The Boys In Black – Chapter 2

They crossed the street and walked toward the ice cream parlor. The boys were peppering Ranger with questions and he had his head dipped down, answering them with what looked like complete sentences, judging by the way his mouth moved. Huh.

Ranger had seemed calm when he'd agreed to take the boys for ice cream, but having the boys with him seemed to kick Ranger into hyper-alert mode. Even as he walked with the boys and talked to them, his eyes were in constant motion, actively scanning the street, the passing cars and the surrounding buildings for threats. He took the idea of protecting his two charges seriously.

I smiled as they reached the ice cream store and Ranger paused, his head swinging around to gauge the scene again. He motioned the boys to stay, just outside the door, as he entered the store and scanned the patrons. He nodded at the boys and they stepped inside as well, the door closing behind them and blocking them from our sight.

"Wow," ML said, "he does that "protective alpha male" act very well."

"That is not an act," I said. "That is Ranger."

She glanced at me. "Don't you find it kind of ... scary?"

He was definitely a controlling alpha male and he definitely had strong protective instincts, but those weren't the scary things about him. Those things had saved my life more than once. I shook my head. "That's never been the thing about Ranger that I've found scary. But we were talking about you and Lenny. He doesn't want more kids?"

"Lenny loves kids. But, well, money has always been tight. Don't get me wrong," she said hastily. "Lenny makes a decent living and he's a good provider and a great father. We have all the things we really need, a house, food, clothing, all the basics, but - there is always a budget that we have to watch closely and LJ is going to need braces and my car is in the shop again and they say just fixing the brakes will be hundreds of dollars, never mind fixing the air conditioning. With the boys getting older and being in school, I could get a job, we could buy a newer car that didn't need so many repairs, go on real vacations instead of visiting his Aunt Susan in Cape May every summer and not worry so much about all the little expensive emergencies that pop up when you have kids." Mary Lou paused and took a big gulp of air after getting that all out on one breath.

I couldn't imagine the kind of budgeting Mary Lou did to keep her family going - I sometimes had to cajole Dillon into letting me pay my rent late, or scrounge food at my mother's or skimp on the hamster crunchies for Rex. Braces for the kids? A safe car with no rust and working brakes for driving the kids around? Beyond my financial ability. A depressing revelation, especially at my age. It made Joe's vision of a Burg life with a big family even less appealing, if worrying about every penny was a constant issue.

"But I want another baby, hopefully a girl. Before the boys are too old to relate to a younger sibling and before I am too old to have another baby."

I rolled my eyes. "We're only 32, ML."

"Exactly," she said. "By 35, fertility in women starts to decline."

I'd heard this from my mother, many times, that my biological clock was going to turn into a time bomb and someday - poof! - no more possibility of babies and my Hungarian metabolism that kept me thin - okay, thin-ish - would vanish, too. I still wasn't sure what I thought about any of that, but at this point there was no man in my life anyway, and a member of the opposite sex was required for making babies, at least for me.

"So what are you going to do?"

She sniffed and sighed, running her hands through her hair. "Well, I've heard people say that you are more likely to regret the baby you didn't have than regret the baby you did have, and I think, for me, that would be true. So I think I want the baby, not the job."

I kept my mouth shut. It's all a matter of perspective. Right now I want the job, not the baby. I'd had a couple pregnancy scares, and I did not regret that they'd been false, that there had been no baby. The first time I'd been in college and it had just been a fling with another student and the second time had been with Dickie Orr. On the other hand, I wasn't married to someone I thought of as my best friend, the way ML thought of Lenny, either.

"How are you going to convince Lenny?"

She smiled a slow smile. "I have my ways."

Nope, I did not want to picture that.

Across the street, Ranger and the boys came out of the ice cream store. Both boys had a double cone. LJ was licking down from the top, eating one flavor at a time and Frankie was licking around from the base and smushing the two flavors together. I favored the Frankie method, myself.

They walked back to the corner, Ranger walking between the boys and the street, still alert to the traffic and the other pedestrians. When they got to the corner, Ranger reached for the boy's hands without prompting. It took Frankie a minute to realize he had to switch his ice cream cone to his other hand, and I might - might - have seen a flash of something close to appalled surprise on Ranger's face when Frankie, his hand wet and sticky with melted ice cream, grasped Ranger's.

As the boys came back to us, LJ grinned at his mother. He had already eaten his way through the top flavor and his mouth and chin were mottled gray-black-purple as he started on the pink flavor below.

"What flavors did you get?" his mother asked.

"Licorice and bubblegum," he said. I shuddered. I was adventurous in my ice cream tastes, but not that adventurous.

"I got Birthday cake and triple chocolate fudge ripple chip," Frankie volunteered. He looked up at Ranger adoringly, "with extra sprinkles." Frankie was always my favorite and not just because we shared taste buds.

I saw Ranger surreptitiously flex his now-sticky hand and I rummaged around in my purse and came up with a bottle of water and several napkins. I held out the water bottle in a pouring position and he got the idea immediately as he held his hands in the stream of water, rinsing away the sticky ice cream mess. I handed him the Cluck-In-A-Bucket napkins and he dried his hands off and tossed the napkins into the trash.

"No ice cream for you?" I asked.

"Didn't have my favorite flavor."

"What is your favorite flavor?"

He smiled.

Mary Lou had herself a little better together by this point and she said, with just a small sniff, "Thank you so much for taking them for ice cream. Let me pay..."

He held up a hand. "My treat and my pleasure." he said. He looked at me. "Need anything else, Babe?" He had a glimmer of a smile in his eyes.

I appreciated his help, but I had to turn away from that smile. He'd said it was my choice about the state of our relationship - or non-relationship - and I needed to stick with my decision or I'd find myself slipping right back . At my hesitation, the hint of a smile vanished and I got a curt nod. I hated this, I...

At the corner of the street, in front of the little bodega, I heard shouting and a gun shot. A woman screamed and two men rushed out. Beside me, Ranger reached back to his waistband holster for the gun I knew he'd have there, then he hesitated as he looked at Mary Lou and the boys. He was not going to fire on the robbers and potentially bring counter-fire toward us.

Instead he grabbed LJ and Frankie by the shoulders and moved them over to the base of the brick wall where it came out from the building and curved around the patio. The higher wall offered more protection there. He held out a hand for Mary Lou to join them. She froze for a fraction of a second and reached out for his hand. He pulled her over to the corner and looked at LJ. "Watch over your mother and your brother," he said, his voice that sharp command tone he got when he barked out orders, the tone that generally had everyone jumping to obey.

LJ nodded once. Order received, sir.

From the corner came the sound of a woman wailing and another gunshot. Ranger looked at me. "You carrying?" He'd asked, but he knew the answer and didn't even wait for it, reaching down to remove his backup piece at his ankle and handing it to me, grip first. I took it. "Round already in the chamber. Safety on."

Ranger didn't usually carry non-lethal devices in casual situations. What would be the point? He had himself, two guns and a knife. That pretty much covered most dangerous situations he found himself in – except this one. He started to move out to the street, leaving me to protect ML and the kids.

"Wait, Ranger," I said, digging into my purse. I fished my stun gun out and handed it to him.

He checked the charge indicator and lifted an eyebrow. "It's even charged," he said.

I nodded. "Don't get shot," I said.

He moved away without acknowledging me, focused on his hunt, a sleek predator after prey. I watched him go and then realized that there were small dark heads on either side of me – Frankie and LJ were watching as well. I motioned the boys down as I grabbed my cell phone and punched in 911.

"I'd like to report a robbery in progress. Jimenez Bodega, corner of Franklin and 7th. Shots fired. An ambulance will probably be required."

"Robbery in progress, shots fired, corner of Franklin and 7th," the dispatcher repeated. "Is that correct?"

"Yes. This is Stephanie Plum. Please inform responding officers that Ranger is on the scene, taking care of the problem." The dispatcher knew who I was and knew who Ranger was.

"Ranger Manoso is on site?"

"Yes, he's headed in now."

"Keep the line open and update us," the dispatcher said.

I popped my my head over the wall to watch as Ranger ran toward the scene and flattened himself against the wall at the end of the street by the bodega. There was a movement in front of him and he leaned around the corner, grabbed one of the robbers by the neck in one hand, lifted him off the ground and touched the stun gun to his shoulder. The robber dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes, his gun clattering down with him.

"I think there are two robbers and one of them is down now, stunned," I said into the phone. I heard the dispatcher chattering to someone else in the background.

Ranger kicked the gun away and checked the charge on the stun gun. It must have been out of charge, because he also tossed the stun gun away. I sucked in a breath as the other robber roared and charged Ranger and then a third man joined in, also reaching for Ranger.

"Shit," I said, "there were three!" I stood up and dropped the phone. It was two-to-one. I had to help. In the distance I heard sirens – a lot of them. They'd be here in scant minutes, but Ranger might not have that long. Even as I stood up, Ranger used the momentum of the smaller of the two men charging him and slammed him into the wall with both hands. He crumpled to the ground, but it left Ranger's back to the last robber.

The last man man was just about Tank-sized, probably 4 inches taller than Ranger and maybe 50 or 60 pounds heavier and it didn't look like any of it was fat. He grabbed Ranger by the neck and tried to body slam him into the wall, the way Ranger had just done to the second man. Ranger braced his legs and jabbed back with his elbow, pulling himself free and spinning away as the main behind him let go and sucked in a breath.

The larger man swung at Ranger, his huge fist connecting with Ranger's jaw, knocking him back a step. Ranger's fist shot out and connected with the other man's stomach, definitely knocking him back several steps. I watched Ranger as he fought with the remaining robber, trading blows with him. The thing about Ranger in motion is that there were no wasted movements. Everything was planned, calculated and calm.

It was beautiful, in a violent way. He was beautiful. It was also very … sexy, seeing that power and control.

From next to me, where LJ and Frankie were supposed to be safely crouched behind the protection of the wall, came twin whispers. "Wow," LJ breathed. "How totally cool."

Frankie nodded. "Totally," he agreed.

I had to agree, too, but we might have been thinking about the situation from different viewpoints. Then I remembered we were all supposed to be hiding behind the wall and I pulled LJ and Frankie down with me. Mary Lou grabbed both of her boys to her tightly.

As soon as I saw the boys were secured, I looked over the wall again. The third man was on the ground, not moving, and Ranger was talking to someone from the bodega. In just a few minutes, he'd gotten the whole thing under control.

I stood back up, blew out a long breath and then sat in one of the cafe chairs. Mary Lou joined me. The boys both avidly watched the scene in front of them.

"This is way better than movies or TV," LJ said.

"Totally," Frankie agreed again.

Two police cars arrived, along with an ambulance. Two policemen stayed to talk to Ranger while the EMTs hustled inside the bodega. The other two policemen, a man I didn't recognize and a blond woman I'd seen once or twice, went to cuff the robbers and put them in the back of the police cars. Apparently they didn't need an ambulance.

It took about 20 minutes for the police to survey the scene, haul off the bad guys, get Ranger's story and release him to us. LJ and Frankie watched all of the commotion with wide, fascinated eyes. The police were interviewing other witnesses when Ranger walked back to us.

"Ranger!" I said. "Are you alright?" His lip was bleeding a little at the corner and I reached for him. "There were three of them."

He pulled away from me and he didn't roll his eyes, but the tone of his "Babe," was the Ranger equivalent of an eye roll. Apparently three-against-one was not something he worried about.

"Tomás, the bodega owner, was shot in the leg but he should be out of the hospital in a few days. His wife and daughter were frightened but they are fine." He held his hand out for his gun and I gave it back to him, the same way he'd given it to me. He put it in the pocket of his black denim jacket. "The cops picked up your stun gun as evidence. I'll replace it."

"No need," I said. The look he gave me said he'd replace it anyway. "The robbers?"

"Headed for jail. Not their first armed robbery." He checked his watch. "I have a meeting in 15." He nodded at Mary Lou. "Mrs Stankovic," then he nodded at LJ and Frankie, "boys." Finally he turned to me. "Steph."

We faced each other for a moment, without saying anything.

Both boys - and I - watched Ranger turn and walk away.

"Thank you for the ice cream, Captain Manoso," LJ shouted at his back.

Ranger had reached the door of his sleek black Porsche. He turned back, his face serious, and nodded once at LJ.

He'd made quite the impression. On all of us.