22 Caliber - A Stephanie Plum-inspired Story

Chapter Twenty

Three days into my protection detail and we were starting to fall into a pattern. Hal and I worked together trying to catch skips all day. Morelli, Ranger, Hal and I ate dinner together every night, often from a casserole Ranger brought from Ella. During this time we would review the progress Morelli and Ranger had made during the day. This didn't take long, as Morelli and Ranger were making no progress. They had spoken to all the same people I had spoken to and had retraced my steps. No new information was given. It was frustrating. One or more of those people had to be protecting Mario and they weren't giving him up. It was particularly upsetting to Morelli since Mario was his brother. The chances were high the person protecting Mario was a family member.

After dinner Joe would walk Bob and leave me with Ranger and Hal for protection. When Joe came back Ranger would depart for the evening, leaving the three of us to watch whatever game or action flick was on the TV until it was time for bed. Hal elected to forgo sleeping in the guest bedroom with the explanation that he would hear any potential threats better if he slept on the couch. So we would set up the couch for Hal before heading up to bed ourselves. I knew Ranger also had a car outside Morelli's house at night staffed with two more employees in case Hal or Morelli were sleeping too heavily to hear any intruders.

The high level of protection was driving me crazy. It was too cozy, too claustrophobic an arrangement which everyone seemed to handle much better than me. And ultimately I didn't even think it made sense. We couldn't catch the person in the act of threatening me if the person couldn't get close enough to me to do so. I talked to Ranger about it. "Better to feel claustrophobic than to be dead," he said logically, "and this level of protection is just giving us more time to work on finding the person responsible, whether it is Mario or someone else. We aren't finding answers fast and we need to know you're safe while we figure this out." Ranger left no room for argument.

We received no blackmail threats at Morelli's house. I hadn't been back to my apartment to see if there were any threats there, but I also hadn't received any phone calls from Dillon. I took that as a good sign.

On Friday, Hal and I decided to go back to get Kenchiro. We drove out to The Pines and parked behind the same clump of trees as before to get suited up. I asked Hal whether he had a knife. He pulled out a pocket knife and asked if it would do. I confirmed it would. We got back into the car and drove back to the trailer. Hal and I got out of the car. I whispered to Hal to wait there and quietly walked over to Kenchiro's truck. Hal followed two steps behind me anyway. I crouched down and used the knife to puncture all four tires. The car slowly sank to the ground. I handed the knife back to Hal and whispered "thank you." Hal smiled, put the knife back into his pocket and we walked up to the trailer. Hal pulled his gun and stood at the side of the door and nodded that he was ready. Yelling "bond enforcement", I opened the door and stepped a few steps inside the trailer to face an angry six-foot man looking down a shot-gun barrel at me.

"Did you fucking think I didn't fucking know you were going to fucking come back? I was fucking packing to fucking leave", he said. It was hard to wade through all the "fuckings" to figure out what Kenchiro was saying.

"Hi. I don't know if you remember who I am. I'm Stephanie Plum. I represent Vincent Plum Bail Bonds and you missed your court date. I need you to come with me to reschedule."

"I'm not fucking going to re-fucking schedule. Why can't you fucking get it through your fucking thick head? I don't want to fucking go back to no fucking jail."

"Who said anything about going to jail?" I asked. "I just want to take you back to get rescheduled. You can get bonded out again. Since it's morning we could bond you out by the end of the day."

"Thanks, but I don't fucking have any fucking thing else to use as fucking collateral. And my fucking family, those fucking bastards, refused to fucking help me out the last fucking time. They won't fucking help me this fucking time. I'm not fucking going to fucking jail again."