Undercover Chapter 16

Joe was due at the Detroit PD at noon. Terri was picking him up there. I really didn't want to see her. He'd been struggling with his emotions all morning and I had seen a lot of his cop face. I had started teasing him about it when I found him pacing, still damp from the shower, in the bedroom wearing nothing but said cop face. He was trying to have a good attitude about it, but he knew at this point, there was no stopping. Even if I'd asked him to, he would feel a real obligation to return to the operation since he was already in the middle of it. "Joe, I told you to do this. I'm fine. Muffin is fine. This is going to be fine. We have 5 months before the baby comes. It will all be a memory by then. You'll be home with me. Everything is going to be fine." Deep breaths, Stephanie, I said to myself, you are going to be fine.

His face softened. "I know. I'm working as hard as I can to get it resolved so that we don't even need to do the December apprehension. If we do have to go through with it, is everything all set with Ranger?" Surprisingly, I hadn't even told Joe about what had happened with Ranger. It seems so trivial compared to everything else Joe is dealing with right now.

I responded, "Yep. He's looking forward to it as much as you're dreading it." We both laughed.

"I'll bet. But the payoff for me is that I get to sleep with you afterwards," He was smiling the nice smile again and looking into my eyes. I could get lost in those pools of chocolate brown, "Come on, Cupcake. As much as I hate it, it's time to go."

He'd packed the car earlier so I had no excuse to dawdle. I drove. He held my hand as we shuffled reluctantly into the PD. We found our contact. He explained that Terri was waiting for Joe down the hall in an interrogation room. I walked to the door with him. He kissed me and opened the door. Terri's voice grated on me like fingernails on a chalkboard. "Jeez, Joey, is that a freakin' hickey?" Joe winked at me and entered the room.

I heard him say, "C'mon Terri, give me a break. Put some clothes on," before he closed the door.

My flight back to Trenton was uneventful. Dunphy picked me up at the airport when I got there, as promised. He'd kept Bob and Rex for me, so he had brought them home and gotten them all settled before picking me up.

Dunphy walked through the house with me. He'd cleaned everything up. If it hadn't been my own house, I would never have known anything had happened, but since it was, I could see that everything was just a fraction 'off'. I resolved to go through everything the next day to get it all back to normal. Of course, I hadn't even lived here that long and it was mostly Joe's stuff, but I'd still feel better if I combed through it.

Dunphy offered again to stay, but I didn't feel like he needed to. After all, it looked like whoever it was just wanted information and now that they know it isn't here, surely they wouldn't come back a second time. "Thanks for all your help," I said as he made way to the front door. "Oh, by the way, I learned from Joe that your preference is for…big boned girls." I was trying to say it delicately. "I have a couple of cousins you might like to meet. I know they'd love to meet you." I was teasing him and he knew it.

He wheeled around and gave me a big smile and said, "Friend, I hate to disappoint, but I really couldn't care less about the size of a girls bones as long as she has some super sized headlights and a nice sturdy back bumper." I had absolutely no response to that. "See you at the gym tomorrow," he winked and grinned on his way out the door.

I called both of our parent's houses to let them know that we'd had a wonderful weekend and that I was home safely. I called Mary Lou and thanked her for helping me with my wardrobe. She knew I couldn't really tell her anything but she did ask, "Was it magic?"

"Yes! Absolute magic," I answered breathily, feeling all a-flutter deep in my abdomen when I thought about Joe and it had absolutely nothing to do with the baby.

She sighed, asked if I thought it would help her feel that way again if she sent Lenny away for a couple of months. She didn't wait for an answer, but just said she needed to get off the phone to go vacuum cheerios out of her bed so she could go to sleep.

I didn't know how I would explain the new ring on my finger if anyone noticed it. I didn't want to take it off, however, so I thought I'd just tell them maybe that the big jerk owed it to me and I had bought it for myself. I was tired of avoiding all the subjects I was avoiding with everyone. I was back to my routine now. There would be 62 more red X's on my calendar before I could see Joe again.

Back at work the next day I explained that I had apprehended Joe and brought him back in over the weekend. I must have looked pitiful enough about the whole situation and no one really asked any questions, other than Lula, who just wanted to know if I got to beat the crap out of him or shoot him during the apprehension. I assured her I kept the apprehension very professional and that I was fine. I didn't tell her I had forgotten the handcuffs.

I grabbed 3 skip files and started thumbing through them. One of them was a little old homeless lady that I pick up on occasion. She's kind of a pain in the butt but not hostile at all. The second one was a man with no record that had been caught trying on lingerie in Victoria's Secret. I was unaware that this was against the law. This seemed like sexual discrimination to me. Maybe I could get him to come with me if I lend him a sympathetic ear. The third one was an arsonist with a bad temper. I decided to see if Ranger would mind picking him up.

By the end of the day, I had gotten my little old lady all bonded out and tucked back into her bus stop. I'd met the lingerie guy and promised him I would take him to "Bun in the Oven" to help me pick out some new lingerie if he would go peacefully with me. He was amenable to this arrangement, and we both found a couple of nice pairs of underwear and some panty hose and I bought a nursing bra.

Sunday rolled around and I went to the Morelli's for dinner, as usual. Tony was practically running from the room to keep a safe distance from me and Angela was practically glued to my side and was being very sisterly, although I felt it was more a way to put a barrier between her husband and me than anything else. Obviously 'Mom' had discussed the situation with them. I felt conspicuous.

This week Barbara had stayed home and Shelly was on Marc's arm. He is even a bigger jerk, if it is possible, when Shelly is with him than when Barbara is with him. I was watching the bizarre interactions of all the people in this crazy family and kept remembering what Joe said, 'in a big family everyone brings their own issues to the table.' I felt like I knew too much about all of them to be a relative stranger myself. For heaven's sakes, I knew about infertility, domestic violence, odd sexual preferences and unfaithfulness impacting several of the people in this room.

What did they know about me? I ran over Joe with a car once, broke off an engagement with him at least once and I was easily distracted enough to forget to pack my birth control pills on my honeymoon. Of course they read the newspapers, so they also knew I was a bounty hunter and had a way of getting myself into trouble.

Grandma Bella couldn't let an evening with the family pass without giving us a vision. "I see danger around the corner for someone in our family. One of the boys will be seriously injured in the near future." I learned that by 'the boys' she meant Marc, Tony and Joe. Considering that I was ready at a moment's notice to inflict serious injury on either Marc or Tony, I decided to think that Joe was the safest of the three right now.

By the end of the week, I had 7 red X marks on my calendar and 3 new notes from Joe. The first one said, "I love you and I miss you." The second one read, "I'm going crazy without you." The last one said, "Terri is a psycho-bitch from hell and I hate her."

As I was putting the 13th X on the calendar, I heard the front doorbell ring. I opened it to find a deliveryman with 2 dozen gorgeous fire and ice roses. They are my favorite. We had used them in our wedding. They are stark white in the center and have a ruby red rim on each petal. The card read, 'Halfway to six months now. I love you. Joe'

He was reminding me that the assignment was at least halfway done and he would be back with me soon.

By the time I had 20 red X's on my calendar, the messages included things like, "I hope Muffin is being good for his Mommy," "Good day on the case," "Jennie is developing calluses," "Found someone interested in my dad's car," and "I can't sleep without you."

Morelli family meals were becoming more fun. Each week, it seemed like the girls were more open and ready to accept me into the family. I was learning the vocabulary of the family. I'd learned that there were two groups, "the kids", meaning Joe and his brothers and sisters, and "all the kids", meaning the rest of us, too, including the 'not real Morelli's' – the 'you would never understand' ones.

Bob's head was being nudged closer to my knees every night by the growing bulge in my tummy. All of the Doctor reports were encouraging. I'd decided not to find out the sex of the baby too early. I really wanted Joe to be able to be there if he could when I found out.

However, one evening at the Morelli family meal, the sisters and sister's in law said they could tell me. They needed a strand of my hair and then they needed my wedding ring. I didn't get it. I was supposed to lie on the floor and they were going to hang it over my belly – the ring tied to the hair and depending on how it swung, they would know if the baby was a boy or a girl. This sounded suspiciously like 'the eye' to me and I was scared it was hereditary. What if my child inherited 'the eye'. Could that happen? I could see three year old Sophia dramatically standing up at the breakfast table in her little PJs to make a pronouncement about a vision. It was enough to make me a little queasy.

I was enjoying the bonding with the girls, but I said that I didn't really want to take my ring off since Joe had put it on my finger. Kathy said, "Aww. That's sweet, but really, let's do this." She was persistent so I decided to go along with it. "Ooh. I don't remember seeing this ring! It is gorgeous. You didn't have this ring when you got married, did you?"

Uh oh. "Well, no, it wasn't ready then, so we didn't have it, but I got it shortly afterwards…" I was hoping they would just let it drop.

Mary was studying it. "I think I've seen a ring similar to that before. Who had one like that? Wasn't the ring Joe gave Terri Grizolli sort of like that?" I hate learning things this way.

"What?" I was going to lose it. "When the hell did Joe give Terri a ring? I didn't think they were ever that serious!" I was speaking a lot louder than I should have been. I wasn't actually shrieking, but all of 'the girls' were looking at me like they were afraid I may have a gun on me.

Angela dove right in. "No. No. No. That ring looks absolutely nothing like Terri's ring did. Remember hers was platinum and it was just a simple little round solitaire. They were only kids – he couldn't have ever given her anything this nice."

Shelly piped up, too. "Stephanie, don't get upset. It really wasn't anything. I don't think she even wore it more than a week. She tried to trick Joe into marrying her by telling him she was pregnant. You know Joe. Mr. Integrity, he didn't even question her, the big dope. She eventually told him she lost the baby but I don't think she was ever pregnant in the first place."

Mary said, "I can't remember why they broke it off. It wasn't because of the baby….or the non-baby…or whatever…"

Shelly remembered. "Oh, it was because some girl ran over Joe with a car and broke his leg. Terri got all huffy about it like he had cheated on her or something by letting someone else nearly kill him." She was laughing really hard. Then everyone else started laughing really hard. Shelly hadn't been here that night that I confessed to running Joe over, so she still didn't know that girl was ME! It was a funny moment and we really bonded a lot that night. It also gave me a huge sense of well-being that I had thwarted Terri's marriage attempt to Joe. HA! Score: Stephanie – Lots Terri - Zilch

My phone rang twice that evening. The first time was around midnight. I wasn't asleep yet, but just like anyone else, the telephone ringing really late at night sets my heart to pounding and fear zinging around through my spinal column. The number said, "unknown" on the caller ID. Last time it had been Joe, so I answered, hoping for the best. "Hello?"

A low growlish voice responded, "Where is he?" My spine was tingling now and every hair on my body was standing up at full attention.

I managed to say, "Excuse me?"

"I need to know where Morelli is and I need to know immediately (pronouncing it im-mej-ut-ly)," the mysterious caller demanded.

"Um, why? What do you need with him? Maybe you can leave a message with me and I can get him to call you." I was exhausting all the ideas I could come up with while trying to scramble down the stairs to find my cell phone to try to call Dunphy.

The caller laughed with a low, throaty grunt, "I'm going to find him and when I do, I'm going to kill him. I've been trying to be patient and hunt for him on my own, but he may be getting close to what he's looking for and I'm running out of time. Maybe I just need to take matters into my own hands and nab you. I'll bet he'd come out of hiding then."

My cell phone was no where. My purse was on the dining room table but the cell wasn't inside. I had a bad habit of tossing it into the passenger seat of my car when I hung it up instead of putting it back in my purse. It must still be in my car outside.

The caller must have been getting nervous about being on the phone too long, because he hung up then. I called Dunphy and he said he'd see if there was any way to trace the call, but he sounded doubtful. He asked again if I wanted him to come over, but I declined. I didn't tell him about the threat to kidnap me. I didn't think it was a real threat for one, and secondly I didn't want him to tell Joe and worry him. I'm a big girl – getting bigger by the day, and I can take care of myself.

At 2:15 a.m. the phone rang again. I was disoriented with sleep and felt like I had been on a 3 day drunk. My mind was foggy and I was struggling to read the caller ID. When I saw it, I was paralyzed. It said "Detroit Mem Hosp". Something's happened to Joe. Why else would anyone at the Detroit Memorial Hospital be calling me? I heard the answering machine in the office pick up the call. Joe's voice came on the line, "Cupcake? You must be staying with your folks tonight…."

"Joe!" I had grabbed the telephone on the bedside table and was so happy to hear his voice.

"Oh, hi Honey. I'm sorry to call so late. I can't talk long, but I wanted to tell you that I'm okay in case you hear from anyone that I got shot tonight."

"Omigod! You got shot? What happened?" I was so terrified that my caller had found him. I kept reminding myself that I was talking to Joe. He's obviously okay or I wouldn't be talking to him.

"I'm fine really. It's not a big deal," I could tell he was using his 'don't worry' voice. That's not usually a good thing because it meant I had a reason to worry. "I just was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Where were you?"

"Uh, I don't really want to go into it. I just wanted you to know I'm okay. I figured the word may get around and you may hear about it and I just wanted you to know I was really okay. I promise. Listen, I can't talk long, they are about to dig this slug out….Shit, that hurts." He had turned away from the phone and I assumed he was talking to a nurse or someone.

I went ballistic. "Joe Morelli, you tell me right now what happened. I mean it. All of it….you mean the bullet is still inside your body? Omigod. This wasn't a flesh wound." I was freaking out.

"Cupcake listen…" I heard him put his hand over the receiver and say, 'Terri, get the hell out of here. You shot me, okay? Isn't that enough for one day? Leave me the hell alone.' He was back with me again, "Honey, really I'm fine. I really don't want to get into it now."

"Terri Gilman shot you?" My voice was dripping with anger and distain. "What the hell, Joe?"

Joe gave a mighty sigh. I could picture him gritting his teeth and wishing he hadn't called me. "Honey, remember at my mom's house when I told you that with Terri we fought more often about things I didn't do than about things that I did do?"

"Yeah." I said, straining to hear his words, he seemed to be slurring them a little now.

"Well, as you know, there is something Terri has wanted me to do since we've been here, but I won't." He was speaking slowly and deliberately. He'd said they were about to take the bullet out, so I guess they had given him something to make him sleepy.

"Terri, shot you because you won't have sex with her? I'm coming out there and bringing you home."

"I'm okay, though," he repeated. "Really." I didn't know if he was trying to convince me or himself. I've taken a few bullets in my time, but Joe had never been shot.

"Where did she shoot you?" I was trying to calm myself.

"In the shower…" he yawned.

"NO! Where on your body did she shoot you?" I was shouting to keep his attention.

"Oh. She was aiming for my dick but I guess I sort of freaked out when I saw the gun. She said it looked like I was doing a Kung Fu move," poor Joe was drunk on painkillers and was sort of giggling now, "so she caught me in the ass."

Before I could ask anything else, the nurse took the phone and said that Joe was really incapacitated and couldn't talk anymore at this point. I do have my priorities, so I asked her if she thought he would have a scar. I mean he does have the best ass I've ever seen in my life. I would hate to think it would be defaced, so to speak. She agreed that it was quite a fine looking ass. I think I heard her wiping drool from her mouth while we were talking. She said it would be sort of hard to describe how the bullet went in, but that there probably wouldn't be a scar that you could see unless you were really looking for it. Hmmm. What the hell does that mean?

I hung up the phone and started to try to relax. It was no use. I wasn't going back to sleep tonight. I was wired. I was thinking about Gilman trying to eliminate my future with Joe. What if she'd really shot his dick off? I would still love him, I think. What a terrible thing to think! Of course I would still love him…….I think. He'd said she was an excellent shot. If he hadn't jumped, she may have missed him altogether. I felt guilty when I realized I was blaming Joe for doing a Kung Fu move and taking the bullet in the ass instead of letting it go harmlessly into the shower wall. I felt lucky that he would still be able to...perform, anyway. Getting shot in the ass wasn't so bad. I've been shot in the ass.