Disclaimer: Not mine, not making any money. I'm just playing.
Trial no.2
Stephanie was slumped on the couch in Ranger's office fiddling with the clip on her RangeMan I.D. tag, absently clipping it onto her black RangeMan shirt and then taking it off again. Clip on, clip off. Clip on, clip off. Clip on, clip off. Then she clipped it on to her finger by mistake and hissed under her breath, "Fuck! Ow!" She pulled the clip off quickly and sucked her sore finger into her mouth.
"Babe."
She looked up. Ranger was staring at her.
"Did you want something, or are you just trying to make sure that I can't think of anything else all day except the way that you're sucking that finger?"
She shrugged. Clip on, clip off. Clip on, clip off. Remove finger from mouth with a little pop, inspect the damage then slide it back into mouth. Slowly. Just don't look up. Don't acknowledge the waves of tension emanating from the other side of the room.
Then a large hand grabbed hers and she squeaked as he pulled her to her feet and out of his office.
He took her down to the parking garage and remoted the Turbo open. "Get in."
"Where are we going?"
"Out. Lunch. Anything that I can think of that will stop you from carrying on with your little head-fuck, which by the way, I recommend that you don't try again unless you want to deal with the consequences."
"Oh, was I bothering you?" she asked innocently.
"Cut it out. You know better."
"It's not nice is it?"
"What?"
"Having someone deliberately messing with your head."
He expelled a breath. "Now we're getting down to it. Okay, let's go get some lunch and we'll talk."
o0o0o0o0o
They ended up with coffee and sandwiches on a quiet bench next to a duck pond in a local park. Mercifully, there were just a few small ducks and moorhens waiting for crumbs and not the guerrilla waterfowl that she had met on her last visit to a pond.
She quietly balled up pieces of crust and flicked them towards the waiting birds.
Ranger watched her fidgeting. "You wanted to talk, so talk."
"It's wrong."
"What's wrong?"
"What you're doing to Connie. What I'm helping you do to Connie."
"Trust me, what I'm doing to Connie would be far worse if you weren't involved."
"It still felt wrong. She was crying. I've never seen Connie cry." She started punching little holes in her disposable coffee cup with her fingernail.
"But she wasn't bored."
"Bastard."
"Steph, nothing will stop this. Nothing. I know she was frightened but she was in no danger at any time. She was completely covered, and she came through with flying colors. Think of it as expanding her horizons."
"It still feels wrong."
"You don't have to be involved if you don't want to."
"I won't walk away from her. She's better off with me there than without."
He tucked a stray curl behind her ear. "She's not the only one."
Three days later Ranger dropped a file onto Stephanie's desk. "The next one. You'll be pleased to hear that she's in no danger at all on this one, not even from a horny nude model."
"I presume that there's still a catch in there somewhere."
"There's always a catch, otherwise what would be the point? And you know what a creative man I can be when I put my mind to it."
"The knowledge of how creative you can be is burned into my brain. As well as the speed with which you were out of the door the next morning. But don't worry, it wasn't just you. Departing male asses seem to be a regular feature of my life." She turned away from him to stare at the cover of the file.
He lingered as if he was about to say something, but finally he just stroked the back of her neck gently and went back to his own office.
Stephanie headed over to the bonds office. Connie was there on her own. "Hey, Connie. Lula out?"
"Macy's. Hot date with Tank tonight. I've got the files ready for you." Connie saw that Stephanie was already holding a brown manila file in her hand and stilled. "Next one?"
"Yeah."
"What can you tell me?"
"That it's better than the last one. I think. I hope." She pulled up a chair and they sat down together to read.
o0o0o0o0o
"Surveillance. Well that doesn't seem so bad. Ranger takes you on a lot of surveillance jobs, right?" Connie said.
"Yep. I've lost count of the hours I've spent sitting in a car with him getting a numb ass. Plus, I only get one pee break in the whole eight hours. You'd think he'd need to pee too, but no, he's a machine. I have to deliberately not drink for four hours before we start or I have to get out and look for bushes with nice dense leaves and no security lights nearby."
"Well, I'll take that over Max the potential rapist. What do I have to surveil?"
"Looks like there are going to be four points, with a team covering each one. The skip's house, his girlfriend's, a bar on Stark and… his other favorite place to visit."
Connie leaned over and peered at the roster, then sank her head into her hands. "He wouldn't."
"I think he just did."
"Now why would Ranger schedule me to cover Domino's? Oh no, don't tell me, I know this one. Because I like to watch, right?"
"You don't really want me to answer, do you?"
"Not really."
o0o0o0o0o
After a cup of coffee and an emergency donut they went back to the staffing roster.
"Looks like you're on this job as well," Connie said, "Covering the girlfriend's house with… oh look, what a surprise, Ranger."
Stephanie snorted. "Another night of 'The Zone' coming up. I wonder what he'd do if I brought a Gameboy with me to pass the time?"
"Probably ply you with coffee, wait until you went to find a bush then throw the console up in the air and shoot it on the way down. Who am I with?"
"Hector."
"And? Who's Hector?" Connie prompted.
"Probably better that you don't know. Just don't piss him off."
Connie rolled her eyes. "Yeah, because things could be so much worse with someone else from RangeMan pissed off with me as well."
"Gang tattoos, one teardrop."
"I take your point."
"Just look at it this way; he's gay, so at least your virtue will be safe this time out."
Connie thought about it, and in a bizarre sort of way, Ranger's plan made sense. "Guess Ranger wants a team that doesn't go a whole bunch on boobs, huh?"
"The way I see it, there's being aware of your surroundings, and there's being too aware of your surroundings."
Connie stood in front of her open closet, debating what to wear. What should a girl wear to accompany a gay gang-banger on a non-date to a strip club? She needed to blend in to do the surveillance effectively, but not blend in so well that she was in danger of being considered part of the entertainment. She snorted. Yeah, right, thirty something and a little on the heavy side to boot, probably not particularly likely to get mistaken for a stripper. Might be best just to go low key and remove all doubt.
Finally she picked a smart pair of indigo jeans and a deep v-neck t-shirt embroidered with beading that plunged between her breasts, and added a pair of stiletto heeled shoes. She was due at RangeMan in thirty minutes; Stephanie had said that they would all meet there then the teams would assemble and head out in the RangeMan cars to their various positions.
o0o0o0o0o
The control room buzzed her in when she pulled up to the basement car park entrance and Tank met her at the elevator entrance.
He nodded. "Connie."
"Hey Tank. Feels strange, me coming to you instead of you coming to Vinnie's."
"You'll be fine." Tank was evidently just as talkative on his home turf as he was on hers.
He escorted her up to the control room to join the rest of the men that would be working the same shift.
The fifth floor was a hubbub of activity, with men checking radio links and assembling what they would need to sit in a car for eight hours straight. Stephanie was sitting on a desk swinging her legs and looking wistfully at the coffee pot just visible through the door to the break room.
Connie stifled a laugh. At least she wasn't suffering alone tonight. She waved, and Stephanie's face brightened as she hopped off the desk and squeezed through the RangeMen to get to her. She was so much smaller than most of them that she looked like a child trying to get to the front of a crowd to see the parade.
"Connie!" Stephanie squeezed her in a hug. Being the only two women in a room full of hulking ex-military men inspired a sense of girl solidarity. "All set? Let me introduce you to Hector and then we'll get you fitted with a radio."
She grabbed her hand and headed back the way she had just come, pulling Connie in her wake. Connie couldn't help notice the number of eyes fixed to her cleavage as they ploughed through. She hoped that it wasn't an omen of the evening to come.
o0o0o0o0o
They found Hector sitting at the very back of the room allowing Ella to apply camouflage makeup over the tattoos visible outside his clothing.
Connie gulped, looking at the teardrop that was still visible under his eye for the moment.
Stephanie introduced them. "Connie, this is Ella, our house mommy at RangeMan Trenton, and this is Hector, who's going with you tonight. Guys, this is Connie. She runs the bonds office for Vinnie most of the time."
A pained expression flitted across Ella's face and was gone almost before it arrived. "Would this be the Vinnie with the pet duck?"
Connie nodded, and wondered if there was anyone in Trenton who didn't know the duck story.
Ella continued to paint Hector's skin. "Well, it's lovely to meet you dear. Please forgive me if I don't stop, I have to get this finished before they leave."
Hector just looked at her. She quailed a little, telling herself that he would have at least nodded if he wasn't keeping still for Ella to do his makeup.
o0o0o0o0o
Hector got into the driver's seat of their RangeMan vehicle and Connie got in next to him. He still hadn't said a word to her, and her hands were starting to shake as she tried to buckle her seat belt without brushing against his hands as he did the same. In fact they were shaking so hard that she just couldn't fit the tongue of the belt into the buckle at all. She tried three times as silent tears sprang to her eyes.
She felt a warm hand grip her own and froze in terror. She looked up and saw Hector watching her with sharp eyes. He held one finger up in front of him and took the belt away from her unresisting hands. He carefully fastened it for her then gave her a smile and patted her shoulder. "Okay?"
She nodded dumbly, and sat back in her seat waiting for the shakes to subside.
o0o0o0o0o
The music was pounding as they walked through the lobby doors into Domino's. She looked for a back table where they could sit together to watch for the skip. She spotted one to the right and pointed it out to Hector, but to her horror, he directed her to that table, and then he moved to the left side of the room to take up a position at a table on the other side of the gangway. She had to sit on her own? In a strip club? She noticed that his position gave him an excellent view of the bouncer's ass and raised her eyebrows at him.
He twitched his lips and shrugged. It looked like Ranger's cunning plan to make sure that the surveillance team wouldn't be distracted wasn't going to be as effective as he had planned. Good. Served him right.
Connie ordered a drink from a scantily clad waitress, fixing her gaze firmly on the end of the woman's nose to avoid seeing far more than she ever wanted to. Stephanie had suggested that one or two drinks to relax her again might be an idea, but not to overdo it. She was going to try to stick to the plan, but she made no promises to herself. It depended on how close she had to get to other women's boobs as part of tonight's job.
She scanned the crowd carefully, looking for signs of the skip. There were a few women scattered around, mostly in the company of men, but for the most part the club was filled with men in all sorts of shapes and sizes.
A tall blonde girl captured Connie's attention as she was looking round. She was wearing nothing but a silver thong and a filmy top, and she looked about sixteen. Surely she was too young to be working in a strip club? When she looked back at Connie and headed over, she realized that she had been caught staring.
"Want a dance, honey?"
Connie flushed to the roots of her hair. "No! I was just-"
"Just what?"
"Wondering how old you were."
The girl gave her an odd look, turned and walked away towards a middle aged man who had his eyes fixed on her obviously hoping for a little side action.
Connie took a slug from her drink. It was going to be a long night.
o0o0o0o0o
At eleven o'clock she suddenly heard Ranger's voice in the discreet receiver that was concealed underneath her strategically large earrings.
"All teams report status. Position two, clear."
She pressed the send button that Stephanie had shown her how to use before she really had time to think about what she was doing. "Hello?"
Someone else's voice that she didn't recognize snickered in her ear, "Position one, situation 'Hello' too."
Then she heard Stephanie's voice. "Knock it off, Lester, we don't use radios in Vinnie's office. Weren't you ever new?"
"Never, Bombshell, I was born experienced. At so many things."
Another unknown voice next. "Santos, you are such an asshole sometimes. Position three, clear."
Finally Hector's disembodied voice arrived, answering in thickly accented English. "Position four, clear."
Connie watched curiously as his lips moved slightly ahead of his voice arriving in her ear. It was like watching a foreign film with a dubbed soundtrack.
"So, Bombshell, do you need to pee yet?" Lester asked over the radio.
"Bite me, Santos."
"One day, if you ask me really, really nicely."
Ranger cut in abruptly. "Enough. Resume radio silence."
Connie sighed. Playtime over. Okay, so she'd looked stupid, but it had been a brief distraction from the endless display of breasts around her. Time to get back to business.
o0o0o0o0o
About ten minutes later she managed to accidentally catch the attention of another girl. This time a redhead about the same height as her. Damn.
"Want a dance, sweetie? We do girls too," and she pressed her breasts in closer.
Connie tried to not to recoil in case she blew her cover. "No," she squeaked. This was terrible. She looked across at Hector, who seemed to be quite comfortable with his view of the doorman's ass. Connie watched a girl approach him and veer away as he shook his head slowly. Tattoos or no, he still had an air of menace that she would have currently given anything to possess.
o0o0o0o0o
By the time she had turned down another two potential lap dances, Connie had just about mastered the art of turning them away while keeping her eyes firmly fixed above shoulder level. It figured that the evening would then have a new challenge to throw at her.
She noticed a large man squinting at her from his seat at a table two rows down from her own. His eyes were reddened and bleary and he was clearly several drinks past happy and well on the way to stinking drunk. She tried not to catch his eye, concentrating her attention on the tanned and toned twig currently writhing around the pole on the stage. Bitch.
It didn't work. With a lurch he hauled himself up from his chair and staggered towards her. He was huge and flabby and she could see thick tufts of hair poking above the neck and through the armpits of his wife-beater.
She glared at him, hoping that she had hitherto undiscovered powers of psychic persuasion like the ones Hector appeared to possess. Go. Go away. Fuck off. Fuck. Off. Now.
Nothing doing. In fact she had possibly just encouraged him. She was clearly just human and she was on her own. Worse, she was a girl and she was on her own.
He leaned over her and spoke right into her face with beer laden breath, "Hey sweetheart, I've been watching you. Enjoying the show?"
She ignored him, sending a silent plea to Hector to intervene. Not that her psychic powers were doing her much good so far tonight. Knowing her luck, Ranger would have instructed him not to interfere so that her punishment didn't get spoiled.
"C'mon baby, don't be that way. You got a great rack on you. Bet you'd look fine up there dancing with that pole, a proper woman like you, with real curves."
Ugh. Finally someone appreciated her charms and he turned out to be a near cousin to King Kong, with slightly more body hair. Stephanie got to choose between Morelli and Ranger. There was no justice in the world. None.
"Plenty to hold on to, if you know what I mean."
Oh no, he did not just say that, did he? This had to stop. Now. Without being arrested for carrying concealed or for shooting assholes without a permit. She needed something else. And since she was clearly a girl alone, then girl weapons it would have to be. She gently eased one foot into position under the table and smiled at him.
"You know, I have great shoes to go with my great rack. I'm wearing three inch spike heels. They hurt like a bitch after a couple of hours but they make my legs look fabulous, so what's a little pain?"
"Huh?" He had no idea what she was talking about. Meat head.
"One of those spike heels is currently resting over your left pinky toe. With a little pressure I could probably chop the fucker straight off. But the best thing is that I have two. Where do you think I'm going to aim the other one if you're still here in ten seconds?1"
He blanched and rose from the table. "Sorry to trouble you ma'am." Not only did he leave her alone, he clearly decided that he had had enough close encounters with women for one evening and headed straight for the exit and left.
So much for men. The bouncer hadn't even noticed. It looked like all he was good for was providing Hector with something to look at. She glared at the unwitting bouncer for a while, then switched her gaze to Hector and sent him a dagger look as well. He just grinned back and winked at her.
o0o0o0o0o
She tried to keep scanning the club unobtrusively without drawing attention to herself, but eventually she realized that it just brought the girls over to her. She needed a new plan. She tried to focus on the stage for a while instead.
That seemed to solve the problem of unwanted visitors for a while, but it did mean that she got to see far more than she was used to seeing, and got to see it gyrate into the bargain. It was hard not to draw comparisons between her generous thirty-two year old figure and these all-over tanned twigs with their platinum blonde hair and pneumatic breasts that seemed to defy gravity. She winced as the current act came to an end. Okay, add waxed to within an inch of their lives as well. That much depilation had to hurt. She wondered idly how they dealt with the stubble issue.
A large man walked up to Hector and she tensed, not sure if he had been made. Hector seemed relaxed enough, so she supposed not. The man leaned in and spoke to him, then they exchanged a complicated handshake and he straightened up.
He turned and began walking towards her, and she realized that she knew him. He sat down at her table and smiled shyly at her.
"Hal?"
"Hi, Miss Rosolli. Good to see you."
"Are you part of our surveillance team too?"
"No, I come in here all the time."
Connie watched him blush crimson and avert his eyes from the over-siliconed pair of breasts on display on the stage, and stifled a laugh. "Of course. Silly of me. You ex-military guys are men of the world, right?" She watched him sit a little straighter in his chair.
"Of course." He saw her biting her lip trying not to laugh and looked embarrassed. "Okay, maybe not. I just thought you might appreciate some company since you were stuck here all evening."
"Do you know, that is possibly the nicest thing that anyone has ever done for me. You are so sweet."
"Sweet? That's not something I'm used to hearing every day. In fact you're the only person apart from my mother who's ever called me sweet."
"Ah, but how many women have you let practice their seduction skills on you?"
"You're definitely the first. Not even my mother. In fact definitely not my mother."
She laughed. "Not even Stephanie?"
"No, Stephanie practiced her takedown skills on me instead."
Connie raised her eyebrows. "Tell."
"She stunned me with my own stun gun," he said sheepishly.
She leaned forward. "Now you have to tell me everything."
Hal told her a part of the Slayer story that she hadn't known, and suddenly she was having fun, even if she did have to check periodically to see if their skip had made an appearance, and even if they did both regularly blush at what was going on around them.
o0o0o0o0o
At around half past twelve Connie heard Lester's voice in her receiver, "This is position one. Our dumbass just came home and we have him in custody and on the way to the station. No damage, no casualties."
"Good. We're done everybody, pack up and head back," Ranger answered.
Connie turned to receive a thumbs up from Hector. He had heard too. She smiled; Stephanie would be relieved, she wouldn't be hunting for bushes tonight.
Right on cue, Stephanie spoke. "Connie, we're going to come over to your position and pick you up. You and I can head back together and Ranger will take Hector so that we can talk."
Hector had come over to their table, so Connie relayed the message to him and Hal.
"Ranger's coming here?" Hal jumped up from his seat and looked around. "I need to get going. Early to bed, early to rise, right?"
"I guess. Thanks for keeping me company tonight."
He beamed at her. "It was my pleasure."
o0o0o0o0o
Hector and Connie left through the main door and found Stephanie's and Ranger's car already waiting for them out in the dimly lit parking lot. Hal had left through a different door, mumbling something about parking on a side street.
Ranger rolled his window down and nodded wordlessly to Connie while Stephanie climbed out of the passenger seat. He couldn't see it from inside the car, but Stephanie was grinning and giving her a double thumbs up over the roof of the car. It looked like two down, eight to go.
She nodded back at Ranger, striving to look suitably solemn. Wouldn't do to let him know what Stephanie was up to behind his back. She cast a casual look around the surrounding streets to see if she could spot Hal anywhere around. She half suspected that Stephanie wasn't the only one operating just below Ranger's radar. Those had looked suspiciously like RangeMan pants and boots that he was wearing with his casual shirt.
Stephanie jumped into the driver's seat, still grinning. "So?"
Connie reflected. How to sum up the evening in one sentence. "Oh my God, the boobs!" She started to giggle. "Boobs, everywhere! They must have thought I was a complete perv, but no-one batted an eyelid! I didn't know where to look. They offered me lap dances and everything. What if someone I knew was in there?"
Stephanie was giggling helplessly too. "Well, of course they'd think you were a perv. They already do, what with you working for Vinnie for so long and all."
"What?" Connie's laughter stopped abruptly.
1 Sadly not my idea. I borrowed it from Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett. HIGHLY recommended.