. .oOo.

Chapter 15

He was quite pleased with himself. Not bad for a spur of the moment attack. Nick took one last look at the slowly moving vans and left his hiding place to go find a new vantage point. The action that he was interested n was back at Ranger's place.

In spite of himself, Nick had to be impressed. Ranger had built himself a solid business. Jealousy reared its ugly head, and Nick swallowed down the bile that rose in his throat. While he had been shuffling papers, stuck in a dead end office job, the guys he had known so briefly, in that ranger's training, had been going on to much bigger and better things. Over the years, he'd heard all about them.

Now on the roof across the street from the big red brick building that housed Ranger's business, Ellis settled in to watch the show. He had not had long to set it up, but that did not worry him, he still had some amazing skills with guns and explosives. And he couldn't wait for Kinkaid to see what he had been missing out on since dumping him in that stupid office.

An unwelcome memory surfaced and brought another dark mood as he waited. Sometimes, it seemed, he could not keep these voices out of his head. Now he grimaced, he had pushed Melissa out of his mind, but she kept popping back in when he least expected it.

"Don't you do anything?" Melissa had said, her voice constantly getting on his nerves. "All we do is sit around when you get home from work, at least Ben had all those parties that he was always invited to."

Nick remembered this particular night very well. He'd thought of leaving her, he'd grown so tired of her complaining all the time. He had not responded to her criticism, or to the fact that she was throwing Ben in his face. In fact, he had been doing a pretty great job of ignoring her completely. But she would not shut up. Coming up behind him, she tried another tactic, putting her arms around his waist, she had laid her head on his shoulder and whispered in his ear.

"At least you don't sit around telling war stories all day," she'd said. "I like that about you. It seemed like I could never get Ben to shut up."

Slipping under his arm, Melissa had come around to face him. She smiled and kissed his chin. Nick had to hand it to her, she could be persuasive when she wanted to be. It was almost enough to bring back the reasons that he'd obsessed about her in the first place. Almost.

She continued her tirade about Ben and his stories. "Ranger always did this," she said in a mocking voice. "Demo did that..."

Her voice was droning on, he had almost stopped listening again, but that was when the idea had hit him. "Tell me," he said. "Tell me one of his stories, what did Ranger do?" Suddenly he was very interested in what she had to say.

"Oh, I don't know," she sputtered, "its not as if I really listened to any of it." But he pulled her over to sit down on the couch with him.

"Tell me," Nick repeated. "Try to remember."

Though Melissa had to be getting annoyed at him, she had stopped and given it some thought. She couldn't remember any of the details, but she could come up with a few basic outlines of the stories that Ben had told her.

Nick recognized the events that she was speaking of. As much as he had hated it, everyone in the other agencies had watched Kinkaid's team with some amount of admiration. They couldn't help but compare themselves to the rangers who seemed to be the best at everything. To some extent, Nick had heard about the missions she was talking about in Ben's stories.

The idea had been born in that moment. The only ones who never spoke of their exploits, except perhaps in private, were the guys in the rangers team itself. It was classified for the most part, that was one reason, but why did they need to brag, when all of the other operatives out there were doing it for them.

What better way to put them in a bad situation than to expose the bad and ugly parts of the missions in some innocently portrayed stories of bravery that were told by an ex-wife. It was brilliant, if he did say so himself. Personal account stories were becoming more and more in demand, the timing was perfect. He could get the interest of a publisher in no time, they were eager for this kind of thing.

He could leave now he thought and write it himself, but he dismissed that idea as quickly as it had come to him. Nick knew that he could not be the one who could get away with doing it, but Melissa, he was sure that she could. Of course, he had realized that he'd have to stay, she could never get it right without him, he would probably end up writing it all in some form of another. But it seemed like a small sacrifice to make, to get his revenge.

Ellis was crouched down in his hiding spot. That simmering anger now bubbling up in his chest. This memory only served to remind him that it had been Kinkaid, 'ol Uncle Doug who had wrecked everything for him. Again. Interfering with the publishers had made him look bad. Nick did not like feeling like an idiot. Kinkaid had to pay for that.

Just then, the fireworks started. They had triggered one of his fireballs. The effects were better than he had imagined. It shot straight up in the air a good ten feet. Nick felt a whoop wanting to be shouted at the top of his lungs, but he suppressed it, no sense in giving his location away.

He did gasp when that guy caught on fire, but he had to expect at least a bit of collateral damage. It's just too bad that it had not been Kinkaid or one of his precious rangers. That heat rose again in his gut, and Nick raised his rifle, aiming at the target near one of the vans. He squeezed the trigger, a smile gracing his lips when it hit and caused the next part of the show.

"Ricochet," he whispered as hundreds of bullets were set into motion.

And just for good measure, another explosion rocked the street below him. This time fire burst out all around the van. That would get them moving he thought, and sure enough, the men started spilling out of the side door. No one caught fire this time, much to his dismay, but he did take pleasure in watching all of the guys scrambling for cover inside of the garage.

The other van had turned around and headed away from the mayhem. Nick noticed that they did not go far, just enough to get out of his line of sight. But he assumed that the guys in that van would be finding their way into the building without getting involved with all the fun he had planned for them. It was a disappointing turn of events.

. .oOo.

Sarah was going to defy them, if they killed her then at least she would not have to live under their control, and without Vasya there did not seem to be any reason to do this spying thing anymore. If she wanted to be dramatic, she could say that without him there was no reason for her to go on at all. Actually, she thought, that was not dramatic, it was the truth. Just one more thing that she had never told Vasya before he disappeared. She felt a deep pain pierce her hear again. The agony of what might have been.

Now he was gone. Sarah lifted her head and started backing away from the employee's entrance. They could kill her now, for all she cared. She was not going in there. Her footsteps quickened, her lungs starting to burn as she broke out in a run.

"Hey there," a deep male voice yelled from behind her. Sarah did not pay heed, she needed to get as far from this place as she could. The plans for her immediate future were unclear, except for that one fact. "Halt!" the voice called out again.

Tears were in her eyes, and a side pain had nearly doubled her over before she was tackled down to the ground.

"What's your hurry?" this same voice said, Sarah detected the sarcasm, but had no time to respond before her hands were cuffed behind her and she was hauled to her feet. "Let's go," he said.

At this moment, Sarah had resigned herself to whatever fate this person had for her. Though she was cuffed, to make it look like a legitimate apprehension to any bystanders, this man had never identified himself as a cop. He had offered no explanation for why he had grabbed her. Not that she had expected an assassin to be very forthcoming with his victim.

Her head hung down, she was defeated and she knew it. The man had hold of her arm and was pushing her forward at a brisk pace. Sarah thought that she heard him mumbling something, words too low, too quiet to understand. It only added to the sense of foreboding that had seeped right down to her bones.

Her own thoughts were all over the place. One minute she had been willing to run, to risk dying to get away from a life that she knew would never have Vasya in it. The next, she felt such incredible waves of hope, maybe he was not dead. She had been listening to the news, no body had been found. That, it seemed was enough to make her believe that there was a chance that he was still alive somewhere. But, her thoughts came around again to the fact that Vasya had said goodbye and he had left her alone.

In the end, she was sure that she was going to die soon, so none of that mattered. As they approached a car that looked more like a rental than a police cruiser, Sarah felt him put a hand on her head to push it down as she slipped into the back seat. The touch was gentle, almost tender and her head jerked up to look at him.

He had a finger to his lips, "Shhhhh."

Tears filled her eyes and blurred her vision. The car door was slammed shut, and another one opened. She listened as he closed his door and started the engine.

"It won't be long now," he said, and Sarah knew, she could hear in his voice that he meant it.

. .oOo.

The elevator dinged its arrival. Even all the way down the hall, Stephanie could hear it and she came running. 'Ranger is back', it was her only thought. Well, maybe she thought of how it would feel with his arms around her too. It had been so long, she couldn't wait.

But instead of running into his arms, Stephanie stopped short when she noticed that it was Woody that had stumbled out, alone. The immediate disappointment that she felt soon turned to panic. His clothes were smudged with black soot and had been burned in spots that still had smoke rising from them.

Stephanie reached him at the same time that Ella did. She helped Ella get Woody seated, but then stood back a bit as she watched Ella's first aid skills at work.

"What happened?" Stephanie asked, hoping that he had not seen the disappointment in her face when she'd realized that it was not Ranger who had come out of the elevator.

Woody answered quickly, he had come to warn Cal and the rest of the men, and to get more help down to the garage level where Chet and Vince were trying to get the fires under control. Tapping his ear piece, that had apparently stopped working, Cal had joined them too. Within minutes, several guys were headed down the stairs, ready to deal with the fires.

Stephanie stood motionless for a moment, Cal had been barking out orders, Ella was still working on Woody, and everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. Looking around, she saw Hector in front of a bank of screens. In an instant she was standing behind him, Stephanie could see that each of the eight monitors he was looking at showed parts of the RangeMan property. Security cameras, she guessed.

Hector was using a remote signal to move the cameras around to get broader views of what was happening outside of the garage. When she saw the fires, Stephanie gasped. Through the flames and smoke there were men jumping out of the van, keeping crouched over and low. She could not see their faces, couldn't find Ranger among them.

As she watched, the van burst into flame and exploded. Stephanie made another noise, and Hector was suddenly by her side, easing her into a chair. "No, no." he was murmuring softly, soothingly "It is going to be okay," Hector said to her.

As much as she didn't want to see the chaos that was happening, her eyes would not stop looking. They continued searching for him, determined to find Ranger. That is when she spotted something on one of the screens. Stephanie jumped up and pointed to it.

"Hector, what's that?" she asked breathlessly. Her finger was on the screen, and Hector immediately saw what she had found. At the same time that he was relaying the information to Cal, Hector got back on his controls and tried to zoom in on the roof across the street, to get a better look.

Stephanie's attention was back on the other screens. Frantic now, she had to find Ranger. She did not know which of the vans he had been riding in. But she had to believe that he had not been in the one that was now a bonfire. Wouldn't believe otherwise. She couldn't.

But where was he?

. .oOo.