Chapter 18

I walked into my apartment for the first time in a few days with my gun drawn. It gave me confidence even if there were no bullets in it. The bad guy wouldn't know that. It was amazing how eerily silent the place was without Rex in residence. It felt empty and there was no indication I had company, but I had to make sure. I quickly and quietly made my way from the foyer to the living room and kitchen. Next, I doubled back to my bedroom and bathroom. When I was sure the place was safe, I locked my door and settled in for the night.

I didn't think Rafael posed a serious threat to my life now. It might be different if he knew what I knew. His main goal now was to intimidate me, threaten me and get me back in his grip, literally and figuratively. I grimaced at the thought. Rafael wanted me for the same old reasons, but if he knew I had the tapes and that I was working with Ranger to get him convicted of David's murder, then Rafael would want me…dead.

I felt secure in my apartment and relieved to be there alone. I had some serious thinking to do. I went to the kitchen and unbagged the cake my mom had sent with me. I found a half-eaten container of vanilla ice cream in the freezer and emptied the carton into a big bowl, then added the cake slices. I settled myself on the sofa to do some serious thinking. Not my normal thinking position, but the best position for thinking when eating.

Not that I needed it, but my mother had given me permission to pursue Ranger. Maybe it wasn't so much permission as it was encouragement. I love my mother, but I hadn't always liked her. At this moment I liked her and felt empathy for what she'd gone through. I think for the first time in my life I understood her. I also understood she wanted what was best for me. It must have been hard for her to finally accept that Joe wasn't best for me.

I was still reeling in disbelief at the mostly calm way she had accepted my news. She had been exactly right when she said I was trying to manipulate Ranger into getting my own way. I had a need to be the one to bring Rafael down. Once I did, I could push the nightmares that sometimes haunted me completely out of my brain. Ranger would come around to my way of thinking, either because I would convince him, or more likely, there would be no other way. He'd used me in distractions and put me in moderately risky situations before. I didn't see why he was balking now.

The overload of sugar was working its magic on me, and it was getting time to move to my more familiar thinking position. I took a quick shower and pulled on my oldest, softest RangeMan t-shirt and went to bed.

I came awake suddenly. There was a light on in my living room and there was a man silhouetted in my bedroom doorway. My brain recognized Ranger a nanosecond after the adrenaline shot into my system. My heart was pounding, and my breath was coming fast.

"You scared the crap out of me!" My voice was whispery, breathless.

He stayed where he was and answered. "I thought we had an agreement that you would stay at RangeMan." I could tell by the timbre of his voice and his complete lack of movement. He was pissed.

"I cleared my apartment and locked everything up tight. I'm safe here. I made sure no one could get in."

"And yet, here I am."

"You're not no one," I said. "You're…" I stopped. I thought of him as Batman sometimes, but it didn't seem like the time to call him that.

"My point exactly," he said. "I got past your locks. Someone else could, too."

I rolled my eyes. "That's not likely and we both know it. I know I was supposed to stay at RangeMan, but I took all the precautions. I have my gun right here on the nightstand."

"Is it loaded?"

"No, but the bad guys don't know that."

"Babe." I saw his shoulders relax downward, just a fraction of an inch, but I understood the body language. He may have still been exasperated, but he was no longer angry. I relaxed a little, too. Intellectually, I know Ranger would never hurt me, but when I saw him in the doorway he'd looked threatening at first, and just for a moment I had contemplated reaching for my gun—which was a good reason not to have bullets in it.

As he approached the bed I could see he was in full RangeMan gear.

"Were you working tonight?"

"Yes. We had a call to a warehouse. The alarm had been breached. I was covering for Lester who is currently otherwise occupied."

He stood by the bed and started divesting himself of his equipment. Some of it he let drop to the floor, but he placed his gun, his mag lite and his cuffs on the nightstand next to my gun. The clank of the cuffs against the wood caused a shiver to run through me. I pulled the covers up under my chin and leaned back against the headboard.

"It's cold in here," I said. It wasn't, but he didn't contradict me. "What are you doing?"

I knew what he was doing. It was obvious.

"I asked you to stay at RangeMan to limit the possibilities of Acosta coming to find you. If you don't want to stay there, then I'm staying here."

Ranger pulled his t-shirt over his head and unsnapped and unzipped his cargos. I wondered for a moment if the man getting in bed with me was the one who wasn't going to make love to me or the guy I'd slept with last night, who despite his best intentions, caved.

"You can stay here," I said, "but not because I need protection from Rafael. I don't think he's capable of breaking in and I don't think he'd do anything in a place where he didn't have total control."

Ranger was down to silk boxers as he sat on the edge of the bed. "He's smart. He's been keeping tabs on you. He might know the connection between you and me, but I'm not sure if he knows of my connection to David. If he talked with you and you let one little thing slip," he paused and placed his hand at my throat. "He would be capable of quieting you very quickly. Then you wouldn't have to worry about your tape being made public. You'd be beyond worry."

Ranger was trying to scare me, and it worked.

"I don't have to worry about that anyway," I retaliated. "I told my mom tonight. Almost everything, and she was wonderful. Her exact words were, 'It will be the talk of the Burg for a long time if this comes to light. Your grandmother will revel in the sensationalism of it. Your father will completely ignore it. I will survive it.' She didn't rant or rave. It was a good talk with her."

Ranger's hand slipped from around my throat to behind my shoulders and he pulled me up against him. My heart was beating double time and only partly from the adrenaline still coursing through me because of his unexpected appearance.

"I'm glad she took the news well, but I'm surprised you told her. The threat of your family and friends finding out was what kept you tied to Acosta."

I shivered again. "Tied to Acosta" was a phrase I didn't like. "If you're staying, get in bed," I said. "I'll tell you why I told my mother. She figured it out and you probably already have as well."

He went back into the living room and turned off the light and in a matter of seconds was in my bed with my backside pulled against him. He moved as quickly through a dark apartment as I could in full light.

His arm wrapped around me and held me close to his body. It was the same position we'd been in when a few short nights before I'd confessed the awful details of my relationship with Rafael to him. There was something about the dark that made it easier to talk, but this time I was mostly sober.

"I told my mother because I am trying to ease the hold Rafael has, or had, on me. I knew she'd be upset, but I was kind of banking on the fact that she loved me and hopefully would get over the shock, especially since I may have the only tape."

Ranger nuzzled his face into the back of my neck and I felt his lips move as he spoke. "I want to discuss the hold Acosta has on you."

"I do, too," I said. "But first I want to finish telling you about my mother. She's very smart. I always knew that, but tonight I saw it firsthand. She knew exactly why I was telling her about Rafael and she called me on it. She said I was telling her to manipulate you into giving me my own way, and she was right."

"What is your own way?" he asked.

"Ranger, I really want you to use me to get a confession from Rafael. This morning you said no, but I need to help. I'm sorry if the idea of my secret becoming public embarrasses you, but I'm ready to risk exposure of my affair with him if it can get him off the street and in prison where he needs to be."

Before I knew it, I was flat on my back and Ranger was on top of me. His words were low and intense. "I'm not embarrassed by you. I'm proud of you and I'm trying to protect you. You did not have an affair with him. He used you and abused and blackmailed you into letting it happen. You were such an emotional mess when you told me about you and him, Babe, that I knew he'd hurt you badly. I'm not sure you're strong enough to deal with the outcome of having your story publicly bandied about, and the one thing I'm certain of is I don't want to cause you more pain."

"I am strong enough," I countered. "And when Rafael is in prison I'll be just fine. I can't get a confession from him without your help. I want you to help me."

He was quiet, looming over me in a dark room. I couldn't see him well, so I couldn't read his expression, but I knew he, with his darn cat-eye night vision, could see me, so I looked up at him with as hopeful an expression as I could manage.

"Two days ago, you asked me why I was so afraid of Rafael," I said. "You said you thought I'd want to go after him to protect my family. Well, now I do. Seeing the tape of Rafael and David has changed everything for me."

"Lester will be home day after tomorrow," Ranger said. "We'll talk. I sent him to gather any information he could. You can be at the briefing and after we see what he's come up with, we will figure out a plan. You'll be involved; I promise you that. As to what extent you're involved, we'll have to wait and see."

I shifted in the bed and spread my legs a little wider. Ranger's legs were nestled between mine and his body was in contact with mine in all the places I liked it to be. He remained still over me, most of his weight resting on his elbows. I could feel he was enjoying the closeness as much as me. I wanted the next thing to happen, but nothing did. I wiggled under him again and was rewarded by a response, but it wasn't the response I was hoping for.

"I have something to discuss with you," he said. Ranger, the man of mystery, the man who could go for hours without uttering a word, wanted to chat. The pressure in my belly was building. He had rotten timing.

"Do you remember the night I came to your bedroom after I apprehended Eddie DeChooch? You were in bed and you thought I was coming to collect on the debt."

"I remember," I said. I was surprised at his choice of conversation.

"I was coming to collect," he said, "but you were so terrified I changed my mind and decided to give you some more time to get used to the idea."

"I wasn't terrified."

"You were," he said. "I sensed it, so I turned on a light to see you. Do you remember?"

"I remember."

"I dropped my utility belt to the floor and I set my gun and my cuffs on the nightstand, just as I did earlier tonight. And you had the same reaction tonight as you did back then. Seeing the cuffs on the nightstand unnerved you."

I wanted to tell him I was nervous about sleeping with the wizard. I was afraid I wouldn't measure up to his standards. He'd had way more experience than me in that arena. I didn't tell him though because he wasn't finished.

"When we did make love, you asked me if I was going to use handcuffs. Do you remember that?"

"Yes," I said. "You said you didn't need handcuffs to enslave a woman."

"And you looked terrified at the thought of being enslaved," he said. "I'm starting to understand why."

"You think it's connected to Rafael? That's crazy."

"Babe." I wiggled again. If he wasn't going to finish what I thought he'd started he needed to give me some space. He stayed firmly in place.

"I think you might be carrying a lot of mental trauma from what you've been through, which is understandable. I think you should consider getting some therapy."

"You're on a therapy kick these days. First Vince, now me."

"It's not exactly the same," Ranger said. "Almost all of the RangeMen guys have been to therapy of some kind, at one time or another, including me. It helps when you have something horrific to process. I think it would help you. I'll go with you if you like."

I snorted. "You'll go with me? Like couples therapy? Just one problem. We're not a couple."

Ranger lowered his head until his lips were a millimeter from mine.

"We could be," he whispered.

My mouth dropped open and he took advantage covering it with his. It was a long and soul-bearing deep kiss, and it lasted until I pulled away.

"I want to tell you something else my mother said tonight," I told him. I heard him groan, but he listened. "She said I shouldn't settle," I said. "She said I should go for what I want. And Ranger, do you know what I want?"

"What?"

"You."

In a move worthy of a WWE wrestler, I pushed Ranger off me, flipped him onto his back and straddled him. His mouth dropped open and I covered it with mine, and there was no more talk of counseling, handcuffs, or Rafael Acosta that night.