JE created all the characters below, I am merely taking them out for a little fun.

Jenny (JenRar) thank you once again for all your work as the beta on this story. You have an incredible gift for not only improving the technical aspects of the story, but for making it more fun too.

Chapter 14 – Letting it All Out

I dismissed the men from the morning meeting, pleased with the information that had been shared regarding current cases and overall business activity.

As the guys left, I called out to Lester and Hector to stay behind.

Les was beside me, so he turned his back to the departing group and raised an eyebrow. "What's doing, cuz?"

"I need a pulse on the guys," I told him as the reason for asking him to stay behind.

"Anything in particular?" he asked, proving that despite his joking exterior, when the situation called for it, he was fully capable of getting serious.

Each of the guys on the core team had a valuable skill, unparalleled by anyone else in the organization. Bobby was a peacemaker and could diffuse nearly any situation. I don't know if it was something that grew out of his skill set as a medic, but for whatever reason, he was the negotiator and the one that I could call on to stop a problem before it escalated.

Tank, aside from his sheer size for intimidation, spent part of his career in the Army as a drill sergeant. When things began to get disjointed, I could depend on him to pull everything back into shape. Whether that was behavior from the men, overall fitness, or general attitude, he could easily bring that persona out and the men automatically fell in line.

Then there was Lester. Sure, he joked and played harder than nearly anyone else I'd ever met, but there was a purpose behind that seemingly laid back character. He could size up a group faster than anyone I'd ever met. He had a gift for knowing where allegiances fell or the attitude of a group, and the amount of time he spent simply hanging out with the guys meant there was not a whisper of gossip in the building that didn't make its way to him.

In short, Lester's ability to get the guys to open up to him would enable him to get the information I needed without it seeming forced.

"I'm assuming everyone knows about me and Steph," I began.

"Man, that's old news. We all knew long before you did," he informed me, basically repeating what Tank had said.

"I need to know how the guys would respond to her working in the field again if she had a RangeMan partner," I told him, knowing that I could trust him to answer me honestly and to keep the information to himself.

He ran his hand over the top of his hair, rearranging the gelled spikes that were there. "Everybody was thrilled to see her moving in. It means she'll be safe and close by so we can all keep an eye on her. There's no issue at all with you guys being a couple and working together. But her in the field, not able to hear if someone is sneaking up her…I don't know how I feel about that, much less the guys."

"I'm going to talk to Hector about working with her, but before I make it public, I need to know if there's anything else I need to consider. She wants her life back, and a big part of that was the lower end bonds for Vinnie. If I tell her she can't do it, she'll try it anyway to make a point. But if I'm careful about helping her, then hopefully, we can at least keep her safe in the process," I told him, watching his eyes weigh the options and come to the same conclusion I had.

"I see the corner you're in, but…Hector?" Les tipped his head in the direction where Brett and Hector were standing going over some specs from a client system installation scheduled for later today. "Can't we keep her in the core team and let us back her up?"

"I suggested that, but she seemed to think it was a bad idea that it put her above everyone else, and she refuses to do anything that might allow her to be portrayed as using me for my money or influence. It's like she knows she needs help, but she won't just let me do it," I said, clearly voicing my frustration.

From his expression, I could tell he understood.

"Well, rock... Meet the hard place," he summed it up easily. Then he turned and looked behind him quickly, adding, "I'll put some feelers out and get the guys used to the idea of her being in the field again. My guess is they'll be worried about her getting hurt, but since we all know her, they'll understand why you're letting it happen."

I nodded that I'd heard him, and he knew the discussion was finished, so he turned and walked over to a small group and made a comment that had them all laughing right away.

Hector caught my eye, and I nodded to my office. He walked out, and I knew we'd meet up there. I spoke to a few of the guys on my way out of the conference room, realizing this was technically the first weekly staff briefing I'd attended since I'd gotten back from my mission. For some of the guys, it was their first chance to talk to me, and as a leader, I knew how important it was to let them see me walking around in control of the organization.

After making my way out, I turned down the hall and headed to my office, where Hector was waiting in a chair across from my desk.

I shut the door and addressed him in Spanish. "I need a favor."

"Name it," he replied, eager to do whatever I asked.

Years ago, I'd gotten Hector's file as a skip to bring in. He'd been arrested on some trumped up murder charges, and the DA had tried to negotiate with him to get him to turn evidence in exchange for his freedom. Hector had refused and run, instead of facing the certain death that jail or the plea deal with the DA would certainly mean.

When I caught him, he hadn't shown any fear, but he'd wisely recognized that he couldn't get away and had held his head up with pride, but not arrogance. Something about the way he carried himself caught my attention, and I talked to him while we drove from the warehouse where I'd found him to the police station, where I was supposed to turn him in. I still couldn't tell you what it was that made me want to help him. It might have been the reasons he gave for being so heavily involved in a gang, or it might have been that I understood the position he was in. Regardless of the reason, I'd decided to help.

Hector's sister had dated one of the gang leaders. She was an innocent girl, and he'd joined the gang to protect her because she'd refused to give up the man she thought she loved, despite the danger their relationship put her in. She'd been shot to deliver a message to the leader of the gang, and perhaps to Hector, too, who had risen pretty high up in the organization because of his lethal skills. He'd been as feared as the gang leader on his side of town, because most people had heard of his ability to use a knife as more than a prop, and it was common knowledge that the teardrops on his face had been earned and weren't there as decoration.

I'd found evidence to prove his innocence on the trumped up charges, keeping him from having to either sever his gang ties or go to jail. In exchange, he'd helped me out whenever a case brought me to his side of town. We'd worked together regularly enough that over time, we'd talked about stuff other than skips and intel, and one night after a take down, I'd asked if he was interested in coming to work for me. He'd told me that I'd saved his life, so he owed it to me. I'd never seen it that way, but from the day he entered RangeMan, he'd been an asset in so many different ways that I knew I'd done the right thing in helping him.

I didn't realize at the time, but he was a self taught genius with electronics, able to repair, install, and debug nearly anything that had wires. It only took me a few weeks to recognize how beneficial it was to have someone with his skills installing security systems. Not only could he do the work more efficiently than anyone else, but he also had an uncanny ability to find the vulnerable points of entry to a house or store and modify the system to accommodate the weak places. I'd never asked how he'd developed that skill, figuring it was probably better I didn't know how he'd learned to scope out a house.

Continuing in Spanish, I began outlining what I needed to tell him. "You're going to want to hear this one first," I warned him. "I want you to think it through, and then let me know if you think it's something you can handle. I'll totally understand if you don't think you can do this, but I'll need your help in figuring out who should do it."

His eyes narrowed as he listened to what I said, and I knew he was debating internally whether or not he would really tell me no.

"Stephanie wants to go back in the field to pick up the low end skips for Vinnie. I talked her into working with a partner from RangeMan, but she refuses to use anyone from the core team, because she thinks it would make the guys talk about her as though she were getting some kind of special treatment. She didn't want me to break up any of the current partners to free up someone for her, so that really only leaves you and Brett. When I gave her the choice—"

"I'll do it," he interrupted before I could tell him that she wanted to work with him.

I shook my head at his willingness to jump into this. "You realize you would be working with someone who can't hear you or the skip she's supposed to be picking up," I pointed out.

"I can be her ears," he pledged.

"But you don't speak English, and she doesn't understand Spanish, so she won't be able to read your lips." I felt the need to dwell on the negative a little more.

"No matter." He waved off that major concern just as quickly as Stephanie had.

"How will you communicate?" I asked, trying to help him see the difficulty of what he was in essence volunteering for.

"I sign, she understands," he informed me, before reversing it. "She signs, I understand."

Well, at least the two of them were on the same page. "I don't know if she can do this, but I refuse to tell her she can't without letting her try," I finally got down to the heart of what I needed from him.

Hector put his closed fist over his heart and looked me in the eye. "On my life, I'll keep her safe."

I believed he would lay down his own life to keep her safe, and I began to wonder why. They'd had very little interaction over the years – primarily due to the language barrier and the fact that I figured she was a little scared of Hector. But this pledge wasn't being made to repay a debt to me; this was more personal, and before I let him leave this building with my woman, I needed to understand what was going on.

"Why would you make that pledge?" I asked suspiciously.

"Estephania is just like Anastasia, my sister," he told me, putting any worries I might have had to rest.

What I knew of his sister came flooding back. Ana had been hearing impaired and was the reason Hector knew sign language in the first place. She'd been headstrong and had loved a difficult man – ultimately paying the price for that – an incident Hector still blamed himself for. If he looked at Stephanie as being like his sister, I knew no one could watch over her any better. He lost Anastasia when she was shot as a human message and I knew he'd give up his own life before letting something like that happen to Steph.

Despite that acknowledgment, I still had to level with him. "I'm asking you to work with her, to keep her safe, but you need to know how hard this is. Stephanie is…" Damn it, I couldn't even begin to say what she was. I needed to finish that sentence, but I didn't have the vocabulary to cover it. The pussy way out would be to say she was stubborn or to try to say she approached pick ups very differently than RangeMan and had a soft, sweet talk approach, but neither of those were what I wanted to say.

I must have paused too long, because he stood up and held his hand out for me to grasp his palm and cross our thumbs. To an outsider, it would look like we were about to arm wrestle, but I knew this was how his gang made a blood pledge.

"I understand," he assured me. "I will treat her as my own blood, and I will remember she is your life now. No harm will come to her when she is with me."

I tightened my grip to let him know I understood what he was saying and appreciated the lengths he was promising to go through to ensure her safety.

"Gracias," I replied, feeling it was completely inadequate.

"De nada," he assured me, letting go of my hand and stepping back.

Before I could tell him Stephanie would be in touch, he turned around and walked out. After he left, I was able to come up with numerous ways that this could go wrong between them, but I couldn't pull out now. If I was going be in Stephanie's life, then I had to accept that she needed to do this and give her the space to try. If it worked, I could be there to celebrate her success and independence, and if it didn't, I would be there to help her pick up the pieces, as well.

I went upstairs, wanting to see if Stephanie was awake yet, and if not, I had some ideas of how to bring her into the land of the living with a bang. Unfortunately, I couldn't put any of them into effect, because when I opened the door, she was awake, sitting on the floor, surrounded by stacks of CDs that had been in a box she'd packed from her apartment.

"What are you doing?" I asked when I was close enough for her to read my lips.

"I was sorting out my music to see if I can give any of it to Mary Lou or Valerie," she explained, pointing to two of the piles, before moving her finger to a third, larger stack and adding, "or throw them away because I don't think anybody would want or need it."

"Why are you getting rid of your music?" I asked without thinking.

She looked at me with an expression that clearly communicated she didn't appreciate that question. "Well, I could play the soundtrack to the movie Titanic around here if you really want to listen to it, but somehow, I didn't think you'd be into hearing it by yourself." Her sarcasm finished the message her face hadn't conveyed.

"But some of these probably meant something to you," I explained, feeling like her approach of just getting rid of everything was a bit of an overreaction.

"Yes, and having them around but not being able to enjoy them is like putting a piece of Pineapple Upside Down cake in front of me with a fork in my hand, but then surrounding it by some sort of invisible force field that keeps me from being able to take a bite. It's just a cruel reminder of what I want and can't have," she said, proving something had set her off this morning and I needed to get myself up to speed fast.

"What happened?" I wondered, figuring I'd never know if I didn't ask.

"Nothing," she replied with a clipped tone.

I put my finger under her chin to force her to look back up so I could talk to her. When she looked at me, I called her on her act and said, "Bullshit. Now tell me what set this off."

I let her look down, figuring she needed a minute to get her thoughts together.

Just as I was about to lift her chin once more, she started talking. "The ringing is getting better."

"That's good news," I said slowly, picking up on the fact she didn't agree with me.

"It would be, except that nothing is taking its place. I'm not getting any muffled sounds, any occasional blips of noise that would indicate my hearing is ever going to come back," she confessed, letting me in on the truth. She was realizing her fear that even though her ears were healing, her hearing wasn't going to return.

Before I could say something trite to try and console her, she started again. "I got up this morning and made some toast, turning on the television out of habit. I was finished eating, dressed, and about to leave the apartment, when I noticed it had been on the whole time and I'd never noticed. I used to have it on so I could have a little background noise in my apartment and to occasionally hear some news that was outside of the 'Burg grapevine. But it had been on for over an hour, and I hadn't taken the time to sit and read the closed captioning, which meant it did me no good."

She set a CD down hard enough that a small piece of plastic broke off and flew across the floor. I made a mental note to pick it up when she finished talking so that she didn't step on it later and cut her foot. I knew better than to move right now, or I'd risk breaking the spell of her really telling me what was going on. As much as she accused me of being closed off, if it dealt with her feelings, Stephanie was as bad as I was about opening up.

"Sometimes, it doesn't bother me – I mean, I can't hear, so I don't realize what I'm missing, but since the ringing has begun to go away, I'm aware of how quiet it is. There's just nothingness around me, and I hate it. I can't turn on music or the television to make it go away. It's just…nothing…all the time, and it makes me feel lonely, even though I like being by myself." She stopped and forcefully wiped at her eyes, as though she were angry with the tear ducts that dared to act up while she was mad. "I feel so stupid saying it out loud, but I don't like the constant quiet. My brain can still hear things, memories of sound, but my ears just…can't."

And with that admission, a single round tear began its descent from the corner of her eye. It only made it to the top of her cheek before I couldn't stand the distance anymore. I kicked the CDs out of the way and fell to my knees in front of her to pull her into my arms. I could easily take yelling – hell, if she wanted to throw shit and watch it crash into pieces, I'd gladly provide her with fragile things to pitch against the wall – but the look of being completely lost, trying to keep a grip on her emotions with that fat tear betraying how torn up she was, pushed me past what I could handle. I had to ease this pain, but I knew of nothing that would do it. The truth was, she was facing the truth, and the truth wasn't something you could fight. It merely had to be accepted.

She grabbed me and held me with a fierceness that I could feel. With her face buried against my chest and away from my field of vision, she finally let go and cried. Her body racked with sobs that were sharp enough to leave what I knew would be scars in my heart. I'd never known a pain like this – watching the woman I loved grieving over the loss of her hearing. I wished there were words to take this away, or at least ease it in some way, but I had nothing.

Finally, I couldn't bear it anymore. My mouth opened, and I spoke in Spanish of how sorry I was that she was going through this. I told her of how I hated that I hadn't stopped her before she'd left that day to get Rex. If I'd just delayed her leaving by a matter of minutes, she might have missed this whole ordeal, and that knowledge hurt me more than anything else. There was a role I could have played in this, but I'd let her go anyway.

I don't know how long she cried and how long I held her, spouting off words she couldn't hear and wouldn't have understood, even if she'd heard them. But finally, Stephanie's body began to still, and I could feel her taking long, deep breaths, trying to pull herself back together. I waited for her to indicate she was okay before I relaxed my hold on her.

Stephanie pulled back with a red face, but I couldn't tell if it was from crying or embarrassment. "I'm sorry I ruined your shirt," she offered softly.

"I don't give a shit about the shirt," I told her honestly, still keeping her in my arms. "I'm sorry about all you are going through. I wish I could take it away or do something to help you."

I got a half smile at that. "You are doing something. Just letting me get it out of my system without trying to talk me out of it was big. I've been fighting giving into the tears for a while now, knowing they wouldn't do any good, but I think I'd just hit the point of needing to get them out so they'd leave me alone."

As strange as it sounded, I understood. While I didn't tend to break down and cry, I knew the idea of holding back emotions until the dam had enough pressure to burst, and then having to find an outlet to get it out. "Did it help?"

She sat back, forcing me to let her go, despite not wanting to. After a moment of true thought about my question, she replied, "Yeah, I think it did."

We both sat on the floor with the scattered CDs around us as the only evidence of what had just occurred. She broke the silence first and asked, "What brought you up here?"

I decided to skip the plans I'd been making on my way up and went with the other reason I'd been seeking her out. "I talked to Hector about partnering with you when you are ready to do some work for Vinnie, and he's more than glad to do it. He didn't seem to think communicating would be an issue, either, so it looks like whenever you want it, you have a partner."

"Wow," she replied, as though she were surprised by the news. I waited for her to say something else, but as the silence dragged on, I began to worry that maybe she hadn't really intended to do this and I might have overstepped.

Just before I asked if she was having second thoughts, she spoke up. "Can I swing by the bonds office now and see if there are any files Connie can give me? Maybe I could come back and run a surface search to get a plan together for going after them, and then I could talk to Hector about when we could round them up."

I liked that plan, especially the part where she did some research and came up with a plan. I knew she was much more likely to be both successful and safe if she had a well-developed plan to apprehend whoever Connie gave her.

"You can do anything you'd like," I assured her. "Do you want some company?"

"No, I think I can handle a trip to the bonds office. I'll pick up something to eat, and they'll gladly let me hang out there for a while. Then when I come back home, I'll be more myself, I promise," she said, as though afraid that I would be worried that she might melt down again.

"You don't need to be anything other than what you are," I assured her. "Don't go hide there because of this. I want to be the one you come to when you need to be held, when you need a safe place to let go of all the shit you've been carrying around. Don't run from me because you think I can't handle emotions. Just because I don't often show them doesn't mean I don't feel them," I told her, trying to soften my initial words so it didn't sound like a lecture.

"I know," she replied quickly. "But I don't like falling apart like that. I mean, I do feel a little better for some reason, but I don't like admitting that it became too much for me to handle. You're always so together, and I don't want you to think I'm some hysterical woman who can't get through the day without tears."

"I don't think that. I never could," I told her flatly. "I know you too well to ever misunderstand your actions like that. And don't forget, this impacts me, too. Seeing you hurt, knowing what you've lost... I know it isn't the same, but it still has an effect on me."

She touched my face, and I felt the comfort pass from her to me in a tangible way. Just a simple touch of her skin on mine, and I felt better. What I'd said was true. I may not have cried myself, but holding her as her emotions passed between us left me feeling as though I'd released a great deal of pent up anger at what she was being forced to endure.

She looked around at the mess and laughed. "I don't fall apart often, but when I do, I do it big, don't I?"

"I don't think you can take the credit for the fall out. I'm pretty sure I was the one that made this mess," I reminded her, glad to see her smiling and refusing to stay down, even if it would be understandable in light of what she was going through.

I stood up, still feeling the pull in my leg from the slowly healing injury, and then offered my hand to help her up, as well.

"You ready to head out?" I asked.

She looked around and said, "No, I'm going to clean this up and drop off some of the CDs that I know Mary Lou and Val would like, and then I'll swing by Vinnie's."

"Want me to help?" I offered, willing to get back on the floor and do anything I could.

"No, I think it's something I need to do," she replied confidently. "But thank you for earlier. I think I needed to get that out of the way so that I could move forward."

I cupped her face and smiled as her eyes closed and she leaned into my hand. I had a feeling she was absorbing the comfort I was offering just as I had done with her earlier.

We spoke for a few more minutes, before I headed back downstairs. I knew there would be bumps along the road like that, and I recognized that it hurt or she wouldn't have felt the need to let it out, but I couldn't help but feel good about how she'd let me comfort her. I'd watched her shut her emotions down as expertly as any soldier could when she was around Joe, but with me, she let them out.

I didn't fear her ever going back to the cop, and since he was married, I didn't worry about him trying to come between us, but I guess there had been a little seed of doubt that because of their long history, he might know her better than I do and perhaps would have been able to handle this whole situation better. But after seeing her let go and show me how she truly felt instead of bottling it away from me, I knew we might not have the same history as she and Morelli, but what we had was even better.

We had a future.

A/N: After dropping away last week I wanted to warn everyone that I'm not posting again this week because of the Thanksgiving holiday. I'll be back in my office next Tuesday and will post again then. Sorry for another posting pause, but I'm looking forward to some time away from work and with my family. I hope you all have a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving.