Finger Lickin' Fifteen (Stephanie Plum 15)

RANGER WAS IN the shower when I got to the apartment. I flopped onto the couch, pulled a pillow over my head, and hoped when he came out he wouldn’t notice me lying there.

Pretend you’re in a good place, I told myself. You’re on a beach. Hear the waves swooshing in and out. Hear the seagulls.

The pillow got lifted off my face and Ranger looked down at me. “You can run, but you can’t hide,” he said.

“Just shoot me and get it over with.”

“Talk to me.”

“Ernie Dell.”

Ranger yanked me to my feet, pulled me into the hall and out the door. “He needs to find another hobby.”

Ranger

is a master of control. He can lower his heart rate at will and walk past a bakery and never be tempted. On the surface, Ranger would appear to have no emotion. It’s anyone’s guess what rages below the surface. What I do know about Ranger is that he’s most dangerous when he’s dead calm. And right now he was pretty calm, except for having his hand clamped around my wrist.

Neither of us said a word in the elevator. Ranger guided the Turbo out of the garage, and I gave him directions to Ernie’s house. He looked relaxed at the wheel. No angry little lines in his forehead. No tense muscles working in his jaw. He also wasn’t talking. He was in his zone.

We drove down the alley behind Ernie’s house and parked in his driveway, Ranger still not saying anything, looking at the wreck of a haunted mansion in front of him. We got out of the Porsche and walked to the building’s back door. Ranger listened for a moment and knocked. No answer. Ranger knocked again.

There was a sound overhead like a window being raised. I looked up to see and Splooosh. I was doused head to foot with red paint.

Ranger was standing inches from me, and he didn’t have a drop on him. He was in black Rangeman tactical gear of T-shirt, cargo pants, and windbreaker, and he was pristine. He looked at me and did a small I can’t believe these things always happen to you gesture with his hands.

“If you so much as crack a smile, that’s the end of our friendship,” I said to him.

The corners of his mouth twitched a little, and I knew he was smiling inside.

“Babe,” he said.

“I’m a mess.”

“Yes, but we’re going to have fun washing this paint off you when we get back to my apartment.” He unholstered his gun and handed it to me. “Stay here and don’t move from this spot. If you see Ernie Dell, shoot him.”

“What if he isn’t armed?”

“He’ll be armed by the time the police get here.”

Ranger disappeared inside the house, leaving the kitchen door open. A minute later, I heard something crash overhead. The crash was accompanied by a loud grunt, as if the air had been knocked out of someone. I’d seen Ranger in action on other manhunts, and I suspected this was Ernie Dell getting thrown against a wall. There was a moment of silence and then more thumping and crashing. I looked inside, past the kitchen, and saw Ernie sprawled on the floor at the foot of the stairs. Ranger hauled him to his feet and wrangled him to the back door.

“What was all that crashing?” I asked Ranger.

“He slipped on the stairs.”

Ernie’s hands were cuffed behind his back, and he wasn’t looking happy. I was relieved to have captured Ernie, but it was annoying that it was so easy for Ranger to execute a take down and next to impossible for me.

“You have other talents,” Ranger said, reading my thoughts.

“Such as?”

He tucked my hair behind my ear so it wouldn’t drip paint on my face. “You’re smart. You’re intuitive. You’re resilient.” He thought about it for a beat. “You’re stubborn.”

“Stubborn is a good thing?”

“Not necessarily. I ran out of good things.”

A Rangeman SUV glided into the driveway and parked. Tank and Ramon got out and went pale when they saw me.