Explosive Eighteen (Stephanie Plum 18)

“Bingo.”

“It was a photo of a guy standing on a street corner,” I told Berger. “Casual. Not posed. Completely unexceptional. No piercings or tattoos. Just a nice-looking guy. Somewhere around forty. Short brown hair. Fair-skinned. He was wearing a dark suit.”

“Did you recognize the street corner?”

“No. It could have been anywhere. It looked like an office building in the background. No vegetation, so I don’t know if it was Hawaii, Oregon, or New York.”

“Would you recognize this guy if you saw him again?”

“Hard to say. Maybe. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the photo.”

“I’d like to set you up with an artist,” Berger said. “At this point, anything is better than nothing.”

“Do I want to know why this photo is so important?”

“No. I don’t even know. And I don’t want to know. Something to do with national security.”

“I’m being harassed by two men posing as FBI. Morelli ran them through the system, and they’re not with the Bureau.”

“American?”

“Yes.”

“It’s possible you’ll also have some foreign nationals sniffing around,” Berger said.

“Great. What am I supposed to do with these people?”

“Don’t let them get too close. I imagine some of them are nasty buggers.”

“Shouldn’t you be protecting me?”

“Protection got cut from the budget. Come back tomorrow, same time. I’ll have a forensic artist here. We’ll see if you can give us anything useful.”

I left the building and found Ranger lounging against my parked car, arms crossed over his chest, his expression unreadable, his posture relaxed. My messenger bag hung from his shoulder. He had a Band-Aid covering the stitches under his eye. The Band-Aid was a couple shades lighter than his skin. Ranger’s heritage was Cuban and his look was Latino. He was multilingual, ambidextrous, and street-smart. He was formerly Special Forces. He was my age. He was more big jungle cat than golden retriever.

“You’re driving without a license and probably no money or credit cards,” Ranger said.

“It seemed like the lesser of two evils.”

There was the hint of a twitch at the corner of his mouth, as if he might be thinking about smiling. “Are you saying I’m evil?”

Ranger was playing with me. Hard to tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“I’m saying I don’t know where I’m going with you,” I told him.

“Would you like me to make some suggestions?”

“No! You made enough suggestions in Hawaii.”

“You made some of your own,” he said. His gaze dropped to my hand. “You’re still wearing my mark on your ring finger. Not as legal as a wedding band, but it would qualify you for a good time.”

“That ring mark got you seven stitches and a broken bone in your hand.”

“At least Morelli fights clean.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Babe, you stun-gunned me on the back of my neck.”