Unapologize

By: PricklySare

A/N: Insert standard disclaimers here. Many thanks to all those who have been reading and reviewing. I'm glad that you're enjoying this story. The action and suspense, not to mention the problems are all beginning now. Things are about to get really rocky. I'd love to know what you think of Lester. Once again, Meg, thanks for being and awesome friend. I promise to send Lester over just as soon as I clean up the mess he made with the chocolate. :) --Sare

Chapter 21: Lester's Feeling

At six thirty Stephanie hadn't shown up at my apartment yet, so I'd called her cell phone. When it went straight to voice mail, I'd taken a deep breath and tried to relax. Stephanie being late wasn't really a cause for concern, except that I had a really bad feeling. I tried to tell myself that her phone was just dead and that she was stuck in traffic, but that wasn't working for me either.

She still hadn't shown up at seven o'clock, so I headed upstairs to five to pull up her trackers. Hal and Cal were on monitor duty and gave simultaneous head nods when I entered the control room. "Need you to pull up Steph's trackers," I told Hal.

He looked at me, the worry evident on his face. "What's wrong?" he asked.

I shook my head, "Nothing, I hope," I said. I really did hope that nothing was wrong. Steph was probably my very best friend. Sometime in the last few years she had managed to become a closer friend to me than even Bobby. I'm not sure how she had managed it, but I thanked god everyday for it. Now with the unwanted wedding, I wasn't sure what else Morelli or her mother might try and pull. For all I knew they had her tied up in the basement. Fuck, Santos! Get your head in the game.

"Uh, Les," Hal was sounding nervous. Shit! I knew this wasn't going to be good. "She doesn't have any trackers," he said.

"That's not possible. It's Stephanie. She always has trackers," I told him. Ranger was going to kill them when he found out she didn't have trackers on her. "She's got a cell phone tracker, a pen tracker, and a tracker on her car," I said in irritation.

"Look, man," he said pointing to the screen. Sure enough, all her trackers were inactive.

"What the fuck!" I said. "Check the last dates the trackers were working."

Hal's fingers flew across the keyboard while Cal looked between us and the monitors. He wasn't much of a talker, but I could tell that he was worried about Steph as well. All the guys knew about her 'conversation' with her sister at Diablo, they didn't know what all was said, but they knew that Steph finally gave her family the big middle finger; and no one knew about the arranged wedding. No one, that is except me. Shit. "Anytime now, Hal," I said.

"The last time her pen was active was the night of the job at Diablo. Her cell phone was transmitting earlier this afternoon, and her car hasn't transmitted in three days," he said.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! How was it possible that we hadn't realized she wasn't carrying her trackers? "Is there any way to tell why her car tracker quit transmitting?" I asked him.

He shrugged his massive shoulders and said, "Hell if I know, man. Hector could probably tell you."

I fought the urge to run my hands through my hair. Why couldn't anything be simple? I decided it was time to tell the other guys, and once I did that I'd worry about talking to Hector. I needed to know where Steph was. I don't know why, but I had a really bad feeling about the whole situation.

Walking into Tank's office without knocking I said, "You need to call Bobby. I think we have a problem." I was trying really hard not to freak out, but my heart was beating double time, and I felt like I'd just finished running a marathon. Something wasn't right, and that something had to do with Stephanie.

Tank's face remained blank when he asked, "What kind of problem?"

"Just get Bobby. Then we'll talk," I told him.

His face was tight with anger but he just nodded his head and picked up the phone. "My office," was all he said before hanging up. "He's on his way."

During the five minutes it took for Bobby to get to Tank's office I paced back and forth. I couldn't seem to find the calm place I usually went. Steph was out there, somewhere, and I needed to find her. I couldn't explain it; I only knew that she needed us to help her.

"What's going on?" Bobby asked when he came into the office and saw me pacing.

I took a deep breath and gave in to the urge to run my hands through my hair. I was a mess, and I didn't even know what the problem was yet. I had no idea how Ranger dealt with everything that happened to her. He'd been gone a week and I already felt like my heart was going to explode. When he was here, I sat on the sidelines of Steph's situations. We were friends, damn good friends in fact, but she was his. Completely, one hundred percent his. I was the backup, so the major force of emotions didn't usually fall on me because as long as he was here, there was a buffer. There wasn't a buffer now.

"Steph's missing," I said. "She never made it to my apartment tonight." The guys looked at me questions in their eyes. Everyone knew about our friendship, and there were no secrets with the Core Team. Hell, there really weren't any secrets in Rangeman, at all. We were all a bunch of busybodies. The 'Burg grapevine had nothing on us. Every kiss that Ranger and Steph shared was known about and discussed almost before they were finished. Since none of us had a death wish, we were all smart enough never to say anything.

Her coming to my apartment wasn't in question; it was my level of panic that was responsible for their looks. It took a lot to make me lose my cool, and as it stood right at that moment my cool was long gone. "When was she supposed to be here?" Tank asked, his voice gruff.

"Six. We were doing pizza and movies," I said.

Tank looked down at his watch, "Santos, it's barely eight. Maybe she forgot, or something came up," he suggested. Tank is one of my closest friends, and I'd trust him with my life, but for the first time ever, I really wanted to kill him.

"She would have called, or gotten in touch, Tank. She's not flighty and you know that. Headstrong, yes. Flies by the seat of her pants, yes. Flighty, not on your life," I said. "Something is wrong and we need to find out what it is. Where she is," I sighed. "Look, she got a phone call from her grandma today. Apparently, her mother and Morelli have decided that she's getting married whether she wants to or not. They've already sent out the invitations. The wedding is set for next month."

Tank and Bobby's mouths both dropped open. Their usually blank faces were filled with surprise. "You've got to be kidding me," Bobby said.

"That's not going to happen," Tank replied.

"Of course it isn't going to happen," I said. "She already told her grandma that. The only problem is that I don't know what else her mother and Morelli might have up their sleeves."

"Did she tell you where she was going?" Tank asked.

I nodded my head, "Yeah, she was going to the beach."

"Okay then, let's get a read out on her trackers and start from there," Tank said.

I was already shaking my head, "I already checked. There are no trackers on Steph."

"That's not possible," Bobby began, "It's Bomber."

"I already checked," I told him. "Her pen tracker has been off since Diablo, her cell quit transmitting this afternoon, and her car hasn't transmitted in three days."

"Three days? How did we not catch this?" Tank asked.

"My only guess is that since she's been here so much, the guys on duty didn't check it." An oversight I was going to rectify as soon as we found her.

Tank picked up his phone again and said, "I want the last readout on Bombshell's phone triangulated. We needed it yesterday," he said and then hung up. Standing up from his desk chair he looked me in the eye and said, "Whatever is going on in there, snap out of it. We're going to find her." We were interrupted by a perfunctory knock on the door, right before Ram stepped in.

"Here are the GPS coordinates from her phone," he said handing the information to Tank. "Is Steph okay?"

Tank ran his hand over his bald head and said, "We don't know yet, I sure hope so though."

"Let me know if there is anything I can do to help," he said as he shut the door leaving us alone once again.

"Let's roll," Tank said heading out the door with Bobby and I on his six.

It took an hour to arrive at the coordinates. A small beach on the outskirts of New Jersey called Shifting Sands. The parking lot was completely empty, and there was no sign of Steph's car. Apparently when she'd decided to go to the beach she'd not chosen her favorite, but a place that was out of the way, and relatively unknown. Things must really be bothering her.

I've been worried about her since Ranger left, but she's been holding up well. She's seemed strong and pretty carefree. Happy for the first time in a long time, but I know the stress must be getting to her. She has changed so much in the last year, with the biggest changes happening within this last week. I couldn't be more proud of her, and I know that Ranger couldn't be either.

Tank pulled the SUV into a parking spot and we all climbed out. The next thirty minutes were spent combing the parking lot for any possible trace that Steph had been there, and it didn't look like we were going to find anything when I heard Bobby call from farther across the lot. "Hey guys, you're going to want to take a look at this."

I sprinted across the tarmac and met up with Bobby at the same time Tank did. My breath caught in my throat and my heart stopped beating. Right in front of us was yellow crime scene tape and a drying puddle of blood. "God, No."