Chapter 1

I felt a sense of relief as I parked my car at the back of the lot next to the dumpster. Home at last, after a dinner from hell at my parents. Not that it was unusual for me to feel of it like that. Maybe the weather wasn't helping my mood either, so I pulled my hood up on my jacket against the fine drizzle that was falling. It was quiet as I made my way into the entrance and noting that the elevator was still out of order opened the door for the stairs. My elderly neighbors wouldn't appreciate that we were into the second day of the elevator being out of commission and would probably be feeling marooned having to stay in their apartments. I could totally understand how they felt having been on lock down last year due to Covid. I couldn't wait until I was allowed out of the building, if only to check in with family.

There it was again, the thought of family. I suppose that my parents were being cautious about not going out of the house, but they'd really put the guilt trip onto me. I'd spent most of my time running errands for them and when my sister's family came down with Covid, one at a time, I'd had their shopping to do as well. Work, well that had been a none starter with few courts being in session and the idea of entering a strangers house just hadn't been what I'd wanted to do.

Unlocking my apartment door and walking in didn't have the same appeal as it usually did. Normally I'd feel relieved, even relaxed to be inside the place that I called home. I hung up my jacket, removed my boots and was about to go into the kitchen area and retrieve a bottle of beer from the fridge, when I stopped and looked around. The conversation from dinner came back to me like a tsunami and I actually slunk down onto the floor, lent against the wall. The description of there being a conversation between my parents and me was far from what had actually happened. Maybe some of what had been said I'd heard before, but it was as if my mother had saved up all of the worst parts of my life and then thrown them at me.

For once it had just been the three of us sat at the dining room table, my mum, dad and me, with the usual roast chicken and mashed potatoes laid out in front of us. Once our plates were full that was when my mother had started on me.

"It was your birthday last month Stephanie. You're thirty three years old"

I couldn't exactly disagree with her statement so hadn't responded, though her statement seemed a bit odd to me. Instead, I'd continued to cut up some chicken ready to start eating.

"And what do you have to show for it?"

That had me turning and looking at her, wondering what the hell she'd meant when she'd said that and was about to ask her just that when she just continued talking.

"I mean look at you. That apartment that you live in, it's small and shabby with worn out furniture in a building that's outdated. How many times does the heating fail and the laundry facilities that are down in the basement are disgusting. You should be in a nicer place. Valerie has a lovely house with everything modern and working"

I was shocked that she was criticizing where I lived but had to concede that I probably did always turn up with my laundry for her to do, but that was mainly because she'd always offered to do it for me.

"It's in a good location mum. Besides the rent is cheap"

Which was true. I was far enough away from home that my mother couldn't nosey into everything that I did and usually I could pay the rent. There were very few places that I could move to that I could afford without ending up in a dangerous area of town.

"If you got yourself a better job then you could afford something better. That job that you do, it isn't what a young lady should be doing. What if you get badly hurt and can you see yourself doing it in five or ten years time?"

I suppose that had never really occurred to me before. Taking on the job of a Bounty Hunter had been a lifeline when I was unemployed and now it was what I did. Most of the time I actually enjoyed it. I was my own boss, worked when I wanted and could decide on my wardrobe, but was she right about what would happen if I did get hurt and couldn't do it anymore. To be honest there had been some very close calls but I'd always managed to come away with just a few bumps or bruises.

"When Valerie was your age, she was married with two beautiful children"

I'd closed my eyes as she redirected her opinions to another aspect of my life. Marriage, why was it that to her that being married with kids was the epitome of being a successful woman?

"Then she ended up homeless, divorced and moving back home with the girls. Besides, I did that whole marriage thing, and it didn't work out"

Had been my quick reply. I noticed how my mother pinched her lips together but wasn't sure of it was because I'd criticized Val's disaster of a marriage or because she was disappointed and probably embarrassed with how my marriage to Dickie Orr had ended. Yeah, she'd been so overjoyed when I walked down the aisle in that flouncy, frilled monstrosity that she decided was what a Burg daughter should wear as a wedding dress. That she had never once backed me up for how I felt when I caught said husband screwing Joyce Barnhardt on our new dining room table still hurt to this day. Forgive, look the other way, you need to ensure that you meet your husband's needs were the words that she'd greeted me with. I don't think so.

"That's all in the past. She has a loving husband, a wonderful home and four beautiful daughters now. You could have all of that with Joseph"

At that point I'd been thinking that my mother was being delusional. Okay, Albert Klounghn loved Val and the girls, but Val was constantly complaining about how hard up they were. Was that what I wanted? Was she any better off than I was? At least I was doing what I wanted to do. Then there was the whole issue of Joe Morelli.

"Mum, Joe and I will never get married. We argue too much, it wouldn't work, which is why I finished with him"

"Then make it work. He'd provide you with a home, children and an income. You wouldn't have to work if you didn't want to"

I was sure that I'd rolled my eyes as she'd said that. Her trying to get me married seemed to be her ambition in life. Did it embarrass her that I was in my thirties and still single?

"No, mum. He would make me quit my job and stop me from seeing my friends. He'd isolate me"

Joe was always complaining that I was a disaster at my job and how much trouble I always managed to find because of it. He never saw my job as a worthwhile occupation even though he worked in law enforcement. Then there were the people that were my friends. He could barely tolerate Lula and Connie, the ex ho and the one with family connections. Okay, Sally, Briggs, Dougie and even Mooner were a bit out there, but they'd always supported me.

"That would be a good thing. At least then you wouldn't be associating with those thugs in black"

I'd assumed that she was referring to the men who worked at Rangeman. She could only have picked up that description of them from Joe, because he hated them, especially Ranger.

"How can you call them that? They're all ex servicemen and keep the community safe"

I suppose that I shouldn't have said anything because it seemed that she'd had ammunition from Joe to back up what she'd said.

"Really. The one who's always getting you to do dangerous things. That isn't keeping you safe"

Of course, she was talking about Ranger. It wasn't as if she hadn't met him on several occasions, but he'd always treated her politely. Besides, he never got me to do anything that I wasn't willing to do, and I knew the dangers. Hell, that was the nature of the people that he dealt with. I'd had the feeling that I wasn't going to win with my mother. It seemed that she'd been determined to criticize everything in my life at that meal and I was sure that there were occasions when my dad was nodding his head in agreement with her. I'd decided to stay quiet after that hoping that she'd run out of things to say. Yeah, like that had happened.

Sat on the floor against the wall looking around, everything that she'd said came back to me. My eyes went to the kitchen, and I was seeing the old worn worktops with the crinkled vinyl flooring. A fridge that I knew was empty of food along with the cupboards above that held mismatched crockery and glasses, but very few cooking utensils. The living area held a worn and stained couch that to be honest wasn't very comfortable and a coffee table that was covered in stains. None of the furniture matched because I'd bought what I could from charity shops. They did the job that I needed them to do not for how they looked. I turned and looked down the short hallway, bypassing a bathroom that belonged in the seventies, to the bedroom. A threadbare carpet under the bed that held cheap sheets but a comfortable throw. I only had that throw because Mary Lou had given it to me after she'd redecorated her bedroom and the color didn't match. Yep, my mum was right. The place wasn't exactly somewhere to be proud of, I'd just never looked at it like this before.

A look at the clothes decorating the chair that I'd been wearing before changing for dinner told a similar story. Most were cheap because I ruined them so often that it wasn't worth buying anything better. Jeans, T-shirts and hoodies were my go to for work clothes but I knew that the closet didn't hold anything that was classy. Maybe an odd dress, skirt and top with the rest being an assortment of slutty outfits that I'd worn for jobs for Rangeman. My only concession to anything tasteful were my shoes, but they weren't much good unless I had an outfit to wear them with.

My life revolved around my job. I didn't have time to contemplate what I owned or how I looked. The job that I worked hard at to pay the rent and bills with some left over for food. Maybe that was why I mooched so many dinners from my parent's house, not because I always wanted to, but because I needed to. My job, I suppose that most of the time I enjoyed it. I got to meet lots of people, and some had become friends, though there were plenty who had caused me trouble and strife. No job meant no money. What would I do if I couldn't work? Maybe my mum was right, maybe I needed to start to look at my future.

There was no way that I would ever agree to marrying Joe. I knew that the relationship that we had just wasn't strong enough for me to devote myself to him. We had so much history together but that wasn't enough. The number of times that we'd fallen out only to get back together again. Stupid, stupid, stupid really, so why did I keep doing it? At six years old he'd been the one to get me into trouble. I mean what mother tells her daughter off when she's touched up by an older boy? Then she blamed me for when he basically forced me to have sex with him behind the counter of the Tasty Pastry. I hated him especially after he'd written poems about it all over Trenton.

So why had I let him back in my life? I suppose because he seemed to have changed, seemed to have settled down from that bad boy image that he'd had as a kid. He was a detective, so had a responsible job and he'd charmed me out of my pants. He was familiar, a constant in my life, someone who was there and who met the aspirations of my mother. Who when I really looked at him hadn't changed one bit. He was still chauvinistic, self opinionated and demanding. Let's not forget his weakness for women, because I knew that he saw other women. So why had I never pushed him about it? Because I felt guilty. Carlos Manoso, aka, Ranger. The man that I had slept with and the man who I had fallen in love with. Joe was history now. I'd told him that we had nothing going for us and tried to be pleasant about it. I hadn't spoken to anyone about it because I wasn't prepared to have to defend myself. Over time people would realize that we weren't an item anymore.

I sighed at where my thoughts had taken me to. My apartment was crap, my belongings were cheap and trashy, my job sucked and the two men who were in my life weren't there anymore. My life sucked just like my mum had told me. If I'd had ice cream in the freezer then I would have had a pity party, but I didn't, so now I needed to decide what the hell I was going to do about it. I decided to shower and change into my pj's before curling up on the couch with the TV turned on. I flipped through the channels unable to find anything that would occupy me, because everything that my mother had said wouldn't go away.

Should I cave in and try to make it work with Joe? Could I be happy by doing that? I knew that my mother and probably my father would be ecstatic. Friends, well they probably assumed that I'd eventually settle for Joe and that my infatuation for Ranger was what it was. A dream that would never be a reality. I knew that, hadn't he admitted that to me himself. A condom not a ring said by a man who told me, yeah me, that he didn't do relationships. The thing is that just because I couldn't have Ranger it didn't mean that I had to just settle for Joe. It was at that moment that I felt that I'd at least made one decision, now to sort out the rest of my life.