Chapter 15: The Disappearance

After Terry left Ranger and Stephanie at the restaurant, Stephanie had a slew of burning questions she needed answers to. Ranger dropped her off at her parents' house so she could talk to her grandmother and make some calls. Stephanie called it the power of the Burg grapevine. He arranged for someone to pick Steph up when she was ready to return to RangeMan, leaving him time to follow-up on some leads.

Just as he was walking out the door of the Plum household, he received an anonymous call telling him that a waitress at Shorty's knew who had kidnapped Stephanie. The thought that this might be a set-up wasn't lost on Ranger, but he wasn't too worried. He'd known Shorty for years and knew that the restaurant owner would have his back. He knew the layout of the area and felt confident he could spot anything and anyone out of place.

He got into his SUV and was on his way to Shorty's when the car in front of him braked suddenly, forcing him to slam on his brakes. The van behind him didn't stop in time and plowed into the back of his SUV, shoving his vehicle into the stopped car in front of him. The airbag exploded, forming a cloud of white dust around him, and pushing Ranger back against the driver's seat.

He opened the door to let out some of the floating powder. A man approached and Ranger waved him off. "I'm fine," he said. "Go check on the driver in front of me." The man reached toward him and Ranger felt a jolt of electricity surge through him. What the fuck? The man just stunned me, Ranger thought. He tried to raise his arm in defense, but his muscles wouldn't obey. The man zapped him again and held the device to his neck for several seconds. The shock left him temporarily incapacitated. Then there was a prick and a sharp burning pain in the left side of his neck, and things got fuzzy.

Within seconds, he felt like he was floating on a white cloud. There were people around him, talking to him, and he knew he was answering, but nothing seemed to make sense. He knew he was walking, but he couldn't feel his feet. And then someone was helping him lie down, which he really wanted to do. There were wonderful sounds and colors swirling around him and all he wanted to do was look and listen. And then, he didn't remember anything at all.

...

It was late afternoon when Tank got the call from the Trenton police about an abandoned RangeMan vehicle that had been involved in a three-car accident on Olden Street. The only company car not currently in the garage was the SUV Ranger was driving. A call to Ranger revealed that Ranger's phone was no longer turned on. Tank immediately drove to the site and met the police investigating the accident.

After talking to the cops on site, Tank studied the accident scene, taking in the placement of the vehicles that had been involved. It was obvious it was Ranger's SUV that had rear-ended the front car, a blue four-door sedan driven by a middle-aged woman. Witnesses, though, had said a third vehicle, a white panel van, had slammed into Ranger's SUV causing it to rear-end the first car. Tank could see that the SUV's air bag had deployed. Witnesses also said that the third vehicle had left the scene, but not until the van driver, a man, had helped the disoriented SUV driver, also a man, into the back of the van.

Trenton police had interviewed the driver of the sedan and several witnesses, which consisted of three teenagers walking home from school. The woman of the sedan had sworn that a dog had run out into the street, and she had slammed on her brakes to avoid hitting it. None of the teens had seen a dog.

The three teens had said that the SUV, which Tank knew had been driven by Ranger, had braked hard but had been able to stop before hitting the stationary sedan. The white panel van, however, had not been able to stop in time and had struck the SUV from the rear, pushing the SUV into the sedan. The woman in the sedan had been shaken up, but unharmed. She had remained in her vehicle, dazed and upset, and had been unable to provide the police any other details.

According to one of the teens, the man in the van had run forward to the SUV and helped an obviously dazed Ranger out of the SUV and into the back of the van. Then the man had driven away. The entire incident had taken less than three minutes.

Tank had questioned the woman driver and had found her still confused and unclear about what had happened. He also was able to talk to the teens, and thought they had a pretty clear picture of what had happened. They had assumed that the man in the van was helping the disoriented man in the SUV get to the hospital. But no one fitting Ranger's description had been admitted to any of the local ERs. And Ranger's phone was still turned off and untraceable.

Tank leaned back against his vehicle and went back over what he knew. The seemingly innocent accident sounded like a well-known ploy frequently used by criminals for car insurance extortion. Ranger wouldn't have fallen for it. Who got to him, and how and why did they do it? He must have been incapacitated, either from the accident, or from something that was done to him afterwards. That was the how, now he had to figure out the why and the who. And he had to talk to Stephanie, ASAP.

Bottom line: Ranger was MIA.

...

She was dressed to kill, and she would kill if Ranger had been harmed. She wore RangeMan black with a full utility belt. Her hair was tied back out of the way, her stun gun had a full charge and her bullets were in her gun.

Tank had given her the devastating news. He assumed, and she was certain, that Ranger's disappearance was related to her recent kidnapping. She'd been careful recently, not leaving RangeMan without an escort, but that time was over. Her two captors were dead, and if Terry didn't actually pull the trigger, she'd given the order. Stephanie felt sure of it, but she had no proof.

She didn't tell Tank, and she didn't think he knew, because he was busy setting some plan of his own in to action. She simply picked out a fleet vehicle and drove out of the parking garage. She knew someone in the control room was tracking her, but maybe they didn't realize she didn't have an escort. She didn't need one. She was going to the Trenton Free Public Library.

She pulled the SUV into the library parking lot and got out quickly, beeping the door locks as she strode out of the lot and headed east. She would be methodical. She would be observant, and she would do what the FBI had been unable to do. She would find the place where they'd held her, where they were holding Ranger.

She walked quickly and with purpose. She went six blocks due east and then turned north. She would walk the area, block by block. Eventually she would find her prison. All she had to do was find steps to an outside basement entrance. She'd been looking for an hour, street after street, and the light was starting to go. Her hand went to her waist and fingered the mag light on her utility belt. Darkness wouldn't stop her. It might become her friend.

Suddenly, she felt something, maybe her spidey sense, if there was such a thing. The area looked familiar. She stopped and looked up and down the side streets. Those streets were a wash, as there were no entrances to anything, underground or above. She was walking alongside a warehouse that encompassed the entire block. There was a janitorial supply store across the street. Wide steps led up to double doors over which hung a sign that read "Long's Janitorial Supply." It was the only business she could see and there was a light on in the upstairs room. It must be open, despite the late hour. It was after six, past closing time for most businesses. That made the place worth a closer look. She walked across the street and onto a small patch of grass between the curb and the sidewalk. Her CAT boot connected with a loose piece of concrete and it skittered across the sidewalk and disappeared, and Stephanie Plum froze.

The memory of her bare foot scraping on rough pot-holed concrete came rushing back, even as she saw the stairs tucked under the stoop of the upstairs entrance. Her hand went to her gun. She'd found it! She made her way down the steps, noting several pieces of broken concrete.

The door was steel with multiple locks and it was set in a windowless wall. She didn't want to knock and give herself away. She turned and went up the steps and then up the second flight. The knob turned easily in her hand, and she stepped into the janitorial supply store.

A man in gray coveralls sat at a beat-up government-issue desk, looking at a centerfold in what might have been an old issue of Playboy. He had a greasy blond ponytail hanging down his back, and he had the stub of a cigar dangling from his lips. He looked up at Stephanie and his eyes took her in from head to toe and all points in between.

"Can I help youse, sweetheart?" he asked. Stephanie's heart thudded so loudly she thought he must hear it. Youse. Her abductors had said youse. This guy didn't seem to recognize her, though.

"I, uh, I don't think so," she said, glancing around the office. Her eyes fixed on a floor vent situated in front of the desk. "I thought this was a plumbing supply store. I can see I was wrong."

"Yeah, youse are. We're janitorial, and we're wholesale. We don't sell to the public."

"S-sorry," she stammered. She turned and left the building and took a good look at where she was. Then she ran, as fast as she could.

AN: Regarding the effects of stun guns, it is a common misperception that a stun gun typically knocks a person unconscious. The author of the Plum series perpetuates this inaccuracy in her novels, and many of us fanfiction writers have continued that mistake. We have been guilty of that earlier in this story, and for that, we apologize. Research shows there is considerable variability both in the voltage of different brands of stun guns and in the physiological reactions of people. Some individuals will simply jerk away from the painful charge, while others will be temporarily incapacitated; it is extremely rare for someone to lose consciousness. The voltage amount, duration of the charge and the unique response of the person being stunned will determine the end effect. The stun guns used in this story are of high quality and extremely high voltages, rendering the victim temporarily incapacitated. And in Ranger's case, stunning him was only a means to allow him to be drugged.