Disclaimer: Janet Evanovich is one clever lady. Characters and everything you recognize are hers. I'm just playing.

Chapter 13

The meeting continued with Hector and some other men he'd been working with detailing all the dirt they'd been able to gather on Joe Morelli. Apparently after we'd broken up for good and had the public quarrel, the guys had taken it upon themselves to start compiling cold, hard facts against him. Evidence that he was abusing his power as a cop. We spent hours sorting through all the data that the men had gathered, eating lunch then dinner in the room when Ella provided them to us.

It turned out that the deal he'd struck with the goons he sent after us in Hawaii wasn't the only such deal he'd made He was taking bribes in exchange for letting drug dealers off some very big charges. Eventually, he actually started sending business their way, which might be enough to get him on some conspiracy to deal drugs charges.

Even better, he and Terri Gilman were running a scam on Trenton PD. Pretending to be informants while actually playing on the side of her mafia connections. They were framing people they wanted out of the business and uncovering other informants and turning them over to be "handled" by The Family.

I sat there contemplating all the evidence before me, and I just couldn't understand how I'd ever thought that Joe was a good person. He'd played me so well. I shuddered to think of whether or not I'd inadvertently aided him or furthered his agenda working my cases and helping him with his.

"Babe, there are two ways we can go here. We, obviously, can make him just disappear, but we figured that you might not be comfortable with that. We can provide this information to someone we trust at the FBI. He'll say he got the information from a Confidential Informant to protect us. There's more than enough here for them to put Joe and a lot of others away for a very long time. If Joe chooses to cooperate, they'll put him somewhere where he's less likely to get killed in jail for being a cop, but rest assured, he'll be put away for a very, very long time- if not for the rest of his life."

Did I want Joe dead? He planned to have me kidnapped, rape me, and probably hold me prisoner while trying to convince me to love him. When I didn't eventually give in, and after I'd given him some kids, I had no doubt that he'd have killed me. Even knowing that, I couldn't let them just make him disappear.

"Send the information to the FBI. It'll take a while, I'm sure, for them to make the arrests, so you and I will both keep a low profile in the meantime, right?"

I looked Ranger dead in the eye at that and he nodded his head in agreement. "I'd prefer to stay here as it is the most secure place, but if you'd rather, we can go to one of our other properties."

Hearing him call them our properties threw me for a bit of a loop, but I guessed I was going to have to start getting used to that. "We can stay here for now."

"Hector, get me all of that data on a secure, encrypted thumbdrive. I'll call my contact now, and find out how he wants to make the exchange. We'll meet again tomorrow at 0800. For now, you're all dismissed."

Ranger walked me up to the seventh floor and gave me a hell of a goodnight kiss before going downstairs to make his call.

For the next week, we fell into a bit of a routine. Ranger would wake me up at 5:30 with the only incentive that he could to get me out of bed that early- sex. After we'd cleaned up, we'd head down to the gym for about an hour and a half of working out and training on the mats. Then we'd shower and get ready for the day, having a meeting each morning about Morelli and his associates.

I spent the bulk of each day running searches, and thankfully after the first day of trying to get me to run searches on Rangeman's normal caseload, Ranger had realized that was a lost cause and had allowed me to just focus on Morelli. He'd even flown Sylvio up to partner with me, and the two of us together were finding plenty more fuel for the fire. In the afternoons, I'd take a break long enough to work with Ranger or one of the other men in the shooting range.

Of course, Ranger had kept his word and remained out of the field while working with me to get ready to certify as field-ready with Rangeman. Truly, it didn't seem to drive him anywhere near as crazy as it was driving me, even knowing that we would need to be staying in right now anyway. Hector had been able to use his street contacts to find that Ranger and I both had active contracts out against us. Much to our disappointment amid all the stress, I'd gotten my period. We hadn't been trying, at least not completely, but it was clear to us both that we'd actively wanted it to happen. To say the least, it was a tense time.

Another week passed, and I was beginning to wonder if Ranger's FBI contact was playing us. My searches with Sylvio had stopped being fruitful. I was fairly certain it was because we'd already pulled as much as we could purely on searches, so Sylvio was back in Miami and I was back to running regular Rangeman searches. Ranger and I were both getting bored and frustrated with being indoors, even though it hadn't been all that long, so we dealt with that by a lot more training for me. It wasn't just workouts and guns, but also lockpicking, sparring, and any others of his ninja trips he decided he felt like showing me on any given day.

"Okay, Babe. Today lets do a practice qualifying test just to see how much we need to work on in each category and how we should prioritize, okay?"

"I'm sure I'm nowhere near ready, Carlos."

"That's fine, Steph. I just want a new baseline to use to design the next few weeks of your training. No pressure, okay?"

I gave him a kiss and looked at him for a few seconds before saying, "alright, if it will help you have a better time training me, then that works for me."

"Thanks. Most of the guys who can be spared are going to join us and help us since they trade off helping with your training, okay? That way we all have the same information."

"Sure, why not. It'll be a totally exhausting party."

We spent the next couple hour with me running through my tests. Ranger coached me and gave me helpful reminders and tips before each session started. Bobby handled the fitness tests, Tank ran the hand-to-hand tests, and Ram the marksmanship tests. For some reason, Hector insisted on finishing with a computer skills test, even though we knew I'd make it through that easily. But, since Hector is still a bit frightening when he is determined, I just went along with it.

I took my time in the shower afterward, sincerely hoping that Carlos was going to join me, maybe rub my back... And some other, more interesting places. When I realized I was getting pruney, I figured that wasn't going to be happening. So I switched off the water, drying off then finding a message from Ranger asking me to join him in the conference room on three.

As soon as I opened the door, I knew something was up. There was cake on the center of the table, and I was fairly certain it wasn't anyone's birthday. I walked over to where Ranger was sitting at the head of the table and leaned down to give him a kiss, not surprised at all when he pulled me into his lap to sit with him. I looked at everyone smiling around us and asked, "so, what's going on? Why do we get cake?"

"Well, it turns out we have two things to celebrate today, Babe." He nodded to Hector and the projector whirled to life showing a series of photographs of the major members of every gang, mob, or other crime organization Morelli had been able to be connected to being arrested. And for the finale, there were multiple shots of Morelli himself being cuffed and dragged out of his house, along with a naked Terri Gilman, by a satisfied looking Eddie Gazzara and Big Dog. When the projector cut off, we all broke out into applause.

"From what our various contacts have been able to determine, the hits out on us have been effectively ended by these arrests. We're going to need to continue to lay low though until we're sure word has finished circulating and those hits really are off for good, Babe."

"That's fine. Now that I know there's a definitive end in sight, I can handle a few more days if I need to. What else do we have to celebrate though?"

"The second, and most important thing we have to celebrate is you becoming a full fledged Rangeman! Because you passed all the qualifying tests today!"

"You said it was just practice!"

I felt Ranger shrug as I whipped my head around to look at him, "I knew you could do it, but I didn't want you to be nervous or put too much pressure on yourself."

"You promised I passed by my own merits?"

I heard scoffing noises from all the men around the table. "That's why we ran them and kept score, Little Girl," boomed Tank's voice. "Ranger wouldn't have cheated for you anyway, not when it could affect your health. None of us would, but we felt you would be more confident in the results this way. You passed, every one of the tests very comfortably, Steph."

"So that means, as soon as we verify that there's no impending threat as a result of Morelli's take down, you're back in the field, Babe."

"So are you."

"Babe."

His tone told me he was saying, "that's a given" with a bit of an "I told you so" thrown in because it really hadn't taken as long as I'd figured for me to pass the tests.

"So, who is going to be my partner?"

"You can choose from anyone in here, other than me. We may wind up in the field together from time to time on the larger takedowns and if you're doing a distraction, but on the day to day cases, it'll be better for us to not partner together where we might be more likely to be worried about the other person and make the wrong decision."

I nodded as I looked around the room, smiling at all the pleading eyes I was seeing. Of all the Rangemen, there was one who I felt I owed the most. And since he hadn't had a regular partner for a couple months and was looking at me with just as pleading eyes as everyone else, I figured he wasn't holding a grudge. So, "I choose Hal!"

There were some good natured groans of complaint, as well as some good-natured joking about him being doomed, but Hal had a big smile and let out a victorious whoop.

"Just don't tase me again, partner."

I have him a cheeky grin in return, "I really can't promise you that!"