Alex turned her head away from looking at Ranger. She was tired, tired of fighting to stay alive, tired from running to try and get where she needed. Now she was tired of where this conversation was leading. Her mind reeled from what she had been going through over the last two weeks. There was no way she was going to talk to the FBI. Shiropolli wouldn't let her live, the FBI might not be afraid of what the man could do, but Alex had seen what his henchmen could do when they received an order that he wanted followed.

Ranger watched her as she looked away. He knew she was a smart kid, but he also knew the FBI wanted her more than she realized. "If you don't talk to them they'll have you thrown in prison, you did violate your bond agreement by not showing up at your last probation meeting."

"Wasn't my fault." She turned her head and glared at him with her dark blue eyes. "I was busy, in case you didn't notice, I couldn't squeeze it in my appointment book."

"They are still going to lock you up." Ranger told her, he leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees his hands relaxing in the space between them. "You don't have many choices, you can talk to the feds or keep you mouth shut. Either one isn't real positive here, both have bad consequences to them."

"Either way I'm screwed. Go to jail and try to stay alive or talk to the feds and try to stay alive."

"The feds could relocate you, give you clean record."

Alex sat up when she heard the front door to the school open up. Ranger stood and moved to the office door.

"Alex!"

Alex jumped up and headed for the door, "James, I'm in the office." She reached for the door knob and Ranger pushed her hand away. She looked up at him, "Jerk, it's just James."

The door came open and James looked from Ranger to Alex and then back to Ranger. "What did you do to her?"

Alex wanted to grin, James thought Ranger did all the bruising. Fine with her, she needed a way out of this, a way to get somewhere away from Ranger so she could think. She had to make up her mind, to figure out what she was going to do.

"I didn't do anything to her. I told you before she was in violation of her bond agreement." Ranger told James.

James moved into the office he looked at Alex and then back over to Ranger. "If she's in violation of her agreement, why isn't she at the police station. What are you doing here?"

Alex watched as James was trying to crowd Ranger, James didn't back down to anyone. James was an alpha male, Alex knew the types. When alpha males get together things exploded. Alex saw how much room she had and moved back towards the wall. Ranger glanced at Alex and then back to James.

"I came in to get my FTA after I saw her come inside." Ranger told James as he stepped closer into his personal space. "You need to back off."

James didn't budge or back down, "I'm not backing off, what do you plan on doing with her?"

"She has to go back into the system. They won't let her get bonded back out, she'll have to sit some time out, unless she talks to the feds." Ranger told James. He knew James cared about this kid, his behavior said so, it was a possessive quality that he himself had over the people he cared about.

James' brow furrowed, "Why do the feds want her?"

Alex had stepped on her each of her feet while they were talking and slipped off the socks. She knew if she tried running in the socks again she was going to be falling flat on her face. Alex moved quickly and pushed James into Ranger and dove out the door. Running flat out she headed for the back of the school and pushed open the fire door setting off the alarm. Ranger felt the weight of James falling into him pushing him into the corner of the desk jabbing into his back. James had grabbed his arms and both of them went crashing onto the floor as the alarms rang out in the building. Alex didn't go through the door, she turned and went inside the ladies dressing room, jumped onto the chair by the lockers and climbed up on the lockers and lifted the paneling out of the ceiling and climbed up inside. She grasped the piping up in the ceiling with her legs locking them in place, then leaned back down and replaced the panel she had pushed aside as she heard footsteps outside the door to the dressing room.

Ranger pushed through the door at the back and looked around the lot. He didn't see Alex anywhere in sight. James came out a second after him. "Where did she go?" James asked.

Ranger looked at him, "Damn that kid." Ranger couldn't help the grin that surfaced on his face. "She's good at being the wind."

James looked at Ranger, "She's not going to come in with you until she's ready. What happened to Miss Plum?"

"She's at home, she'll probably be around. If Alex comes back, talk her into giving herself to either me or Miss Plum. Her life expectancy would be better off she did."

James watched as Ranger went back inside through his school. "What did Alex get herself involved in? She knows to keep her nose out of shit, she's not a stupid kid."

"Her mother got her involved with Shiropolli." Ranger threw out over his back as he was leaving.

James went to the front of the school and watched Ranger as he went around the Uhaul then he saw the sleek black car drive out of the lot. "Damn it!" He opened the door to his office and righted one of the chairs that had fallen over and picked up the socks off the floor. "Fucking Shit!" He had tried talking Alex into moving in with him six months ago. The kid needed a stable place to sleep. He knew her mother was a crack head who liked to gamble. Her mother wasn't allowed in his school. He didn't allow anyone who was on drugs inside his school. They all knew it, his school was one place that was considered safe. He had a few gang members in his school, but he wouldn't take their shit when they came in. He walked out of the office and headed back towards the changing rooms, back towards where all the stench was coming from.

Alex kept her breathing even and listened. She could hear footsteps coming back to this way.

"Fuck!" she heard James say.

Alex slowly let out her breath and then went for the ceiling tile and lifted it back up and slid it to the side again. Grabbing onto the pipe she lowered her lower body down and out of it onto the lockers. James was watching at the door as he saw Alex come back into the school from the ceiling. Her face finally came into view, his eyes bore daggers into her. "None of this would have happened if you would have just moved in with me when I asked you."

Alex reached up and replaced the tile, "It wouldn't work and you know it." Alex jumped down from the lockers on all fours and stood up. "We are too different James. You don't understand me, I'm not what you need. Christ you're old enough to be my old man."

James moved into the room, his brow furrowed, he couldn't help the way he felt about this kid. He had fallen in love with her a year ago. "I told you I would wait until you are eighteen. I wouldn't force you into anything you didn't want."

"Then quit pushing the subject. It's not happening." Alex set her jaw as James reached out and touched the bruise on her left cheek.

"What did Shiropolli want with you?" James asked.

Alex moved away from his touch. "I was forced to pay off her debt. My mother sold me out to him."

"Did they rape you?"

"Christ no!" Alex moved around him and picked up the duffle bag off the floor and emptied it. "I had that choice and I didn't choose that, I chose to go into the pit and fight instead." She let the karate fighting gear fall to the floor and then went back to the lockers and opened hers up. She started shoving what little bit of clothing was inside it.

"So the feds want you to roll over on Shiropolli?" James asked and went over to the lockers and leaned up against them.

Alex finished stuffing the clothes inside. "More or less. That isn't happening either, it's not an option. Shiropolli will have me killed if I talk to them." She zipped the bag and looked up at James. She liked him, but not in the way he liked her. She liked James because he didn't take shit off of people, she liked the way he stuck up for the underdog, she liked he fact that he really liked teaching people how to take care of themselves. She learned more from him in the last seven years than she had from living in the hell hole with her mother one street from Slayerland. "I need the money you're holding for me. I need some time to think and the money will at least afford me some thinking time. I need to call my probation officer and find out what the courts are going to do."

"They'll lock you up. You know that." James told her. He pushed off from the lockers and looked at her bare feet. "You need shoes."

Alex looked down at her feet, "I get money and I'll get shoes, I'm not putting on the others. You need to toss that bag in the hall, I think I waded through a water full of shit when I ran off after I got away from Shiropolli."

James shook his head, he wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake the shit out of her. "You need to see a doctor," he pointed to her hands and face, "get looked at and get a shot. The last thing you need is to get sick or an infection." He walked out of the dressing room and Alex followed him.

James wasn't bad looking, but he wasn't all that good looking either, Alex thought his nose was too big. It had been broken several times owing to the fact that the scar tissue increased its size. She stopped in the doorway of the office as James sat down behind the desk and opened the drawers. He pulled out the lock box and counted out a thousand dollars and laid it on the corner of the desk. Alex reached out and took the money. He placed the lockbox back and pulled out the cell phone. He tossed it to her.

"The battery is charged, you'll have to come back for the charger. Keep it on you and call me if you need me." James told her.

Alex caught the phone and then placed it back on the desk. "I can't take the phone. Too many people will try to trace it."

"It's my phone, they won't know you have it." James stated. "Take the phone."

She looked at it and then turned out of the office, she wasn't coming back and she didn't need to have something that belonged to James. "I have to go."

James got out of the chair and caught up to her as she reached the front door. He reached out and grabbed her chin making her look back up at him. "You can come back anytime you want. I'm not going anywhere."

"I won't be back." Alex pushed open the front the door and walked out.

James watched her walk away, he went back to the office and sat down and looked around his desk. He saw the two cards, one for Rangeman the other for Stephanie Plum. He hadn't really liked Ranger, the man didn't feel right to him, Stephanie on the other hand, he felt like he could trust her. He picked up the phone and dialed her number.

Stephanie picked the phone up and looked at the clock six in the morning. "What?" Her mind thinking that it would be either Joe or Ranger calling.

"This is James Spragget, Alex just left the karate school, she's barefoot."

Stephanie sat up in bed and tossed the covers back. "Why is she barefoot? She had shoes the last time I saw her." There wasn't any need to mention the kid didn't have her shirt.

"I think it has to do with smelling like shit. Alex doesn't like stuff like that. I gave her the money I owed her. Knowing her, she'll go shoe shopping and maybe try one of the local clinics, she looks like shit." James hung up the phone.

Stephanie was in the process of pulling on her jeans when James hung up. She punched in Ranger's number.

"Yo."

"Got a phone call, Alex just left the karate school." Stephanie told him.

"I know. She took off while I was there. James got in the way and she bolted as soon as she saw her chance." Ranger told her as he stopped at the corner. He blew out a deep breath.

Stephanie listened to the breath being blown out. She couldn't fathom what that was about, normally Ranger didn't show much emotion and rarely let it come across the phone. "I'm sorry. I never should have asked you to help with this skip."

"Too late Babe." Ranger watched as Trenton started to slowly come awake.

Stephanie's mind started processing things, she knew Ranger wouldn't have dolled out that money even for the feds. "Why did you really pay for Shiropolli to release her?" She sat back down on the bed, not sure if she really wanted the answer to that question. There were things she was still not willing to risk letting out of the dungeon in her mind.

Ranger leaned his head back on the headrest of the seat. "Because you asked me to help you Stephanie."

"Is that the only reason? Because I asked." Her heart was beating faster, she got him to toss out money like it meant nothing to him. He tossed out money on a kid that she didn't want to see get hurt. On a kid that for the last two weeks she had been digging around in the life of. She hated where this kid lived, hated that this kid wasn't really acting like a normal teenager. Not doing the normal teenage things. What frightened her the most was the more she learned about this kid, the more she learned about what made Ranger tick.

"No." The phone went dead on Ranger's end.

Stephanie stared at the phone. She felt like throwing it at the wall. Pulling anything out of Ranger was like pulling teeth. He didn't give up anything without a price. With him she had to jump through hoops, travel down never ending mazes to get just a piece of knowledge about himself.

Ranger hung the phone up. "Not going there yet. Damn it. I'm not ready for that yet." He was angry with himself. Angry with her for even asking the question that he didn't want to deal with. Angry with a fifteen year old kid who came into his life who reminded him so much of himself. "Damn it, Babe, you don't understand." Ranger pulled away from the curb and headed back to Rangeman headquarters.