Thanks so much for your wonderful reviews they mean so much to me - I know some of you find my English different but I do try to write American English as much as possible so please bear with me (every now and then I want to rebel and write things like tarmac instead of blacktop or Mr Kipling instead of Tasty Cakes, but then I realise you would have to go find translations as I do and I know how tedious this is. What is lox, by the way?)

Anyway, next chapter is up so read and enjoy and as ever, please, please, please let me know your thoughts (especially if you've put me on alert etc and not left me a review, hint, hint)

Steph walked woodenly from a now very wet Chez Alcatraz and although part of her was pleased that she'd managed to escape, part of her was sad that anyone had had to stoop to such drastic action in order to save her. True, no one had been shot in this latest rescue, but even so, she'd needed saving. Again.

Chase stood silently by her side in the elevator but as soon as the door shut he subtly leaned into her and squeezed her hand. "It's ok to need and use help offered by others you know" he said softly just as the car stopped so that they could get out on 7.

Steph followed Chase who gently led her through the calm, artificially bright space and up to a plain black wooden door which he opened with a key fob.

"What the fuuuuuu…" he whistled out softly with shock in his voice.

"?" she added eloquently, muscling past him.

They stood, too shocked to move, and looked at the boxes that littered the room, on every available space. Small boxes, large boxes, wobbly piles of paper – all lining the edges of the room and spilling over onto the kitchen counter tops and dining room table. It was everywhere!

"What the hell has Connor been up to?" Chase whispered as he moved further into the apartment. Steph followed behind him shaking her head in surprise. Stepping into the bedroom they could both see that the mess had not spread quite that far. Yet.

"Well at least I have a bed for the night." Steph giggled out, hysteria tickling the sounds as she made them.

At that moment her phone rang and without thinking she pulled it off her belt and opened it up.

"Yo" came a very welcome voice.

"Ranger" Steph replied with a broad smile on her face as she felt his strength roll down the phone and push her panic away. Everything was going to be fine. Her knight in shining armour had stepped up and gotten her back.

"How's our plan working?"

"Well, I don't think we'd legislated for the state of your apartment…"

"Babe?"

"Well, there are boxes and paper piled up everywhere and I mean everywhere" Steph said as she took a lid off one of the boxes and pulled out a few scraps of scribble covered paper. Seems I'm looking at the real history of Atlanta. Not the version you've been fed." Her mind was working overtime as a tiny flicker of an idea started to form.

"Babe." came the stoic reply.

"Yeah. Connor's in real deep." Steph looked at Chase and gestured for him to sit down. He looked round for a clear spot and plonked himself on the arm of the sofa where he crossed his arms to wait.

"Ranger. I think I may have just come with a way to dig Connor out of some of the mess he's in and maybe even win some brownie points with him too. Let me run an idea past you and see what you think."

"I'm listening" Ranger asked, thinking how stunned he was by this amazing woman. He'd wrestled with the best way to deal with Connor and if her thought processes were going in the way he was now thinking then perhaps Atlanta would work out. Probably without its current leader, but that was a thought for another day.

Minutes later, Steph had explained her idea.

"I think that may just work, proud of you Babe. See you tomorrow morning then." He said softly. "I'll phone Connor and tell him I'll be on the red eye. That should give you enough time."

"Can't wait." She replied to thin air. "Aaagh! She thought, he so needs phone manners!

She turned round to Chase and filled him in on the plan she'd just agreed with Ranger. Connor wasn't going to know what had hit him, but if he got on board with it, it might just save his skin.

And that of the rest of the Atlanta team.

o0o0o0o0o

Ranger looked up as the phone on his desk rang.

Show time.

"Yo" he said as he picked it up, his voice deceptively nonchalant.

"Boss, Connor here. There's been a situation." He stated as he paced round his office like a caged animal.

"Explain." Trying his best to sound puzzled.

"The sprinkler system has destroyed the apartment Miss Peach was staying in. She's ok but her stuff is ruined."

Ranger took a deep breath, Connor assumed it was because of the damage to his building. He was very wrong.

"God dammit Connor! It's Plum! The woman's name is Stephanie Plum!" Ranger exploded. "Is she ok? Did the water seep down to the next floor?"

"?"

"Did the water manage to leak down onto 6?"

"Ah…"

"Connor?" Ranger had him and he knew it so decided to come clean. Taking a deep breath he sat down to begin his confession.

"Well, we've been using 7 for storage. There are a few more sensitive files and some new equipment up there so I decided it was best to put her in a er… a different apartment."

"Which was..."

"The… the contractor's overflow." Connor took a deep breath. He knew Ranger would be furious and judging by the silence and tension that began pouring down the phone at him he was right.

"I. Want. You. Up. Here. Now." Ranger gritted out slowly, all the time thinking "And the winner of the best actor award for his role in 'pissed off of Rangeman' goes to…"

"Scratch that. I'm coming down there." He added. "I'd be with you this evening but I have a meeting to go to so I'll be with you tomorrow - crack of sparrows. I want to know what the fuck you've been up to! I told you to look after Miss Plum" He said, emphasising her surname "and you put her in the spare accommodation that I wouldn't even put your Grandmother in if there was an emergency! How could you?"

Ranger took a deep breath, he knew he had to keep his cool otherwise he could give the game away. "Do NOT move anything from anywhere! I want to see for myself what the hell you've been up to and what you've done to 7 when you have perfectly acceptable storage on 1 and 2."

"Sir yessir." Connor barked out, nodding his head like a bobble head as he heard Ranger slam down his receiver. He mechanically and slowly returned his phone to its cradle then, still in slow motion, put his head in his hands. When Ranger saw what he'd been up to he'd be even deeper in the shit than he was already, he thought. Damn that woman! Everything had been doing ok, hadn't it? That was until she came along and all eyes began to focus on his operation.

He sat unmoving for several minutes as he tried to settle his nerves and the bile that was threatening to make an appearance. How on earth was he going to wriggle out of this one, he wondered. At that moment he looked up, just as the woman at the centre of the storm walked out of the elevator and straight towards his office.

Could his day get any worse? He sighed.

o0o0o0o0o

Steph walked up to Connor's door and knocked then waited.

"Come in, Stacey." Came the strained command.

As she entered the room, ignoring his salutation, she turned and shut the door before walking over and sitting down opposite him. "Looks like you're in deep doo-doo." She stated matter of factly "but I think I might have just the shovel you need to get out of this one."

Connor looked at her, panic etched into the side of his eyes. "How?" he said, looking at her like a cornered snake. "And why?" he added.

"Why is easier to answer so I guess I'll start with that."

He nodded for her to proceed.

"When I first came across Rangeman I was a clueless, bumbling BEA and spent most of my time covered in garbage or Vaseline or… well you get the idea. Despite all that though, Ranger must have seen something in my rather unique methods that made him want to help me. I always got my man even if I did take the long and rather messy way round to do it. And whatever he saw must have been worth all the chaos and mayhem I caused despite all the weird things in my life. I come from a very scary gene pool, just ask Santos about my Grandmother. I have some very dubious friends including a dope head and an ex-ho and I have an ex-boyfriend that used to stand and yell at me whenever my cars blew up…"

"Pardon?"

"Yeah, one time I even totalled a Porsche Boxster that Ranger lent me…" she said with a wry grin on her face.

Connor whistled through his teeth "and he still employed you?" he asked incredulously.

"Yeah." Steph snorted out, shaking her head as she thought about how unlikely it all seemed "Like I said, Ranger must have seen something he liked."

Connor sat and thought for a few moments "but I still don't get it. Why would you help me after all I've done to alienate you from the team since you've arrived?"

"Because we've all done things that are morally grey, but sometimes they slide into completely FUBAR but by then we have no way of stopping the train. One small lie turns into ten big ones and by that point there's no turning back. I've never lied to Ranger, but I've often landed myself right in the middle of trouble – pretty much of my own making – and yet he has always been there for me..." Well for the most part she thought as her mind wandered back to the DeChooch deal and the last real face to face conversation they'd ever had.

"Anyway" she added, changing the subject away from matters close to her heart "I've been through your computer based company files. The real and the fakes ones by the way, and know all about the parallel world Atlanta is really in and can see how it's all happened. I have no idea of the motives behind anything, but I do know that you're in deep shit. If you feel anything like I have felt when I've dug myself in too deep, then I know exactly how desperate you are for it all to stop…"

"Bullshit! You know nothing about me…" Connor snapped.

"True, but neither did Ranger when I first met him and he's really come good for me." Momentarily she stopped and thought about that statement. She'd file that one for later. "I didn't say I understood why you've done what you've done, but rather that I know what you're probably thinking right now…"

"Don't patronise me, Susan!" Connor ground out.

"I don't mean to. And you need to drop the name changing it's getting old, Clarence! But right now you need me. How many other people know what's really going on here? Hmm?" She leaned back and crossed her arms, her eyes flashing dangerously as she raced towards full rhino mode. Lula would have been proud.

Connor looked at her in surprise. She looked like a tiger defending its young and somewhere deep inside a part of him begged the rest of him to trust her. Another part of him started to wake up and wanted to join in the action. He shifted in his seat to accommodate his growing problem. Dios! This woman was something else and he could see how come she was so captivating.

He nodded in surrender. "Ok, what plan have you got? Manoso's coming down here for first thing in the morning."

"Good, we should have enough time. So, onto the how…" She smiled as the started to outline her plan.

o0o0o0o0o

Connor dragged Mungo, Pike and Robo up with them to 7 where Chase was already hard at work.

Mungo was Connor's second in command who, from what Steph could see, had a very good idea of what had been going on. She also realised he was waiting for the wheel to fall off before he went brown nosing to Ranger.

Bastard.

The two other men who'd been drafted in to help were a set of yes-men twins that had served their country well, but had been the followers rather than leaders of men. Everything Connor asked them to do they did with quiet efficiency, questioning nothing.

Once this was all over, there'd be some changes in personnel, but not necessarily the ones Steph originally thought.

o0o0o0o0o

Ella brought dinner up to 7 where five men were deep in discussion.

"No! Absolutely not!" protested Bobby. "No-one is going to practice their sewing skills as part of this exercise!" He leaned back, his arms crossed and stared at Lester. "Come up with a good idea or shut the fuck up, will ya?"

Lester grinned. He was bored with trying to put together a set of tests so was trying to piss off the men around him instead.

"It was your stupid idea, Hector. So you decide from the list we have." Tank said, rolling his eyes in true 'Burg style.

"Well, Boys. If you want my opinion, you need to think differently." Ella said as she pushed her cart into the room. She'd heard the conversation and was waiting in the hallway for the right moment to interrupt them. "I thought the whole idea behind this scheme was to make Connor and his team re-think their stance on women so I suggest you need to look at this from Stephanie's perspective. What does she bring to the party and how can you use this to teach the boys from Atlanta a lesson?" Ella explained before rolling her cart past the five astonished faces and heading into the kitchen.

"She's got a point." Ranger said shaking his head. "Let's eat and think then start again, shall we?" he added as he stood up to follow his aunt into the kitchen. Four hungry men followed behind, deep in thought.

o0o0o0o0o

"Ok, let battle commence" Connor said as he picked up a file, scanned the title then put it down on the floor by the front door. He picked up a second, flicked over the name and it too joined the pile.

"Right then, everything loaded over here is to be taken down to 2. Steph, can you find some colored labels and put them on these files. We'll put them in bay 4 for later."

"Sure thing."

"No worries."

"Yep."

"Wilko."

Came the replies.

An hour later most of 7 had been moved downstairs, although following a suggestion from Steph some of the motion detectors, control panels and computers were left to make it look like part of the lounge had been used for bone fide storage. Connor didn't need to know that Ranger knew what had really been going on, but making it look like they were pulling the wool over his eyes would win Steph the first of the brownie points she planned to get before he turned up in the morning.

After a quick pizza the three of them settled in to begin the process of sifting throught the remaining eight accounts that would win her the rest.