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Chapter 2

Rubbing both eyes with the heals of his hands, Ranger tried to ease the tension that had been building. It had been intensifying ever since the team had finished their last assignment and had been sent home, only to be dropped right into another problem.

Actually, not all of this was a complete surprise. Stephanie had alerted him to Chef's situation before they left. It had been hard to hear that his former team member could be involved in illegal activities. But that had been nothing compared to the blow of finding out that he had been killed.

Slowly he pushed away from his desk. This night seemed endless and he was nearly drained of all energy, but now that he had a break, there was only one thing on his mind. He had to go and see if Stephanie was still outside of his office. He had been thinking of her every day for weeks, wishing that he could be with her, talk to her. But so far, since they got back, he had only very briefly seen her standing in the shadows at the far end of the hallway,

Though it had been such a fleeting moment, and he had not been able to do anything more that glance at her, Ranger knew that Stephanie had been waiting there. He knew because he had felt the tingling on the back of his neck. The tingling that always told him that she was near. He had missed that for two long weeks. There were no words to describe what it meant to him to feel it again.

It had been strong when they'd been ushered into his office earlier, but strangely, he did not feel it so much now. The disappointment over that, and of finding the hallway empty, left him with a hollow feeling in his gut.

There was nothing that he wanted more than to see her smile. Feel her arms wrapped around him. He had missed that more than he could say. He would call her, he decided. It was late, or was it early, he had nearly lost all track of time, but he needed to at least hear her voice. Ranger had just turned on his phone when he was distracted, again. Hearing his footsteps in the hall, Tank called out to him.

"We have to get there ASAP," Tank said, replacing the phone in its cradle and looking up as Ranger stepped into his office. Ranger nodded and slipped his cell phone back into one of the pockets in his pants as he entered. Unfortunately, and as much as it killed him, the call to Stephanie would have to wait.

As per the instructions from the general, before he left ahead of them to get back to DC, arrangements had been made to get the whole team together. They would soon be gone again, with no way of knowing how long it would be this time.

"The guys can be ready in fifteen minutes," Ranger said, dragging his hand over his face. They were all exhausted from the events of the past twenty-four hours. None of them had gotten any sleep, and it didn't look like that was going to change anytime soon. "Benny will be here with the chopper for us, any minute now," he added.

Despite their fatigue, both men moved swiftly, there was no time to lose. They had just lost a friend, and they were not willing to lose anyone else because of what he had become. Even the information, that Stephanie had found a couple of weeks ago, had done little to prepare them for this.

Everything was happening too fast. Even before the debriefing from their last assignment was over, the General had called them all in, assembling the team that had worked together years ago. Kinkaid knew that this group of Army Rangers had been through a lot together, and he was hoping that they could figure out who would want him dead, and to discover everything that Ben, 'the chef' Davron had been doing before he was killed.

Ranger followed his men to the roof, and within minutes, the black helicopter lifted slowly up into the gray cloudless sky. Just before dawn, the town below them was still asleep. The ride was smooth, but the atmosphere inside the chopper was turbulent and most of them had trouble keeping their blank faces in place. They were all lost in their own thoughts. And the mood only got darker the closer they got to DC, and the mystery that they needed to solve.

Ranger looked back, watching as his building disappeared from view. He regretted not calling Stephanie, he knew she was going to be hurt when she found out he was gone. Time had not been on their side lately.

They had been growing closer over the past few months, and he did not want to deliberately keep anything from her. But this time he truly did not know what he could have said to her, even if he'd had the chance to talk to her. Not only was what they were doing considered Top Secret, the general had warned them that since they didn't know who was behind this or why, they could all be under surveillance.

Ben had been killed. As part of the elite team, they could not rule out the possibility that he could have just been the first one. It was conceivable that they could all be targets. Until they knew everything about why he had died, they had to assume that their association with Chef could put them all in danger.

Ranger understood this all too well, and he knew that if someone connected Stephanie to him, she would be in danger too. No, Stephanie would not have been happy to hear that again, but it was the truth, his reality. Still, he wished that he could have at least said goodbye.

Ranger almost shook his head in frustration. His life was so screwed up. What he wanted from it had changed since he had met Stephanie Plum. Of course, he had been too thick headed to admit it for the longest time, especially to himself.

It had been so convenient to let the policeman take the blame. Easy to keep his emotional distance from her when he let himself think that she was interested in someone else. But by dumping Morelli, Stephanie had changed all of that.

When she had taken him up on his offer to have her run searches for him at RangeMan, he realized just how badly he had messed things up. Pushing her away for so long had to have been the stupidest thing he had ever done.

He beat himself up regularly for that, and at the same time, he tried to believe that he could now make her wishes come true. Yeah, he knew that she had a plan. Her heart was so open, her face so easy to read. He knew. That she had chosen him was singularly the biggest honor he had ever been given.

And yet, here he was, leaving her behind, still trying to keep her out of his life so that she would not be hurt. The last time they had actually been together had not been the best either. He had just received notice that they were to leave when Stephanie had come looking for him.

What she had to tell him had not been expected. He had been shocked, didn't know what to say. Then he was called out and before he knew it, they were loaded up and gone. For two weeks he had not been able to forget the look he had seen in her face. It told him that she did not understand. That she was hurt, by him. And that had been tearing him up inside all this time.

If only he had been able to talk to her before leaving again. He closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the tall seat. Not that doing so could block out the fact that his world had once again come between him and the only woman that had meant anything to him.

He wondered if she knew that he was trying to do something about that. In a flash of brilliance, that made his breath catch suddenly, it occurred to him that he should probably tell her. The assignments he had taken lately had been short ones, for the simple reason that he didn't want to be away from Stephanie any more that he had to. That, he realized, would have been a good thing for her to know.

In fact, the one they had just come home from was to have been the last. Would have been the last. Until word of Chef's death changed everything. Now Ranger was back to protecting her from the dangers that followed him. Back to leaving her. He hated it more than he could say.

Tank glanced over at his boss, his friend. Ranger looked like he always did. Blank face, stoic, fierce. Under it all, though, Tank knew that Ranger was worried. The safety of his team had always been his first concern, and now, if he was reading things right, Ranger was worried about Stephanie too.

Things had been changing for the two of them lately, and Tank had been watching with interest as they turned up their flirting by several notches. About damn time, if you asked him. But there was nothing to be done about that at the moment.

If they were being threatened, they had to deal with it and treat it seriously. Not that he liked it, he didn't, not one bit. No conversation was necessary for Tank to know how his friend felt. He just knew. He felt the same. If he had been in a relationship, he would be worrying too, just like he knew Ranger was now. The best thing to do, at this point, was to go and get the job done, so that the danger would be over.

Taking a look around, Tank recognized the fire in the eyes that met his. The determination to make things right. They were all dealing with the knowledge that everything all came back to what happened to Chef. There were still a lot of questions about him to be asked, and answered.

Ben had been part of their first team, back before Ranger had earned his name. They liked him because he knew how to cook, his nickname said it all. And 'Chef' had lived up to his name, using whatever ingredients he could find, in their different locations, to create the best meals they had ever had. Plus, the guy was fun to be around. He loved to talk and had enough stories to keep everyone entertained for hours at a time.

With the information that Stephanie had come across, Ranger and Tank had contacted the general right before they left on the assignment. Kinkaid had taken the news seriously, he knew that it could be even worse than Ranger thought. All of these men had been regarded as the best of the best, and Kinkaid had kept tabs on them since the team had broken up.

It was one thing to follow their careers, and another entirely to snoop into their personal lives, but the general felt like something had been off about Davron. As far as Kinkaid was concerned, Chef had been as good a Ranger as he was because of the rest of the team. He had long ago noticed that as long as he was with them, he had been his best self.

Now it would not be long before he had to tell them what he now knew about Davron. The news, that Ben's ex-wife had written a book, had been only the beginning. The rest of the information that Stephanie had dug up did not bode well for the former team member either.

Ranger saw the look Tank shot him. He gave a slight nod. In his mind, he tried to make sense of all of this. A train of thought started and he let it run through his mind. He remembered the moment that Stephanie had shared the bad news about Ben with him. A smile almost tipped the corners of his mouth at the memory.

Standing there in his office, twisting her hands together as she told him that, among other things, his good friend was about to be exposed by his ex-wife. The look in her eyes telling him that she was worried about how this was going to make him feel, how it could affect him and the other members of the team.

That was one of the things he loved so much about her. In her own way, she was always looking out for him, feeling the need to protect him as much as she could, but always willing to be completely honest with him. And Stephanie had good instincts. She had been right to be suspicious about the book.

Ranger felt the heat rise in his chest. Melissa had never been good for Chef. He had almost been relieved when Chef divorced her. But vipers like her never went away, and this book proved it. Just a fictional story, she'd said, when Kinkaid had confronted her. It was only 'loosely based' on her former husband's life. Another one of her huge lies.

She'd never had an original thought in her life. Ranger knew that someone must have given her the idea to do this, and he imagined that she had been all too happy to go along with it. Because what it would turn out to be, for her, could be pure profits, and that was all she cared about. All this from a book that, in reality, was a tell all, full of the stories from the part of Chef's life that she had never had any part of, that she had always been jealous of. What did she care that the things she was about to share would be giving out more information than should ever be allowed to go public.

That was the number one reason why, when the General had gotten that call from Ranger, he had responded immediately. Kinkaid found out the details of the upcoming book. Fortunately, he had the time, and the clout, to stop the first print run. National security reasons carried the weight he needed, but not in time to stop the select number of ARCs, that had been sent out. The buzz generated by these advance readers was causing him great concern.

Kinkaid had gathered the original team in a conference call weeks ago. Not only to let them know about the book, and the kinds of stories that were in it. But also to warn them, so they would be prepared if anyone asked if they had had a part in any of it.

Melissa may have been too uninformed to know what kind of trouble she was causing. But whoever was working with her was not. There were definitely some ulterior motives behind this. The general was naturally worried about what those motives could be, and the team was to be on high alert until they got some answers. When they did, those people would definitely be dealt with.

From the moment he knew about it, Ranger had wondered how Chef had taken the news about Melissa's book. It had been a long time since he had last seen his friend, and if they had not been out of the country on assignment, he would have gone to talk to him. This had to be hard on him, and no matter what he had done, he could have used some support in a time like that. Regret was a hard pill to swallow, there had been no way to visit him, and now he would never see Chef again.

Along with the rest of the team, Ranger was convinced that the fact Chef had been found dead, only days after the book had been announced, was no coincidence. Someone wanted him permanently silenced, and it was anyone's guess who that was. Maybe it was the people Melissa had worked with.

Or, given Stephanie's research, Ranger worried it could be someone that Chef himself had known. It seems that he had not been as careful as he should have been about who he associated with, made deals with. There was so much that they needed to know about all of this.

Kinkaid had flown back only hours ago, and now he met the the chopper in DC, the rest of the team joining them as they transferred to the private plane that was waiting for them. The briefing started as soon as they were off the ground, and the next couple of hours were spent in an emotional upheaval for all of them.

The last thing the general had wanted to do was share what he now knew about Chef. It was not any easier for him to say, than it was for the team to hear. Ranger had heard most of this from Stephanie a couple of weeks ago. Now he looked into the faces of the men he had once worked with so closely.

Tank and Bobby already knew all this, they were silent as the general laid out the details that he had. Since they were still with him at RangeMan, Ranger knew what their lives had been like since leaving the Special Forces. He turned his attention to Cameron Shields, the explosives expert they'd called Demo, he still had a hard look about him. So did Anson Bing, AKA Bowie, and Juan Cabrera, or Jefe. Ranger knew that these guys had been involved in as many undercover co-ops as he had, just with some different alphabet agencies.

The rest of the team had become civilians after their time was up. But none of them had lost their edge, he could see it in their faces. They were all ready to make things right for one of their own. That was what this was all about, no matter how hard it was to know what their friend had been up to.

Finally, the general ordered them to rest before they arrived at their destination. He knew it would not be easy, but he needed them to be sharp. After a few minutes, he looked around, satisfied. They had all been trained well. Shutting down and grabbing sleep whenever they could was still a great skill to have. They would all feel a little bit better when they got there.

Kinkaid set his watch alarm and closed his eyes. Knowing what they had ahead of them, he could use some rest too.

. .oOo.