This story is an AU of an AU. The series it is based on is the Mercenary Ranger series by sweetdreams-sunnymornings. If you haven't read any of those, this will make no sense (but you should go read them right away if you haven't already). If you've read Shelter From The Storm, this grabs that about halfway through and takes a hard left turn with it. Ranger, Stephanie, Anthony, Zoë and many other characters are in it, with another addition. I love the whole "ESP" bit in the Mercenary Ranger series and I run with it. There is a bit of minor swearing here and there. Sex is more implied than shown, but there is a bit of light kissing and maybe fondling. Thanks so much for the permission to post this up here, sweetdreams!

He leaned his head back against the soft leather headrest in the back seat of Anthony's sleek black helicopter, piloted by one of Anthony's efficient and pretty much interchangeable employees.

The mental calm to catnap had never come on this trip from DC. Unusual for him, he'd learned long ago to grab sleep when he could. But he was almost home and still too on edge from his latest mission, still keyed up yet hovering on the edge of mental exhaustion. Not a good combination and he probably should have taken a few days to decompress, but he just wanted to be home after that shitshow.

It was supposed to be a solo mission, hiking in 5 days, then two weeks of recon and then maybe two or three days, tops, getting into position and taking down the target and another 5 days out. Instead, once in-country he'd spent three weeks doing the recon and realized that the intel he'd been given was beyond bad and if he wanted to complete the mission and get out of there alive, he needed backup, and the best backup at that. A quick call to his hermano Anthony and they'd been able to knock off – literally – the job in another 5 days. But a single target in a central location had turned into multiple targets spread out across the damned landscape packing a lot more firepower than expected.

The whine of the helicopter's engine and blades shifted, and he glanced down to see the Rangeman helipad directly below them, lit up for a night landing. The helo touched down and he grabbed his bag and hopped out, with a nod to the pilot. The stealth chopper took off immediately as he cleared the blade radius. The two armed Rangeman guards nodded to him and held the roof top door open for him.

He walked down the stairs to the family apartment on Seven, which was silent and still in this pre-dawn hour. He stood in the apartment, just inside the door, and soaked up the quiet and the sense of home.

Then he made his rounds. The central rooms – living room, kitchen, den, office - were secure and empty, all items present and correct. He moved on to the bedrooms.

His three-year-old daughter Zoë was asleep in her room, a slight smile on her face, perfect red rosebud lips pursed in an "o" which worked slightly in her sleep. Probably talking to someone in her dream. Her dog Killer slept on the end on the bed, snoring away, Zoë's personal dog-noise sleep generator. He tried tuning into her dream and got a blast of light, noise and sound – was that a unicorn dressed in Rangeman black, flying a spaceship, while Zoë sat on a throne behind him and shouted orders? - and immediately backed out. Another headache on top of the one he already had wouldn't help him.

Moving in to the master bedroom he found Stephanie asleep in the bed, sprawled all the way across the bed, managing to take up most of the larger-than-king-sized bed. It was one of her special talents. The light in the bathroom was on and the door open, spilling a little light into the room, enough to see her clearly by. She was on her stomach, her wild hair loose and spread around her, her tiny tank top rucked up just under her breasts and barely-there shorts tight across her ass. He paused to admire the view, the view he intended to be much closer to in a moment, in a very hands-on way.

He quickly locked away his bag and all his weapons in the secure weapons locker in the walk-in closet, taking the time to check that his backup weapon was loaded and ready in the biometrics-locked gun safe next to the bed. His tasks were done, his home secure, his family safe and sleeping soundly. He stripped and went in for a quick shower, toweling off as he came back into the bedroom, smiling at his wife, who hadn't moved at all.

He already knew about her run-in with a skip, or rather her run-in with a rusty fire escape while chasing a skip, which had necessitated far more stitches than he wanted to hear about. The fire escape had been too small and fragile for Cal, her very large Rangeman partner, to climb and so she'd decided to go up after the skip herself. Cal had made a grab for her to keep her from doing it, but just missed and she wiggled her way up to the second floor on the fire escape. The fire escape had collapsed, as Cal had known it would, and she'd gotten a cut that later took 15 stitches to close as she fell through the collapsing metal and into Cal's arms. He hadn't heard, nor did he particularly care, what had happened to the skip. It might be necessary to teach someone a lesson about why it was a bad idea to run from Stephanie Manoso, but that was something to deal with later. Much later.

When he sat down at the edge of the bed, next to her, she finally sensed him and edged closer to him, never waking up. Gently he pulled back the edge of the tape on her shoulder and checked under the bandage. The wound still had red edges and he knew she was on her second course of antibiotics to knock down the infection. A stubborn wound for a stubborn woman. He smoothed the bandage and tape back down and covered the bandage with his hand. That beautiful pale skin did not deserve such a raw and ugly wound and he moved his fingers in light circles over the bandage until he was satisfied with the result.

Then he ran his hand across her uninjured shoulder, gently stroking the soft skin as he started on the project of waking his wife from sleep. She came awake slowly under his hands, sighing and arching up into him. He bent to kiss her and his hands traveled further south.

"Mmm, you're back." She opened her eyes, smiled up at him and reached for him and then frowned. "Wait," she said, scooting away from him. "We need to use protection."

He raised an eyebrow. "Protection as in a condom?"

"Yes," she said with a grimace, not any more of a fan of them than he was. "I was going to switch from the pills to the shot and then this happened," she shrugged her injured shoulder and lifted her eyebrows in surprise when it didn't hurt. "The doctor told me to wait for the shot until the wound healed and I was completely off antibiotics."

"So you are not currently on birth control?"

"No, I'm not. I stopped taking the pill to wait for the shot and then I thought you'd be gone longer, and..."

He closed his eyes and took in what she was saying. Then he stopped her words with kisses and ran a hand over her smooth, soft belly, lightly tracing the faintest hint of a stretch mark from her pregnancy with Zoë. "This mission was ugly." he said, his lips against her skin. "I had to call in Anthony and it was still a near thing. A lot of blood and death, Babe." He did not usually share this kind of information with her and he felt her body tense under his hands. When he looked up at her, her eyes were wide. He stroked her belly again. "To hear that I could come back from that and be given the gift of making another beautiful child with you – I want that."

Her eyes opened wide as she heard the sincerity and need in his voice. "You want another child?"

He nodded. "I already told you I like children."

"Now?"

His lips twitched up as he moved his hand to cup her neck and pull her back into him. "Now."

And so Alejandro Carlos Manoso arrived, a surprise early delivery, 8 months and 2 weeks later. Zoë had been telling her, all that morning, that her baby brother "said" he was going to be born that day, two weeks early, but she hadn't quite believed it. She should have.

3 years later -

Really, it wasn't like Stephanie hadn't known how different siblings could be. She and Val weren't very alike, Val's three kids were all different, after all, but other than the fact that Zoë and Alex and Julie all looked a lot like Ranger – slightly different, of course, variations on skin tone and eye color and hair, they were very different in personality.

Alex's skin was the darkest of the three, very nearly the same hue as Ranger's. He shared straight, very dark hair with Julie and Ranger, but he had her bright blue eyes and stubborn chin. Like his sisters, he was obviously his father's child, the resemblance strong. They made a very pretty family photograph, the three beautiful children.

But, unlike either of his sisters, Alex wasn't a sleeper or a cuddler or a talker. He slept a few hours at a time, never through the night and, once he could move himself, did not like to be held or kept in one place.

He could talk, understand and respond in several languages, he just … didn't unless he had something he really wanted to say. He watched everyone and everything around him with his clear blue eyes and he was silent and stealthy when he moved. Ranger's battle-honed 'something is not right' sense could pick up Alex when he was on the move around the apartment at night, but it was not unusual for Ranger to get up for his early morning run and find Alex already up and exploring the apartment.

For everyone's peace of mind, Ranger had eventually installed motion detectors and surveillance equipment in his son's room. Steph had balked at adding a door lock to keep him inside his room, not liking the idea of a child who might be seeking comfort not being able to get to his parents. She was completely fine with the secure lock on the apartment keeping him in, however.

This morning, she was on a hunt in the apartment for Alex. It was 7-friggin-am, the crack of dawn, literally, and he wasn't anywhere he was supposed to be. Not in his own room, of course, not in his sister's room, not in his parent's bedroom. Not in the den, living area or kitchen. Not in his father's office. Not in the closets or bathrooms. Not under any of the beds or furniture. The front door was securely locked.

She pinched the bridge of her nose. She knew she'd gotten the gesture from Ranger, one of the few physical tells he ever permitted himself and one he only used within the Rangeman building. But since it was because of one of his children, she thought it was only fair to borrow his gesture.

Finally, she sighed and punched in the control room on the house phone. Hal answered before the first ring had even finished. "Control," he said crisply.

"Could you tell me where Alex is, please? Right now?"

"Well, Ranger didn't bring him down this morning, so he's not down here with us. And he's not with Ranger or Tank, they are in a secure early morning meeting on Three." The control room on Five was one of Alex's favorite stops, where he could often be found, perched on the lap of a random Rangeman, watching the monitor feed very carefully with them. "Let me review the footage."

Eventually, the monitoring devices had extended from just Alex's room to most of the apartment, other than the master bedroom and bathroom. The feed was never directly monitored and it was accessible only for review to a select few people with master codes. Stephanie did not like the idea that she could be watched in her own home but, especially now with Alex, she was glad it existed.

It was not the first time she'd had to call with this exact question. Where the hell is Alex? was a common refrain since he'd become mobile. Outside the building, Alex had to either be carried – which he did not like, "down!" was one of his favorite imperatives - or hold the hand of an adult, who had instructions to never let go of that small hand, for any reason whatsoever. He'd also hold his sister's hand and let her drag him around, his much-shorter legs working hard to keep up with her while Zoë supplied a running commentary on what they were doing.

Hal was one of the few with the code to view the apartment footage. "Ranger was in Alex's room at o530 this morning. Alex was already up and out of his bed. They talked for 10 minutes, Ranger helped him dress in a long-sleeved t-shirt and pants..."

"Let me guess, plain, all black?"

"No, a plain dark blue t-shirt and dark gray pants." She rolled her eyes as Hal continued. She had a lot of very cute outfits for Alex, but neither Ranger nor Alex liked them much. "Ranger put him back in his bed with his two favorite toys, the black helicopter and the black Porsche, and brought him a bowl of cut-up fruit and a cloth napkin and a glass of water, then Ranger exited the apartment, securing the door behind him." To her astonishment, Alex, her own flesh and blood, preferred his father's twigs and berries. No chocolate for him. Even Zoë wrinkled her perfect nose at his food preferences.

Steph peered into his bedroom. His toys were still in his bed, but no bowl of fruit. She crossed into the kitchen, and still no bowl of fruit. Nothing out of place, nothing missing...

Hal continued as he watched the footage. "And then... holy shit, Steph." Hal hit the button on the console that would broadcast an escape alarm to selected cell phones and would loop Ranger and Tank directly into the discussion.

"What?! Where is he?" she shouted into the phone.

"Roof deck by the helipad," Hal said.

"How did he get up on the damned roof?"

"Pushed a dining room chair to the sideboard, pulled out your fob, opened the door, pushed the chair back to the table and scuffed the drag marks away. Exited the apartment, used the fob to lock back up and then climbed the stairs to the roof, where he used the fob again to open the roof door."

She glanced at the large bowl on the sideboard that usually held fobs and keys. Her fob was definitely missing. "What is he doing on the roof?"

"Nothing," Hal said. "Sitting there on a lounge, dangling his feet over the edge of the building, eating the fruit, watching the sun come up."

"By the railing?"

"Uh, no," Hal said. "The open section by the helipad, facing east."

She slapped her hand on the biometric pad to unlock the front door and heard the door click and dashed out of the apartment. Not all of the roof top had a fenced, secured edge, especially by the helipad. It was a sheer drop there.

She'd had a thing for jumping off of roofs as a child, positive she would be able to fly. Surely Alex was smarter than that. Surely...

Ranger made the roof just before she did, even if he had started four floors below her.

"Ranger..." she started, out of breath.

"I heard," he said.

Alex was, indeed, sitting on the edge of a lounge that had been pushed to the edge of the deck, swinging his legs freely over the drop to the street and eating his fruit, watching the city of Trenton below him as it woke up with the sun. He'd turned toward them as they cleared the roof door, and now he looked slightly surprised.

"Papá," he said, calmly nodding greetings at his father. "Mamá," he said to her.

Ranger crossed the rooftop and squatted down by the lounge, one hand firmly grasping the small shoulder and pulling him away from the drop. Alex smiled and offered him a piece of pineapple out of the bowl. "No, thank you," Ranger said softly, and then a little more sternly, "M'hijito, you did not have permission to leave the apartment."

Alex's smile dropped and he blinked, as though processing the idea of requiring permission to go anywhere. With the hand holding the pineapple, he gestured toward the city and the rising sun. "Very pretty," he said, explaining himself.

Ranger touched his son's mind briefly and found nothing but calm, orderly speculation about why the adults were so excited. He'd been alone in the apartment and he wanted to have his breakfast on the roof, and he'd made it happen. Simple.

Simple, Ranger thought. Set a goal, make a plan and execute it. Flawlessly.

"There are rules, m'hijito, which must be obeyed. We will review them later today." He ignored his wife's snort at the word "rules" as he picked up his son, pocketed his wife's fob from the cushion and moved back to the doorway.

Steph still felt her heart threatening to stop at how close he had been to the drop from the roof to the street below and reached out to stroke a hand across Alex's silky-soft dark hair. At 3, his hair was just starting to get a wave to it. He wouldn't have Ranger's perfectly straight hair, but he wouldn't have her curls, either.

"How did he walk out onto the roof without anyone seeing him?" she asked. Behind her in the doorway she heard the belated entry of a large portion of on-duty Rangeman arriving, weapons drawn. The men scattered out onto the roof, confirming no threat existed.

"He's below the weight threshold for the rooftop pressure sensors to trip. Motion sensors on a rooftop get too many false trips so we use pressure sensors to trip the cameras." Ranger said. "And he's fast."

"You forgot sneaky and stealthy," Steph said, trying, and failing, to raise a single eyebrow at him. She'd been working on that for awhile, but the second eyebrow still rose a bit with the first. "Think of it as an opportunity to upgrade equipment."

Ranger tilted his head and looked at his wife. "You seem remarkably calm about all this."

"Well, what I'd like to do is scream hysterically, but then I'd just hear my mother's voice come out of my mouth." Her fists were clenched and her chin was jutted forward. "And that wouldn't get us anywhere good."

Ranger smiled for the first time and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. "Come on, let's get our little escape artist back where he belongs."

"Ranger, you know how I said that now that we have 2 kids, I needed to be a full-time Mom and look after them myself, without an au pair for them? I take it all back. I really can't do this by myself."

"I think that the job is beyond any one person," he agreed. "And Alex doesn't need an au pair, he needs a squad. Maybe a platoon."

Tank snorted. "Surround him with his own squad and he'd be leading them by the end of the week. Coordinated raids on the supply cabinets."

Bobby shook his head. "I already told you, man. Two words: subcutaneous tracker. For both of them." He eyed Stephanie. "Or more."

As they walked down the stairs from the roof to the apartment, Zoë met them half way. She was still wearing her long white nightgown, hand-embroidered with little pink flowers and gamboling fawn-and-black pug puppies ringing the fine cotton yoke. Her hair had been braided back into pigtails for sleep and was beginning to pull loose and stand up around her head like a dark halo.

"Daddydaddydaddy," she said in her sing-song greeting, "are we having breakfast upstairs?"

"No, we are not," her father replied, his voice very final.

"Alex had his breakfast upstairs."

Ranger put his free hand on Zoë's back, directing her back down the stairs to the apartment door. "We will discuss that later." He pulled the fob out of his pocket and smiled down at his wife. "Good thing Zoë never thought to grab a fob and escape..."

Oh, Daddy, like I'd need a stupid fob to open a door...

Before Ranger could hit the fob button, the door lock clicked and the door swung silently open.

Zoë and Alex exchanged a glance and they both smiled.

"So, brother, got an alarm on my phone this morning. Middle of a big meeting with Credite Suisse. Had to bail on them and get ready in case I needed to book it to you. What's the deal-io?" Anthony sounded like he was in full surfer mode.

Ranger pinched the bridge of his nose. "Alex. Grabbed a fob, opened the apartment while Steph and Zoë and the staff were asleep, then opened the roof door so he could have his breakfast, by himself, on the open roof, right next to the edge. No one had eyes on him for almost an hour."

"Stealth op?"

"Yeah."

"Kid's gonna be in ops, man, you know that."

"No, he's not," Ranger said sharply. He was very, very good at his job, hired for operations because there was no one better, but his children would be anything other than what he was, live a different life than his. They'd be happy, well-adjusted and be able to live with their families, not feel the need to spend weeks away in a stinking jungle or baking desert looking at life through a rifle scope. They could be accountants or maybe lawyers. Were accountants well-adjusted? In his experience, lawyers weren't. Maybe investment bankers, like a lot of people in his family.

"Uh huh," Antonio said. "Don't you think your mom and your old man said the same thing about you? That Olivia didn't say the same thing about me? Dude, look how well that turned out."

"He can be anything he wants, like Julie and Zoë can. Just … not me."

Antonio snorted again. "It's not good when you are delusional, brother. That kid is you. Or, you know, me. Either way, man."

There was a long pause.

"Also," Ranger said, "I need a bigger building. Even more secure. Top two floors for family. Kid's floor with an active monitoring station and a night watch. Room for more staff. Guest floor below that."

"Wouldn't it be easier to just buy a big house and move?"

"A house doesn't come with entire floors of armed Rangeman employees between the family floors and the street."

"Maybe we could just buy the Pentagon."

"Needs too much remodeling. Besides, I don't want to live in a swamp."

"Dude, you live in Trenton."

"Still not a swamp."