. .oOo.

Chapter 7

The message she received late that afternoon was unexpected. Stephanie had actually been leaving for the day, and had even made her way to the elevator before it arrived. She was exhausted. Between her searches for Rodriguez and all of the emotionally draining extra work she was trying to do to help Ranger, every minute of her day had been jam packed. The only break she'd had was at lunch.

With her phone in hand, ready to make a call, Stephanie was startled to get a message notification. She held it up and stared at the words on the screen. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw who it was from. Elation over seeing his name there quickly turned to panic. She was scared to know what Ranger had to say to her after all this time.

With a death grip on her phone, Stephanie took a deep breath before opening the message. Ranger was a man of few words, and, of course, his texts were no exception. 'Please check search files. Instructions included. Thanks. R'

Short and sweet. With a quick text of her own, she let him know she was on it. Stephanie didn't give her evening plans a second thought. Ranger needed her help so she hurried back to her desk and brought up the search programs again.

At first Stephanie wasn't sure if she should be worried about what was in that file. It was enough for her to know that Ranger had asked for her help. Within minutes, she had it open in front of her. Her breath hitched, it was file BD845562, and she immediately understood. This was the ID number that had been given to the file she had opened about Ben Davron. The one that had started all of the trouble to begin with.

After reading the instructions, Stephanie sat back and closed her eyes. Her shift may have been over, but she knew that she was not going anywhere for a long time. She sucked in a deep breath before turning her attention back to the screen.

Ranger wanted her to keep digging into his friends life. Of course she would do it, that was not the question, it's what had she been doing all along anyway. But for a brief moment, she remembered the reaction that she thought she had seen in him when she'd found information before, what would it be like when she uncovered more of Chef's secrets?

Pushing all of her worries aside, she looked closely at the words on the screen. Ranger had sent her what looked like account numbers, and she was pretty sure that she knew what they were for. The rest of his clues confirmed it. It was a bit more complicated than her other searches on Davron had been, but with this additional, specific data, Stephanie was able to pull up everything that she was looking for.

The picture that all of this new intel painted was not good. In fact, the numbers that she was looking at told her that this man had been playing with the big boys for a long time. But the most disturbing thing that she had discovered was that he had been playing with so many of them. Now if she could figure out who they all were, she would really have some solid answers for Ranger.

Just as she would do with any of her searches, Stephanie followed the steps that Rodriguez had taught her. 'Tricks of the trade', he had told her, and she knew that they worked. She also knew that it was not going to be easy, but she had to follow the accounts as far as she could to see where they came from. Every trick, every skill that she had learned was put into play as she traced the money back to their origins. In the end, code names were all that she came up with. Stephanie had wanted more, but she knew she was actually lucky to have gotten this deep.

Three hours after getting his text, Stephanie got out her phone and sent another short text of her own to Ranger. "Answers in file." It was the safest and quickest way to let him know what she had uncovered. Her phone was still in her hand when it buzzed again.

"Thanks."

She smiled and set the phone down on the desk. Stephanie knew that she had done as much as she could for now, but still she felt reluctant to leave. This contact with Ranger, as brief as it had been, had sent her reeling again. This time it felt so much better. Just the idea that he was still talking to her, still needed her, filled her chest with a calm that she had not felt in weeks. She would sit here and enjoy that feeling for just a little bit longer.

. .oOo.

Aban carefully snuck into the small room, trying to contain the nervous energy that pulsed through his body. He was not supposed to be here. After coming for him days ago, he had been told to abandon this place, never to return. Since then he had been in hiding, but now there was something he needed from here. Everything that he had worked so hard to compile was still here and he could not leave it behind.

It was not easy to be back here. In his chest his heart tightened. The plants on the roof above him were probably wilted and dying now. He could do nothing about that, no matter how it hurt him to leave them behind. Maybe it was symbolic. Aban could not help but let that thought creep into his mind again. It was morbid, but he did not kid himself, he knew that his days were numbered.

Again, he made himself look back at the mess he had made of his life. All of the days and nights that they had spent babysitting passing along information was over for now Aban. This assignment had kept them busy for years, but what had they truly gained? What had it all been for?

That it had come to this was not a surprise. Aban had seen a lot of what was happening, but even he was unprepared when they were asked to find the chef. They had not worked with him for nearly a year, there had been other people to watch since then, and Aban could see no reason why they would want Davron now. Mahir insisted that it was not for them to understand their orders, they just needed to do what was required of them, his devotion to the cause never allowing him to question any of the things they had done.

Aban had never come to that point. As hard as he had tried to silence it, his father's voice was still in his head, asking him who were these people to whom he had pledged such loyalty. The answer to that question had never satisfied him. Not in all the years he had given to them.

Now he would never be able to forget what these people had done. What they had asked of him. Aban felt the stab of guilt deep in his heart. It was his fault, they had done what they had been ordered to do. Mahir had never had the skills, even if he had had the desire. It had been Aban who had found the man, the chef. Now he had to live with what had followed. But, for Aban, he could not be party to this any longer. It was over, his part in this was done. Truly seeing them for who and what they were would keep him running for the rest of his life, no matter how long, or short that turned out to be.

Now it was down to the one and only thing that he needed to see through before he died. All that Aban did, all that he had ever done since joining this group, had been recorded. Mahir knew that it had, of course he did, Aban had made sure he would. Had shown him the records, many times. From the beginning this had been part of the plan that Aban hoped he would never have to use. But his own sense of self preservation had demanded that he have a way to show the world what was happening.

When he had obeyed the instructions to leave, Mahir had dutifully packed up all of it. Just as they had told him to. It was as it had to be. Mahir had to think that all of the documentation had been safely removed. It was the only way he would be safe from the monsters that they had answered to for so long.

Poor Mahir, Aban thought. He was so loyal, so trusting. The men who had recruited him had loved that about him. Puffing him up with accolades, they had controlled him with promises of future rewards, and that had been enough for him. Such a simple mind. But this kind of blind following was so dangerous that it made Mahir dangerous. Aban was pained to have seen this about his friend.

Just as so many others like him, Mahir had been too easily controlled. He would do whatever he was told, actually believing in the stories that he had been fed. The lies. He could no longer think for himself.

No, that was the burden that only Aban seemed to be suffering from. The hardest part was that he had believed once. Enough to leave his family, his home. But they had never stopped the words in his head, the ones that kept him true to himself.

His was not to be the easy path, however, he understood that now. Aban could not accept all that he was told, he had to seek out his own confirmation, validation. Some things just did not feel right. If he was to justify the price he had paid, all that he had lost in his desire to belong to the cause, he had to know for himself. To have the surety that what they were asked to do would truly fill the purpose he believed was his.

What he had promised his father had turned out to be a lie too. No, he had not carried a gun. But Aban had been there when the chef had been killed. The memory of that moment would never leave him. There in the plane, the chef was huddled in a bruised and battered heap, having already been beaten by the monsters he had come to hate so deeply. Aban had seen the gun, a split second before the shot rang out and he was covered in another man's blood.

Nothing he had ever seen had been that terrible. And then Aban, himself, was given the order. He was horrified at the thought that he had been expected to push the man's body out of the plane. He had not done it, but that was not noticed. The body had fallen. It had been Mahir who had been strong enough to push it himself.

Aban had been left to watch it falling through the air. To hear, to actually feel, the thud of it hitting the ground. He nearly stopped breathing as he relived those horrible moments. He felt that just by being there, he had become a killer, just like they were. A man's blood was, literally, on his hands. They had turned him into the one thing he had vowed he would never be. He would never forgive them for that. It had all changed in that moment. Aban was ready to do what he had to.

He knelt now, prying up a loose floor board, only enough to reach in and grab the worn envelope and a small zip drive that he had hidden there. Yes, he had recorded everything that they had done, secretly keeping a copy for himself. And all Aban had to do now was get that information into the right hands.

. .oOo.

With Wallace's permission, the team remained camped out in his house all through the evening and into the night as they followed the clues that they were finding. He worked in his kitchen, keeping the men supplied with water and food. As he pulled biscuits out of the oven and served up steaming bowls of stew, Wallace took a good look around.

Being out here mostly on his own had not given him much of a chance to be part of anything significant in a very long time. He missed that. Sure, there were the occasional visitors that needed help, the weekly meetings with the other rangers, the Monthly trips to get supplies. But for the most part, he had lived as a hermit, connected to the rest of the world only through the internet. It felt good, helping these men in their work.

Most of the guys had already grabbed their food, but Ranger and Tank were still hunched over a small screen, digging into their latest mystery. Why was Chef living in a remote cabin in Arizona when he had luxurious properties in places like Liechtenstein?

Ranger knew that it had seemed odd to Stephanie too. So she had done the logical thing and used her search programs to build his personal history. As hard as she tried, she couldn't find anything or anyone to tie him to the tiny country tucked in between Austria and Switzerland.

As Ranger followed her train of thought, he nodded, a smile almost showing itself. Chef had no family there, not even remote ancestry from anywhere near it. There was no known evidence of his ever traveling there. Of course, Ranger mused, she had no way of knowing that Liechtenstein was probably one of the only countries that Chef had never actually been to. As Rangers, they had been all around the world.

So why did he own anything there? Stephanie was incredibly tenacious when it came to finding answers. Ranger had always admired the way she connected the dots. It had not taken her long to figure out that unlike the Cayman Islands, that everyone seems to know about, Liechtenstein was a relatively unknown haven for things like large family trusts. But Ben Davron was not from one of those wealthy families with trusts and large inheritances. Her research had shown that already, so Stephanie's discovery had opened up many more questions than it had answered for her.

Until she discovered that as it turns out, that small country is another perfect place to hide money. Especially when it looked like legitimate real estate transactions had taken place. In Chef's case, multiple properties had been purchased. At least on paper.

On the night that she had shared what she had found on Chef, Stephanie had only been able to speculate on how she thought he had been buying up real estate in Europe. Ranger knew she had hated to say it out loud, but while he got royalty checks from the cookbook he had been featured in, and his salary of 85K a year was impressive, it certainly was not enough to allow him to purchase 2.6 million dollars worth of property in Liechtenstein. Her cheeks had tinged with pink and she had looked away when she asked if there was any way that he could have become involved with dealing drugs.

Ranger remembered being shocked at the idea. Of course not, he had thought. The Chef that he had known was not like that. But he was at a loss, and he didn't know what to say, so he had not said anything at all. He thought that he would have time to talk to Chef, to get the answers himself. It had not worked out that way.

Tank nudged Ranger with his elbow. "Steph's codes have been tracked down," he said. After running their intel through Kinkaid's connections, the rest of the picture was coming through. And it wasn't pretty. Tank growled, low and mean. He did not like any of this.

Ranger looked at the computer, his stomach clenched in anger, the shock he had felt over Stephanie's drug theory was nothing to what he was feeling now. Oh no, this was worse. So much worse than he had let himself even imagine. It turned out that being a drug lord would have been a nice thing to accuse Chef of. As the page, that Tank was now showing him indicated, the people who had funneled money into Ben Davron's accounts were connected to terrorist networks from all over the world.

Tank sat back heavily, he was shaking his head. Ranger too, backed away from the laptop, even though he couldn't tear his eyes away from it. How could this be true? He didn't want to believe it. But how else could he explain away all of the evidence in front of them. Chef had turned traitor.

The worst scenario, the one they had never let themselves imagine, was the answer to what he had become. Both Tank and Ranger mourned for their friend, but at the same time, anger simmered under the surface. Apparently their feelings were not as well hidden as they may have thought. Everyone in the room seemed to sense the change in them. Silently, they started migrating over to the couch, waiting until Ranger was ready to fill them in on what had been discovered.

Even Wallace paused what he was doing in the kitchen. Tense, quiet moments were finally broken when Ranger stood and pushed his hand through his hair. He looked at everyone one by one, Kinkaid last of all. Then he took a deep breath and finally started to speak.

. .oOo.