger who gave Hector the tip about the Asians moving crates at the dock in Linden.
And they might be equal parts thrilled and disturbed at the lengths these people were willing to go to get Giana McGovern back safe and sound.
"I need a name." The voice was eerily devoid of emotion. When no answer followed, he took the pinky finger of the man tied to the chair between his hands.
Snap. Screaming.
"Fuck! That hurts, shit that HURTS!"
Lester moved his hands to the man's next finger and asked again in the same detached manner, "Name."
The man – he was more kid than man, Lester thought dispassionately, with the faint fuzz on his upper lip and the babyish roundness that hadn't yet left his cheeks – had a thin sheen of sweat covering his now pasty face. His breathing was rapid, verging on hyperventilation, and his wide eyes were trained on his own hand as Lester gripped his ring finger, preparing to break it next.
"I told you, I don't have a name! It was just a favor, man, just a favor for a bitch, I didn't mean nothin'-"
Snap. Screaming.
"STOP, STOP, STOP…Christ, that hurts!" The kid shrieked. Juan Diaz, age 18, street name 'Lizard', had been drilled since the age of 15 to never give up information about his gang. Let them torture you, let them beat on you – death before dishonor. It was all well and good in theory, a principle that governed the life of a gang banger…but put into practice, Lizard was suddenly having trouble remembering why he thought joining Mara-18 had ever been a good idea.
Lester's hands moved deftly to the kid's middle finger when the door to the holding room in Rangeman's basement swung open. The kid went from pasty to white and promptly puked down his shirt.
Hector Gutierrez stood in the doorway, illuminated by the hallway lights. He stalked slowly into the room, followed by Ranger and Bobby. Bobby broke an ammonium tablet under Lizard's nose and the kid snapped to attention, his wide, terrified eyes focused on Hector.
Hec lowered himself so he was eye to eye with the kid. "You know who I am?" he asked softly.
Frantic nodding from a still unblinking Lizard.
Hector held a piece of paper up in front of the kid. "The address of your mother's home. Your brother, in Philadelphia. Your abuela, in Queens. Your puta girlfriend lives in an apartment above a pawn shop in Linden. And the banger you're fucking on the side lives with his girlfriend at this address." Hector said, pointing to the last address on the sheet. He waited silently as the kid tried, unsuccessfully, to swallow. Hector leaned forward and whispered in his ear, "You give me a name or I'm going to start visiting the people on my list."
Lizard hesitated only a fraction of a second before remembering who he was dealing with. Gutierrez was a legend in the M-18 ranks; there was no questioning the seriousness of his threat.
"Yun-Ji. She asked me to make the call to Hector."
A beat of silence followed before Bobby said, "The stripper. The one from The Landing Strip. That Yun-Ji?"
At the kid's nod, the four Rangemen turned seamlessly and exited the room, boots pounding as they raced for the stairs. Lester whipped his cell phone out and dialed Mark's number. When he answered, Les wasted no time.
"Is Yun-Ji on stage tonight?"
"Uh, lemme check…nope. She's not on the schedule, probably sleeping off last night's bender. Bobby knows where she lives. Why, what's up?"
"Thanks." Les murmured before hanging up. He looked at Bobby. "She's at her apartment."
Ranger spoke up. "Bobby, you and Hector go, see what you can get out of her. Les and I-"
Les exploded, shoving Ranger against the wall. "Fuck you, Ranger! If you'd told us Gia was with Stephanie at that fucking park, we'd have known to look for her and she wouldn't be gone!"
Bobby stepped between the two, a hand on either man's chest. "Enough! Les, you already blacked his eye. Knock it off. The signal we get from Bomber's panic button gives us her location, it's not designed to do a head count! We didn't know they were together."
Lester raised his voice to DEFCOM-3 levels and screamed, "HE KNEW! He was the only ONE who knew Gia went to that fucking funeral with Steph, he didn't tell ANYONE they were-"
"I didn't tell anyone because it wasn't important at the time!" Ranger cut him off. "You were in a separate car, Santos. We rode to the docks in Linden separately to check out the warehouse, and we rode back separately. I gave my car the sit-rep. I gave Ram's car the sit-rep. You and Bobby and Bones were behind us, I truly didn't think you'd get to them before me."
"And even if you'd known, she was gone before we got there." Bobby finished.
"If we'd known, we could have positioned a car to chase them!" Lester seethed back. He was tightly wound, ready to launch himself at his cousin again.
"We did chase them." Ranger said calmly. "They laid a fucking spike strip down and it blew all four tires on the SUV. I know you're pissed, Santos, and maybe you're not entirely wrong, but right now we need to focus on the objective. We need to determine her location and perform an extraction. Just like we've done a hundred times."
Lester had had it. He shoved Bobby aside and lunged at Ranger. "She's NOT just another fucking extraction!" he shouted as the two hit the landing and rolled down the flight of stairs, wrapped around each other. Bobby cursed and stomped after him. He'd known Lester long enough to figure out that his partner had a little crush on Giana – hell, Bobby himself had had more than a few fantasies about her – but he'd obviously underestimated the seriousness of the situation. This was more than just a fleeting crush for Lester, and Bobby was going to do everything he could to help get her home safely…if he could ever break the two idiots wrestling on the stairs up. He reached into the writhing tangle of black at his feet and tried to pull them apart, getting knocked on his ass for his efforts.
Since the stairwell, as well as everything else at Rangeman, was monitored, it was only a minute later that Stephanie arrived. She strode purposefully over to the men and shouted, "If you two don't knock it off I'm going to start kicking crotches!"
That gave the men pause, and Stephanie and Bobby helped the two up. "If you two are done beating the crap out of each other, we need to find my friend. Did you get anything from Lizard?" she asked.
After giving each other a cool glance, Lester answered her. "We got a name. We were on our way to check it out when…"
Stephanie rolled her eyes and snarked, "When you decided to act like idiots and throw each other down the steps? Got it. If you're done, can we please go? Grab Hector, I'm sure he'll want to come."
Bobby gestured up the flight and said, "He's right behind…" and trailed off. "Hec! Hey, Gutierrez, let's roll!" he called. When he got no response, he heard Les mutter, "Shit!" and they all took off at a run for the control room.
"Pull up the feed from the stairwell, 10 minutes ago!" Ranger barked at Hal. Hal pulled up the correct screen and they watched as Lester shoved Ranger against the wall, and almost immediately Hector slipped out the door leading to the garage.
"Garage feed, same time, pull it up!" Ranger ordered. Seconds later, they watched as Hector climbed into a black Rangeman SUV and peeled out onto Haywood Avenue.
"Let's move!" Lester yelled, shooting a glare at Ranger. Ranger turned to the waiting sea of black and said, "We're checking a lead. Be prepared to roll on my call. Tank, keep your phone on you." And with that, Ranger shot Stephanie a pointed stare – stay here – and raced to the garage on Lester and Bobby's heels.
By the time they got to Yun-Ji's apartment, Hector was gone. She'd answered the door in tears, having been soundly threatened by Hec. She'd caved fairly easily and told him everything, the men had learned. About how she'd been visited by a Korean man named Heun at the club and he'd paid her for a 'private after-hours show' at a house outside of Newark. How the four men at the house had all taken her, and how she'd been paid and sent along her way. She'd forgotten her phone, she stated, and when she went back to the house to retrieve it she'd seen Roy, 'that big dumb guy who worked with Bobby', in the house and thought it odd. By the time she got home, Heun had been waiting in her apartment for her. After he'd thoroughly terrified her, Heun had fucked her brutally and promised more of the same from a dozen men if she told anyone what she'd seen or who she'd been with. Heun had contacted her a couple of days ago with the information he wanted her to feed Lizard, who was an occasional 'customer' of hers.
"Why didn't he just kill her?" Bobby whispered to Ranger, gesturing toward Yun-Ji as she sobbed on her couch.
"Arrogance. Probably wanted to use her in some capacity before they killed her." Ranger said in a low voice, eyes focused on Les.
"And now these fucking animals have Giana. And we can't find them." was Lester's reply. He sat heavily and closed his eyes, scrubbing them with his palms. "It's probably not worth the trip, but let's hit the house she saw Roy at. Hector's got enough lead time on us that he's already picked it clean, but I'm not just going to sit here waiting."
It was approaching midnight by the time they reached the house outside of Newark. They approached cautiously, moving through the shadows and taking care to ensure they remained undetected. As they approached the open back door, the metallic scent of blood hit all of them at once.
Entering the kitchen cautiously, they noticed the first dead man right away. His throat was gaping in a perfectly arching line and he lay where he'd probably fallen, dead seconds after being sliced.
Ranger motioned for the men to move forward, and they slipped soundlessly around the body and down a hallway. Two more dead men lay in the living room; their deaths had obviously been more thought out and slow than the first man's. After determining the rest of the house was empty – and finding a room nearly bursting at the seams with heavy artillery – the men reconvened in the living room.
"Well, if there was any information to be had, Hector got it." Bobby said grimly, nudging the severed hand lying near Bozo #2. Ranger nodded and motioned toward the coffee table, where #3's hand had been skewered to the wood with a knife. "I'd bet this guy gave up something."
"So that's it." Lester's voice was insipid, bordering on disinterested. "We just throw our hands up and let Hector take the lead here. We sit around and just hope for the best."
Ranger approached his cousin slowly, waiting for Lester's earlier anger to bubble to the surface. When Les remained still and silent, Ranger slowly reached out and squeezed Les's shoulder. "I know, primo. I get it." Waiting for Les to meet his eyes, Ranger nodded slowly to drive home the fact that he did, in fact, get the reason for Lester's unbridled anger. Ranger was a quiet man; he was not an oblivious man. "We'll keep looking. While Hector's running this lead out, we'll keep going."
They left the house a moment later, leaving no trace of their clandestine visit.
The sun rose brightly over Trenton, New Jersey at 6:13am precisely. The weather station promised it would be a scorcher, and the city woke up in increments – early morning commuters, husbands sent out to get a missing breakfast ingredient, and mercenaries running down leads.
The men inside Haywood collapsed heavily into the conference room chairs. They were just back from their hunt and none of them had anything to show for it. A concerned Mark had called Lester around 1am, wondering if they were trying to locate Bobby (the only reason he could figure Les would want to know if Yun-Ji was dancing last night) and wondering if he'd seen Gia; she was supposed to have called him after the funeral she was attending to let him know what time she was making dinner last night and he hadn't been able to reach her. Les thought, distantly, he'd have to tell Mark about Yun-Ji's side business at some point. Mark ran a strip club, not a brothel, and the dancer's side business would need to be exposed. He wondered, briefly, if his mind was shutting down from an overload of stress and was throwing out these meaningless tidbits to distract him. I'm going crazy, he thought. Wheeee!
The Maras had been apoplectic at the news of Lizard's betrayal, and Ranger had left the kid in their hands. There was no room, no time to feel any guilt for handing him over to a brotherhood as diligent about protecting their own as Rangeman itself was, knowing the rest of the kid's short life would be…unpleasant. No, Ranger's sole focus was righting a wrong. Stephanie had made clear the fact that Gia pushed her to safety and was unable to escape because of it. The remorse and guilt she felt was evident as she tirelessly ran down any lead she could think to chase. He owed this woman a speedy – and hopefully safe – recovery, not only because she was important to Hector but because she had kept his wife safe.
Sighing, Ranger pushed back all unproductive thoughts and addressed the conference room full of his men.
"Here's what we know." He began, and outlined the pitifully small amount of information they'd gleaned. When he finished, he asked if there were any questions before they went back to the task at hand.
"Yeah. Why doesn't anyone know about these guys? They're selling guns, right?" asked Hal. When Ranger nodded in the affirmative, Hal continued. "To who? The Mara's are looking for them, there's not another prominent gang around here…have we looked into the local Families?"
Ranger nodded to affirm Hal's suspicion. "Steph called in a favor to Connie Rosolli. You all remember her uncle and his Family ties?" Nods all around. "Connie says her uncle isn't aware of any guns being bought, certainly not stockpiled. So we're asking Terri Gilman about her uncle's possible involvement. Since we don't have a connection, we had to call Joe Morelli for a favor."
Ranger's news was met with a few hisses and a lot of gritted teeth. "I know, I feel the same way about him. But we can't be picky about who eats at our lunch table today, gentlemen. If Morelli can get any info from the Grizzoli Family, all the better for us."
Ram spoke next. "What do we know about Roy? How did he get past the screening process?"
Ranger's face went from strained to murderous in a flash. "He was still in the probationary period. He didn't have access to any client information; he wasn't put on any surveillance duty, so we hadn't finished the vetting process. We're still working on what his tie to the KDC was."
Vince raised a hand and said, "You said Jimmy Curtains told Connie that he wasn't 'aware' of guns being bought. Do you think he suspects they're being bought on the sly? Why not say, 'No, Ranger, there are no guns being bought because I didn't authorize it'? Aren't these old mob guys more…assertive?"
Ranger took a moment to process Vince's observation; it was a long shot, but right now, all they had were long shots. He nodded and said, "I like it. Let's run with it. Can someone grab Steph? She's running down info in the system, she's our 'in' with Rosolli."
After talking to Connie, Stephanie addressed the room. "Connie's calling her uncle to try and arrange a meeting this morning with Ranger. What about Vaughn? Do we call him and tell him what happened?"
Lester spoke up. "I think we need to keep this 'need to know' for now. The last thing we need is someone grabbing him, too. I think we'll need to address Mark Tatum; Gia was supposed to have dinner with him and she never called or showed. He's called a few times, worried about her. If he panics and calls her family, it'll take resources away from the search." He spoke in a monotone. His brain had overloaded some time ago and he felt oddly detached and emotionless as he addressed the room. He was operating at the most basic level right now, all instinct and habit. Bobby, ever in tune with his partner, gave his arm a discreet and sympathetic squeeze.
Ranger gave a single nod and, sensing that his cousin needed a break, asked, "You want to call him, Santos?" Lester rose gracefully and left the room without another word.
The call to Mark didn't go as planned. When he answered the phone, he was past worried. He'd driven to Gia's house at first light and, finding it empty, was on his way to Rangeman. It wasn't like her to stay out all night, he insisted. She never, ever consented to a one-night stand (interesting, Pseudo-Les thought) and he knew she wasn't seeing anyone. She would also never ditch him without so much as a phone call, so he was headed toward Rangeman to speak with Hector. Les knew then that he'd have to clue Mark in to what was happening. He instructed Mark to park out front and Les would meet him at the doors.
A short fifteen minutes later, Mark sat in Lester's fifth floor office in stunned silence. He had opened his mouth as though to speak and shut it several times before slumping forward and cradling his head in his hands. "What a fucking nightmare." He whispered.
"Yeah. A nightmare." Les agreed in his blank voice. It was odd, feeling so detached. If he concentrated hard enough, Lester could almost believe he could step out of his body and view everything as a silent, third-party observer. He wondered, briefly, how hard this was going to hit him after the initial impact of Giana's disappearance wore off. On autopilot, he stood and motioned toward the door. "Come on, let's go see if they've heard back from Jimmy Rosolli."
Upon exiting the office, they headed toward the conference room to see if there were any updates. And that's when all Hell broke loose.
The noise started at the monitors. A shout of surprise, a loud call of, "Ranger! Sir, we need you at the monitors!" and what sounded like a stampede. Who knew all these CAT boots stomping on carpet would sound like a herd of cattle running?, Pseudo-Les thought dimly. He steered Mark toward the noise and peered over Ranger's shoulder at the monitor screen, his apathy turning to shock and then elation – it was Hector, standing at the open passenger door of a Rangeman SUV, leaning over the still-obscured occupant. Without a thought, Lester whirled and raced for the stairs, apparently having had the inclination to do so only seconds before the rest of the men. If the stampede had been loud a moment ago, now it was positively thunderous. The cacophony of boots pounding the steps as they hit the stairwell reached a deafening crescendo, and as Lester burst through the garage level access door and skidded to a stop in front of Hector, he realized he'd been holding his breath and sucked in a lungful with a loud, sharp gasp.
There stood Hector, menacing as ever, still on high alert from whatever Hell he'd subjected himself to. His guns drawn and pointed at the crowd of men, he stood unblinking, teeth bared. He was sweaty and bleeding from a few small visible gashes, and the left side of his shirt was stained heavily with blood. The Rangemen stood stock still, giving Hector a chance to assess the danger level and lower his weapons.
Slightly behind and to the side of him stood Giana. Gloriously filthy, her pouty bottom lip split and distended, and one eye swollen almost shut, she stood shivering and pale as fresh milk. Her jaw was clenched, in pain or in an effort to still her trembling, Les wasn't sure. He felt relief flood his soul, and the joy he felt at seeing her alive split his heart nearly in two. He took a step toward her and was rewarded with the sound of Hector chambering a bullet and Giana's involuntary step backward. Lester paused and took a closer look at her; her eyes were shiny, the look of desperation now easy to spot. There was also fear, exhaustion, and determination there, and Les felt his heart break a little at the thought of anyone misusing her.
He held his hands up in surrender to Hector, his eyes never breaking contact with Giana's. The two stared at each other, silent as Ranger murmured reassuring words to Hector. He slowly lowered the gun, flipped the safety on, and stepped to the side to hide Giana from the men now openly staring at her. Lester saw her fingers curl into the back of Hector's shirt, desperate for some kind of reassurance. She'd been hurt, and scared, for an entire day. The small fissure he'd felt erupt a moment ago burned hot in his chest, a fire that could only be quenched by holding her in his arms. As much as she needed reassurance of her safety right now…Lester was selfishly tempted to argue he needed it even more.
The silent standoff was broken when Mark pushed through the front line. As soon as she saw him, Giana started to weep openly. Heart-wrenching sobs ripped through the air and tore at Lester's soul before Mark stepped forward and swung her off her feet, bridal style, and strode quickly toward the elevators, Hector tight on his heels.
"My apartment. Second floor." Hector barked as Mark stepped through the doors with Giana tucked firmly against his chest. Bobby was quick to intercede. "Hec, I need to examine her – you, too – let's hit my office on five first." He stepped onto the elevator just before the doors slid shut, leaving Lester wanting and stripped in the Rangeman garage.