I am not receiving money or property off of anything submitted here. I am only borrowing the characters Janet Evanovich created. My use of JE's characters will be different than her use of them and they will change and be considered by many to be OOC. The characters I own are mine and may be borrowed here by anyone for their use here. I will return JE's characters when I am finished with them and they will be in the same pristine condition as when they were borrowed...no matter what their fate is in my fiction. Thank you for reading.

Ranger went straight to Enrique and I went straight to our cabin. He was going to fill him and his team in on the attempt on our lives, I was going to get in the shower and wash away the fear. He was probably more successful than I was.

I stood under the stream of water and cried. Yea…so what?! I'm a girl. When I get scared I cry.

"Babe," he said from the bathroom door. "Are you all right?"

"Uh-huh," I sniffed.

"You don't sound all right," he said carefully.

"I will be. I just need to get it out," I sniffed.

"Babe…"

"It's okay Ranger. Sometimes I just need to be a girl."

"Sometimes you could let me be a man," he said softly.

"I'm in the shower…naked," I reminded him.

"And…"

I groaned and turned the water off and reached for a towel.

He put the towel in my hand and waited.

I stepped out of the shower and into his waiting arms, "feel better?"

"Do you," he sighed resting his chin on my head.

I sighed and wrapped my arms around him. I didn't answer him, but yes I did feel better. I felt better just to feel him solidly against my body. He was there. He was alive. The attempt on his life had failed. I felt the tears begin to drift down my face again and sighed.

"Babe…we're okay," he said gently.

"They're going to try again," I sighed. "And whoever is doing it doesn't care if it looks like an accident," I sniffed. "There's no more trying to hide their actions."

"Which means…we're getting close," he said kissing my head. "Your spidey sense is onto something."

"That's both good and bad," I sighed.

"Get dressed," he said softly. "We're having prime rib and lobster for dinner and some decadent dessert. After you get some good food and wine in you, you're going to feel about a million times better."

"Yea," I sighed again and pulled away. "I'm sure that's all I need."

I dressed fairly quickly in one of my little black dresses. I wasn't in the mood to look like a jewel in one of the blue dresses. I was depressed and dour and my clothing may as well reflect it. Even the rhinestone clasps on the Manolos didn't cheer me up. If shoes don't cheer me up, nothing can except… I wasn't going to go there.

Dinner was good, but I just picked at my food. As much as I love food and everyone knows I love my food, tonight I just wasn't in the mood.

My parents watched in concern. Everyone on the ship knew what had happened on the Island. Everyone was a little quieter than normal. It was getting seriously out of hand around there.

"Maybe we should just call it a night," Ranger suggested as we left the dining room. "Everyone's heading for the lounge, but maybe you and I should just head down to our cabin and read or something."

"I can go alone," I said morosely. "I don't mean to bring you down Ranger."

"Don't be ridiculous. They attempted to murder both of us."

"I don't think they were after BOTH of us. I think one of us was just in the way."

"Which one of us," he raised a brow.

"You were probably the target," I said seriously. "But you're right. I'm ready to call it a night."

A few minutes later we were back in our cabin and I was debating checking my email or opening a book. The incident was still too close to the surface to disappear into a romantic book of fluff, so I kicked my shoes off and grabbed my laptop. I logged on and eliminated all my spam and blinked. There were three emails from Juliet. I opened the first one and gasped, and then I opened the second one and gasped again. When I opened the third one, I swallowed. "Get your coat Ranger," I said sliding my feet back into my shoes, "we have a murder to solve."

"A murder," he raised a brow reaching for his jacket.

"Or four," I smiled serenely. "And I think we're about to do it in true detective fashion. We're going to go where all the suspects are gathered and accuse…sort of."

"Babe," he frowned as we wandered out of the cabin.

I leaned over and whispered two names to him.

"Oh shit, are you sure?"

"Yep," I nodded.

"Okay," he said catching my hand in his.

"Just follow my lead," I said with a smile.

"When it comes to this stuff...don't I always," he raised a brow.

I just smiled up at him.

We walked into the lounge and found Lester and Cal within minutes. I dropped to a chair at their table and cocked a brow at Cal, "where are they?"

He tilted his head toward the dance floor.

"Lester," I raised a brow.

"By the wall," he said.

"Good…the gangs all here," I hopped to my feet. "Get the federal marshals and block all the exits and I do mean all of them. Nobody can leave." I wove my way through the crowd to the Captain who just happened to be in the room.

"Good evening Ms. Plum. How are you tonight?"

"I'm great," I smiled. "How would you like these murders to be solved and the bad guys caught tonight? We can put this whole thing behind us."

"I'd really like that," he said seriously.

"Me too," I glanced around the room and found Marshals and Rangeman men strategically placed. "Would you mind interrupting the dancing and making a little announcement?"

"I'd be delighted," he agreed.

"Just let them know that Marshal Enrique DeJesus has an announcement to make," I said biting my lip.

He nodded and headed toward the bandstand.

I beckoned Enrique over to me and whispered in his ear. He blinked in surprise and nodded. I laid the rest of my plan out to him and he listened intently while the Captain got everyone's attention and made his speech.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, may I please have your attention," the captain said cheerfully. "I'm sure that you're all aware that we've had a series of unfortunate events on this cruise. Four young men have met untimely deaths and I'm afraid none of the deaths were due to natural causes." There was a collective gasp in the audience. "You're probably aware that federal marshals boarded our ship when we docked at Santo Tomas and they've been working diligently to solve the murders. I'm happy to say that Marshal Enrique DeJesus has an announcement for us tonight."

Enrique climbed onto the stage and smiled at the audience. "Good evening. I am Marshal Enrique DeJesus. Before we say anything else, I'd like to ask everyone here to listen carefully to what I'm going to tell you. You may know something that you're not even aware that you know. You may have seen something that you don't realize is important. You may have evidence. So…I ask your help. We'll start with Hunter Solomon.

"Mr. Solomon died of a specific kind of heavy metal poisoning. This poison was not administered over the long term. It was only while he was on the ship and it accumulated in his system. Normally, this death would have been slower. There's a chance if he hadn't been such a heavy drinker he may have survived longer than three days, but it wouldn't have been much longer. We believe the poison was in his bourbon. He was known to have bottles of it, but when his cabin was searched, none was found. If you noticed anyone tampering with or near his bourbon, please speak to one of the marshals immediately.

"Next to die was Drake Hess. Mr. Hess was found electrocuted in his shower with an electric razor in his hand. When Mr. Hess's body sat for a while, the bruises from the murder showed on his body. If anyone saw anyone enter or leave Mr. Hess' cabin please notify a marshal immediately.

"Lindon Craig was found drowned and while on first blush, it appeared to be an accident. He also had those latent bruises showing how he was held underwater and murdered.

"Jim McArthur died of a fall down the stairs. He also had the latent bruises proving this was no accident.

"Both of these men were confined to quarters at the time of their deaths and yet somehow made it out of their cabins and into public areas without the person guarding their doors seeing them. Further…they were both murdered in a manner that could be mistaken for an accident if someone without knowledge of such crimes had not been onboard the ship. If anyone saw anything…I'd appreciate it if you spoke with a marshal tonight."

I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and caught Enrique's attention.

Enrique turned to her, "It's Cindy Sue, right? Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?"

She shook her head vehemently.

Ranger edged closer to her.

"You were Drake Hess' cabin stewardess, weren't you?"

"Yes," she nodded.

"Did you see anything out of the ordinary?"

"Not really, he was a slob," she blinked.

I got to my feet and approached her with a frown, "I'm a little confused by that."

"Why," she swallowed.

"I was in his cabin right after the murders and the place was...it was perfect. If he was such a slob then why was his cabin clean when his body was found? I mean it was spotless. There wasn't even a sock on the floor. There was no dirty towel. There was nothing to indicate that anyone was even in the cabin if you didn't open the drawers to clean clothes. He was found naked and yet there was no indication that he'd removed clothing or put clean clothing out to don after his shower. Even his sheets were clean."

She shrugged, "so...he just didn't mess anything up or he just happened to put things away this one time."

"That doesn't explain his clean bed. His bed was made without a single wrinkle in it. I mean not a single wrinkle anywhere. He couldn't have sat or laid on his bed at all. His sheets were clean. How could his sheets be clean Cindy Sue? How? If he was confined to cabin, he'd use the bed…wouldn't he?"

"Well I'm sure I don't know."

"You cleaned his cabin that day?"

"Yes," she nodded.

"Late in the day," I asked.

She shrugged. "I took special care of them since they were confined to quarters."

"Special care," I raised a brow.

"I checked on them several times a day."

"But you're assigned to the Diamond Deck," I raised a brow. "How did you get four extra cabins on the Ruby deck?"

"I just…"

"Cindy Sue…or should I say Linda," I raised a brow.

She gasped in surprise.

"Why did you get assigned to the cabins of the men you held responsible for murdering your fiancé? And how about the good ship's doctor? Doctor King," I raised a brow and turned to him, "you're his brother...is this really is a coincidence?"

At that moment all hell broke loose. Ranger had Cindy Sue or Linda Johnston in seconds but the good doctor decided to give us a run for our money. I ran toward the door where the doctor was attempting to make his escape and found Marco had him down on the floor of the lounge.

"I've got him," he called out.

"Good job…Ghost," I grinned down at him.

He blinked at me.

The Federal Marshals took Dr. King into custody and hauled he and Linda or Cindy Sue or whatever the hell her name was out of the lounge toward the bridge.

Ranger wrapped his arms around me, "good job Babe."

"Thanks," I grinned.

"I'm going to catch up with Enrique."

"Sure," I nodded. I turned back to see Ghost, Marco or Mitch still standing there waiting for me.

"How did you know?"

"You were doing recon," I shrugged.

"Recon," he raised a brow.

"You were asking questions," I laughed. "I recognize it because I do it. And to be honest, at first I thought it was you and Louisa."

"Yea right," he shook his head. "That girl couldn't concentrate on anything long enough to kill this cleanly."

"No kidding," I laughed.

"So that cleared us?"

"No," I smiled. "I asked Juliet, the girl who's covering our office in Trenton, to get me a picture of you and she couldn't find one even though you'd done all manner of body-guarding with one of the most photographed people in the world. Then I realized maybe I wasn't looking at the right pictures. You were on stage with her. You were the elite body-guard, weren't you?"

"It helps to have other talents," he shrugged.

"I would say so," I smiled. "But how did you keep these guys from recognizing you?"

"Easy, they expected me to be a ranger. They remember what I used to look like. I just became the opposite," he brushed long black hair from his face. "I softened my expression and dyed my hair a little darker shade and I'm wearing brown contacts." He leaned over to pop the contacts into his hand and showed them to me. He gazed at me through perfect silver eyes. "The easiest way to hide, is in plain sight so it doesn't look like you're hiding. Nobody suspects the average guy. It's the guy with the cabin in the woods in Montana they suspect."

"Rightly so," I laughed. "You did a great job."

"Are you going to tell them," he asked.

"No, I'll let you do that," I smiled.

"They think I…"

"You'd be surprised what they think," I said softly. "You should trust them. Remember what I told you Mitch, they trusted you."

"I'll think about it," he said quietly and walked away.

Cindy Sue AKA Maria and the doctor were taken into custody and locked away in the bowels of the ship and the mystery was solved. Poirot or Nick and Nora could go back to their day to day lives and the wedding of Lula Brown and Tank Thibodaux would go on as scheduled in two days in Grand Cayman. Things were looking up.

Ghost or Mitch Wheeler found that he was indeed welcomed into the arms of his former comrades. He found after only moments of conversation that the rhetoric from the men who'd died on that ship hadn't really counted for much with his friends. They believed in him and his disappearance had hurt them all a great deal. Ghost blamed himself for King's death. He had been watching Score, Points, Cable and Hunter for a lot of years. He was waiting for an opportunity to get back at them, but he wasn't planning on killing them. Death, he said, was really too good for them.

I left the men in the cigar lounge and retreated to my cabin. I sent Juliet an email thanking her for everything and letting her know what happened on the ship. It was a long email. I changed into my little pajamas and poured myself a small brandy and grabbed a blanket and went out onto the balcony and sat in the dark just watching the stars and the water go by. It was a beautiful night and everyone I loved was safe again. Old friends had been reunited. The wedding would go off without a hitch. Life was good. Why wasn't I happier?

Ranger sank down on the lounge beside me and reached for my hand. "You're not eating pie?"

"There's a certain satisfaction that comes from solving murders," I said serenely.

"It's a sexual satisfaction," he raised a brow.

"I don't know about that," I sighed and leaned back and closed my eyes. "There's just a satisfaction."

"Did you always know it Cindy Sue?"

"No," I said with a slight smile, "I thought it was Louisa for a long time."

"Did you really," he grinned.

"Yea," I sighed. "I wanted a reason to throw her bitch ass in jail. But she didn't provide me with one."

"How would you feel if Marco…er Ghost or Mitch came to work at Rangeman?"

"I think that's a great idea," I agreed and lifted my head to give him a big smile. "Mitch will fit in well with the guys."

"Yea," he smiled.

"Yea," I nodded. "But you can still call him Ghost if you want to."

"Thanks," he said and kissed my knuckles. "He's good. I didn't even see him."

"He is good. He said hiding in plain sight is smarter than sneaking around. He's got a point."

"Yea. I plan to take advantage of his special skills."

"I'm sure," I nodded. "Why aren't you up on deck celebrating with the rest of the guys?"

"I just thought I'd rather celebrate with you."

"Isn't this a kind of boring celebration?"

"Not really," he smiled, "this is just how Nick and Nora would celebrate."

"Yea," I smiled and lay my head back on the lounge, "it is."