Explosive Eighteen (Stephanie Plum 18)

I watched Buggy disappear around a corner. I procrastinated a minute, then gave in and called Ranger.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“I’m at Rangeman.”

Rangeman was the security company he partially owned. It was housed in a nondescript building in the center of Trenton, and it was filled with high-tech equipment and large, heavily muscled men in black Rangeman uniforms. Ranger kept a private apartment on the seventh floor.

“Some big dopey guy just stole my car,” I said to Ranger. “And he has my bag. And he’s FTA.”

“No problem. We have your car on the screen.”

Ranger has this habit of installing tracking devices on my cars when I’m not looking. In the beginning, I found the invasion of privacy to be intolerable, but I’ve gotten used to it over the years, and there are times when it’s come in handy … like now.

“I’ll send someone out to get your car,” Ranger said. “What do you want us to do with the big dopey guy?”

“How about if you cuff him, cram him into the backseat, and drive him to the bonds bus. I’ll take it from there.”

“And you?”

“I’m good. Lula’s on her way to pick me up.”

“Babe,” Ranger said. And he disconnected.

Okay, so I fibbed to Ranger about Lula. Truth is, I wasn’t ready to face him. Especially since he sounded a tiny bit exasperated. I looked down at my naked ring finger, grimaced, and called Lula.

FOUR

“YOU GOT SOFT IN HAWAII,” Lula said. “You lost your edge. That’s what happens when you go on vacation and do whatever the heck it is that you did. Which, by the way, I don’t even care about no more.”

Lula had picked me up at Buggy’s house, and we were on our way to the bonds office.

“I didn’t go soft in Hawaii,” I said. “I never had an edge.”

“That could be true about the edge, but you’ve been out after two felons now, and they both whupped your butt. So I thought maybe it was on account of being distracted by whatever it is you’re distracted by. Not that I care what it is. And notice what a good friend I am, even though you don’t care to confide in me and I disturbed my nap to rescue you.”

“I’m not distracted. You can attribute both whuppings to pure incompetence.”

“Well, aren’t you little Miss Down-on-Yourself. I could fix that. You need a doughnut.”

“I need more than a doughnut.”

“What, like chicken? Fries? Maybe one of them giant two-pounder bacon burgers?”

“I wasn’t talking about food,” I said to Lula. “You can’t solve all your problems with food.”

“Since when?”

“I’m thinking about taking a self-defense class. Maybe learn kickboxing.”

“I don’t need no self-defense class,” Lula said. “I rely on my animal instincts to beat the bejeezus out of an offending moron.”

That didn’t always work for me. I wasn’t all that great at beating the bejeezus out of people. My fight-or-flight instinct ran more toward flight.

“Now that I’m up from my nap, I’m in a mood to go after the big one,” Lula said. “I want to bag Joyce. Where’s she living? Is she still in that hotel-size colonial by Vinnie?”

“No. The bond agreement lists her address as Stiller Street in Hamilton Township.”

So far as I know, Joyce is currently single. Although that might be yesterday’s news. It’s hard to keep up with Joyce. She’s a serial divorcée, working her way up the matrimonial ladder, kicking used-up husbands to the curb while negotiating lucrative settlements. She left her last marriage with a net gain of an E-class Mercedes and half of a $1.5 million house. Rumor has it he got the guinea pig.