Chapter 7, a brief look back in Trenton and some serious news for our agents.

Warnings: None

Enjoy!

The Parent Trap

Chapter 7

Too Clean

"Where is that thug at?" Tank raised an eyebrow, looking over to one Joe Morelli, as he paced the entrance of Rangeman, looking pissed off, "I know you know something, where is he?"

"Morelli, don't you have a job?" Tank finally asked the man, as he continued pacing, "I know I do, in fact, I might go up to work, the accountant needs-"

"I am working!" Joe said, folding his arms and looking at Tank, "Stephanie's mom put in a missing person's report for Stephanie. She thinks that Ranger kidnapped her and is holding her hostage somewhere."

"I bet he is…" Tank muttered, rolling his eyes and looking back to Joe, "Morelli, if we knew where they were, we'd be the first to find them and bring them back to Trenton. It's been over a week, and it seems Stephanie and Ranger are fine. Besides, they ran off together, how can Helen Plum put in a missing report for someone who doesn't want to be found?"

Joe pinched his brow and said, "She came into the office, raising hell, every day. She called us over 100 times a day, I had to go over there and threaten her with a fine if she didn't stop using the emergency line to report Stephanie missing."

Tank had to give the busy body props, she was like a bone, when it came it to things, "What does her husband have to say about this?"

"He doesn't care, says Steph is a grown woman, not a child," Joe sighed, looking to the side, "I did call her cell, the day I saw the papers, she answered."

"Did she now?" Tank was curious, he had called Ranger and he had answered as well, telling him not to send out the team he would be off the grid with Stephanie for a while. He could run Rangeman via a laptop on their travels.

"Yeah, I told her she needed to come back, but she tore into me, telling me to leave her the hell alone and that she and Ranger were never coming back, at the rate people are acting back home," Joe said, looking back to Tank, "Yeah, I tried telling that to her mom but you know Helen Plum…"

Tank nodded his head and said, "Don't we all…"

"I'm humoring her, okay, I really didn't file a missing person report, Steph's right, she can do whatever she wants…kind of wished they had told anyone before they went off the grid." Joe admitted rolling his eyes, "Would make sense to tell at least one person, right?"

"Don't we all wished they had that sense," Tank shook his head and ran a hand over his face, "Don't we fucking all…"

(~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~)

Something was off about all that was happening and Lester Santos could feel it. As Stephanie would say the same about her 'spidey senses', Lester's senses were tingling as well. He knew his cousin and he knew Stephanie as well. They didn't do things like this, well, Stephanie might, but Carlos, no, he wouldn't just leave, on New Year's Eve, marry Steph and make both of them go poof. That's not how he worked.

"You don't leave loose ends," Carlos would tell Lester, before whomping him for something he had done, "That's how you get questions you don't want to be asked about…"

Stephanie and Carlos running off to elope, that raised so many questions. The whole situation behind it too, that also raised questions. The newspaper announcement, the phone calls, the everything! It wasn't normal.

It was clean, too clean, way too clean. In fact If Lester had to guess, it was too clean to be normal. Lester would be the first to tell you that he didn't believe in the supernatural, but the way that this situation happened, how it panned out, Lester could only go with some other higher powers at play.

But why, is the real question here, why were things happening like this now?

Lester would get to the bottom of this, he had to find his cousin and Steph. The only problem he faced was that…he didn't know where to start, if this was supernatural.

Fuck a duck…

(~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~)

"Hello Stephanie and Carlos," William Evanston crouched in front of the two children, a smile on his face, "How are you two doing?"

"I'm good," Carlos was the first to speak, though he did it behind Heidi's thigh, while Stephanie had buried her face in her waist all together, "How are you, Mister?"

"Oh, I'm good, thanks for asking," William said, before he reached for a shopping bag that was beside him, "I have a gift for you two."

That made Stephanie look up from her hiding spot and ask, in a soft voice, "What is it?"

"Well, I don't know if you two like sweets, but I live in a place that famous for it's chocolates," William said, taking a box of fine Swiss chocolates, "I bought a big box for you both to share."

Carlos looked at the box of chocolates and then to Heidi and asked, "Can we have them, Mami?"

"I don't see the harm in eating sweets," Heidi said, making both children smile brightly at her, "Besides, this is my father, and he does know how to pick out the best sweets."

"Does that make you our grandpa?" Stephanie asked, her eyes getting big, "Carlos, we have a grandpa."

"Sweet!" Carlos said, as William stood straight and nodded his head, "Wow, Steph, we have a Mami, a Papi and a grandpa, we're so lucky!"

Heidi raised an eyebrow and then looked over to her father, who was giving her a look, motioning with his head slightly down the hallway. Heidi sighed and then said, "Stephanie, Carlos, why don't you two go relax in the kitchen with your coloring books and chocolates, wash your hands before you eat."

"Okay Mommy, thanks for the chocolates, Grandpa!" Stephanie said, snatching the box from the man.

"Thanks, Grandpa," Carlos nodded his head and then the two were running off into the kitchen, with their prize.

"Diesel," Heidi called down the hallway, "Come here, we need you."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming," Diesel voice carried through the halls and he appeared from out of the kitchen, his hair up in a bun, a dish towel slung over his shoulder and a smudge of sauce on his face, "I got the sauce for tonight's dinn-oh, hey Senior Agent Evanston," Diesel looked between father and daughter and asked, "What's going on?"

William raised an eyebrow at the two adults and then said, "We need to talk about the situation at hand, there's been an…incident."

The adults sat in the sitting room of Heidi's house, Diesel in an armchair while the daughter and father sat on the loveseat. The man looked over to Heidi and Diesel said, "There's no other way to say this but Robert Tock can't make a solution for the situation at hand."

"Uh, why not?" Diesel asked, leaning forward, "He should be able to fix this problem, he made it!"

"Exactly, this is his mess, why is he not able to fix it, what happened?" Heidi asked her father, who sighed and rubbed his chin.

"Well, we don't know if it was Tock himself or someone else with nefarious plans," William started, looking at the two agents, "But Tock was hit with an almost lethal dose of Forget Me dust. Enough so that he's forgotten who he was. He doesn't even know that he's an unmentionable."

"Convenient mess is convenient," Diesel hissed as he looked up at the ceiling, "It's like there's a higher power against us."

"Well, the lab will look into it Diesel," Heidi said, turning from the agitated man and back to her father, "Right?"

"We are but the sample we took from the two was decayed, this mission might last more than a few….months," William said, and watched as Diesel and Heidi blinked and stared at him, "You two are very capable agents, this mission is very important, I know you will be fine with an extra month…" and he mumbled softly, "Or years…"

"Was those years I heard?" Heidi asked, panic rising in her throat as her father stood suddenly, "Daddy! Where are you going?"

"Things to do, I'll be back on Saturday for our family meal," William said, too quickly for Diesel's pleasure as he walked out the sitting room, "I'll bring more chocolates for the kids!"

"He-he said years," Heidi said, slowly, turning to Diesel, with panic in her eyes, "I heard years…"

"Well, that's not…good," Diesel agreed with the panic that growing in Heidi's eyes, "That's not good at all."

"Papi, the sauce is all over the floor!" Carlos's voice drifted out of the kitchen, "Also it's gonna stain Mami's floors."

"Not the floors, not the floors, not the floooors!" Heidi all but ran out the sitting room to save her wooden floors, "Diesel, come get your sauce!"

"That's not good either, took me three hours to get that sauce where I wanted," Diesel folded his arms and walked into the kitchen to salvage what he was making for dinner.

Their dinner couldn't be salvage so Diesel went a picked something up from town and when the dinner mess was cleaned, the children bathed and put to sleep, Heidi and Diesel sat in the living room, on the same couch, with space between them, the TV on but the sound muted. They were drinking and chipping away at the rest of the chocolates the children hadn't eaten, trying not to think about the elephant, or elephants that were upstairs in their rooms, asleep.

"We continue on, with the mission," Heidi said, looking over to Diesel, as she licked her fingers clean of chocolate, "You know, in our line of works, months and years, that happens, right?"

"Yeah," Diesel nodded his head, finishing his beer and setting the empty bottle on a coaster, "It's normal, very normal to be dealing with things for years…"

The two fell into silence again and then Diesel said, "That honeymoon sham is not going to last for long, Heidi, we may have to do something a bit more permanent, like…memory erasing or something of the sort."

"Isn't there possibly another solution?" Heidi asked, setting her wine glass down, "Diesel, that's so extreme, that would be a whole town we would have wipe memories clean of, and that would eat a chunk of the fiscal budget!"

Diesel tapped his chin, with his fingers and said, in a low voice, "You know…maybe there is a solution to Stephanie and Carlos going back to town, I'll have to make a few calls, but, some people owe me a favor, yeah, that'll work!"

"As long as it doesn't include 45 percent of the damn fiscal budget," Heidi muttered as she settled back on the couch, "I suppose, we should…work harder on being more friendlier with one another…"

"We will be living together for a while," Diesel agreed, running his fingers through his hair, wincing, "And, you know, maybe it'll be good for the kids, if they see that we're a united, happy bunch who are definitely not freaking out about the fact that we're about to be parents for a long time."

"A very long time…" Heidi muttered, looking up at the ceiling, "We should even….get to know one another," she forced a smile, "You know, to be more friendly."

"Yes we should," Diesel said, looking over to Heidi and suddenly sticking his hand out in front of her face, "Hey, the name's Diesel Diesel, nice to meet you."

Heidi looked at the man's hand and then up to him and shook it slowly saying, "The name's Heidi Evanston, nice to meet you too, Diesel."

The two looked at one another, before going back to watching the muted TV, awkwardly. This was going to be an interesting time for them both. Well, they could deal with that later, tomorrow, they were going to the school, with the children to get them registered and they had to talk about what they were going to tell the headperson of the school regarding Carlos and Stephanie.

Fantasitc…

Fun Fact: Diesel's first name is his last name as well, hence the jabs from Heidi. Also, Fun fact number 2: Diesel's memory wipe of the whole city was actually what I was going to do, but I decided something more...chaotic should happen. Also some stones pop up soon, just letting you know.