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Standard FF disclaimers apply.

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I Need You. Discovery

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When Tank returned home with the team, he had some specific things that needed to be done immediately. The first things on the list he could delegate to others. And he did. The most important thing that Tank needed to do was to talk to the woman who was standing there watching them all walk out of the elevator. He hurried toward her, he had a message from Ranger to deliver to her, an excited smile was growing across his face. And then she fainted. He was just close enough to catch her on her way down. Rushing her down to Bobby, he was panicking. Ranger was expecting to talk to her, right now. He had it all planned out. How was he going to explain this?

Even before Tank made to his office, Bobby was informed about the incident. He knew exactly what this was all about. He had seen Stephanie earlier, he talked with her in the break room. She had asked about the assignment, hoping that someone would know something that they could tell her. She was so anxious, he tried to be calm as he told her that they did not have any details to share with her. He knew that she was worried about Ranger, maybe more so than he would have expected, but they all worried about the teams when they were gone on the missions. He figured that it could be the same for Stephanie.

Tank had laid her down on the examination table. Bobby smoothed her hair back, out of her face. The shock should wear off soon. He propped her feet up and checked her pulse. And when her eyes fluttered open, he smiled at her. She did not return the gesture. There was still some panic in her eyes.

He wanted to keep her lying down for a few minutes more, but she looked like she wanted to be anywhere but here. So rather than see another fainting episode from letting her get up too fast, he slowly helped her to sit up, but he wouldn't let her leave. Handing her a bottle of water, he encouraged her to sip from it, and he tried to ask her some questions. She accepted the water, but she was silent. He understood. With an arm around her shoulders, he spoke softly, words to calm her, reassure her.

Tank walked back into the room. Stephanie stiffened and tried to avoid looking at him, Bobby felt so sorry for her. He was about to say something when Tank shoved a phone into her hands. Realizing that it was personal, he started to move away, but he didn't go too far, he still wanted to keep an eye on her.

It seemed that Tank was also hovering nearby. Just as Bobby was going to say something to him, Tank stepped up to Stephanie and handed her a photograph. The moment she saw what it was, her face lit up and in her excitement she tried to grab it with both of her hands, dropping the phone and then frantically grabbing it up again whispering "Don't hang up, don't hang up!"

Thankfully the call had not disconnected. Bobby looked up to see Tank's reaction, but the big man was heading out the door again. What was going on? All he could do is sit and try not to eavesdrop on the conversation between Stephanie and Ranger. Everyone was acting strange around here, and he wondered what was going to happen next. He only had to wait a few minutes to find the answer to that question, as he saw Tank coming back through the door.

Apparently, Stephanie had not seen him leave and was confused to see that he was gone, but when he strode across the room to hand her a small box, he thought that she was going to burst into tears. And just when he thought that nothing could get any stranger, a priest walked into the room. With Bobby pulled up to stand on her left, and Tank standing on her right, Stephanie looked at the priest and said 'I Do' with the phone still up to her ear. Somebody was going to owe him an explanation soon, he thought as he signed his name to the witness line on the paper the priest handed to him.

Tank was relieved. Ranger and Stephanie were meant to be together. Hadn't he been trying to tell his friend that very thing for years now? But never had he imagined that he would be standing as best man for Ranger and a bridesmaid for Stephanie while standing in the middle of Bobby's office. When it was over, he hugged her and shrugged his shoulders as he made his way back to his office. He knew a couple of days ago, when Ranger asked him to take that picture of him and the baby, that something big was about to happen. He was right!

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On account of the situation with the baby, none of the members of the team were required to go straight to DC for the debriefing. The powers that be had the doctors there, and had even arranged for the two business men to make an appearance. So they would not be missed until Ranger was able to get home.

This gave them a chance to unravel a few mysteries before they had to hand over the information that they had gathered. Hal and Cal worked with Woody sorting and cataloging the items found on the rescue site and in the huts. It was easy to separate everything into four categories. Cartel personnel. Humelik, doctors, and Maria. What these items had to tell them would take time to see.

Apparently, only a few members of the drug cartel stayed at the kidnapping site, as evidenced by the lack of personal items that were found. The detainees were in such bad condition for so much of the time, there had been no great need to guard them. On the night of the raid, a total of nine guards were found. None of them had any identification with them, and none wore any jewelry. There ended up being a pile of chewing gum, cigarettes, and bic lighters to show for the guards. Mostly Ranger's men just gathered up the weapons they found everywhere.

Surprisingly, all of the 'prisoners' had all of their personal effects still with them. The men had their wallets in their pockets and Maria's bag was found hidden in the corner of her hut. Not much else could have been taken during the abduction, there had probably been no time, and no opportunity to grab anything at all. They were able to verify every ID satisfactorily, with the exception of Dr Dunne's. something about his information felt too generic. They would keep looking into him.

As Hal had found out, the most interesting things to find were in the hut with Maria. Ranger still had the letters that he had shown him while they were in Ecuador. She also seemed to have been able to carry quite a varied assortment of things in her bag. In fact, it looked like she kept all of her most prized possessions with her at all times. Wedding rings and antique looking gold jewelry was tucked into pouch that had been hand sewn into the lining of the bag. A narrow wooden box tied with leather strips acted as her savings account, it was packed full of money, mostly bills of various denominations. Another pouch held hair clips, and barrettes. They were made of different materials; exquisite carved wood, finely worked metal and even one that looked like delicate ivory. It was agreed, however, that the most valuable thing of all was the carefully prepared collection of letters to her son.

While they were putting this picture together, Silvio and Rodriguez worked to find connections between the doctors and the men from Humelik. At least that was the angle that they started out with. It was only a matter of time before they started to see things a lot differently. Especially when they dug deeper into Dr Dunne's information.

Gene was called up to help Lester figure out what they could from the contents of the locker from the lab. With his degree in science, Gene was a great help to explain what clues they could find in the notes. Dr Taylor was meticulous about keeping records. They would have expected the same from Dr Dutton, but everything associated with his work seemed to be coded. That seemed more than a little bit strange. Well, strange for a scientist. It was something that the guys were very familiar with, and this piece of the puzzle just didn't seem to fit.

The first thing that Gene did was put all of the work in chronological order. There was always a reason that scientists came to their conclusions, and it was easy to understand if you could see it in context. For hours Gene looked over the notes, arranging them and making some copious notes of his own.

He found that he had a great appreciation for the work that Brian Taylor had been researching all his life. Most if his focus had been on environmental impact and improvements, so when he saw the newest direction that his research had taken, Gene could understand the interest that had been gathering.

It had been spelled out in a research paper that he had submitted to a scientific journal. A copy of that paper was in one of the books they had recovered. Gene looked it up, it had never been published in its entirety, but he was able to find another reference to it in a piece by his partner Tom Dutton. That article had been published three years ago, around the time that Humelik became interested in the partners.

Gene could see that they were working out the details on a few very interesting theories. The applications of which could alter the medical profession. The problems seemed to be the calculations, something was not adding up, and as much as Gene wanted to follow the numbers and figure it out, he was at a dead end. Where all of his other research had been neat and precise, Dr Taylor's most recent notes were scattered and incomplete. It was frustrating.

The whole team wanted to get as many answers as they could before Ranger got back. They had to, because the moment he was stateside, they would have to go in and turn over everything that they had. This was their chance to keep potentially problematic information out of the hands of bureaucrats who had no business playing games with information hard won by a few brilliant scientists.

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From the minute that Ranger signed the last of the paperwork, he could not wait to get home. It had been two days since he sent the rest of the team home. Now he and Mat had to wait for the next flight out in the morning. It was all he could do not to go crazy without Stephanie by his side. When she agreed to marry him, his whole world opened up for him. In that moment he knew a joy so pure, so deep it filled his soul! The only thing that could make him feel happier than he had in that moment, will be the moment she is back in his arms again. He ached inside to be with her.

Once again, he found himself looking out of the window from the darkened room. Mat was in his arms, and he held him close as he looked up at the stars. This time tomorrow, he would be home with Stephanie in their home. With Matthais. What was Stephanie going to think of all of this? He had asked her to become a wife, and a mother all at the same time. He still wondered if that was fair of him to do. He knew that they wanted to be together. He knew that she had an incredible capacity to love. It felt like the right thing to do at the time. He still felt that way. But he was a realist. He knew that extreme situations affected people in different ways. He was anxious to get back home, to see the look on her face when he saw her for the first time as his wife! That would tell him what he needed to know.

He owed her so much, ever since that first meeting in the café, she had done something to him. She had awakened his own ability to love again. She did not know that, he had not even realized it until very recently. But he knew, now, that Stephanie had saved him. Without her, he would never have known that he could care, that he could love! That his life was more than duty and responsibility. A part of him, somewhere deep inside had responded to her, yearned for what she could help him to be.

Mat sighed in his sleep, a contented sound. It made ranger lips turn up into a satisfied smile. From the moment he saw the baby, Ranger had felt such a strong connection. How do you explain something like that? He just knew. It was more than just the need to protect him. He would have done that no matter what. No, this feeling was so much deeper. Like he belonged with him. He recognized those feeling immediately. It was very similar to what he felt for Stephanie.

He had felt those feelings from the first time they met. It had just taken him a long time to admit to what those feelings were all about. He had spent so many years protecting himself from having connections with people. Not because he did not want relationships. But because he truly believed that there were things about his life that would be too dangerous to anyone who got close to him. He had always been about protecting everyone. Protecting them from the evil in the world and protecting them from him too.

That was why his feelings for Stephanie scared him. He couldn't let her into his life, because he knew that with the way he felt, it would kill him if anything happened to her. He couldn't protect her, so he decided to protect himself, from that kind of hurt. By the time he realized that he was hurting himself more by pushing her away, he had almost lost her. And that hurt more than anything he had ever experienced and he knew that he couldn't go on being the one hurting himself, hurting her. He couldn't do that anymore. He had to let her into his life. He had to let her save him. And she had.

He wondered what Stephanie was feeling right now. When they had spoken on the phone a few hours ago, the breathlessness of her voice told him that she loved him, that she did not regret their crazy impromptu wedding. That she really did want to be with him as much as he wanted her. There were not words in any language to describe how that made him feel.

While he was staring in the night sky, with all of these thought swirling around his head, Mat started fussing. Ranger moved to the comfortable wicker chair. He looked down at the small child. He was hungry. No surprise. This little man had been eating like a champ. The nurse who had been here watching him every day had been very pleased. Ranger almost took it as a personal compliment that his boy had been improving steadily day by day. Truthfully, he could take some of the credit, he never left Mat's side if he didn't have to. He was, in every sense, his caretaker. Much to the delight of all of the women in the building. There is nothing quite as sexy as a strong man carefully taking care of an infant. Of course Ranger had not noticed any of the admiration directed his way. His only focus was on Mat and getting home to Stephanie.

They were ready now. The paper work was finished, and Mat had has his final checkup. When Ranger had brought in the agency doctor and his nurse when they got here, he wanted to make sure Mat was healthy. He was as surprised as Dr Santiago had been that there had been no complications, considering the situation and with the weakened condition of the baby when he was found.

In the hut, conditions had been less than ideal for his birth. They all knew that. But Maria had done her best, all on her own to keep him clean and safe. She had done absolutely everything in her power to care for her baby. It still tugged at his heart that she knew that she had to leave him. She gave him all that she had. That was her legacy. Mat had survived, he was a little fighter. Ranger stayed by his side and watched him closely, he was so proud of his incredible spirit. It was his charge now to care for him, to love him, but he would make sure that Mat knew about his mother, and her love for him.

Now he was taking Mat home, to a place where there would be people who loved him everywhere he looked. The hungry little boy was working on emptying another bottle. Ranger watched him in wonder. He had not had this experience with Julie. So much had changed in his life since then. That thought brought a sudden smile to his face. Stephanie was in his life now. Everything had changed!

The smile remained as he let himself remember the conference call that he and Stephanie had made after their 'wedding'. Both sets of parents, and Julie had all been on that call. Together he and Stephanie had announced not only that they were married, but that they were a family with Mat. As he knew they would, the parents first expressed their shock, and then their congratulations to the new couple, the new family. It was Julie that Ranger had worried most about. How would she feel about having a little brother suddenly pushed into her life? It was with some regret that he was not able to be with her personally to make this announcement. They had been building a relationship over the past year, would this change that?

Mat was with them on the call, snuggled up by Rangers neck. Julie had squealed when she found out that he and Stephanie were married, but she had been quiet since then. Was she upset about Mat? It was not until the little boy had made himself heard that Ranger had his answer.

He could hear her intake of breath. "Oh," Julie said softly. "Is that him?" Her voice was full of that same awe that he had heard in Stephanie's voice that first time that she had listened to Mat's gentle sighs. Ranger was hopeful.

"Yes," he answered, "That is Mat, he had been on the call with us." He heard several of the people on the line take in a breath to say something, but Julie beat them all to it.

"Hey Mat!" she said with whispered excitement. "This is Julie, I'm your sister." Ranger's eyes filled with tears, so did Stephanie's. Neither one had been capable of saying a single word just then, but that was okay, because Julie kept talking. "I can't wait to meet you, little guy'" she said. Then in Spanish she told him that she was going to be the best big sister that he could ever hope for. "You came to the right place kiddo," she teased the now sleeping baby. "We all love you already!" If Ranger had been speechless before, the lump in his throat now left him almost weak with relief and such a sense of pride in his daughter.

"Dad," Julie suddenly said. "What does he look like?"

Again there was a sense of anticipation from everyone on the call. Ranger could not be happier about their response. Stephanie particularly was listening closely. She had never asked that question. It would not matter in the end. But she suddenly found that she was just as curios as Julie.

"He looks a lot like you did when you were born querida," he said. Julie giggled. "He has darker skin, more like mine," he continued. "And he has a whole head of black hair that sticks out all over the place after he has been asleep." Sighs and ohs were heard during his description of the adorable little boy. "His eyes are big and very dark right now. And his eyelashes are long and dark, just like yours Jules," he told her. Then in mock seriousness he said, "He has ten toes and ten fingers, I counted them to be sure!" Finally he was very serious. "He is beautiful Jules, and he needs a sister like you!"

He could hear her swallow some tears. Softly she answered, "I can't wait to see him, Dad!" Everyone on the line understood how important that statement had been to Ranger. Silently they all added the same sentiments.

"We will get you up here to see him soon Julie," Stephanie said. And the realization that she was not only getting an instant family with Mat, but that Julie was going to want to be a big part of it too just made her heart burst with happiness.

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Brian Taylor had mixed feelings about being back in the jungle as he and his partner Tom Dutton pulled up in front of the lab. He was relieved to see that the building was still standing. From the questions he had been asked, and from random comments that he had heard, he was afraid that it had been destroyed in the attack.

As the two men got out of the car, they were greeted by the familiar sounds. Overhead hundreds of birds were calling to each other. Brian could immediately identify many of them, and he smiled. His birds were happy to see him.

Neither of the men were very strong yet. And the doctors in DC had objected strongly to letting them go so quickly. If they had their way, they would still be under medical care for another two weeks. That was entirely too long. Tom knew he had a job to do. And Brian was anxious to find out what had happened to his notes. Time was of the essence for both of them. Tom walked directly to the front door. As soon as it was opened he headed straight to the lab. He did not look at the spot in the front hallway that should have shown the stain of the blood from the officers. He did not check the office. The fact that everything had been cleaned up as if nothing at all had happened only slightly disturbed him. He had only one thing in his mind.

He and Brian had talked about this. Brian had very real fears about his research notes. Tom had finally shared his own fears. The research that they had been working on for the past several years had brought some interesting things to light. In the scientific community, they were of interest for their contribution to the continuous quest for knowledge. But as Brian had already supposed from the reaction of the Humelik people, this information could also be used to create something new. Something that both he and Tom could not allow to happen.

Brian followed closely behind Tom, they ended up standing in front of the metal locker. Slowly, as if he did not know what to expect, Tom opened the door. The locker was empty. He took a deep breath. there was no sign that anyone had been here, but his instincts told him not to trust anything.

The moment the false back was removed, they knew that someone had been here. Tom closed his eyes and leaned his head against the cool metal. Brian stepped back slumped against the counter.

"What are we going to do?" Brian asked. He had hated to have to tell Tom about his suspicions that the very company that had funded their research was trying to steal it and use it for their own purposes. He felt a bit thick for not seeing it before, and was ready to start mentally beating himself up about it when Tom spoke. Brian looked up at him, not quite comprehending what he was saying at first.

"We need to contact the men who found us, who took us out of the jungle," Tom was saying. "They will know how to help us." He had said this as a matter of trust. At this moment in time, Tank was the only person that Tom felt they could go to. The only one that he could trust. He might have to call some of his contacts to find out how to get a hold of Tank. Tom really hated to do that, it always made things more complicated. He stepped back and leaned against the counter with Brian as he thought of the best thing to do. Both men looked into the empty locker. Brian was shaking his head.

Suddenly Tom remembered something that Tank had said to him during his brief visit. 'Things are seldom what they appear to be.' It had seemed like a strange thing to say at the time. But now, somehow, it made perfect sense. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of Tic Tacs. The one that Tank had given him. He shook it, absently wondering if it could be the answer that he was looking for. Brian was looking at him, annoyed at the sound. He declined when Tom offered to give him a tiny mint. And Brian was still staring at him as he turned the small plastic container over and over in his hands. Looking for something, but what?

Tom closed his eyes again, hanging his head down on his chest. He was tired. They were both tired, neither of them had recovered from their ordeal. Maybe I am over thinking this, he thought. His thumb smoothed over hard plastic. It got caught on the folded up edge of the label. He looked down at the Tic Tacs again. His mind was nearly numb from travel fatigue, but he made himself think. "What if…" he whispered. He looked at Brian. His hands started moving almost of their own volition. The label peeled off easily. Tom carefully removed it and looked at underneath. A phone number. He knew exactly what it was.

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