Chapter 20

I stumbled as I walked into Ranger's apartment. I caught myself on the credenza to keep from falling, but I dropped my messenger bag and watched as random items rolled across the foyer floor. I fell to my hands and knees, scooped up the errant miscellanea and stuffed it back into my bag. Black tactical boots stepped into my field of vision and I looked up to see Ranger frowning down at me.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

"Yeah, I just tripped on something." He reached out a hand and helped me to my feet.

"We didn't discuss plans this morning, so I wasn't sure when to expect you. The trackers showed you at your mother's house all afternoon," he said.

"You track me when I'm not working?" I asked. I knew he did, but something about the way he said it made me frown back at him.

"You're driving my personal vehicle. All my vehicles have trackers in them. I tried calling you and you didn't answer so I checked your location."

I looked at my phone and sure enough there was a missed call from four hours earlier. "I didn't hear it," I said. "You should have called back."

"It wasn't important," he said. "When I saw that you were at your parents' I figured you'd be staying there for the evening meal."

"I did, sort of," I said. I turned to walk past him and lost my balance. I fell into his arms, which saved me from the floor.

"Babe, have you been drinking?"

"My mother put whiskey in the iced tea and I drank the whole pitcher!" I wailed.

"And you drove from the Burg here?" he asked.

"Of course not," I said. "I let my mom bring me home in the Macan. Now Junior is taking her back to the Burg. I hope that's okay…that I let her drive the car."

Ranger raised an eyebrow, whether at the thought of my mother driving his car or Junior escorting her back home, I couldn't tell.

"Apparently, it's fine," he said. "I haven't had any alarms go off. You could have called." He walked me over to the sofa and I gratefully sat down.

"You missed something," he said as he went back into the foyer. He pulled on the edge of a piece of paper that was just barely showing underneath the credenza and smiled as he saw what he had. "You'd be sorry if you lost this."

I looked and saw it was the body receipt for Simon Ruguzzi. "Wow, no kidding. It will be one of my biggest paydays ever. I told Vince I'd share it with him, but he said he won't take the money. He said he was already getting paid by RangeMan to help while I'm working for you. You must pay good."

"Not that good," Ranger said. "I never told him he couldn't keep his recovery fees."

"I think he and Lula are developing a friendship. He didn't want to hurt her income. He told me to share part of this with her, which I'll do."

"Did you have any trouble with the apprehension?" Ranger asked.

"Less than none, which I attribute to Vince's presence," I said. "That's why I wanted him to take the money, but he refused. Afterward, I called Morelli and told him. He was the primary on the original arrest, but I think he'd already been alerted. He didn't seem that surprised, and he's dating a nun, well, an ex-nun." I was rambling and I knew it was the "tea." The thing was it went down so smoothly it was hard to keep track of how much I'd had.

"And the drinking?" he asked. "Was that fallout from yesterday's discussion with your mother?"

"No, I think it was kind of bonding with my mother. We both understand each other much better now than we did." I yawned. "I need a nap."

He walked with me into his bedroom and waited until I divested myself of my jeans and socks. He turned down the comforter and I fell into bed still wearing my t-shirt, panties and bra. He pulled the covers up tight under my chin and kissed my forehead.

"Sweet dreams, Babe." OMG, I thought. Ranger just tucked me in!

Granted, we didn't get much sleep the night before and Connie's call had come exceedingly early, but I was surprised to see the morning sunlight coming in around the edges of the window shade when I woke up from my nap.

Ranger walked into the room fresh from the shower, dressed for the day. "I'm not going to go get you Coke and fries," he said. "But I'll make you toast and scramble an egg for you."

I hoisted myself up on one elbow and pushed my hair back out of my eyes. And I waited. No headache. No roiling stomach. "I don't have a hangover," I said. "And I'm starving. I'll have whatever you have. I may have found my signature drink. Iced tea and whiskey, who knew?"

"Lester got in around two this morning," Ranger said. "We have a debriefing scheduled at eleven. It will be Lester, Tank, you and me," he said. "They won't have to know of your personal involvement, but I want you in on the meeting. I want you to hear what Lester brings back so we can formulate a plan to go after Acosta."

"Okay," I said. "I'll be there, but I need to run down to the bonds office to turn in the receipt on The Rug."

I walked into the bonds office a little before nine. Lula was sitting on the sofa, her leg elevated. The leg without the cast was still wearing the bejeweled croc. "What's the deal?" I asked. "I thought you'd be wearing your new sneakers."

"No way," she said. "I don't want them to get uneven wear. I'm not wearing them until I can put them on both feet."

"Makes sense," I said. I dropped the body receipt on Connie's desk and Connie did a little fist pump.

"You got him!"

"Yep, me and Vince." I arched my eyebrows and gave Lula my best grin. "We got The Rug!"

"Are you shittin' me? The Rug. I thought he was hopeless."

"I did too, but Connie got a tip from her brother, and Vince and I moved on it. And you haven't even heard the best part."

"What's that?" Lula asked.

"Vince is refusing to take his cut of the capture money. He said give it to you because it's his fault you weren't available to help me get The Rug. You can buy yourself a pair of designer sneakers in every color."

Lula's mouth dropped open and I thought she was going to cry. "He is the nicest man," she said, and I thought, yes, he is.

Connie made short work of writing the checks. I handed Lula her share and stayed long enough to watch her eyes widen and to hear the first few items she was putting on her shopping list before I left. I went by the bank and deposited mine and then headed for RangeMan.

My phone rang as I entered the garage. The call came in as a private number, but I didn't hesitate to answer. Sometimes calls from RangeMan came in as private numbers, and sometimes from my bank. Maybe I'd filled my deposit slip out wrong. Possibly I didn't add enough zeros. I smiled at the thought.

It wasn't RangeMan and it wasn't the bank. Rafael's well-remembered buttery voice sounded in my ear.

"Ms. Plum, so good to hear your voice." I immediately disconnected, labeled the call as spam and blocked the number, all while I was pulling into the parking space allotted to Ranger's personal vehicle. I exited the car on shaky legs on two accounts. The first was the unexpected sound of Rafael's voice filling the cabin of the Macan, and the second was the realization the front bumper of the Macan was nearly touching the wall of the building.

"Calm down, Stephanie," I said, my voice echoing in the garage. I looked around, but it appeared I was alone.

"You want to come face to face with this guy and yet his phone call makes you jittery? You've got your tape. You've got him by the balls. He has no power over you." I continued my pep talk until my hand wrapped around the stairwell door handle. I walked up the stairs using the time to get myself under control and burn off the shot of adrenaline I'd felt at the sound of his voice. The exercise worked and I arrived on seven feeling winded but calmer. My legs were still shaky, but, hey, seven flights of stairs would do that to a person. I went into the apartment and got a drink of water and noticed that it was almost time for the debriefing, so I headed back down the stairs to five.

I bumped into Lester on the fifth-floor landing.

"Good morning, Mr. Rodarte," I said.

He laughed. "No more Mr. Rodarte. Diego is back in the closet for the foreseeable future. It's plain old Lester, see." He pointed to a fine scar slicing through his eyebrow.

"Hey, you got your stitches out," I said.

"Yeah. Bobby just took them out. The plastic surgeon that put them in said they could come out in a week and what a week it's been." He held the door open for me and we walked onto the floor together. It was only later that I wondered if his choice of words "back in the closet" had a more significant meaning.

They didn't register with me right away because I was thinking about his earlier comment of what a week it had been. One week I was living my life and looking forward to running a half marathon. My running habit had been hit or miss this week. A week ago, Ranger wasn't coming around to see me. Now he said we could be a couple. Yeah, it had been some week.

Ranger came out of his office and saw me standing with Lester. "It's a little early, but we're all here, so let's get started." He motioned toward the conference room.

"Beautiful, you're in on this, too?" Lester asked.

"She is," Ranger answered before I could. "She's been doing a lot of research for me, and she needs to hear what you have to say. She's now part of the team to get Acosta locked up."

I saw Lester bite his bottom lip and then give a little shrug. A little zing of nervousness started but I determinedly tamped it down. He walked to the mini fridge in the corner and pulled out a bottle of water. Leaving a small gap in the otherwise completely full row. Ella at work, I thought.

Tank came in and distributed folders in front of all of us, including Lester. No one made a move to open theirs, so I followed suit.

Lester cleared his throat and started. "The first thing I did was meet with Gaby, the contact we've been using," Lester said. "She got me settled into my hotel room and gave me everything she had on both Rafael and his sister. The family apartment is in Polanco, one of the best areas of Mexico City. Lots of money and lots of high living and Paloma is right in the middle of it."

Ranger said, "That's a little different from the lifestyle she lives in the states then."

"Yeah, but she traveled back and forth quite a bit when Rafael was in residence at his family home. So maybe she was kinda leading a double life. And if she was, she wasn't the only one."

Lester had everyone's full attention, but he hesitated and glanced in my direction. "He is discreet about it, apparently, but, uh, Acosta, well, the best way to say it is he walks on both sides of the street."

I rolled my eyes. This was the same man who was taunting me with a discussion about sex at Pino's just a few days ago.

"If you're trying to say he's bisexual, Lester, then for Pete's sake, say it!" I saw Tank's hand go to his mouth to hide a smile at my outburst.

"Okay," Lester said. "He likes men and women. Mostly it's men south of the border and women when he's here in Trenton, but I don't know what geography has to do with it. According to our operative he spends a lot of time and money at Toma. Toma's a bathhouse and since our informant doesn't have the necessary equipment to get past the bouncers at the door, she doesn't know much about what Acosta did once he was inside."

"That's unfortunate," Ranger said.

"I have a good idea of what and who he did," Lester said. "Diego spent most of his first night in the city there. It was kind of fun. I'll tell you about it."

Tank groaned and pushed back his chair. He came back to the table with bottles of water for himself and Ranger and me. I was thinking of my mother's iced tea and wondered if the water would cut it.

"This place is upscale and there were men of all nationalities there. It wasn't naked night so there was a nice towel in my locker and a big box of condoms. I wore the towel and brought the condoms home. People were friendly and easy to talk to, so I let it be known that I was hoping to meet up with the man I met last time I visited, and I mentioned his name. Everyone knew him. One guy suggested I go to the fetish bar, because he thought that's where Acosta spent most of his time, but he did mention that he hadn't seen him recently.

"I went to the fetish bar and some dude pulled my towel off as I walked in. He seemed to like what he saw so he followed me around for a while. I was a little leery of sitting in a booth, but the barstools looked clean so I sat at the bar with my new friend, Daisuke. Nice guy. CEO of a microchip company in Tokyo. He was coming on strong, so I told him I was really hoping to hold out for Acosta. He told me he could give me anything Acosta did, but I resisted and he said something very odd before he went to find a new boyfriend. He said, 'If you wait for the dark one you must want bad. Really bad.' I thought maybe he meant I wanted him really bad, but now I'm not so sure."

Lester stopped to take a drink and then continued. "After that I meandered into the steam room and watched a couple of guys…uh, and then I went to the sauna. It was a great way to work out the kinks from the flight down."

"There were no kinks from the flight down," Tank groused. "You flew first class."

"Yeah, I appreciate that, or should I say Diego appreciates that. This place was really posh," Lester continued. "We know Acosta's propensity for unethical financial dealing, and this would be a great place to make contacts. You'd have to be loaded to go there on a regular basis. I left my receipts in your office," he said looking at Tank.

"I saw," Tank said. "Thirty-six hundred dollars! What the hell were you drinking?"

"It's not what I was drinking," Lester said. "They track you somehow and charge you by the spaces you visit and how long you stay. I thought it was my job to look around and so I did. Three different bars, a couple of different saunas, and the naked boxing ring was…interesting." Tank groaned again.

"After that I went back to the hotel. The next day I went to visit Paloma and spent most of the next twenty-four hours with her, and that's when things got weird."