Disclaimer: The characters belonging to Janet Evanovich are used strictly for entertainment purposes.

A/N:

…

FromChapter13:

Just when we rounded the corner of the hotel, two strong hands grabbed my shoulders from behind. I yelped and Lester stopped, turned around, and then froze.

I knew that meant only one thing. Ranger.

…

Chapter 14

I turned my head to look at him and met his familiar eyes, hardened to pitch black. Ranger was … well, pissed off seemed too tame of a word. He continued to stare at me, with potent and unblinking focus. His hair was disheveled, short as it is, as if he'd run his hands through it many times, and he was obviously infuriated.

"Why?" I barely heard the word over his harsh tone.

"I just reacted." My best course of action, I realized, was to answer with direct and honest words. "When the shock wore off, I realized what I'd done and I was scared to be out there alone with all the passing out stuff. But Lester showed up, he'd followed me."

"You were afraid?" I nodded and his lips thinned. "You disappeared again," he said. The quiet in his voice stalled any defensive retort I may have made.

Lester took a step toward us and I gave him a slight shake of my head. No, I had to handle this on my own. I'd expected a reaction like this from Ranger. The look he gave me asked if I was sure. I was. He nodded and turned around, heading inside.

With Lester gone, I drew in a slow breath and looked up at Ranger, doing my best not to flinch under the force of the anger radiating from his eyes. Damn, I needed to learn how to curb my gut reactions. I sighed and closed my eyes briefly before answering. "I know. I'm sorry. I didn't think."

"No, you didn't." He gripped my upper arms, not enough to hurt me, but enough to let me feel the tremors of fury in his muscles. "In case you forgot, we went through hell the first time you disappeared. You remember that? When you went away and had a baby no one knew about?"

I felt as if he'd slapped me and that quick fire temper of mine flared instantly. "Do not tell me that you think I did all of this on purpose, faked my death, so that I could avoid having to tell you I was pregnant. Don't even think about suggesting it. You might be bigger than me and stronger than me, but I will so kick your ass if you go there."

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and when they opened there was a slight look of remorse when he said, "No. I know you didn't leave by choice. Just tell me if you knew you were pregnant when we started dating."

"So now you're not only assuming the baby is Morelli's but that, what, I was trying to pull a fast one on you when we got together?"

"I'm asking you to tell me how the fuck this happened, because none of the scenarios I've come up with make sense."

"And I'm asking you to grow a fucking brain, Ranger!"

"Stephanie." He reached up to take my arms in his again and I stepped back with a hand up to keep him at arm's length. He put his hands down, face taut, and said, "Please tell me."

I'd expected him to be worried about who the father was, but I couldn't believe that he was questioning whether I'd lied to him. Somewhere in the back of my compassionate mind, I knew he just wanted assurance. But right now all I could think about was that he was breaking my heart. And that pissed. me. off.

I started toward the hotel and he magically stepped in front of me without looking like he'd hurried at all. "Where are you going?"

"Inside."

"We're not done talking."

"Oh, I'd say we were finished."

I willed myself to take another step away from him even though my heart felt like it was going to explode into a million pieces. I hadn't wanted it to sound the way it sounded, but I was too proud to amend it now.

"I was out of line," he said, so low I almost didn't hear it. I stopped and turned my ear back toward him slightly to show I was listening, but remained silent. He moved to stand right behind me and said, "I'm sorry. I just need some answers." His voice was low, full of pain.

I wondered if I would have felt the same way if our positions had been reversed. What if he'd had a girlfriend before me who suddenly had a kid nine months after they broke up? Would I be so understanding about it?

I slipped my hands into my pockets and turned around to face him, slowly. My lips were dry so I licked them before replying. "I don't know how it happened, but it happened with you. I guess my IUD didn't work." I'd gotten the device so I couldn't have any accidents. It was part of that 'let's get responsible' kick I'd been on when I got home from Tahiti. It had dawned on me back then that sleeping with Ranger and Joe in the same week could have produced a hellish pregnancy debacle. Oh, the irony.

Ranger's eyebrows drew together. "Or you were already pregnant when you got it."

"The doctor did a pregnancy test before she gave me the IUD. It was negative!"

"Could have been a false negative."

"Why would she give me an IUD if she couldn't be certain I wasn't already pregnant? I had to wait until I was on my period to get the thing! The same period I started the night of our first date, in July, remember? I'm telling you, the IUD must not have done its job." That seemed to get through to him. And then it got through to me.

"Shit, Ranger. If the IUD was never working…" then we'd just had unprotected sex for two days. Just like we'd had unprotected sex for nearly two months because we thought everything was covered. Today we found out that we had a baby, we didn't know where the baby was, and that we'd put ourselves in jeopardy of having another one. I wanted to throw up.

Despite the clenching in his jaw, he sounded calmer when he said, "One thing at a time." He lifted his hands to take my arms again, only gentler this time. "Did you know you were pregnant before you were taken?"

My mouth dropped open on a gasp and I locked my knees to keep from stamping my foot. "Seriously?"

"How could you not know?"

I tried to jerk my arms to get free, but he was an immoveable force. "Gee, Ranger. I didn't think I could get pregnant. They told me that thing would make my periods taper off. I didn't think a thing about it when I didn't have one in August because I thought that was supposed to happen!"

"You should have asked your doctor."

"You can go to hell!" How dare he put this on me?

"Thanks, but I did that once today." He turned, releasing one of my arms, and headed toward the hotel.

I tugged on my arm, but couldn't get free of his grasp. "Let go of me!" I shouted. "I'll come back to the hotel, but you're not going to drag me back like a criminal."

He stopped, still facing toward the hotel, but didn't release my arm. I struggled again for a minute and he tightened his hand fractionally. I clenched my teeth and breathed roughly through my nose. "I'm not going anywhere with you like this."

Ranger didn't turn around, but he seemed to deflate a little. He tilted his face back toward me and said, "Today you ran. You promised to keep someone with you."

"I know," I said. "But you left, too, Ranger." I waited until he acknowledged my statement with a nod. "Why?"

He wrapped his hands around my arms again, this time in a loose grasp, sliding his hands up and down, shoulders to elbows. "I was hurt, confused." He tugged me toward him and his hands moved to my back as he drew me into a hug. "I didn't know what to think."

"And now?" I held my breath so I wouldn't breathe hard and let him know how much his answer meant to me.

"I don't know. Another kid, Stephanie. I'm not even a good dad to the one I already had."

I could deal with that kind of fear. I was worried about being a parent, too.

"This one's a boy," I said and he gave me a look that clearly asked how I thought that mattered. "Maybe you'll have more common ground with a boy. Guns. Cops and robbers. You know?"

"Would I have to play the cop?" He asked more light-hearted, but then he sobered. "Name?"

"Giancarlo, Carlo for short."

"We'll find him."

…

Activity in the room came to an abrupt halt when I walked through the door. Walker and Tank simply stared at me for several seconds, then Tank started in.

"What the hell did you—"

"Stephanie," Walker said, cutting off Tank with a wave of his hand. "Good to see you're okay. We were worried." At least one of the angry men now surrounding me was rational. "Running off wasn't ideal."

I nodded. "I know. I'm sorry for worrying everyone." I sent an apologetic look to Tank. Then I turned to Walker. "I need to talk to you."

I felt Ranger's presence behind me and turned around, asking for his understanding. "Alone."

Ranger's eyes flicked to Walker and stayed for a second, probably sending a message via ESP, and then he nodded once.

I followed Walker into the bedroom and sat on the loveseat. Walker pulled the armchair by the door over and sat in front of me with an expectant look on his face.

"I need you to get inside my mind. Fast." He cocked his head to the side, listening and contemplating my words. "I had another dream before I ran off. Me—Camila—with Adriano. We went to see the baby. I know what he looks like." Walker started to speak and I held up my hand. "There's more. When I woke, I knew who I was. I mean, I wasn't confused.

His eyebrows lifted. "Big development," he said.

"I know this stuff is all right here." I gestured toward my head. "Can't you do anything to move this along?" He began to speak, but I interrupted again. "I mean, are there any 'head' things you can do to jump start my memories? Seems to me that if I can fall asleep and dream about it, then you could somehow, you know… make it happen on purpose?"

"My plan was to use EMDR on you."

"What's that?"

"Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing."

I gave him a skeptical look. "Okay."

"It's a therapy that focuses on helping your cognitive and neurological coping mechanisms deal with trauma-related memories. If you have an event that causes you distress or that your mind can't cope with, it can trigger a trauma response. In your case, your mind completely shuts down and you lose the conscious ability to control your thoughts. EMDR would address those responses and help your mind develop more adaptive coping mechanisms. In other words, help you to stop shutting down and passing out."

"So, I'd … be able to remember things while awake?"

"Ideally, yes. There are several steps to the process. First, we identify the trauma events. That's easy, we know what they are thanks to your dreams." I nodded for him to continue. "Next we establish a safe place, a place or thing for you to focus on that feels safe." I immediately thought of Ranger, despite the unresolved mistrust currently between us. "After that, we actually begin the therapy. I'd start by showing you pictures that represent your trauma. In this case, it'd be the security photos of you. I'd ask for your feedback on what you feel, what you see, and any feelings or memories that surface when you see the pictures."

"What if I can't see or feel anything?"

He sat up slightly. "We have to be patient. Not everything will give you a response and not every response is a good indicator of how you cope with the trauma."

I sighed. This sounded like a lengthy process. Something we definitely didn't have time for. "We're talking about a baby, Walker, my kid. We don't have time to play it safe."

"Stephanie, real therapy, the good kind, is time-consuming. You need real therapy, not a Band-Aid. And not a method that could potentially hurt you even more."

"But there are other, faster ways?"

"What I'm trying to tell you is that we have no guarantees that using drugs or any other drastic method will help you remember anything else important to the case. In fact, following up on the names we learned from your dreams is a lot more productive than shooting you full of experimental serums."

"Do you think I have an abundance of patience right now?"

He put his hands on my shoulders. "Stephanie, no matter what we do, I'll still have to ask you hard questions. Questions that will be uncomfortable and traumatic."

"Nothing could be more traumatic than finding out there's a baby out there who's missing!"

"You sure about that?"

"Yeah!"

He narrowed his eyes at me and crossed his arms. "How did you get the scars on your back, Stephanie?"

I reared back as if he'd kicked me. "What scars?"

He cocked his head to the side a little. "The scars. On your back."

"I don't have—" To my knowledge, I'd never run as fast as I did in that moment. Walker was right behind me. I yanked my pink t-shirt off and turned around, back to the mirror, and cranked my head back to look. A four inch deep section between my shoulder blades was covered in scars. Most of them ran together, forming long lacerations, red and angry, against the peach tone of my flesh.

"Holyyyy," I said and started to hyperventilate. Omigod, omigod. What the hell? What the hell? "What the fuck is that?" I gasped out breathlessly.

Before I realized it, I was already falling, slipping into the familiar blackness, unable to stop myself from going into another dream.

…

The stockings Adriano had grabbed from my wardrobe were tied tightly enough to bite into my wrists and ankles, making my hands and feet go numb. He got down on one knee next to the edge of the bed. His clothes were soaked with sweat from exertion. He lowered himself until his eyes were level with mine. "Tell me that you don't hate me."

"I don't hate you," I whispered. "To hate you, I'd have to care."

He snarled and stood up again. I struggled against the restraints on my wrists and ankles, but couldn't go anywhere to escape what was coming. I heard the whip fly back and then slice through the air before he hit his target and I screamed.

Just when I thought he'd hit me again, a familiar scent pulled me up and away, out of Adriano's reach.

…

Bvlgari. Ranger. I snapped my eyes open and looked into Ranger's concerned face, blinking.

"What happened?" he asked Walker.

"I asked about the scars on her back. She didn't know she had any."

"Babe," Ranger said, squatting down to lift me off the floor. "It's okay. They don't matter."

"Don't matter!" I shouted. "Of course they matter! How could I let anyone do this to me?"

"You probably didn't have a choice."

I began to shake. This couldn't be happening. It couldn't. I wouldn't have let someone do this to me. They were an atrocious sight and looked like oddly shaped cuts, like when Kloughn tried to carve the turkey at Thanksgiving.

The ridiculous thought made me laugh. I laughed and laughed and laughed until I was crying and couldn't stop. I found myself tight in Ranger's arms, my nails digging into his back, my mouth pressed into his shoulder to muffle the sounds. I was terrified and angry and didn't know how to handle either emotion.

Afterward, I sat across Ranger's lap on the floor, dazed, blinking, and breathing and not much else. Somewhere along the way, Ranger had put my t-shirt back on me and I would have been grateful if I could find it in me to care.

Walker said, "Something about this whole situation doesn't sit well with me. Whatever was done to her either didn't work or they decided to undo it."

"Is that even possible?" Ranger asked.

"No, maybe not on purpose. That's why I'm leaning toward the theory that their method didn't work on her."

I sat up. "In one of the flashbacks Camila had this whole déjà vu thing about Haywood, uh, Ranger's apartment in the Trenton Rangeman building."

"Interesting," Walker said. Was 'interesting' a good thing?

"So you're saying 'they' just dumped me off because I was remembering myself? Why not just kill me?" Not that I wanted them to kill me, but letting me live didn't make sense, either.

"I don't know," Walker said.

"You okay now?" Ranger asked me.

I took in a deep breath and let it out. "I think so. Sorry, this was just a bit much." I looked at him and asked, "Why didn't you say anything about my back before?"

Ranger kissed my forehead and said, "Didn't know where to start."

I shook my head. "Maybe it's best that I didn't see them before now. I'm not sure at that point I could have handled it." I hugged Ranger and he tightened his arms around me. "Walker and I need to finish going over some things."

He helped me to my feet and stood, kissing my temple. "I'll be in the living room if you need me."

Walker and I followed him out of the bathroom and when he shut the door, I turned to Walker and said. "We need to talk about those drugs."