Chapter Eight

Stephanie POV

While driving to the Rangeman building on Haywood Street, I wondered the whole time what the file Tank had compiled on Richard would reveal. I've lived with Richard for the last five years, ever since we graduated college, and we were together for two years before that. What could he be hiding? Though I suppose I didn't know he was cheating on me with our nanny. I guess he could have cheated on me before.

Before I knew it, I was at the seven-story brick building that houses Rangeman. It was nondescript, except for the solid black metal garage door that looked extremely secure. Tank had told me to pull up to that underground garage door, and it would open for me automatically. How it knew that it was me and not some random schmo on the street, I don't know. But they're a security company, so I guess they know what they're doing.

When the door opened, I moved into the garage and parked in an empty space next to the elevator that didn't seem to be reserved for anyone.

I took the elevator up to the fifth floor, following his directions. When I stepped off, I was in a large room full of monitors, and three men were sitting, watching whatever was on them. Each man looked towards me curiously, so I gave them a little finger wave and smiled. I heard footsteps approaching me, and when I looked around, I saw Tank coming down the hall.

"Hi, Tank," I greeted with a big smile. He gave me a quick tour of the fifth floor, promising a more in-depth tour later. I saw the break room, where he explained there was always a selection of sandwiches and cut-up fruit or vegetables for anyone to eat when they were hungry. There was a washroom for the men's use off the hallway where his office was located, but since it wasn't a single-user washroom, it would probably not work for me. He showed me to an office next to his and rapped on the door jamb, and a gorgeous dark-skinned Latino man raised his head at our arrival.

"Rangeman, this is Stephanie Orr. She's Jeanne Ellen's sister, who agreed to fill in for Rodriguez while he's in Philly with his sister. Steph, this is Ranger, the big bossman."

"Nice to meet you, Ranger," I said as I smiled at him.

"Welcome to Rangeman," he replied.

"Ranger, you remember we talked about the bathroom situation?" Tank asked.

Ranger nodded. Tank lifted his chin towards the back of Ranger's office. "There's a bathroom back there you can use when necessary."

"Oh, thank you both," I said, though it might be awkward if I had to use it while he was still in his office. Hopefully, I'd only work at night when he wasn't here.

Tank led me to his office and invited me to sit down, which I did on his soft black leather couch there. His office was masculine but not overwhelmingly so. In addition to the couch, there was a large walnut desk and a matching bookcase directly across from me. The small coffee table in front of me was made of glass and brass, and two visitor chairs in front of the desk matched the couch. On his desk were two Macbooks and a stack of files.

"Nice office," I said, taking in everything.

"Thanks, Steph. How are you feeling today?"

"I'm okay. I feel better today because I slept last night. I couldn't sleep the night before I came here, so I was exhausted all day yesterday."

Tank nodded sympathetically. I'm glad you're feeling better. What do you want to do first, learn the search programs or read the file I compiled for you?" he asked.

I thought for a moment. "I think the research programs. I really want to know what you found, but if it's awful, I might be unable to do anything constructive."

"Good thought. I have a cubicle for you to work in when you're ready, but I'll run through it all with you here for now." He opened one of the laptops, which was hooked up to the two monitors on his desk. He pushed the other laptop toward me. "Go ahead and sign in. Our IT guy Hector set that up for you to use."

When I opened the laptop, there was a Post-it on the screen with a username and password, so I entered the information at the prompts and watched the screen come to life. Tank instructed me to set up my fingerprint on the power button so that in the future, I wouldn't have to sign in as often, and he also walked me through changing the password to something I'd remember.

Over the next two hours, he showed me the various research programs and which one specialized in different types of information gathering. Before long, Jeanne Ellen was coming in with Zoë, who rushed to my side and hugged my waist.

"Hi Mama, guess what?" she said excitedly.

"What?"

"Auntie Gigi took me to the park, and we fed the ducks!"

"Oh, you did? That sounds fun." I said with a smile.

"It was super fun!" she replied, smiling wide.

I looked up at Jeanne Ellen, who was smiling fondly at Zoë. "Thanks," I said to her. She nodded and smiled.

"Amante, are you ready to go?" Jeanne Ellen asked Tank. He nodded and stood.

"Steph, when I get back, we'll start a new search with you at the helm, and I'll watch and give pointers, okay?" he said.

"Okay, sounds good," I replied. "Be safe, you two."

They took their leave, and I turned to Zoë. "Are you hungry, Zo-zo?" I asked her.

"I'm staaaarving," she declared dramatically.

I chuckled and said, "let's go find some food then." I took her by the hand to return to the break room Tank had shown me earlier. Hopefully, there was food there that Zoë would like, but if there was fruit and veggies, I was confident she'd eat. I felt a bit shy as we entered, and five men were sitting at the various tables eating lunch, but Zoë walked in like she owned the place and started straight towards the sandwiches and fruit plates. I nodded to the men who caught my eye and quickly prepared plates for Zoë and myself.

We sat at an empty table, and Zoë chattered about the ducks in the park. "We threw birdseed at them, Mama. Did you know you shouldn't feed them bread?"

"I know, Zo-zo."

One of the men stood up from his table and came over to us. He was a tall Latino man with startlingly green eyes and dirty blond shaggy hair. He was gorgeous, and his body language said he was well aware of it. "Hi Beautiful, I'm Lester," he said.

I smiled. Usually, I would not be pleased by someone who called me a term of endearment right off the bat, but Jeanne Ellen had talked about Lester, Ranger and Tank a lot, and someone named Bobby. I knew they were the core team, and though Lester was a huge flirt, he was pretty harmless with it. "Hi Lester, I'm Steph, and this is Zoë."

Zoë looked up at Lester and turned suddenly shy. "Hi, Mister," she said softly.

He smiled widely at her and indicated to the empty chair. "May I sit down with you ladies, Zoë?" he asked.

She nodded but didn't say anything. He sat down and said, smiling, "so, you must be new here because I don't remember anyone as beautiful as you working here before."

Zoë giggled and replied, "I don't work here, silly. My mama does." He looked up at me and winked as I watched amusedly.

"Oh well, I should have known," he said. He turned to me and asked, "you're Jeanne Ellen's sister, right?"

I nodded.

"It's good to meet you, and I'm grateful you're here to help us with the research. Most of the men hate doing it, and Jeanne Ellen says you're resourceful."

I laughed. "That's one way of putting it, I suppose. More like I'm nosy, and I bet that's what she actually said."

One by one, the other men filed by and started introducing themselves. They all smiled at Zoë, but none spoke to her directly. If what Jeanne Ellen said was true, they weren't used to children, so I didn't take it personally, and Zoë didn't seem to either as she busied herself with her carrot sticks. The next man to introduce himself was very tall and good-looking with blond, close-cropped hair and a military demeanor. He was blushing slightly as he shook my hand. "I'm Hal, ma'am; it's nice to meet you. Jeanne Ellen has told us a lot about you." He spoke in a flat midwestern accent.

I smiled gently at him and said, "It's nice to meet you too, Hal. I hope my sister hasn't been spreading lies."

He smiled. "It was all good things."

I giggled. "Now I know it was all lies!"

Next was another tall, broad-shouldered man with slightly wavy dark hair and icy blue eyes. Wow, all the men here are hot, I mused. A moment later, I knew I had spoken out loud when Lester let out a bark of laughter. He winked at me and said, "it's one of the hiring requirements, Steph."

The last four men in the room introduced themselves as Zip, Zero, Binkie and Cal. None of the men were particularly distinctive; all were gorgeous, but Cal also sported a large flaming skull across his forehead. They each shook my hand, but all four men seemed very quiet and didn't say much to me.

After the rest of the men had left the break room, Lester said, "duty calls, Beautiful. I'm sure I'll catch up with you again later," and he languidly moved out of the room.

When lunch was over, I took Zoë back to Tank's office and checked to see what was in the bag Jeanne Ellen packed. I found Zoë's colouring book, crayons, and some small toys. I pulled out the book and crayons and showed them to her, "want to colour, Zo-zo?" She nodded, and I handed them to her. She started colouring in a big picture of a turtle, and I turned to look at the file I knew contained Richard's secrets. Part of me wanted to open it badly, but I couldn't do that while I was with Zoë. Instead, I opened a file for a potential employee. Tank and I had run through one prospect this morning, so I felt like I could start this one and print out similar things to what we did this morning. I opened the laptop and started the three different research programs. I plugged in the candidate's name, birthdate and social into all three and set the parameters. I set all three to start searching, then turned my attention back to Zoë. She was carefully colouring the turtle green, yellow and black, trying to stay within the lines. She was mostly successful, but there were a few spots where her crayon had gotten away from her.

I heard the soft ding from the laptop, indicating a complete search, so I turned my attention back to the screen. Tank was right when he said this would be easier in the cubicle with the two large monitors. I started printing the data on Tank's printer.

An hour later, I had printed all the searches for the prospective employee and put them in a folder. When Jeanne Ellen picked up Zoë, I would read through it all and make sure I had the information Tank wanted. It occurred to me that Rangeman may have done a search like this on me, and I wondered what type of information they now had about my life.

As my curiosity was about to have me plug my name and social into the programs, Tank and Jeanne Ellen came back. They smiled at Zoë and me, and when I asked, Jeanne Ellen confirmed it was a successful capture. We chatted for a few moments, then I gave Zoë a big kiss and hug before her Auntie Gigi took her back to the house for the rest of the afternoon.

Tank sat down in his chair next to me. "I did a search while you were gone, but I haven't had a chance to look over the results yet. Should I do that now?" He indicated his approval, so I pulled out all the sheets and started reading through them. I highlighted some stuff that caught my attention and decided to look further into those aspects when I did an initial read-through. After twenty minutes, I finished the file and highlighted several areas for further research. I looked up. "Tank?" I asked.

"What's up?"

"I think there's something he's hiding. Do you have access to his military files?" I asked, biting my bottom lip.

"Why do you think he's hiding something?" Tank queried.

I pulled a piece of paper over and pointed to the highlighted section. "On his resume, he says his discharge date from the Army was May fifteenth. But the tiny part of his military record I could see says he was discharged on March thirtieth. Why the two different dates? And it might be nothing, but something is telling me there's more to the story. Why doesn't he say honorably discharged on his resume? Isn't that something you'd be likely to do if you had a record of good military service?"

Tank frowned for a moment while he read over the areas I had highlighted. He opened his laptop and started a program I didn't have, then turned it away. "Sorry, Steph, this is classified. I can't show you this." He typed in some information and waited a moment. He had a weird expression when he was reading over whatever the information showed, then said, "I'll be right back," and took his laptop with him out of the office.

He was gone for about ten minutes, and when he came back, Ranger was with him. "Steph, you appear to have good instincts," he told me. "Thanks to you, we will not proceed with his application. He was dishonorably discharged with a sexual assault charge on his record."

My eyes widened at this. "Wow. Thankfully you saw his military service record."

"We may not have looked without your gut feeling. It's all down to you."

My spidey sense saves the day, I thought.

Tank burst out laughing, and Ranger had the merest hint of a smile on his lips. "Shit. Out loud?" I asked sheepishly.

"Steph, is that what you call your instincts? Your spidey sense?" Tank was chuckling.

My face flamed as Tank teased me.

"Seriously, Steph, I'm sorry if I'm embarrassing you. You're doing great so far; that was only your first search. I'm proud of you." I smiled a little, still feeling my face burning.

"Proud of you, Babe," Ranger said before leaving the office.

A/N: There's no way Rangeman wouldn't have done a military background check on a prospective employee. But Steph doesn't know that, and there's a reason for everything. ;)