Disclaimer: Not mine, not making any money. I'm just playing.
Trial no.8
After another week with no sign of trouble, Ranger let things return to normal. Connie resumed work at the bonds office and the guards were reassigned to other work.
Vinnie had been delighted to have her back, although she suspected that his feelings had more to do with relief that he had someone else to write bond for him, while he resumed his activities in his locked office.
She found the four walls of the bonds office hard to take at first after the constant change of the surveillance assignments and she missed her conversations with Manny, but she had missed Lula more. She was even pleased to see Vinnie, although torture wouldn't drag that little piece of information past her lips where anyone could hear it. All in all it was good to be back.
o0o0o0o0o
Back to normal lasted all of three days. On the fourth day everything changed. It was half past five and she was just locking up the bonds office for the night. Vinnie had left an hour earlier, muttering something about an appointment to see a man about a dog. Knowing Vinnie, she hadn't inquired further.
Lula had gone ahead of her into the parking lot talking loudly and cheerfully about her date with Tank at the weekend, and Connie was laughing as she set the alarm.
"So, I said to him, 'Baby, I'll keep these shoes on all night if you want me to, just check the hotel ain't put us in a room with a water bed, that's all I'm sayin'."
"And what did he say?" Connie called over her shoulder as she turned the key in the deadlock.
"He said that we had a date before we were so rudely interrupted," an unpleasantly familiar voice murmured in her ear.
She froze with horror, wondering if she had a chance to reach her gun. She started to inch her hand down slowly towards her purse, but before she could reach it she heard a click and Lula's voice.
"You are so wrong. Now move your nasty smelling ass away from my friend before I shoot you a new asshole that smells even worse than the one you already got."
Gerard stepped back with his hands in the air, shoved backwards against Lula, whirled and ran out of the parking lot. Lula fired a wild shot that went nowhere near him, and he was gone.
Connie sagged. "Shit."
"You got that right. Now open the door again. We got calls to make."
o0o0o0o0o
Tank put the phone down and walked round to Ranger's office. "Problem. Gerard was at the bonds office tonight. Lula just stopped him from grabbing Connie at the back door. Took a shot at him but he got away. You want the guards back on her?"
"No, put a man on Steph, I don't think she's the target, but I want Connie in and under lock and key."
"You can't hide her in the building for ever."
"I won't have to. Bring her in, keep her in and give her a job rough enough that she'll believe it's one of the ten. That way she won't fight it."
"What job?" Tank asked.
"I don't know, be creative."
"And what are you going to do?"
"I'm going to hunt down Gerard."
o0o0o0o0o
The day of Connie's next job dawned three days after Gerard's re-appearance. The Toys 'R' Us delivery had arrived the day before and one of the conference rooms had been set up for her. She had no idea why Ranger thought that this should be one of her ten jobs, or why it required her to stay on the fourth floor for several days, but she wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. She had faced horny, naked thieves, armed robbers, strippers, bail jumpers, pimps and rats. Babysitting a few kids for the afternoon was going to be a walk in the park.
Tank was waiting for her when she reported to the control room. "You ready?"
"Absolutely," she replied confidently.
He looked at her for a moment. "You know much about kids?"
"None of my own, but plenty of them at Italian family gatherings. How bad can it be?"
He shook his head pityingly. "A word to the wise. Watch LJ. Like a hawk."
"LJ?"
"One of Lester's."
"Lester has kids? I didn't know he was married."
Tank looked at her as if he couldn't believe that she had even asked the question. "He's not."
"Then how… okay, stupid question. Forget I asked."
They walked to a large conference room on the third floor that she hadn't seen before. The tables were pushed to one side and there were a series of play-mats laid out on the floor. Connie counted ten children sitting with their fathers. They were all old enough to be walking and talking, and she would have guessed that they were between the ages of about three and eight, not that she knew much about children to be certain.
Tank introduced each man, who in turn introduced his children.
Vince had brought two children, a girl, Tegan, and her younger brother, Tommy. They both had fair skin, dark blonde hair and a ready smile like their father. Tegan had lost her two front teeth and was sporting a gap-toothed grin.
Bobby had a breathtakingly cute little girl that he called Angel. She had cocoa brown skin and her hair was braided into neat little cornrows. She was one of the smallest children in the room and she regarded Connie with huge, watchful eyes as she clung to her father's neck like a limpet.
Cal was next with his son. Sammy was a tall boy with blue eyes, a shock of black hair and an impish face. He beamed happily at her from his spot standing next to his father, and Connie was relieved to note a shortage of tattoos.
Rodriguez nodded shortly at Connie and introduced three neat-looking children as Carla, Max and Maria. They all had straight dark hair and olive skin, and watched her with solemn faces.
"And finally," Tank said with a pained expression on his face, "we have Lester's hellsp… children."
Lester grinned at Tank. "I rounded them all up especially for the occasion."
Connie looked at the children, then back to Lester with a confused expression. "Are they," she paused, then decided to mouth the last word silently in case they were too young to understand, "adopted?"
"Nope. All my own flesh and blood. Beautiful, aren't they?"
Lester's offspring should have been in a Benetton commercial. The youngest, Ryan, had wavy, light brown hair, light olive skin and bright blue eyes. Chantal, the girl, had a slightly darker complexion than her brother, almond eyes that hinted at Asian ancestry and long, straight, black hair. "And this," said Lester cheerfully, indicating the oldest child, "is Lester Junior."
Lester Junior, a.k.a. LJ, a.k.a. 'that little monster' in his school's staffroom when the door was closed and the coffee was poured with shaking hands. He was a tall boy with warm caramel skin, black hair that lay in loose curls and a smile that suggested that trouble was probably brewing.
Connie realized that, courtesy of the Burg, she had led a very sheltered life.
"I guess you don't run into many baby-daddies in the Burg," said Tank.
"Not really," she answered weakly.
o0o0o0o0o
Cal, Vince, Rodriguez and Bobby all admonished their children to be good for Connie and to do what they were told. Lester just waved at his three and told them to have a good time. They left the room and Connie looked at the children. They looked back at her. It looked like it was up to her to break the ice.
"Hi, I'm Connie."
They all just looked at her.
Connie closed her eyes. There had to be a way to communicate with them. They were people, after all, just very small ones. Toys, she decided, let's start with the toys. "Shall we see what I brought for you to play with?"
That did it. Nine children turned as one and stampeded towards the box sitting by the door. The hive mind in living color. That left one. Angel was standing staring at her with a thumb in her mouth. She squatted down to get to the same level as the smallest child. "What's the matter, sweetie?"
Angel held up her arms in a silent plea.
"You want a hug?" Connie's heart warmed, and she picked the little girl up. Angel wrapped her arms around her neck and settled in. Connie gave her a short hug and tried to set her down again, but Angel refused to let go of Connie's neck and hung there whimpering. Connie gave in. "Okay, you can stay up there for a little while, but we have to see what the other children are doing."
Connie saw Sammy and LJ huddled together in a corner looking at something. Remembering Tank's warning, she decided that she would start with them. She crossed the room towards the boys, carrying Angel in her arms. "What're you doing, boys?"
Sammy started guiltily and LJ moved his hand behind his back quickly.
Connie narrowed her eyes. "Show me."
LJ smiled knowingly and brought his hand round and up towards her face. There was a large, hairy spider in the palm of his hand.
"Fuck!" Connie sprang back, heart beating wildly. Angel hung on tight.
"She said 'fuck'!" LJ shouted joyfully. "Connie said 'fuck'! Connie said 'fuck'!"
"LJ, stop that right now."
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"
Sammy joined in too. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"
"Stop that now, boys. I said stop that. I SAID SHUT UP!"
Finally they stopped, but they didn't exactly look worried. Connie beat a hasty retreat while the going was good. She was sure she heard LJ mutter something behind her back as she moved away.
It sounded like, "No fair, she didn't scream."
o0o0o0o0o
She decided to check on the girls next. Tegan, Carla, Maria and Chantal were playing with some Play Doh. Connie looked over their shoulders and saw the brightly colored array of pies, cakes and pizza slices and smiled. Learning to be like their moms already. Girls were so much more civilized than boys. Much easier. She leaned in and listened to their conversation.
"I bet you he will," Chantal was saying. "He's done it before."
"I don't believe you," Tegan answered. "Boys are dumb, but no-one is that dumb."
"Watch this then." Chantal called her little brother over. "Ryan, look! I made something nice for you. It's a cake. Why don't you take a bite?"
Ryan eagerly accepted the piece of Play Doh shaped like a cake and popped it into his mouth.
"You see?" Chantal said to the other three girls. "Boys are dumb."
Connie gasped in horror. "Ryan, no! Nasty! Spit it out!"
The little boy just kept chewing happily.
Connie tried to put Angel down, but she just wailed and tightened her grip around her neck. "Honey, please, get down for just a minute!"
Angel silently refused. Connie didn't have much more time before Ryan swallowed his cake, so she gave up and tried to use the fingers of her one free hand to force his mouth open and extract the dough. "Eew. God, that's nasty!"
She managed to get most of it out and threw the sticky mess of dough into a waste paper basket. She couldn't do much to clean her hands with only one hand free, so she had to wipe her fingers over the front of her sweatshirt. Lovely.
That left the other two younger boys, Tommy and Max, unaccounted for. She looked around the room for them. Nowhere to be seen. She caught a movement from the corner of her eye and looked under the tables at the side of the room.
There they were. Drawing on the wall of the RangeMan conference room with the fat crayons that she had provided.
"No!" she yelped. "Bad! Out of there!"
When they had reluctantly crawled out of their hideaway she tried to move them onto a less destructive path. "Look, Lego! I bet you could make a house. Why don't you try to make a house? Please, make a house? For me?"
She heard one of the girls giggle behind her and turned, dreading what she was about to see before she even knew what it was. "Oh, dear God, no. Please, no."
Sammy and LJ had found some brightly colored marker pens in the box and shucked their tee-shirts, and they were now carefully drawing tattoos onto their bodies. Sammy already had one on his forehead that looked like a crude copy of his father's flaming skull tattoo, and he was currently drawing a crooked dog on his belly. LJ was carefully filling in a tribal band around his left bicep.
"What in the name of God are you two doing?"
"We're looking like our dads," LJ answered. "Sammy wanted a picture on his head like his dad's but I think it looks dumb, I'm doing one like my dad's. My dad says you get way more pussy with a tribal, and I always wanted a cat."
Jesus wept. "You two, outside to the bathroom. Go wash those off, now."
Connie watched them leave with her heart in her mouth. There was no way that she could leave the younger children unattended while she escorted those two to the bathroom. She would have to trust them to wash up and come straight back. Something told her that this was unlikely to happen. She was way out of her depth.
Someone tugged her sleeve. She looked round and saw Tegan standing behind her looking anxious.
"Miss Connie, My brother just swallowed a Lego!"
o0o0o0o0o
Stephanie was having coffee with Mary Lou in a Burg café when her cell rang.
"Hey, Connie. How's it going?.. What?.. Okay, let me ask Mare, she's right here. Mare, Connie says one of the kids just swallowed a piece of Lego. Does she need to take him to the emergency room?"
"Ask her how many bumps it had on top," Mary Lou replied.
"Connie, how many bumps did it have on top? Okay, I'll hang on while you ask her." Stephanie waited with the phone to her ear for a minute. "Mare, she says probably two. What should she do?"
"Don't panic. Two bumps usually pass straight through. You need to check, though, and go to the emergency room if it doesn't pass on its own." Mary Lou's voice had the confidence of one who had been through this one before.
Stephanie passed the answer on, then turned back to Mary Lou again. "Connie says do you know the best way to tell a mercenary that their child swallowed Lego on her watch and that they are going to have to check their kid's crap to see if it passes."
Mary Lou choked on her mouthful of coffee.
"I think you're on your own with that one. Whose kid is it?" Stephanie asked. "No, I think you're okay; Vince is pretty cool about most things. We'll tell him together, just in case. Has anything else gone wrong?"
She listened for a minute. "Okay, that's not good. I'm going to call someone to help you. Don't worry, we'll set it up so it's not obvious. Anyway, we need to make sure that RangeMan still has a building at the end of the day."
Stephanie hung up then dialed another number. "Hal, are you in the office today? Good, I have a job for you. It's tricky, but trust me, you'll be glad you did it. I need you to find a reason to go to the third floor bathrooms…"
o0o0o0o0o
Connie closed her cell and tried to take deep breaths while she waited for the cavalry to arrive. Then she heard a loud thump coming from the other side of the conference room. Max had just jumped from the top of one of the tables and landed on the carpet. Ryan was poised ready for launch, and Tommy was scrambling up on to the table for a turn, clearly not feeling any ill effects from the Lego swimming around in his stomach.
"NO!" she shouted.
Ryan made his leap anyway, and was quickly followed by Tommy. Max was climbing up to do it again, so she grabbed him by the back of his pants and hoisted him off the table and into the air.
Connie sagged with the strain of suspending a small boy from one hand at the same time as having the weight of a small girl hanging around her neck.
"Enough," she hissed, and the other two boys stopped, looking mutinous. She lowered Tommy to the ground as quickly as she could and felt a twinge in her upper back.
At that moment, the door to the conference room opened and Hal walked in with a dripping wet child in each hand.
"Dear God, look at them! What were they doing in there?" she moaned.
"Spray fights with the bathroom faucets. Don't worry, Luis is already on it. There's a tray of sandwiches on its way down too. I talked to Ella, and she says that food should calm them down for a while. I have to get back to the control room before I'm missed, but I'll be back at the end of my shift."
"I could kiss you."
"Eew, Connie wants to kiss Hal!" Carla had overheard her and conveyed her disgust to the rest of the room.
"Yuk! He's a boy. Boys have cooties." Maria was also deeply unimpressed. Chantal and Tegan were screwing up their faces and making kissy noises.
"You're having fun then," Hal commented.
"Suddenly I miss the rats in the dark. That was so much easier."
o0o0o0o0o
The trays of sandwiches arrived and the children tore into them like a ravening horde. Angel still refused to get down, though, and insisted on leaning down precariously from Connie's shoulder to grab a sandwich. She was currently dropping breadcrumbs down the front of Connie's tee-shirt as she ate. A little heap of crumbs was accumulating in Connie's bra between her breasts.
She noticed that Maria wasn't eating anything. "What's the matter, Maria? Don't you want anything to eat?"
"Don't like them."
"But there are chicken ones here. How about a nice chicken sandwich?"
"Don't like chicken," she muttered.
"Okay, how about a ham one? Or there are some cheese ones, look." Connie pointed them out.
"Don't like them either."
Her sister, Carla, jumped in. "She eats all of those things at home, miss."
"Is that true, Maria? Why won't you eat them here?" Connie asked.
"Don't like these ones."
"Well, if you don't eat any sandwiches, I can't let you have any candy. And I'm sure you like candy, don't you?" She looked at her and tried to envisage that she was staring down a rattlesnake.
Maria reluctantly took a cheese sandwich and forced it down as if it contained ground glass.
When all the children had eaten something, Connie produced the promised candy. She had opted for Sweet Tarts, figuring that they would all like those. All the children stuffed their faces, including Maria this time. She had no reservations about candy by the looks of it.
o0o0o0o0o
"Miss, I need to pee." Max had a worried look on his face and he was gripping his pants at the crotch.
"Okay, hold on sweetie, I'll find someone to take you."
"Can't wait." He started to dance a little.
"I need to go too, miss," Tommy said, and his sister nodded too.
"Well that's three of you." She raised her voice. "Okay, how many of you need to go?"
Six hands shot up in the air and Angel tugged at the neck of her tee-shirt.
"Miss, I need to go now." Max's voice was anguished.
"Right then, we all go."
The children all massed at the door to the conference room. She waded through to the front and opened the door, and they all trooped out after her.
Connie realized that she had no idea where the bathrooms were on this floor, but it stood to reason that they were around here somewhere. The solution was standing in front of her.
"Sammy, LJ, we're returning to the scene of the crime. Show me the way to the bathroom."
"Miss!" Max wailed.
"-quickly."
LJ gave her a mischievous salute that made him the image of his absent father and disappeared around the corner at a run.
She stifled a curse that would have made LJ shout with glee if he'd heard it. "After him, you lot."
The group shuffled into a run and followed LJ.
"I'm gonna pee!" Max moaned and they picked up the speed. Angel squealed with laughter as she bounced in Connie's arms.
They found the bathroom at the end of the corridor with LJ leaning against the wall outside. Connie shepherded them all in and Max sprinted into one of the stalls. Tegan and Tommy grabbed the other two while the others milled around waiting.
When they came out, another three went in, and Connie held Max and Tommy up to the sinks in turn, followed by the hand driers.
While the second batch were in the stalls a man in black walked into the bathroom and did a horrified double-take before walking out again.
"Coward!" Connie called after him.
She insisted that everybody go, whether they needed to or not, and finally every child was finished, washed and dried. They moved en-masse down the corridor back to the conference room.
o0o0o0o0o
About half an hour later, the wonderful peace that the sandwiches had given her was broken as a fight erupted between Lester's older two children.
"You're lying!" Chantal shrieked. "My mommy is daddy's girlfriend!"
"Daddy comes to see us every month. That makes my mommy his girlfriend," scowled LJ. "Anyway, I have the same name as him. That makes me special."
"Everyone knows your mommy just did that to try to make him marry her. My mommy says Daddy is just a tom-cat anyway. Everybody knows Daddy doesn't marry anyone and everybody knows he loves me the best!"
"You don't know anything! He's my daddy. I'm his family, not you, and not him." LJ waved in Ryan's direction.
Ryan started to wail, and Connie rushed over to him. She looked at the crying child and half-heartedly tried to dislodge Angel from her aching neck. Nothing doing, just like the last five times she had tried. She braced herself and scooped Ryan up with her free arm. There was some jockeying for position between his arms and Angel's, but eventually they managed to find a way round each other and both children snuggled into her neck. She sank into a large chair before her spine snapped.
The cuddle calmed him down, and Ryan's wailing gradually descended into heart-wrenching sobs as he buried his face in her neck. "My daddy does love me, he told me so."
Connie choked back a sudden lump in her throat. "Of course he does, precious. Your daddy loves you just as much as he loves your brother and sister."
If Connie survived this, she was going to have words with Lester.
From the other side of her head, Angel whispered her first words of the day into her ear. "Is the other boy very sad?"
"Yes, sweetheart, he is. Do you think maybe you could be his friend today and help him be happy?"
Angel reached out a little hand and stroked Ryan's arm silently.
He sniffed a little, and the sobs slowed to whimpers, then finally he was silent.
Connie made a decision. She kicked her chair into a corner of the room where she could see all the others and sat back down. As of this moment, the kids could trash the room for all she cared. She would intervene if it looked like someone might get hurt, but right now she was going to sit here with these two until her heart stopped hurting.
o0o0o0o0o
Hal came back at three o'clock and stopped short as he surveyed the bedlam in the room. The brightly colored confectionary had done its job and the children were in the middle of a massive sugar high.
Sammy and LJ were wrestling in the centre of the room, trying out WWE moves on two large teddy bears. Max, Tommy, Tegan and Maria were running a wall-of-death around the room which involved climbing up onto the row of tables, running along them and jumping off the other end, then doing a complicated vertical slalom through a row of chairs which involved climbing over one chair, then under the next, then over another and so on, then round the room until they reached the tables ready to start again. The oldest girls, Carla and Chantal, had staked out a corner and were using the colored markers to paint their nails different colors. They occasionally shrieked in protest and threw pieces of Lego at the runners if the wall-of-death circuit got too close to their little beauty parlor.
Hal located Connie in her corner and made his way across when he spotted a suitable break in the wall-of-death runners. Angel and Ryan had dozed off in her arms and she was sitting quietly in her chair so as not to disturb them.
"Are you okay?"
"Yep. We're fine. If you look, Chantal and Carla are actually pretty good at nails. I'm thinking about getting them some proper nail polish. And Sammy and LJ have some pretty good moves on them, don't they? Must be the military dad thing coming out."
"I can see that they're all alive and well, and I'm glad the control room isn't right underneath this room, but are you okay?"
"I'm good. Just prioritizing."
Hal opened his mouth to say something, then changed his mind and closed it again.
Connie saw, and narrowed her eyes. "Say it."
"I shouldn't."
"Say it," she insisted.
"Do you promise to still talk to me afterwards if you don't like it?" Hal asked.
She nodded impatiently.
"I was going to say that you wouldn't believe how good you look with those kids asleep in your arms."
Connie's jaw dropped and she stared at him incredulously.
Hal cringed. "I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. I just looked at you and couldn't help thinking it."
"No, it's okay. You just… surprised me, that's all. I was expecting a comment about the wall-of-death squad or something. But now that we've got that out of the way, come here and take one of them off me. My back is killing me."
"Okay, give me Angel. She's met me before when her mom was sick and Bobby brought her in for Ella to watch." Hal gently took the little girl out of Connie's arms. Angel woke up with the movement, and sleepily wrapped her arms around his neck instead.
Connie's aching back and neck applauded the move, and she decided to stay right where she was, just resettling Ryan on her lap now there was a little more space.
o0o0o0o0o
With Hal around, the afternoon went a lot more smoothly. Ryan slept on in Connie's lap while she enjoyed a front row seat of Hal crawling around on his hands and knees with a succession of squealing children sitting on his back. It turned out that Rangemen were pretty strong horses, because at one point there were three of them on board at once. When his knees gave up, the weightlifting started, with him lifting them each in turn above his head like a weightlifting bar.
After an hour of this he had to call a halt and sit down for a while. He tore himself away from the pleading children, begging for a rest. He came and sat on the floor in front of Connie's chair where he could lean back against her legs. His short hair was damp at the temples and sweat was sticking to his black RangeMan tee-shirt and beading the skin of his neck. She fought a momentary urge to lean forward and lick it off.
"I thought that you Rangemen were tough. Don't you lift weights in the gym?"
He nodded. "Sure. I can lift 200lb in the gym, but weights in the gym don't shout, "Again, again!"
o0o0o0o0o
An hour later the children were finally starting to flag too. The boisterous games had stopped, and after a break for cookies and juice they had settled down to play quietly with the Lego and the Play Doh. Thankfully, nothing else had been accidentally eaten or swallowed.
Ryan started to stir on Connie's lap, then she felt something warm and wet soak through her tee-shirt and pants.
"What the hell? Oh, eew!"
Ryan had wet himself while sleeping. Connie realized that she hadn't seen any bags of spare clothing, and she hadn't thought for a minute that something like this might happen so she certainly didn't have anything. She shifted Ryan carefully and stood up.
"Hal, help!"
"What's the matter? Oh, damn."
"What do I do?" she asked, helplessly.
"Wait there, and I'll see what I can find for you." Hal left the room at a fast walk.
He came back five minutes later with a couple of tee-shirts. "This is the best I could do in a hurry. I have some wipes, a couple of towels, one of Ella's old shirts for Ryan, and a clean one out of my locker for you, if that's okay?"
"If it's dry, it's better than okay. Thanks."
Ryan was fully awake and thoroughly uncomfortable by now. Connie took him to the bathroom and stripped his wet clothes off, then wiped him down with the wipes and dried him with one of the towels. Then she pulled the tee-shirt over his head. Even though Ella was a small woman it still almost brushed the floor, but at least he was dry and comfortable. She took him back to the conference room and handed him off to Hal before making another trip for herself.
She looked at herself ruefully in the mirror and shook her head. Fortunately the tee-shirt came almost to her knees, because the pants were way too wet to keep on. She looked more like a woman that had just risen from her lover's bed than a harried babysitter. Oh well. She shrugged her shoulders and went back to the conference room.
When she got back into the room, the party was over and the children were being collected. Stephanie had arrived and was chatting to the parents, and Hal was getting hugs left, right and center from the children.
Angel had surgically attached herself to Bobby's neck and gave Connie a little wave over his shoulder.
Rodriguez's children had reverted to solemn and obedient, and she somehow doubted that he would believe a word if she had told him about the day's events. They each thanked her for a lovely time, and Connie wondered if there were pods in the next room that had hatched while she was in the bathroom.
Tegan and Tommy were bouncing around Vince, telling him about the weightlifting and the horse rides, and Vince was looking at Hal with a pitying expression. He shook his hand. "Above the call of duty, man."
Connie braced herself and joined them. "I'm afraid there's something I need to tell you. I think that Tommy swallowed a piece of Lego. I asked for advice and-"
"And I've got shi… poo-combing duty coming up. Don't worry, Steph already told me." Vince seemed surprisingly calm about it. "If I find it, I'll add it to the marble and the GI Joe helmet that made their way through as well." He scruffed Tommy's hair. "One day I'm gonna wire your jaw shut and feed you through a straw so you can't swallow stuff."
That left the other one that she was worried about. The crude flaming skull on Sammy's forehead looked like it was laughing at her. She faced Cal apologetically. "I am so sorry, I swear I just took my eyes off him for a minute, and-"
"It's okay," Cal cut in. "It'll wash off eventually. Anyway, I can hardly get upset because he wants to look like his old man, can I?"
Connie wondered if being in the security business made these men unflappable or if Ranger just hired people like that. Either way she was grateful.
That just left Lester. He smiled and waggled his eyebrows at her. "Like the outfit. You got anything else on under there?"
She looked at him and shook her head then walked away, not trusting herself to say anything civil.
She crouched down in front of Ryan. "We both look funny, huh?"
He smiled and nodded.
"Come here." Connie gave him a last hug, then got up and let him rejoin his father and half-brother and sister.
Stephanie was waiting to the side of the room. "What was that all about?"
"It's just… you know the way we rail at the Burg and the way it expects us to behave like perfect little Stepford families sometimes?"
Stephanie nodded curiously.
"Well, maybe there's a point there somewhere." Connie nodded in the direction that Lester had taken. "He's nice and he's funny and sexy, and he can get any girl he wants, but those kids happened along the way and I spent the afternoon watching them tear themselves up. It just about broke my heart. And I don't know what I can do about it. I don't think there's anything I can do about it. The Burg would hunt him down and make him do something about it."
She shook her head. "Ah, what do I know about kids anyway. Forget I said anything. Take me home? Well, to the fourth floor anyway?" she asked Hal.
"Of course. Did I mention how good you look wearing just my tee-shirt?"
She rolled her eyes. "You thought I looked good buried under other people's kids and covered with Play Doh and drool. I figure you're just easily pleased."
"If you're going to insult me then I'm taking it back."
She ran a finger across his bicep. "Take me home first, and then I'll let you take it off me yourself."
Stephanie sighed. "Don't mind me, you two. I can claw my eyes out after you've gone. I guess I'll go and ask Hector to arrange a glitch on the fourth floor cameras. Again."
o0o0oo0o0o
A quiet click from the direction of her front door woke Stephanie at three a.m. She reached down the side of the bed and pulled her gun from its position tucked underneath the mattress, cocked it and aimed it at the door. She lowered it again when Ranger walked into the room. His shoulders were slumped and he looked tired.
"What's going on?" she asked softly.
"Gerard's gone to ground. He knows I'm looking for him."
"What do you do next?"
He scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Keep looking."
"You look rough."
He almost smiled. "Good to know."
You can stay here if you want. If you promise not to take off again. What was that all about, anyway?"
"Trying to do the right thing. You didn't break up with Morelli by your own choice. I was trying to keep you connected to your own world and not pull you any further into mine."
"So why are you here now?"
"Because you looked for me. I'm not that good a man."
She lifted the corner of her quilt to invite him in. He climbed in fully clothed and curled himself around her gratefully. She felt him relax around her and went back to sleep herself.
o0o0o0o0o
A few little author's notes in case I've confused the hell out of anyone:
Benetton are famous for using pictures of children of different ethnic origin in its poster campaigns. An example can be seen here:
.com/ben_en/about/campaigns/list/children_on_potties/?t=print&version=1
The definition of a baby-daddy from
"A guy who isn't your boyfriend, or your husband, or even really your friend, but happens to be the father of your child."