Sizzling Sixteen (Stephanie Plum 16)

“Even with the best alarm system, there’s a ten to fifteen minute window before anyone responds. And in this part of town, the response is a lot longer . . . if at all.”

Ranger jogged to the back door, and within seconds, he had the door unlocked. He slipped inside, and a couple minutes later, I heard the alarm go off. I gripped the wheel and watched the building, keeping track of the time. Five minutes went by. Ten minutes. I had my teeth sunk into my lower lip, and I was thinking get out, get out, get out! The door opened at fourteen minutes. Ranger emerged alone and jogged back to the car.

“I’ll follow you home,” Ranger said. “I don’t want to talk here.”

I pulled away from the curb, and when I got to the corner, the stretch Lincoln slid to a stop in front of the funeral home and three men got out and went to the front door. Ranger and I drove past them and continued on down Stark.

RANGER WALKED ME to my apartment and stepped inside.

“Obviously, Vinnie wasn’t being held at Melon’s,” I said to him.

“The embalming room is in the basement, and it isn’t pretty. The upstairs rooms are being used as a cash drop. There’s a counting table and a safe in one of the rooms. The other rooms are storerooms. No sign of Vinnie.”

“What about Mickey Gritch? Did he make any more stops?”

“I checked with Chet. Mickey Gritch went straight home from Melon’s. Looks like he’s settled in for the night.” Ranger unzipped my sweatshirt. “We could be settled in for the night, too.”

I moved a step back from him. “Are you feeling domestic?”

The corners of his mouth softened into the smallest of smiles. “I’m feeling friendly.” He closed the distance between us, lifted my bag off my shoulder, and his focus moved from me to the bag.

“Are you carrying?” he asked. “This bag is heavy.”

“It’s the bottle.”

I took Uncle Pip’s bottle out of my bag and set it on the kitchen counter. Rex came out of his soup can house and looked through the glass aquarium at the bottle. His beady black eyes glistened, his whiskers whirred, and he put two little pink feet on the side of his cage. He blinked once and turned and scurried back into his soup can.

“Why are you carrying this bottle?” Ranger asked.

“This is the bottle I inherited from my Uncle Pip. It’s supposed to be lucky, and Lula decided we needed to carry it with us . . . just in case.”

Ranger’s smile widened. “Can’t hurt,” he said.

“Well, it didn’t do me any good tonight.”

“The night isn’t over,” Ranger said. “You could still get lucky.”

______

BEING A BOND enforcement agent almost never requires me to set my alarm clock. Felons are in the wind twenty-four hours a day, so I can pretty much pick which of those hours I want to go hunting. Lula usually rolls into the office around nine, and I’m usually right behind her. This morning was no different.

I’d sent Ranger home early the night before, deciding I wasn’t ready to get that lucky. A night with Ranger was tempting, but the cost would be high. My relationship with Morelli was currently on hold. A morning argument in Morelli’s kitchen a couple weeks ago had ended with the notion it might not be a bad idea if we saw other people, but the reality was that we weren’t. I felt comfortable with flirting and maybe a kiss, but I wasn’t comfortable going beyond that with another man right now.

“Hey, girl,” Lula said from the bonds office couch, “what’s up for today?”

“Dirk McCurdle and a drug guy named Chopper.”

“And Vinnie,” Connie said.

“Yeah,” I said. “And Vinnie.”

“Do you have any leads?” Connie asked.

“I know where he isn’t,” I told her. “I’d like an address for Dirk’s best friend, Ernie Wilkes. I’ve got one Mrs. McCurdle left. If she isn’t helpful, I’ll talk to Ernie.”

Connie punched a few keys on her computer, and it spit out Ernie’s address. She wrote the address on a slip of paper and handed it to me. “He’s retired from the button factory, so he should be at home.”

The phone rang and Connie picked it up. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll be right there.” She disconnected and grabbed her purse. “I have to bond out Jimmie Leonard. That means I have to lock the office up for an hour until I get back.”