22 Caliber - A Stephanie Plum-inspired Story

Chapter Twenty-One

"What now?" Ranger asked.

"Lunch. I'd better head back into the office to get my checks for Kenchiro and Kimmel and deposit them in the bank. And I need to tell Morelli what happened."

"Why don't we meet Morelli in half an hour at Pino's?" Ranger suggested.

I phoned Morelli, who agreed to meet us at the restaurant. Ranger and I were there first and headed to a booth in the back. Ranger took a seat with a good view of the entire restaurant. I sat across from him. Morelli arrived shortly after us. He came over to give me a hug and blanched at the blood he saw on my shirt. "Not mine", I said quickly. Morelli sat down beside me.

"Whose?" Morelli had his cop eyes focused on me as he scanned my body and assessed me to make sure I was alright.

"Hal's", I said.

"Tell me."

I went over what happened again. Morelli went pale when I got to the part where Kenchiro moved me at gunpoint to his truck. And he went even whiter when I told him Kenchiro tried to shoot me and would have if only the door hadn't redirected the aim of the shot. Dazed, he said "I have a girlfriend who foils kidnapping attempts."

"Isn't that a good thing?" I said. I quickly told him the rest, telling him about how Hal was a hero and had tackled Kenchiro and about Hal's subsequent injury. And I told him Kenchiro was now in custody again. He nodded quickly. He still wasn't happy. We paused in our talking to order. Ranger ordered a Greek salad, dressing on the side, hold the olives. I ordered a Caesar salad with grilled chicken and extra croutons and Joe ordered a meatball sub.

Ranger began to talk. "With Hal out, I am now down a man. I have a meeting I have to go to this afternoon, but after that I can free up my schedule and will handle Stephanie's detail myself. I don't have anyone to handle this afternoon though. Can you protect Stephanie this afternoon? Alternatively, I can lock her in my apartment until I am finished my meeting."

"What were you hoping to do this afternoon?" Morelli asked me.

"I was hoping to go into the office to pick up my checks for the Kimmel and Kenchiro captures, drop them off at the bank and then head to my apartment to try to clean up the place a bit more."

"I can do that. I want to check out your apartment anyway to see if there are any more threats there. I have some overtime coming to me. Just let me phone it in so my department knows I am off duty this afternoon."

Later that afternoon, Morelli and I parked in the lot as close to the building as we could get. We looked up at my apartment. The windows looked whole and in one piece. Taking this as a good sign, we took the elevator up to the second floor. My door looked like it was locked. Another good sign. Morelli motioned me to the side, unlocked the door and opened it. Gun drawn, he entered the apartment and searched the place, paying particular attention to the closets, under the bed and behind the shower curtain. Announcing it was clear, he walked back to meet me at the door. I came in and shut the door, and Morelli reached around behind me and locked it. "You know," he said, "we have some time to ourselves without a protection detail guarding you. Maybe we could use that time constructively" and he gave me a kiss and added some tongue. His hands came up under my shirt and stroked the undersides of my breasts and I felt a warm pull that extended down to the tips of my toes. "Race you to the bedroom?" I suggested.

Feeling much more relaxed, Joe and I worked together to pile the broken furniture near the front door. We each took a pile of trash and headed down to the dumpster. Morelli was just about to put his pile in the bin when we heard shots. Joe dropped his load on the ground, crying out and grabbing his upper arm. In a period which felt like eternity but was probably only a few milliseconds long, I froze and stared at him in horror. Joe dropped to the ground, reached up and pulled me down with him. Blood seeped through his sleeve. Bullets continued to ping off and around the dumpster, one hitting me in my calf. "I've been shot", I cried. Morelli dragged me around to the back of the dumpster, out of the path of the bullets. He took out his gun and laid it in his lap, reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone and called dispatch. The bullets stopped hitting the dumpster. And then, as he sat beside me in the calm after the storm, Morelli called Ranger.