Eleven on Top (Stephanie Plum 11)

“I'm sleeping in the guest room, and I'm locking the door. I need a night of uninterrupted sleep. I'm running on empty. I was a mess at work. I couldn't keep my eyes open. And my guys feel like they've been run over by a truck. They need a day off.”

“What about my guys?”

“Cupcake, you don't have guys.”

“I have something.”

“You do. And I love it. But you're on your own tonight. You're going to have to fly solo.”

I rolled out of bed and crossed the hall to the little guest room. The door was open, and the room was empty. No Morelli in the bathroom or study, but Bob was sleeping in the bathtub. I crept down the stairs and walked through the house to the kitchen. There was

hot coffee, and a note had been left by the coffeemaker.

SORRY ABOUT LAST NIGHT. THE GUYS MISSED YOU THIS MORNING. DON'T WORK LATE.

That sounded hopeful. I poured a mug of coffee, added milk, and took it upstairs. An hour later, I was dressed in black jeans and black T-shirt, and I was ready for work. I'd called my dad and mooched a ride. He was at the curb when I came down the stairs.

“You're doing pretty good on the new job,” he said. “Almost a week. And nothing's caught fire or blown up.”

It'd be a real challenge for Spiro to penetrate Range-man. And that's probably the reason Morelli's garage got destroyed. Spiro went for what was available.

Truth is I was beginning to be bothered by the lack of activity. The garage went five days ago and there hadn't been any threatening notes, snipings, or bombings since the Buick.

“They're holding a memorial service for Michael Barroni today,” my father said. “Your mother said to tell you she's taking your grandmother. It's being held at Stiva's. Ordinarily they'd hold it at the church, but Stiva and Barroni were old friends, and I guess Stiva gave the Barronis a discount if they held the service in his chapel.”

“I didn't realize Stiva and Barroni were that close.”

“Yeah, me neither. I didn't see them spending a lot of time together. But then that happens when you got a big family and a business to run. You lose touch with your buddies.”

I had a chill run up my spine to the roots of my hair, and my scalp was tingling like I was electric. “How'd Stiva and Barroni get to be friends?” I asked, holding my breath, my heart skipping beats.

“They were in the army together. They were both at Dix.”

I might have the fifth man. I was so excited I was hyperventilating. Now there's the thing, why was I so excited? Ranger had his FTA, so the excitement didn't come from case closure. I barely knew Barroni and I didn't know the other three men at all, so there was nothing personal. My original long jump tying Anthony Barroni to Spiro and the missing men proved to be groundless. So why did I care? The four missing men seemed to be completely unrelated to anything I'd care about. And even if Spiro did turn out to have a tie to the four men, even if there was a crime involved, it really didn't matter to me, did it? Finding Spiro and stopping the harassment was really the only thing that mattered, right? Right. But stopping the harassment could be a problem. There were really only two ways the harassment would stop. Ranger could kill Spiro. Or Spiro could get convicted of a crime, like murdering Mama Macaroni, and get locked away. The latter was definitely the preferred. Okay, maybe I was excited about the fifth man because it might be Constantine Stiva. And if Con was involved, then Spiro might be involved. And if there wasn't evidence that convicted Spiro of the bombings, there might be evidence to convict him of the shallow grave homicides. So, was this why I couldn't wait to plug Con's name into the search program? I didn't think so. I suspected the hard reality was that it all just came down to tasteless curiosity.

I was a product of the Burg. I had to know all the dirt.

My dad pulled up to the front of the building and I jumped out. “Thanks,” I yelled, hitting the ground running.

I was supposed to sign in and sign out when I entered and left the building.

And I was supposed to show my picture ID when I came through the first-floor lobby. I never remembered to sign in or out, and my picture ID was lost in the garage fire. Good thing everyone knew me. Being the only woman in an organization had its upside.

I waved to the guy at the desk and danced in place, waiting for the elevator. I barreled out of the elevator on the fifth floor and crossed to my cubby.

I got my computer up and running and punched “Constantine Stiva” into the

newspaper search program. A single article appeared. It was small and on page thirteen. I would have missed it on my front-page search.

Private first class Constantine Stiva had been injured in his attempt to thwart a robbery. A government armored truck carrying payroll had been hijacked when it had stopped for a routine gate check at Fort Dix . Stiva had been on guard duty, along with two other men. Stiva was the only guard to survive.

He'd been shot in the leg. There'd been no mention of the amount of money involved. And there weren't a lot of details on the hijacking, other than a few brief sentences that the truck had been recovered. I searched papers for two weeks following the incident but came up empty. There'd only been the one article.

I called Ranger on his cell and got a message. I left my cubby and went to the console that monitored Rangeman cars. “Where's Ranger?” I asked Hal.

“He's not answering his cell, and I don't see him on the board.”

“He's on a plane,” Hal said. “He had to bring an FTA up from Miami . He'll be back tonight. Manny was supposed to bring the guy up on a red-eye yesterday, but he had problems with security, so Ranger had to go down this morning.”