Lindsay Cooper led them to bay where Ranger's vehicle awaited him. He wasn't worried about anything someone who didn't have Paulo's best interest at heart might have done because he had asked his oldest and most trusted friend to arrange a vehicle for him at a secure location. He watched as Lindsay loaded Paulo into the car seat. She handed Ranger the file.
"Read the information carefully. We've had to keep some things from you, but you'll understand once you've read through. When the threat is neutralized, we'll send word," she said. "You're only job is to keep this child alive." Ranger nodded. He looked back at Paulo before sliding into the driver's seat.
"All contact will go through my office," Ranger instructed. "You have the secure line?" Lindsay nodded. He closed the door and once the garage door was high enough, he pulled out. Ranger had never felt that silence was uncomfortable before but in the vehicle, with a toddler, he felt like he should be saying something. He turned to look at the child who had a wooden train in his lap and his fingers in his mouth.
"You like trains, huh?" Ranger said. Paulo nodded and held his train up. "Cool," Ranger said. He settled back in his seat and drove silently for a few miles before pulling off of the road into a busy department store parking lot. The more people around, the easier they could get lost in the crowd.
"Time to go, Paulo," he said to the child. Ranger got out of the car and unhooked the toddler before lifting him out. "We're going to leave all of your stuff here except the train and I'm going to wave this at you," he held up a handheld device used to detect electronic bugs, "It won't hurt. It may beep. Do you want to hear the beep?" Ranger asked. Paulo nodded so Ranger waved his hand under the car and just as he thought, a long, high pitched, beeping noise resulted. Paulo laughed in delight so Ranger waved the device over the child and then the train. The detector went off so Ranger took the train and put it to aside scanning Paulo again. The detector was silent. Ranger shrugged. Made sense to monitor the child by bugging his favorite toy. Ranger knew that sort of surveillance would be counterproductive to his goal. What the base knew, the people trying to kill Paulo would know. Ranger was not usually one to shy away from the fight but his fights also rarely involved children let alone one as small as Paulo.
Ranger turned the train over and inspected the base. He pulled apart the connection between the two cars and found the bug lodged at the head of a nail. Amateurs. Ranger retrieved a small screwdriver from his own bag. Paulo made a small sound of protest when it looked like Ranger might hurt the toy.
"It's okay," he assured the child. "I just have to give your train a shot so that it doesn't get sick where we're going." He thought that Paulo would understand getting shot from the many tests run on him and he seemed to as he settled immediately and just watched the train in Ranger's hands. Ranger poked the bug until it splintered into several pieces and fell out of the toy like powder. He reconnected the train and gave it back to the boy who stroked his toy and cooed at it as though it had been through something terrible. They walked toward the store and sat on a bench against the wall. They only had a few minutes to wait before Bobby, one of Ranger's employees, pulled up in a vehicle that he'd driven from their own garage in Trenton.
"No car seat?" Bobby said, as a greeting to his boss.
"I think we'll leave this one. Did you buy one?" Ranger said sure that his medic had followed his instructions.
"Safety first," Bobby confirmed. "I have the house set and a second one in case that one doesn't work out. Hop in." Ranger locked Paulo into the seat as he'd seen Lindsay Cooper do not long before and then slid in the front next to Bobby.
"Aren't you going to sit in the back with the kid?" Bobby asked.
"No, why would I?" Ranger questioned.
"I don't know, you see people do it all the time. I think it's so he doesn't choke," Bobby said. Ranger glanced back at the child.
"How likely is that to happen?" Ranger asked glancing back at the boy suspiciously.
"I don't know, I don't have kids." Bobby said.
"You do have medical training," Ranger observed.
"The kid gets a bullet wound, I'm on game. All the other stuff, that's gonna be you." Bobby said.
"Let's just make sure you don't have to patch up any bullet wounds," Ranger said dryly. "You hear from Tank?" he asked, rapidly changing the subject
"He observed, just like you told him to do," Bobby confirmed.
"And?" Ranger asked.
"And there's a bet going on that you get cut off for the rest of the year. Jeanne Ellen was a good joke to play on Stephanie," Bobby said, laughing.
"Charming," Ranger said, "But how did she do?"
"She made it through. Her time was slow but she kept going. Did it twice," Bobby said.
"Really? " Ranger said proudly. He knew Stephanie could do it. "Get Tank to set up a massage for her at the spa. You know who to get?" he asked. Bobby nodded. Ranger smiled broadly, he knew she'd do it and now it was down to Jeanne Ellen to get her to stick with it.