I'm jumping forward in time a little bit to move the story along. Hope you like it. Anything familiar belongs to JE. The mistakes are mine.

Chapter 6

I was crouching behind a bush waiting for my skip to walk out of the bar. It was midnight and I was in my usual uniform now of black cargo pants, a black stretchy top, and black boots. I had my gun in a holster on my hip and a knife attached to my ankle. I was waiting on Logan Jacobs to come outside so I could grab him. Jacobs was arrested for killing his wife and attempted murder of the officer that caught him disposing of his wife's body. He was worth $250,000 to the bond office and $25,000 to me. I'm surprised he was even allowed bail. I took me two days to track him down but I had him trapped now. There was only one way out of the bar and I was there. Ten minutes later he came walking out. I ran to him.

"Jacobs" I said "I'm Stephanie Evans, I work for Free at Last bonds and you missed…" I didn't get to finish my sentence before he swung at me. I dogged his fist, punched him in the gut then slammed him against the wall of the bar with my gun to his head.

"Don't even think about moving" I said as I cuffed him. I put him into the back of my SUV and drove to the police station.

I was home and showering 45 minutes later. I was in a great mood. My life was going good! It's now been 6 months since I left Trenton. I was in the best shape of my life and I had money in the bank. A good bit of money actually. I was catching all of the big money skips for the bonds office now. They were surprisingly easy to catch now that I was trained. Plus I had a great car. I bought a Porsche Cayenne 2 months ago. It was dark grey and it wasn't nearly as nice as Ranger's fully loaded fully upgraded one. It was a base model without all the bells and whistle but it was still a really nice car and it was all mine. Well technically the car belonged to Rebecca Stephanie Evans, my alter ego. Since I wasn't getting stalked by crazy people anymore, no one was blowing up my cars, and I actually had money I decided to splurge and get me a nice car, and I've always loved Ranger's Cayenne.

The last 6 months have been the best of my life. I was a whole new person who was actually in charge of their life. I knew how to cook, defend myself, kick ass when necessary and I was an awesome shot. Kevin said I was a complete bad ass now. Ironically I feel like I turned into a mini Ranger, dressed in all black, always carrying a gun and knife, driving a Cayenne. I still thought about him. I was still in love with him, I'm sure part of me will always love him, but I was also angry with him. Part of me really thought he would have looked for me and just showed up one day to drag me back home. Ranger never came though. I don't know if that meant he couldn't find me or that he really didn't care enough to look. I was assuming it was the second. I mean its Ranger we're talking about. He can find anyone.

The next morning was Saturday; I was eating breakfast with Kevin and Shawn.

"I can't believe Thanksgiving is this coming week" I said.

"I know. We need to finalize our menu" Shawn said. Jess and I were having Thanksgiving with Kevin, Shawn and Shawn's family and Shawn and I were doing the cooking.

"This is the first holiday I'm going to spend away from my family" I said a little sad. With the holidays coming up, I've been thinking about my friends and family a lot. I was starting to get a little home sick.

"It's ok darling. You're spending it with us, your new family" Kevin said kissing me on the top of my head. They really had become my family. I loved them both.

"Thanks Kevin. You know I love you both. I was just thinking about sending my family a letter or something. You know, let them know I'm still alive and doing well" I said.

"That's a good idea sweetheart. Aren't you worried that someone might try to track you down with it though?" Shawn said.

"Yeah I am; that's why I haven't done it yet. I don't think anyone's really looking for me, but just in case I don't want to blow my cover. I miss my family but I'm not ready to go home."

Later that day I was in the car with Diesel. I was going to treat him to lunch since he'd spent the morning helping me look at houses to rent. Jessica said I could stay with her as long as possible but I thought it was time to get my own place. We looked at a few different places this morning and I had decided on a cute little two bedroom, one bathroom house. I signed the paperwork about 30 minutes ago and was going to move in next weekend after Thanksgiving.

We got to the restaurant and when in and ordered our food.

"Any

way I can talk you into furniture shopping after this Diesel?" I asked in my sweet voice.

"No way honey, just helping you find a place was a little too domestic for me. You're on your own with the furniture." He said.

"Fine, I'll ask Shawn or Kevin. So what are you doing for Thanksgiving? Are you going home to see your family?"

"No, but technically I'll be spending it with family. Carl and I will probably spend the day tracking my cousin Wulf."

"That doesn't sound like a very good Thanksgiving."

"Eh Thanksgivings not really my thing."

"I love Thanksgiving. My mom and grandma always cook way too much food and I get to live off of the delicious leftovers for a week. This is the first year I've spent away from them. It will be weird cooking my own Thanksgiving food." I said trying to hide the sadness in my voice. Diesel caught it though.

"Missing your family honey?"

"Yeah a little. I've been thinking about writing them a letter, you know, just to let them know I'm doing okay, but I don't want anyone to find me yet."

"I can help with that."

"Huh? How?"

"I can pop up, as you call it, somewhere else and put the letter in a post office box. That way if someone does try to track your letter it will be post marked from somewhere else." Hmm that's a good idea. I wasn't going to even question how he can just pop up wherever he wants.

"What about your fingerprints on the envelopes or you being caught on camera mailing the envelopes? They could figure out your helping me and track you down."

Diesel smiled. "First of all honey, I'm impossible to track down. Second, it doesn't matter because no one will now I'm helping you. My fingerprints won't show up on anything and my image won't show up on any security cameras."

"Wha..How?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"No, not really. You'd probably just tell me some ridiculous lie anyways and then make me feel stupid for believing it."

"See you know me so well now." Diesel said smiling.

I rolled my eyes. "Okay thanks Diesel. I'll let you know when I'm done with the letters."

That night, I was doing surveillance on a club I was hoping a skip would show up at. I was thinking about who to write and what to say. I would definitely write my parents, Mary Lou, and Lula and Connie. I wasn't sure if I should write Ranger or Joe. I wasn't sure if they even cared if I was gone. If they did then I wanted to let them know that I was ok, and if they didn't then I didn't want to give them the satisfaction of knowing that I was still thinking about them. In the end I decided I would write both of them a quick letter just saying that I was still alive and doing well and wish them a Happy Thanksgiving.

The next day I spent the morning writing my letters, and then I put them in envelopes and addressed them without putting a return address on them. I gave them to Diesel and thanked him again. He said it was no problem and he's take care of it for me. I spent the afternoon furniture shopping with Shawn. He had excellent taste and it took us no time at all for me to pick out everything I would need for my new house. I had everything set to be delivered at the house next Saturday. Who would have thought me, Stephanie Plum, renting a house with brand new furniture I bought and a kitchen that I actually knew how to cook in now? I'm proud of everything I've accomplished in the past 6 months.

Diesel's POV

I knew Stephanie was missing her family, that's why I offered to mail the letters for her. We've become really good friends that past few months and even though I tease her a lot about getting her into bed it's really just friendly banter. Don't get me wrong, Stephanie's hot and any guy would be lucky to have her but she's become more like my little sister. She's accomplished a lot since she came to Salem and I'm proud of her. She gave me the letters and I told her I'd take care of it. She wasn't ready to be found yet and I would make sure that she wasn't. I knew Ranger was still looking for her. Regardless of what Steph thought, I knew Ranger was in love with her, so there was no doubt he would still be trying to find her. I thought it would be fun to play with his head a little bit and I knew just how to do it.

Three days later back in Trenton

Ranger's POV

It was the day before Thanksgiving. I was supposed to spend tomorrow with my family in Newark but I wasn't looking forward to it. I'm not that into holidays to begin with but this year was even worse. My babe had been gone for 6 months now. I told myself that I had to deal with it and let her go and I thought it would be easy to do. I was so wrong. I missed my babe like crazy. I never realized how big a part of my life she had become until she was gone. I was miserable without her. I had told my men to stop looking for her, but I could never get myself to stop. I constantly checked to see if her name or social or anything popped up somewhere but so far I've found nothing on her. She had to be using a fake identity. She was being smart about what she was doing, damn it! I went down to level 5 and into my office. I had mail waiting on my desk so I went through it, all business stuff, nothing of real importance. Then I came to the last piece; it didn't have a return address on it. I opened it up, it was a letter from my babe.

Ranger,

Hope you and the Merry Men are doing well. I just wanted to let you know that I'm still alive and I'm actually doing pretty good. I seem to have left all the crazy stalkers back in Trenton. Hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving! Tell the Merry Men I said hi.

Stephanie

Thank God, my babe was alive and well and she was obviously still thinking about me, at least enough to write me a letter. The letter didn't really say much but it was something. I took the letter and walked out to the control room.

"Attention!" I barked. "I just received a letter from Stephanie. There's no return address. Trace it. I want to know where she's at."

"YES SIR!" everyone barked. Cal walked up and took the letter from me.

I was back in my office a couple hours later thinking about Stephanie. As soon as my men traced the letter I would know a general area of where my babe was and I could start searching for her. Someone knocked at my door. "Enter" I yelled.

Cal came in with his blank face on. This won't be good news. "Report" I said.

"Sir, we tried to trace the letter, but there's no post mark on it. It looks like it never went through the post office. We tracked down our mailman and questioned him. He said he remembers the letter and that there was four other letters with it in our outgoing mail. None of the five envelopes had return address on them, he assumed we just forgot, but the one enveloped was addressed to come here so he just put it with our incoming mail. Said he just thought we'd made a mistake with that one. We checked all the surveillance videos the past couple days and there's nothing out of the ordinary and no Stephanie on the video. We have no idea how those letter's got into our outgoing mail. We're assuming the other letters were to her friends and family."

How is that even possible? Fuck! I was never going to find my babe.