Clunky brief flashback in Lula's POV ahead, but Lula REALLY wanted that part left in, even if this story is all Steph's show.

Under Pressure – Chapter 11

On my way into the office I stopped for as many bribes as possible. When I'd gone in the day before I'd felt like a complete wreck and it hadn't taken Lula and Connie very long to pull some of the story out of me.

I began to see some of the ways that life around Ranger could be difficult. I'd never held back any details about my relationship with Joe from these two, but this was different, somehow.

I couldn't tell them about the safe house fiasco because I couldn't tell them about the escape from Brooks, since I had no idea what had actually happened to Brooks or who might be looking for him now. I didn't want to tell them personal details about Ranger. So how to explain why I was so obviously miserable? I settled for telling them that Ranger and I had that final night together and about the scene at the hospital. I told them that things just weren't going to work out between Ranger and me. That we were too different. I might as well have saved my breath. The look they each gave me said that they knew I was holding much, much more out but that they were solidly on my side.

It had taken hours in the office to get through the abridged story and when Lula and I had gone on a lunch run she managed to pry even more details out of me, leaving me even more miserable and leaving her uncharacteristically silent and tight-lipped. I wouldn't say she had gone into full rhino mode, but she wasn't looking happy when I left. Spoiling for a fight was more like it. I pitied whoever she laid into.

So today I came carrying offerings for my evasions and half-truths, knowing that they knew I had broken some of the commandments of girlfriendship by not spilling all the details.

I carried the boxes in carefully, the potential for a shirtload full of doughnut jelly and chicken grease making me exaggerate my movements. I opened the door and made it to Connie's desk, where I stopped short.

Her desk was covered in boxes and Connie was moving faster than I had ever seen her move, filling the boxes with a manic speed. I blinked a few times and then put all my packages down.

"Connie?"

She stopped stuffing boxes and looked up at me. "Help me finish," she spat out. "When that bitch gets here there isn't going to be a single thing left." She picked up one of the bottles of nail polish on her desk and hurled it at Vinnie's closed door. The bottle shattered and the polish ran down the door, the run of polish and the bottle fragments joining the others on the floor.

Whoa. This was serious. And I had a sinking feeling that it somehow had something to do with me. "Connie, what happened?"

She threw another bottle of nail polish. "That .. weasel. That lowlife scum. That barnyard animal loving …"

"Connie! What did Vinnie do?"

"He fired Lula. So I quit. And now Joyce Barnhardt is going to be the new office manager! He wants me to stay and train her. I'll train her, alright, I'll…"

I put my palm on my forehead. "Wait. Back up. Vinnie fired Lula?"

Connie ripped open the doughnut box and took a large bite out of a doughnut. "Yesterday," she said through chunks of doughnut.

"Why?"

"Vinnie had some special job he wanted Ranger to do. When Ranger came in to talk to him about it yesterday afternoon, Lula started in on Ranger about… things."

My stomach and my heart sank down, somewhere around my ankles. "About me?"

Connie nodded. "And then, after, Ranger left without talking to Vinnie. Vinnie tried to page him but he wouldn't call back. Vinnie came in here screaming at Lula for making Ranger leave and costing Vinnie a lot of money and then Lula got out her stun gun and Vinnie fired her."

Lula had fought with Ranger. Lula. Fought with Ranger. This was beyond bad. I sank down onto the couch and sighed. "Tell me about it."

"Are you sure you really want to know?" Connie asked.

"Just tell me."

Connie gave me a strangled look, and I suddenly wasn't sure.

The office door opened and he walked in, his right-hand man Tank following him. Ranger walked in the way he always did, sure of himself. Lula saw the subtle sweep of his eyes around the room. Checking for Stephanie, the way he always did, sure of himself there, too.

Lula's eyes narrowed as she stepped into his path, folded her arms across her ample chest and cocked her head to the side. "She ain't here. You told her no relationship and she's takin' you at your word."

Ranger had been about to walk past her, but her words stopped him in mid-stride. He turned to look at Lula. "My personal life is never under discussion. In or out of the office."

His soft, cold voice made her shiver, but she was mad enough to want to finish her point. "That's cause you ain't got no personal life, you just got a dick. Hell, the way you hurt that girl, all you are is one big dick. I thought you was a mighty fine specimen of man once, but not any more. You just one cold son-of-a-bitch and a user."

Ranger stepped closer, his eyes flat and cold. "And you would do well to remember that."

"Oh, yeah, Batman, hurts to hear the truth, don't it? Got yourself a fine little white girl but she's just another notch in your utility belt. Use her once or twice and walk away." Lula felt the first cold wash of his anger flood in around her and tried to use her own anger to keep from sinking under it.

Ranger took another step in and locked eyes with Lula. She unfolded her arms and took a step backward, until she hit the desk and stopped. Ranger closed the distance between them. "What Stephanie and I do or don't do is no one else's concern."

"Maybe you ain't got friends that care how you screw yourself up or who you screw over, but we are her friends here." Lula folded her hands across her chest again and stood her ground against his anger, which she could now feel breaking over her in huge cold waves. Her own anger wasn't going to save her much longer.

He ground his teeth. "I don't want someone to hurt her."

"Want to save that for yourself, huh? You doin' a damn fine job of it, too." Lula knew where to hit Ranger to score points and so she went for the final jab. "Least when she was with Morelli he cared about her enough that he tried not to hurt her."

He spun away from her, voicing a low, frustrated growl, to find Tank blocking his path.

Tank pulled off his mirrored sunglasses and stared at his boss and friend. "Don't look at me, man, I agree with her. Except that she forgot to add what a miserable fucking bastard you're making yourself while you're at it."

Ranger looked from Tank to Lula to Connie and back to Tank and left the office without another word.

Tank and Lula looked at each other and shrugged. They'd tried.

I looked at Connie and held my breath. I had been right. I didn't want to know but, as usual, curiosity did me in. And, like the infamous cat, if I wasn't careful it would eventually kill me, too.

I sighed. "So Vinnie fired Lula. Did she actually stun him?"

Connie ate another doughnut and threw another bottle of nail polish. "No, Vinnie went back in his office and locked the door before she could."

Both of us briefly reflected on what a shame that was.

As if in response to our thoughts, Vinnie opened his office door, brushing the broken nail polish bottles out of the way and stepping into the puddle of mixed polish colors, now oozing a purplish-brown on the floor. He stepped toward me, his index finger out.

"So there you are – finally showing up to get some work done after all the trouble you caused."

I shook my head. "If Lula and Connie don't work here then I don't work here, either, Vinnie."

He yelped. "You can't leave! You drove off the best bounty hunter on the east coast and then lost me my office staff. I lost 20 grand on the assignment for Ranger and now you're going to help me get some of that back."

I shook my head. "No, Vinnie, if Lula and Connie don't work here anymore, then neither do I." Maybe if I repeated it slower next time he'd get it.

Vinnie blinked his beady little weasel eyes at me. "Stephanie, we're family. I gave you a good job when you were down and out."

"Vinnie, don't even try that approach."

He scowled. "So what's it going to take? More money? I just need one skip brought in. The rest of the job we can back out on. Hell, I'll even go with you, do most of the work. You can be my back-up."

"No, Vinnie!"

"Jesus, Steph, you're breaking my balls here." Connie and I looked away from him, neither of us wanting to be visualizing Vinnie's balls, broken or not. "Okay, here's the final deal. Lula can have the damn job back. Connie, too."

"You didn't fire me, Vinnie, I quit, and I'm not coming back."

Vinnie shot her a look of dislike. "Did I go to bail your worthless brother out when no one else would or not?"

Connie narrowed her eyes. "You bailed him out because your father-in-law told you to." Vinnie's wife's father was Harry the Hammer, and when Harry said "jump" all of Trenton jumped.

"We got connections, then, Connie."

They glared at each other for a few minutes. I could feel Connie starting to cave. Even though it meant working with Vinnie, she knew she had a good deal in the office.

"Connie and Lula get a raise," I said. "And you apologize to Lula."

"Done," Vinnie said, far too quickly for my peace of mind. What was I getting into?

"Before we agree, what, exactly, will we be doing?"

"We got a guy jumped bail. We go in, we get him when he's alone, we bring him in."

"What did this have to do with Ranger? I don't even want to try to bring in a Ranger-level skip."

"That was a side deal. Ranger would bring me the skip but someone else wanted the group he runs with brought in and their merchandise .. confiscated. Ranger could do the whole deal. We'll just do a little part of it." Hmm, one of the gray-area jobs Ranger did from time to time.

"And you think we can do it, you and I?"

"What, do I look stupid?"

"Yes," Connie and I said in unison. But I was probably going to do this. And if I thought Vinnie was stupid, and I was going to go with him, what did that make me?

Ranger kept saying that he did what he had to do. What was necessary. And that's what this was. Necessary. Lula was trying to protect me and it had cost her the job, which in turn cost Connie her job. Connie could find another job. But Lula didn't have a lot of job skills outside of her old profession and I didn't want to see her forced back into that. I'd go with Vinnie, but I'd go in as prepared as I could be, and if things went bad, I'd walk away. Hell, I'd run away.

"Okay, Vinnie, let's get this over with."

I opened the equipment closet and dug out the heavy riot flack jacket. It was exactly my size and a woman's cut, and had just appeared in the closet about six months ago. I had always suspected it was another gift from Ranger but had never worked up the nerve to ask him. Right now, though, I buckled it on and sent silent thanks to him. A Kevlar vest protected the center and sides of the chest but this jacket covered my whole chest, shoulders, arms, stomach and hips. It was heavy and very stiff – hard to move in and not something you ran down skips wearing - but I didn't have much faith in Vinnie. I filled the jacket pockets with two pairs of handcuffs and two cans of defense spray.

Connie had watched me and then dug in her purse and pulled out two guns, both semi-auto, a 9 mil and a .45, which she handed to me without a word. I tucked them away. Vinnie and I walked silently out to his Lincoln parked at the curb. I looked back into the office and saw Connie, her face full of doubt, pick up the phone and punch in a number. I hoped she was calling one of her connected relatives and ordering a hit on Vinnie.

I got in the car, and for my final measure, I tucked my hair up under the SEALs cap Ranger had given me. And I was transformed into SWAT Princess yet again. I looked over at Vinnie as he put a gun in every pocket he had. If I was a Princess, then he was my toad. My heavily armed, warty, hairy toad, that I had no intention, EVER, of kissing.

Under Pressure - Chapter 12

Vinnie drove in his own zone, sort of like Ranger, except that I think Vinnie's zone had less to do with concentration and awareness and more to do with indigestion and gas. And the thought of the money he would be making.

I grimaced. I had yet to go on a take-down with Vinnie that had worked out right. So far, though, they'd only gone wrong in a comedy-of-errors kind of way. I could deal with that - it was one of my specialties. Maybe even my trademark.

I watched out the window as the buildings of downtown Trenton gave way to bigger, more industrial structures. Imported stone fascias became windowless, grimy gray tilt-up concrete slabs.

Shit. The warehouse district. Not an open, heavily populated part of town, filled with potential witnesses, but a seedy, broken-down place where a body could go a couple of days without being found.

Vinnie turned into the desiccated heart of the warehouse district and slowed the car, squinting at the numbers on the buildings. Finally he pulled to a stop and turned to look over his shoulder at an older, mostly wooden building, five stories high. Unlike the neighbors, it still had most of the windows intact and the gang graffiti was minimal.

I looked out of the window and shook my head. "I am not even getting out of the car, Vinnie."

"Come on, when did you get to be such a wuss? Is this the bounty hunter that brought in Joe Morelli?"

I curled my lip up, at both Vinnie's attitude and the mention of Joe. "How do you know your skip is here? And how do you know he's alone?"

"Don't see any cars do you?"

"No, and I don't see anyone, either. Except us."

"Well then, if he's here he's alone."

It made sense in a weird sort of way. Best case scenario was that absolutely no one was here and then we could turn around and go back to the office. I knew Vinnie would try to welch on our agreement, but I could work on that.

I got one of the guns that Connie had given me out, checked to see that it was loaded and ready to go. I looked over at Vinnie as I opened my door. "Okay, let's get this over with."

We walked over to the door of the warehouse. Vinnie knocked hard on the door and I took a step back, looking at the buildings around us. Most of the windows were boarded up and the whole place had a deserted, desolate feel.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement and I turned to my left and saw four men, dressed in dark pants and red sweatshirts, walking down the sidewalk toward us.

The door of the warehouse opened. It was Vinnie's skip. "James Blake," Vinnie started, "I am an authorized bond agent. You missed your court date and you need to reschedule." Vinnie started to pull out his handcuffs. Blake looked over Vinnie's shoulder and took a step backward. Vinnie followed him in.

I was reluctant to go in with them. I looked back to my left and the men were still walking toward me, their eyes fixed on me and the building. I felt a prickle at the back of my neck and looked to my right. Four more men. I looked back at the car. Two men there. All wearing red sweatshirts. All watching me.

I voted for the warehouse and pushed Vinnie the rest of the way in, and turned to slam and lock the door. I heard the sound of a shotgun being racked behind me and I leaned my forehead on the door. Oh, crap.

I took what I hoped would be a deep, calming breath and turned. Vinnie's skip was not armed. Point for us. The ten men behind him were. Heavily armed. Things were not adding up in our favor.

Blake looked us over. "You both bounty hunters?"

I had to admit that Vinnie was determined. Outnumbered and outgunned, but determined. "You missed your court date," he started. "I bailed you out and now you're going to lose the property you put up to me as bond if you don't go back and re-schedule."

Blake looked up and around him at the decrepit building. "Oh, yeah, this'll be a big loss." He laughed.

I understood now. Vinnie had posted a large bond for Blake and he had taken the building in as security and then discovered that the building wouldn't cover the bond. I sighed. Somehow being back-up for Vinnie's wallet was worse than being back-up for his person. Especially when we were in this much trouble.

"Umm…" Time to find out how much trouble. "Would you have any interest in knowing that there are a lot of armed guys in red sweatshirts outside?" I heard a variety of curses spoken by the men behind Blake, ranging in severity from "the nuns will slap your hand for that" to "the nuns will wash out every orifice you have for that."

One of Blake's men came forward and patted Vinnie down, removing his personal arsenal from all the nooks and crannies he'd tucked it into. He moved on to me with a smile and hadn't gotten any further than taking the .45 in my hand when we heard the sound of automatic weapon fire.

We all looked to the front door, which was rapidly beginning to show daylight through it. Things became a blur of noise and motion.

Everyone else was focused on dropping to the floor and hiding their asses as the front door was shot to pieces. Good plan. But I decided my ass would be safer somewhere else. "Vinnie," I hissed, "move, move!" I pulled him toward the stairs and we started up them, as quietly as possible.

At the top of the stairs the warehouse opened out into a warren of rooms, stretching away in a crazy pattern. The walls between the warehouses had been knocked out. I hesitated. It was like being in the center of a maze. I heard footsteps on the stairs behind us and I turned in the direction of what I thought was probably the front of the building.

We moved through several rooms, headed toward the patch of light that meant a window or an opening. Vinnie was swearing about having lost all of our weapons. I wasn't going to tell him I still had a gun until it became necessary.

We reached a room with a window and I cautiously peeked out. About two warehouses over there were at least ten red-clad men in the street, gathered in a loose circle around one man. A man all in black. Ranger. The two men talking to him seemed to be agitated, making wild gestures. Arguing. Ranger stayed motionless, calm. As I watched, several of the other gang members lifted up weapons to point at Ranger, and one of the men who had been talking put a gun up to Ranger's head.

I sucked in my breath. I was too far away to do anything but scream, and in the next instant it became unnecessary to do anything. Ranger shrugged off his jacket and they removed his Glock from his waistband and his other gun from the shoulder holster. The wicked knife that I knew he kept in a boot sheath they let him keep. The circle around him opened and he began to walk up the street, toward the warehouse we had come in.

At that moment several cop cars came to a screeching halt at both ends of the street. I'd thought I'd seen chaos downstairs when the door had been shot in, but it didn't compare to this. Everyone started shooting at everyone else. I'd never seen so many guns or heard so many shots fired. Several of the gang members were targeting Ranger and he made a low, diving roll that put him behind a dumpster in the alley. I couldn't see him anymore, but I heard a sharp sound and splintering wood. He must have kicked a side door in.

I watched the street as the police took up defensive positions and several of the gang members ran into the warehouse. Things were going to get really ugly in here. It was too late to run. Now it was time to hide.

Vinnie said it much less elegantly. "Fuck, Steph, our asses are toast. We gotta get out of here."

We heard a noise and snapped around to see several of Blake's men at the top of the stairs, looking toward us. We started to run before they started to shoot. We didn't have a direction or a plan - we were running to get away. We dodged through rooms, some of them empty, some of them filled with overturned furniture. The rooms opened up into one large area with an open doorway to the left, blocked by a huge overturned table, and a closed door to the right. Vinnie picked the closed door, which didn't open right away. He put his weight behind it and shoved hard and the door opened.

It was some sort of storage room, the sharp, acid tang of chemicals strong. There must have been shelving propped on the door or braced on the door, because as Vinnie's momentum took him through the doorway there was a crash and a thud and the doorway was filled with debris and shelving.

"Vinnie!" I shouted as he fell under the shelving. I moved forward to dig him out and I heard a bullet hit the doorjamb to the side of my head. There was shouting and cross-fire behind them and I dived onto the floor to the table by the other doorway.

I crouched down on the floor by the table, making myself the smallest shape possible and retreating, turtle-like, as far as I could into my bullet-proof jacket. No, bullet-resistant jacket, I thought. Ranger always said there was no such thing as bullet-proof. Not a comforting thought.

As though I'd summoned them by incantation, large, very strong, familiar hands pulled me up and over the table and against the rest of the body that went with the hands. Ranger wrapped his body around me, putting himself between me and the shooters, shielding my body with his. I clutched at his thin shirt and then realized I could feel his bare chest under the shirt. No vest, no body armor. Ranger had come for me, through that incredible shooting gallery out there, alone, unarmed and without back-up.

Frantically I grabbed at his arms, trying to break his hold. "God damn you," I hissed, "get down! Get out of the line of fire!"

I hit him, hard. No effect. He simply pushed me further into the corner, against the wall, and I heard bullets hit the drywall above our heads, spraying us with fine white dust. The shots were getting closer. I pulled my feet up under me and braced them on the wall. I jabbed back with my elbow and hit him hard in the solar plexus, pushing off of the wall with my legs as I hit him.

With a grunt he fell backward and I went with him, both of us flat on the floor. I could hear him gasping to get his breath back, but he still moved to curl around me and shield me.

We heard shooting and shouting in another part of the warehouse and whoever had been shooting at us stopped. We heard them retreating.

In the silence I heard a faint moan from the other side of the blocked doorway. "Vinnie! Vinnie, are you there?" I started to scramble through the debris to get to Vinnie.

Ranger jerked me to my feet and turned me to the door he'd come in. "Out that way. Go. We get you out and then I'll come back for Vinnie."

I turned back. "No! Get out of here.."

"Christ, Steph, I'm competent enough to do this."

"This isn't about whether you're competent or not, it's about how freakin' stupid and stubborn you can be when it comes to me!" His head snapped around toward me and I saw a flash of something dark in his eyes. "I don't want to get shot AND I don't want you to get shot in my place. You need back-up. Ranger, let me be your back-up." I could see that he wasn't convinced. "Let's do this. Let's get Vinnie and then we all get the hell out of here."

He hesitated a few seconds and finally nodded. "Get your gun out and ready. Keep your eyes open and your head down." He waited as I pulled out my remaining gun, the 9mil Connie had given me, chambered a round and put the safety on. "And, Babe…"

I looked up at him and he grabbed the front of the coat, one hand sliding up to my neck as he kissed me hard. "Riot gear suits you."

"Thanks for the jacket, Ranger.

"You're welcome. Probably a better gift for you than diamonds." Any other minute of my life I would have preferred the diamonds. But not now.

He slipped cautiously into the hallway, motioning me to follow. I held my gun out and ready and we moved along to the next doorway. He motioned me to stand across the hall against the wall, away from the line of sight of the door, and then he twisted the door open. When no shots were fired he ducked his head in for a quick look.

The shelving that blocked the doorway had fallen in on Vinnie, who was sprawled on the floor. He'd pulled himself out from under most of it and was looking around with a completely dazed expression. Ranger and I both went in to check on him as Ranger hauled him to his feet.

"Watch the hallway," he said to me and I nodded and turned back toward the door, gun in my hand.

Ranger had his back to the door, his hands full with Vinnie's semi-conscious full weight, pulling him to his feet. Both of us heard the sound of a safety being flicked off and turned at the same time. Ranger dropped Vinnie and was reaching back for his Glock, remembering the second he did so that he didn't have the gun. He twisted his body away, turning to make himself a difficult moving target and I knew with heart-deep certainty that it would not be enough. He would not be able to get out of the line of fire before he was shot.

And I couldn't let that happen.

My hands were already moving, raising my gun, almost without my conscious command. I braced my arms and I held my breath.

I flipped the safety off and fired the first round. And the second. And the third.

And I kept firing until the slide locked back and the trigger pinned.

The man fell at my feet, unmoving, clearly dead.

I lowered the gun and turned away. I swallowed, hard. I looked down on the floor and instead of seeing the dead man, I saw Ranger's face for a moment. It could have been Ranger and for an instant I saw a flash of life without Ranger and I felt more afraid than I had felt firing the gun. Ranger knelt down by him and checked for a pulse and then looked up into my eyes. I closed my eyes.

I felt him standing behind me and his arm came around me, across my shoulders, pulling me back against him. "You come through under pressure again, Babe," he said against my hair. I turned my face against his shoulder and concentrated on just breathing. "You okay?" His voice was soft.

My voice wasn't quite steady when I spoke. "I .. he was going to .."

"Yeah," he said. "He would have. But you stopped him." His arm tightened. "I owe you."

"Owe me?! You wouldn't have been here if it wasn't for me! How did you know?"

He dropped his arm and stepped back over to Vinnie, hauling him to his feet. "Connie called me. Told me your deal with Vinnie. Sounded like trouble."

"And so you came." He gave up trying to steady Vinnie and tossed him over one shoulder in a fireman's carry and headed toward the doorway. He stopped and looked back at me. "Like you always do, Ranger."

He smiled, a tight smile that showed amusement and something else. He echoed my words to him at the hospital. "This is what friends do, Babe. Worry. Watch each other's backs. Stand by each other." He walked back to the doorway.

I stared after him. Apparently we were friends again. I'd told him that was what I wanted. So why did that leave me feeling so .. hollow?

He slipped back out into the hallway, my cousin the toad dead weight over his shoulder. He was sure and steady as he walked back through the rooms, finding his way to the door he'd come in.

When we made it outside, the street was crowded with police cars and we were immediately separated. Ranger put Vinnie down, propped up against one of the squad cars, and then moved away, talking to a detective. A cop I didn't know knelt down with me as we looked Vinnie over and decided he'd probably live. He was certainly moaning and swearing enough.

"Hey, Stephanie." Constanza squatted down next to me. "Do you two need an ambulance?"

"I'm not sure - some of the wall shelving collapsed on Vinnie…"

Vinnie snarled from his slumped position. "Get the ambulance for Blake. I'm not paying for any damn ambulance or hospital for her or me. Just make sure Blake survives so we can collect our body receipt."

Carl snorted. "I'd say Vinnie's gonna be okay." He turned and looked at me. "How 'bout you, Steph?" His voice was casual - maybe a little too casual, like he already knew the answer.

"Carl," I said, my voice almost even, "I shot a man. I'm pretty sure he's dead."

He nodded. "Yeah, well, he isn't the only one. We're cleaning that whole mess out now. Blake and his buddies tried to screw over a local gang in a drug deal. Big mistake and a pretty big body count. You and Vinnie picked the wrong time to show up. You'll need to come down and make a statement about the shooting, but there won't be any charges. Pretty straightforward. You two were lucky to get out of there in one piece."

Big Dog smiled. "Another addition to the Bombshell Bounty Hunter's legend."

I shook my head. "This was Vinnie's deal. His idea and his skip. I was just along as back-up." Back-up. I'd been Ranger's back-up today and I'd killed a man. That fact registered only distantly in my brain.

"Ranger told us that you did what you had to do and saved his life and Vinnie's in there, Steph. He told us you were a real pro under fire."

I looked back at him, surprised. "Ranger said that?" I looked around. "Where is he?"

Carl gestured back at the warehouse. "The detective in charge of the Gangs Unit wanted him to talk to some of the people we arrested." He hesitated. "Steph, is there . . . is there something between you two?"

I shook my head. "We're just good friends." I said, sourly.