A/N: Standard disclaimer applies to this story. Highlands Girl, thanks to your incredible beta skills this chapter actually flows.

My apologies for the long break between chapter postings. I fractured my right elbow a little over a week ago, and learning to type in a splint has been a challenge.

Chapter 13. I haven't ever really found a place that I call home

Pitiful, was the only word that came to mind, when Stephanie took in her living space for what seemed to be the first time in ages since moving into her apartment. Between the outdated bathroom and lackluster kitchen, it was an interior decorator's wet dream, assuming they could rip everything out to start with a clean slate. Even though she'd had the chance to do just that, on more than one occasion, she hadn't taken it, unwilling to spend good money on things, which were bound to be destroyed in the next disaster. Instead of accepting Ranger's offer of a good security system to prevent it from happening yet again, she swapped one hand-me-down couch for another, never giving it a second thought. And so here she was, an adult, living in an apartment fit for a coed.

That's just depressing, she sighed inwardly, toying with the stone of her Grandma's necklace. Walking into the kitchen, she caught sight of Rex's empty aquarium on the counter. It was now four months since he'd moved on to the big wheel in the sky, but she couldn't bring herself to get another hamster. It didn't feel right to replace a friend because her heart told her that true friends were irreplaceable. Looking away from his soup can, she reached into the fridge to grab a bottle of Coke, poured it into a glass, and headed back to the lumpy couch in the living room.

Her conversation with Grandma earlier in the day had given her plenty of food for thought, and going after Marlene Kaminski, her only outstanding skip, had lost its appeal. After checking her bank balance online, she leaned back against the couch and closed her eyes. Since she'd started running searches for RangeMan on a more regular basis to supplement her bounty hunting income, she'd built a bit of a nest egg and could afford to make tangible changes to her lifestyle. Until now, she hadn't thought much about the future, but the possibility of spending another twenty years between these four ugly walls, sent her reeling.

Moping around the apartment, which had become nothing more than a place to crash, was a waste of time, when she was certain that her inbox at RangeMan was overflowing thanks to Tank's efforts. Something has to give, she thought, taking a drink from her glass. The bubbles tickled her nose, and she coughed, struggling to catch her breath, when the carbonated liquid went down the wrong pipe. Wiping tears from her eyes, she rose from the couch, set her glass on the table, and went to change into her uniform.

Half an hour later, she pulled into the garage on Haywood and angled her bucket of bolts into its usual spot next to the space for Ranger's Turbo. The shiny black coupe was missing, so she assumed the man had gotten tied up in Boston for another day. Her heart sunk; as mad as she'd been at him earlier, she was anxious to see him and was hoping that he'd be back by now. She stared at the key fob on her keychain that he'd replaced while they were still in Rumson, erasing all traces of the morning fight on that fateful day. It was as if it never happened.

She let out a deep sigh. Doesn't he realize how screwed up this is? How dysfunctional it makes us?

An abrupt rap on her window brought her out of her mental ramblings. Looking through the glass, she saw Hector leaning against a black truck, wearing an amused expression.

She opened the car door and slipped from behind the wheel. "¡Hola, Hector!"

"¡Hola, chica! You comin' up? ¿O vas a sentar en tu coche toda la noche?" he asked in a mixture of slightly accented English and slowly enunciated Spanish. "Sentar means sit, coche means car, noche means night."

Shortly after she started running searches for RangeMan on a semi-permanent basis, she figured out Hector's secret. Most people didn't question what they were told without good reason, but Stephanie Plum was not most people. And one night, while she was running a search on a hacker wanted by the Feds, it occurred to her that an electronics genius capable of obtaining information inaccessible by the software she used, and creating identities, which passed governmental background checks, had to be fluent in English. She suspected that the majority of RangeMen were aware of his being bilingual, but respected his wish to be addressed in the language he preferred.

When she mustered up the courage to ask him about it, she got a rare but warm smile in return and a confession that he was born and raised about thirty miles north of Trenton, in Perth Amboy. She walked away from his cave, as he called his office next to the gun range, with a deal: as long as she kept that knowledge to herself, he'd teach her Spanish. Somehow, she felt that she'd been suckered into a situation that wasn't a fair tradeoff, but didn't complain, on most days.

"No, I'm not sitting in the car all night." She hoisted her bag onto her shoulder and slammed the car door with her hip to ensure it stayed shut. "Giving me three new words to learn is just wrong. The deal was for one!"

"Sí. But you're forgetting that you get fined for unsafe behavior." Hector smiled, extending his fist, and started counting off fingers. "One, daydreaming in the car. Two, driving a clunker that can stall out anywhere. Three, keeping your gun in the cookie jar," he paused for effect, "and that favor you asked me for is done. So, really, I should've given you four words…"

Forgetting to grumble about his bringing up two behaviors, which were as much a part of her lifestyle as sugar binges, she bit back a shriek of glee at the news that he came through for her. Anxious to get to his cave, she headed for the elevators, not watching her step, and would have flopped on her butt, if Hector hadn't caught her under the elbow.

"You okay, Angel?"

A sizzle of electricity shot up her arm, and she would have tripped again, but he held steady, guiding her to the elevators without loosening his hold.

"Esteph?" he asked with concern evident in his tone.

"Huh?" She gave him a look of a deer caught in the headlights of an eighteen-wheeler. Realizing the surge had been one-sided, she shook off her stupor. It didn't look as if he knew what he was, or rather could become, and she wasn't about to change that. She didn't want him to think she was crazy, so she gave him a small smile and said, "Yeah, all good. Lead the way."

Another half an hour later, she was strolling through the fifth floor to her cubby, with a small cardstock envelope tucked away into the back pocket of her shoulder bag.

Aside from the buzz of electronic equipment and quiet conversations, the control room was usually quiet, but in the last seven days, after Bobby's departure, it was even more so. Naturally, neither the TPD, nor RangeMan investigations had made any headway in locating the body, though, the core team didn't hide their leaning on every available source. In the absence of closure, the morale at RangeMan had hit rock bottom. Even the usual suspects like Lester, Vince, and Manny, who could be counted on to liven up the mood with pranks or raunchy jokes weren't their usual jovial selves. The gym and the gun range were seeing extra traffic as the guys worked through the loss of their colleague and friend.

Maybe things will get better after the memorial service tomorrow? Stephanie asked herself. Her friend wasn't gone but was missing from her life just the same. Even if mourning him didn't seem appropriate, the weight that settled over her chest every time she wondered whether she'd see him again made it hard to breathe.

Who's going to patch me up when I don't want to go to St. Francis? Yeesh, what an idiot! She sighed, aggravated by her short-lived memory lapse. How the hell will I cover up not needing medical assistance after my next mishap, if he's not here? She pressed her thumbs to the corners of her eyes. Enough of this nonsense. Your mascara isn't waterproof! She took a deep cleansing breath. One thing at a time. Bobby is fine. And I'm an adult, I'll figure it out.

The pep talk calmed her down enough to delve into the stack of search requests, piled high in her inbox. After working for a few hours, she sent another set of results to the printer and stretched. A telltale tingle at the nape of her neck told her that the man, whose return she so eagerly awaited, was now in the building and most likely aware of her presence.

I need… coffee. And maybe one of Ella's blueberry muffins. Beating a hasty escape to the break room, she tried convincing herself that she wasn't hiding from Ranger, just buying a minute or ten, before asking him the million dollar question. She might have felt she was entitled to an explanation about Julie and Scrog, but there was no guarantee that he'd agree. Her palms were sweaty, and her hands were shaking when she went to snag a muffin off the tray on the break room table. Do I have any chocolate at my desk? She tried to remember, as she pondered the beverage choices available. None were all that high on the liquid courage scale, and she needed sugar to settle her nerves.

Taking a sip of her coffee, she spilled a little on the counter, when she jumped, startled by the loud guffaw from the hallway. As of late, the sound was so rare inside RangeMan, that she stilled to hear snippets of conversation, telling herself that if Vince and Manny were out in the open, she wasn't eavesdropping.

The guys were talking about the new RangeMan medic, Morgan Carter. Apparently, he wasn't signing off on Brett's return to active duty after a concussion, and Brett wasn't too happy about it. Stephanie remembered getting an email from Carter to schedule a time to go over her medical history, which she'd quickly deleted, thinking that if she ignored it, he'd get a hint and leave her alone. But now that they made him sound like a total hard-ass, she wasn't as certain that her decision had been a wise one.

Draining the last of her coffee, she rinsed her mug and headed for Ranger's office. The door was closed, and she heard the rumble of his voice, but couldn't make out what he was saying.

What language is that? German? She shook her head and turned away from the door. This definitely fell into the realm of eavesdropping, and if she wanted him to trust her with his secrets in the future, doing so was the wrong way to go about it.

Ranger felt Steph approach his office and then walk away after a few seconds. But he didn't interrupt his phone call to find out if she were ready to talk or to stop her from leaving. He told himself that he was putting this much effort into locating Gwyneth Yates for Stephanie's sake. Brown had suggested that she might be convinced to help Stephanie learn to manage the hypersensitivity to other immortals, preventing future blackouts, and Ranger thought it was worth a shot. But his ardent search for the elusive woman wasn't entirely selfless: the hunter in him had awakened, motivated by the thrill of the chase and the desire to show Gwyneth that no matter how good she had gotten at covering her tracks, she couldn't hide from him.

Minutes earlier, when he'd walked into the office after his ill-timed trip to Boston, he found that despite his doubts, Hector had delivered the results he and Tank were waiting for. On the secure drive accessible solely by the core team, were files with copies of documents showing the state of affairs of the late Gwyneth Yates, an art dealer of SoHo, New York. One file containing articles, published in art journals from all over the world, which Hector assembled in chronological order, got his attention. All the articles were by Guinevere Yates, an art theft investigator, specializing in recovering stolen masterpieces. Hector pulled the information on Guinevere together because it appeared as though she was Gwyneth's only living relative, a niece. But Ranger suspected that wasn't the case.

The next file he opened had him reaching for the phone, disregarding the time difference between Geneva and Trenton. Yates had been just sixty miles north three days ago, but the trail could easily go cold in Europe.

The security footage, pulled from the cameras at the terminal four of John F. Kennedy International Airport in Jamaica, Queens, showed her boarding the flight to Zurich, Switzerland, giving him a visual confirmation that Gwyneth and Guinevere were one and the same. Before the images of her current passport and boarding pass were fully loaded on his screen, he'd retained the investigative services of Jason Sheridan, the owner of Quecksilber Sicherheit, a private security firm based in Geneva. When Brown made contact the next time, Ranger would have a starting point and local help for him to continue the search for Guinevere, nee Gwyneth Yates.

By the time Ranger hung up the phone, Stephanie had finished her work for the day and gone home. Looking at the camera feed over the empty chair in her cubby, he rubbed the back of his neck to release tension. The trip to Boston, where he'd crammed the work of at least a week into three days, left him weary and frustrated. As it were, returning to Trenton a day later than he intended put a wrinkle in his plans. Instead of welcoming Carter on board the day she started at RangeMan, he'd have to call a special meeting to introduce the new core team member and medic, before the memorial service for Brown tomorrow.

Shutting down his computer, he briefly considered going over to Stephanie's apartment, but nixed the idea. As much as he wanted to see her, he wasn't going to until she sought him out. After she'd turned him down in his own house, he wasn't about to give her a chance to do it again.

You want time, Babe? Take it. His patience unwavering, he could wait as long as it took for her to make up her mind. He'd always warned her though, he wasn't above applying pressure to get the desired outcome. With predatory gleam in his eyes, he walked out of his office and headed for the stairs to the penthouse. You'll come around, Babe. Sooner rather than later, given the right incentive.

A/N: Thank you, babesrus2, for telling me that Hector deserved to be immortal. I couldn't agree more, so there you go. Hope it was as fun for you guys to read and it has been for me to write. After all, that's what we're here for, right?

TBC