Disclaimer: I don't own the Stephanie Plum series.

AN: Thanks for all the great reviews. They always make me smile. Here's the second chapter. Let me know what you think in a review.

Relatively Speaking

By

Kole

Previously…

"Holy shit, my car!" Lula yelled, looking up from her purse.

"I'll pay for it." I said to Lula, pulling her back away from the flames and trying to calm her down.

It wouldn't help if we were both freaking out. Although I have to admit, I was a little happy I let Lula drive today. I really like my new car and don't want it to die. The happiness was brief. I couldn't believe it. It would seem that I was now going to have to try and survive through book ten.

Chapter 2

"You got bad car karma, " Lula said. "And now its affectin my cars, too."

"Hey! This wasn't my fault!" I kind of yelled. It's not like I lit her car on fire.

"Yeah, yeah, I know." Lula said. "You know when you say that you sound just like the old Stephanie." Lula continued.

I knew Lula missed Stephanie. We had talked about it and she told me that while she was going to miss Steph, I was so much like her that it was almost like she wasn't really gone most of the time.

Lula and I moved farther from the fire, knowing from experience that an explosion was a possibility. We stood patiently waiting, listening to the sirens whining in the distance, getting closer by the second. Morelli's unmarked cop car would be minutes behind the sirens. And somewhere in the mix of emergency vehicles Ranger would slide in to check things out.

I should probably explain about Joe Morelli. Morelli's a very sexy, very handsome Trenton cop. Morelli and I have a long history or well Morelli and the old Stephanie have a long history. Morelli is my ex. Breaking up with him was one the first things I did when I woke up as Steph. It's not that he's not a good guy because he is, it's just that he's not the right guy for me.

We are trying to be friends, but he still believes that I will change my mind about us. He says he understands, but he still tries to "seduce me" and tells me that "the boys miss you".

The thing is with Morelli being a cop is that I never have to call when disaster strikes. Seconds after the emergency call goes in on the robbery and car fire, describing Lula's Firebird, at least forty different cops, EMTs, and fire fighters will track Morelli down and tell him I've done it again.

"Maybe I should leave," Lula said. "There's all that filing back at the office. And cops give me the runs. You can take care of this, right?"

Not to mention she was illegally carrying a concealed weapon that was instrumental in this whole fiasco. "Did you see the guy's face when he pulled his mask off?" I asked her.

"No. I was looking for my gun. I missed that."

"Then leaving might be a good idea," I said. "Get me a sub on the way back to the office. I don't think they'll be making nachos here for a while."

"I'd rather have the sub anyways. A car fire always gives me an appetite."

And Lula took off power walking. Victor was on the other side of the car, stomping around and pulling at his hair. He stopped stomping and fixed his attention on me. "Why didn't you shoot him? I know you. You are a bounty hunter. You should have shot him."

"I'm not carrying a gun," I told Victor. Which was a lie. I had my gun, I always had my gun. I was just too scared to even think about my gun.

"Not carrying a gun? What kind of bounty hunter are you? I watch television. I know about these things. Bounty hunters always have many guns."

"Actually, shooting people is frowned upon in bond enforcement."

Victor shook his head. "I don't know what this world is coming to when bounty hunters don't shoot people."

A blue-and-white patrol car arrived and two uniforms got out and stood hands on hips, taking it all in. I knew both cops. Andy Zajak and Robin Russell. I had learned a lot about the cops. I knew almost all of them by name now. I saw them a lot and they all talked to me because apparently the real Steph knew them all. Zajak was riding shotgun. Zajak waved when he saw me. He said something to Russell, and they both smiled. No doubt enjoying the continuing calamitous exploits of Stephanie Plum. It helped me not want to kill them that this was really the first car I had destroyed since I became Stephanie. So technically it wasn't me they were making fun of.

A fire truck followed Zajak and Russell. Plus two more cop cars and an EMT truck. By the time Morelli arrived, the hoses and chemical extinguishers were already out and in use. Morelli angled his car behind Robin Russell's and walked across to me. Morelli was lean and hard muscled with wary cop eyes that softened in the bedroom, or so I have read. His hair was almost black, falling in waves over his forehead, brushing his collar. He was wearing a slightly oversize blue shirt with the sleeves rolled, black jeans, and black boots with a Vibram sole. He had his gun on his hip and, with or without the gun, he didn't look like someone you'd want to mess with. There was a tilt to his mouth that could pass for a smile. Then again, it could just as easily be a grimace.

"Are you okay?"

"It wasn't my fault," I told him.

This got a genuine smile from him. "Cupcake, it's never your fault."

His eyes traveled to the red mountain bike with the destroyed tire. "What's with the bike?"

"Lula accidentally shot the tire. Then a guy wearing a red devil mask ran out of the store, took a look at the bike, tossed a Molotov cocktail into the store, and set off on foot. The bottle didn't break, so Victor pitched it at the devil. The bottle bounced off the devil's head and crashed against my car."

"I didn't hear the part about Lula shooting the tire."

"Yeah, I figured it wasn't necessary to mention that in the official statement. And please stop calling me Cupcake." Morelli still called me Cupcake. I had told him numerous times to stop, but he wouldn't and it was kind of pissing me off. I wasn't Stephanie and he shouldn't call me that. Although, that might be a little hypocritical since I loved it when Ranger called me Babe, but I HAD asked Morelli to quit it and he hadn't. So, it's gonna piss me off until he does what I say.

I looked past Morelli, as a black Porsche 911 Turbo pulled to the curb. There weren't a lot of people in Trenton who could afford the car. Mostly high-level drug dealers... And Ranger. I watched as Ranger angled out from behind the wheel and ambled over. He was about the same height as Morelli, but he had more bulk to his muscle. Morelli was a cat. Ranger was Rambo meets Batman. Ranger was in SWAT black cargo pants and T-shirt. His hair was dark, and his eyes were dark, and his skin reflected his Cuban ancestry. No one knew Ranger's age. No one knew where Ranger lived or where his cars and cash originated. Well, besides me anyway. I knew how old he was and I knew where his cash came from and I knew where he lived or well at least where he had an apartment and slept sometimes. I didn't know where the Batcave was. Yet. Ranger had told me how old he was, although I already knew, but I had read about all those things in the books. He nodded to Morelli and locked eyes with me. Sometimes it felt like Ranger could look you in the eye and know all the stuff that was inside your head. It was a little unnerving, but it saved a lot of time since talk wasn't necessary. I was also getting better at understanding his silent communications. I think I might be getting a little of that ESP the real Stephanie always thought Ranger had.

"Babe," Ranger said. And he left.

Morelli watched Ranger get into his Porsche and take off. "Half the time I'm happy to have him watching over you. And half the time it scares the hell out of me. He's always in black, the address on his driver's license is a vacant lot, and he never says anything."

"What the hell are you talking about? He just spoke and I happen to think he looks amazing black. And vacant lot, really? I thought he had changed it to the Laundromat?" I answered.

"What the hell am I talking about? What the hell are you talking about? Cupcake, the guy's a mercenary."

Morelli playfully twirled a strand of my hair around his finger. Alright now he was just pissing me off. He had insulted my friend and called me Cupcake again. "You've been watching Dr Phil again, right? Oprah? Geraldo? Crossing Over with John Edward?"

"My name is Stephanie. Not Cupcake. And don't talk about Ranger. You don't even know him." I said, after smacking his hand away. Morelli looked angry for a second before letting out a breath. It seems like he finally remembered that we are just friends at the moment. Not very good friends either.

There was a loud phooonf sound from the underside of my car, flames shot out, and a steaming tire popped off and rolled across the lot.

"This is the fourteenth Red Devil robbery," Morelli said. "The routine is always the same. Rob the store at gunpoint. Get away on a bike. Cover your getaway with a bottle bomb. No one's ever seen enough to ID him."

"Until now," I said, knowing it was the right thing to do. Even if I really didn't want to even mention it. "I saw the guy's face. I didn't recognize him, but I think I could pick him out of a lineup."

An hour later, Morelli dropped me off at the bond office. He snagged me by the back of my shirt as I was leaving his unmarked seen-better-days Crown Vic cop car. "You're going to be careful, right?"

"Right."

"And you're not going to let Lula do any more shooting."

I knew he really did just want me safe. He always made it so hard for me to hate him for very long. "Sometimes it's hard to control Lula."

"Then get a different partner."

"Ranger?" I said, knowing it would piss him off.

"Very funny," Morelli said. He tried to kiss me goodbye and I turned my face to the side. He ended up kissing my cheek. He pulled away and stared at me.

"Look, I'm sorry. Joe, I can only be your friend. I told you this."

Joe looked like he was about to say something or more like yell it from the look on his face, but his pager buzzed and he checked the readout. He let out a breath. "I have to go," he said, shoving me out the door.

"Four sub's filed under S," Lula said when I swung through the door. "I got you capicolla and provolone and turkey and pepperoni with some hot peppers."

I opened the file and retrieved my sub. "There's only half a sandwich here."

"Well, yeah," Lula said. "Me and Connie decided you wouldn't want to get fat by eating that whole sub all yourself. So we helped you out."

Vincent Plum Bail Bonds is a small storefront office on Hamilton Avenue. Ordinarily a more lucrative location for a bonds office would be across from the courts or the lockup. Vinnie's office is across from the Burg, and a lot of Vinnie's repeat customers are local.

Connie is Vinnie's office manager. She's five foot four and looks like Betty Boop with a mustache. Her desk is positioned in front of Vinnie's small inner office, preventing the unsuspecting from walking in on Vinnie while he's on the phone with his bookie, taking a snooze, or having a private conversation with his Johnson. Also behind Connie's desk is a bank of file cabinets. And behind the file cabinets is a small stockroom packed with guns and ammo, office supplies, bathroom supplies, and assorted confiscated booty that mostly runs to computers, fake Rolex watches, and fake Louis Vuitton handbags.

I slouched onto the scarred dung-brown fake leather couch that was positioned against a side wall of the outer office and unwrapped the sub.

"Big day in court yesterday," Connie said, waving a handful of manila folders at me. "We had three guys fail to appear. The bad news is they're all chump change. The good news is none of them have killed or raped in the last two years."

I took the folders from Connie and returned to the couch. I was doing a lot more high bonds recently, but I was still doing the lower bonds as well. I had a pretty good amount of money. I could pay my bills and afford food. I was actually getting ready to upgrade my apartment. I didn't want to move, but I did want to get new furniture. It was kind of bare at the moment.

"I suppose you want me to find these guys," I said to Connie.

"Yeah," Connie said. "Finding them would be good. Dragging their asses back to jail would be even betta"

I flipped through the folders. Harold Pancek. Wanted for indecent exposure and destruction of personal property.

"What's the deal on Harold?" I asked Connie.

"He's local. Moved to the Burg three years ago from Newark. Lives in one of the row houses on Canter Street. Got drunk two weeks ago and tried to take a leak on Mrs. Gooding's cat, Ben. Ben was a moving target and Pancek mostly got the side of Gooding's house and Gooding's favorite rosebush. Killed the rosebush and took the paint off the house. And Gooding says she washed the cat three times and he still smells like asparagus."

Lula and I had our faces frozen in curled-lip grimaces.

"He doesn't sound like much of a threat," Connie said. "Just make sure you stand back if he whips it out to relieve himself."

I took a quick look at the two remaining files. Carol Cantell, wanted for holding up a Frito-Lay truck. This brought an instant smile to my face. Carol Cantell was a woman after my own heart. The smile turned to raised eyebrows when I saw the name on the last file. Salvatore Sweet, charged with assault. "Omigod," I said to Connie. "It's Sally!"

I had wanted to meet Sally Sweet since I first read about him. I thought he was awesome. This might be the only good thing to happen in book ten. Salvatore Sweet used to play lead guitar for a transvestite rock band. He helped the real Stephanie solve a crime and then disappeared into the night.

"Hey, I remember Sally Sweet," Lula said. "He was the shit. What's he doing now besides beating on people?"

"Driving a school bus," Connie said. "Guess the rock career didn't work out. He's living on Fenton Street, over by the button factory."

From what I read, Sally Sweet was an MTV car crash. He was a nice guy but he couldn't get through a sentence without using the F word fourteen times. The kids on Sally's bus probably had the most inventive vocabularies in the school.

"Have you tried calling him?" I asked Connie. "Yeah. No answer. And no answering machine."

"How about Cantell?"

"I talked to her earlier. She said she'd kill herself before she'd go to jail. She said you were going to have to come over there and shoot her and then drag her dead body out of the house."

"It says here she held up a Frito-Lay truck?" I asked, knowing the answer. I was just trying to stall so I didn't have to think about everything that was sure to happen. I was going to have to tell Lula and Ranger about the tenth book now.

"Apparently she was on that no-carbohydrate diet, got her period and snapped when she saw the truck parked in front of a convenience store. Just got whacked out at the thought of all those chips. She threatened the driver with a nail file, filled her car with bags of Fritos, and took off, leaving the driver standing there in front of his empty truck. The police asked him why he didn't stop her, and he said she was a woman on the edge. He said his wife got to looking like that sometimes, and he didn't go near her when she was like that, either."

"I've been on that diet and this crime makes perfect sense to me," Lula said. "Especially if she had her period. You don't want to go through your period without Fritos. Where you gonna get your salt from? And what about cramps? What are you supposed to take for cramps?"

"Midol?" Connie said.

"Well, yeah, but you gotta have some Fritos while you're waiting for the Midol to kick in. Fritos have a calming influence on a woman."

Vinnie stuck his head out the door of his inner office and glared at me. "What are you sitting around for? We got three FTAs in this morning and you already had one in your possession. Four FTAs! Christ, I'm not running a charity here."

Vinnie is my cousin on my fathers side of the family and sole owner of Vincent Plum Bail Bonds. He's an oily little guy with slicked-back black hair, pointy-toed shoes, and a bunch of gold chains hanging around his scrawny tanning salon-tanned neck. It's rumored that he once had a romantic relationship with a duck. He drives a Cadillac Seville. And he's married to Harry the Hammer's only daughter. Vinnie's rating as a human being would be in the vicinity of pond slime. His rating as a bonds agent would be considerably higher. Vinnie understood human weakness.

Vinnie pulled his head back into his office, and he slammed and locked the door. Connie rolled her eyes. And Lula flipped Vinnie the finger.

"I saw that," Vinnie yelled from behind his closed door.

"I guess I'm going with you," Lula said, giving me a look. "since I don't have a car or anything." I rolled my eyes at this. It wasn't my fault.

"Try Cantell," Connie said. "She should still be at home."

Fifteen minutes later we were in front of Cantell's house in Hamilton Township. It was a trim little ranch on a small lot, in a neighborhood of similar houses. The grass was neatly cut, but it was patchy with crabgrass and parched from a hot, dry August. Young azaleas bordered the front of the house. A blue Honda Civic was parked in the driveway.

"Don't look like the home of a hijacker," Lula said. "No garage."

"Sounds like this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience."