Chapter Sixteen

Joe Morelli just stared at him for a second like his eyes were lying to him. Ranger got a perverse satisfaction out of that. Morelli was the idiot, after all, that chose to pass on the trip. Sent Steph to Hawaii all alone. What did he expect to happen?

Then Morelli's eyes flicked to Steph. Shit. All she would see is the hurt. He was going to lose her sooner than he'd expected. Then Morelli's eyes dropped to the ring on her left hand and rage snapped through his black eyes. He crossed the foyer in one step with an exhale of sonofabitch, his fist cutting into Ranger's face.

The retaliation was all instinct when Ranger broke his nose. Morelli's head snapped back, blood spurting down his face and onto Ranger's knuckles. Morelli swung at him again and Ranger slammed him into the wall hard. Savage.

Morelli tackled his middle and they fell back onto the coffee table and then crashed to the floor. He could hear Steph shouting at them with that shrieky, panicked voice she got. An equal mix of fury and fear. But he couldn't stop. Every blow he landed felt like justice. Morelli deserved to bleed. And not just for the cheap shot. No. This was personal.

He got in another shot across Morelli's face and caught a fist to the ribs. They rolled again and he had the upper hand. And then metal prongs touched the back of his neck and the lights went out.

He was only vaguely aware of his surrounding as he fought the shadows. He was in a car. His hands cuffed in front of him. Steph's voice was like a whisper of wind in the distance. It was the only thing that kept him from trying to break free. She was swearing. Profusely. A constant mutter of angry curses that she wasn't even aware she was saying out loud.

The emergency bay of a hospital came into focus when he managed to open his eyes. He didn't let her know that he was alert, though. She would be furious with him. With both of them. Grown men who had acted like children. Fighting over her like she was a toy in the schoolyard.

Morelli was twitching in the backseat beside him. Murmuring in a low string of Italian as he regained consciousness. Ranger knew almost no Italian, but he recognized a fair few of the words Morelli was using. If he hadn't been cuffed, he might have hit him again.

It took several orderlies to drag them out of the car and into the waiting room. Two massive men handcuffed and covered in blood must have made quite the impression. Steph had them set him up on the wall by the nurses' station. Morelli by the ER doors. Probably afraid that if they were too near one another, things might escalate again.

He couldn't say that was a baseless fear. Especially given the daggers Morelli was shooting at him through the mask of blood.

He had never intended to fight Morelli. Not that it hadn't been tempting over the years. Morelli could be an ass. Most of the time he was a good guy, though. And Ranger couldn't blame him for his jealously. It was exactly how he would feel if a man like him was sniffing around after his girlfriend. Ranger knew all along that he was stepping on Morelli's toes every time he kissed her. That he was the one pushing into the middle of a situation where he didn't belong.

And yet something had snapped in him anyway. Something that broke through his careful control. This was Morelli's own fault, after all. He was the ass that took Steph for granted. Stepped back like a coward when things got hard. Ranger had sat on the sidelines for a long time watching that train wreck. Standing by to pick up the pieces when he should have been keeping his distance. And now Steph had seen a glimpse of the darkness in him. It probably terrified her.

She was standing just outside of the waiting room, watching them from the safety of the hallway, her arms wrapped around her chest. Watching Morelli. There was a fair amount of anger simmering there. But mostly she looked sad. Letting the guilt eat at her as she watched Morelli refuse to look at her. She loved him. Didn't like seeing him hurt. And not just the swollen eyes and the broken nose Ranger had given him. She had hurt him too. Because she had the audacity to move on.

Fucking Morelli.

Ranger knew he didn't have any right to hate him in that moment, but he did. And not just because he was going to get the girl. It was because, deep down, Ranger knew he was supposed to let him.

Steph's eyes moved from Morelli to Ranger. He thought for sure that he would see fear. He had been an animal. Tearing into the man she loved like a feral dog. No control. No remorse. Covered in Morelli's blood as much as his own. He didn't see fear, though. He saw the same guilt and sadness as when she'd looked at Morelli. She was blaming herself. Christ.

She shied away from his gaze and slipped into the hallway. He would have given anything to go after her, but he knew he couldn't. And not just because it would cause an upset since he was still handcuffed and bloody. No. She wouldn't have let him. Not in front of Morelli.

He tried to hurry the doctors along when they started assessing the damage. Seven stitches under his left eye, the result of Morelli's right hook. They took an x-ray of his hand too when they saw the swelling. He had a break in his fourth metacarpal. A Brawler's Fracture. Guess he hit Morelli harder than he'd expected when the calm exterior slipped.

It had been a couple of hours since he'd seen Steph. She hadn't come to check on him after they carted him into the ER. He'd texted Noah from radiology. The answer said that she'd gone back to the resort. A small consolation. At least she wasn't with Morelli. The doctor wanted to put a cast on his hand, but he wouldn't wait. He let them splint it and pressed to be discharged.

He got a call from Noah as he was leaving the building.

"I'm on my way now," Ranger told him.

"Won't do you any good. She left."

"Where the fuck did she go?"

Noah was quiet for a second. Ranger didn't swear like that often. Not in a long time. Noah probably heard the anger still clinging under his thin veneer of calm. "Maybe you shouldn't follow her."

It took a good portion of his self control not to growl at the man. He disconnected and called Tank. "I need Steph's 20."

Tank didn't speak right away. For a dark moment, Ranger wondered if he'd talked to Noah. But after a few words in the background, he came back on the line. "Her signal says she's at the airport. I've got her on a flight at 11:35," he said. And then he hesitated. "You didn't know that?"

He didn't answer. "Get me on that flight."

"It boards in under an hour. You'll never make it through security."

"Then the next one."

"Next one's not until tomorrow." Tank paused a beat. "Is there something I should know?"

"No." Ranger considered his options. Didn't like any of them. He thought about having the flight held, but that would cause a lot of trouble he couldn't justify. He shut down his emotions. "Get me on her flight anyway, and book me on the next one as a backup."

"You got it."

Ranger disconnect and called Noah back. "I need a ride."

"You're going after her anyway aren't you?"

"If it makes you feel any better I've got a snowball's chance in hell of catching her."

It took Noah twenty minutes to get him to the airport. Ranger pushed his way through security, calling her cell for the twentieth time. It went straight to voicemail.

He got to the gate just in time to watch the plane lifting off the runway.

o o o

Ranger found the 911 in the airport parking lot, right where she'd told Noah it would be.

The 911 felt empty on his drive back to the resort. Wrathful energy roaming around the intimate space with the faint scent she'd left behind.

His phone rang just as he was crossing the threshold into the lobby. For a brief second he thought it might be Steph. Then he reminded himself that she was in the air.

It was Silvio. "Finally cracked through the security firewall. Searched the footage during the window you specified. I didn't see anyone suspicious near your place. Just maid service and a member of staff I've identified as Thomas Connor, the hotel's concierge. I'm sending you a photo. You want me to keep digging?"

The image came through a second later. It was a face he knew. Ranger turned the full measure of his fury on the squirrely guy behind the front desk. "Not necessary." He disconnected and stalked toward Thomas Connor. Thomas turned white. Ranger had to resist the urge to squeeze the guy by the throat and drag him over the front desk. Given the way his prey swallowed, the impulse must have been all over his face, along with the evidence of the fight with Morelli. He leaned in close.

The guy squeaked. "She told you?"

Ranger's already dark mood worsened. "She didn't have to. I have a man who was able to break into the hotel's security feed. That same man could cut out the cameras right now so that you and I could have a very private discussion." Thomas swallowed, sweat beading across his forehead. "What were you looking for when you searched the very expensive private cottage I paid for?"

"Y—your wife—she was acting—s—suspicious—I was just—trying to make sure she—w—was who you –s—said she was."

Ranger crooked a finger toward Thomas and the man leaned closer like he knew it was the less dangerous option. "You're lucky I have bigger problems right now. I don't need to add finding a place to dispose of a body to the list. But when you go to find a new job after I make sure you're fired from this one, I recommend that you second-guess who you choose to fuck with. Am I making myself clear?"

The guy nodded dumbly, too terrified to speak.

Ranger glared at him for a long moment before he turned his back on the kid and walked away.

He stood at the front door of the cottage for a moment before he pushed the door open. It felt empty too. All of Steph's things were gone. He went to get his gun off the bedside table and froze.

Sitting beside it, right next to his black wedding band, was her ring. It shone in the low light. Left behind when she ran away. Somewhere in the sky, Stephanie Plum was on an airplane with a naked finger. It was the first time he didn't like that some part of her was naked.

Another feeling that he shouldn't have.

He didn't land in Newark until late morning two days after Stephanie left. Tank was waiting at the airport. He'd left everything Noah had given him in the back of the Porsche. Including the hardware that Steph had wisely chosen to leave behind.

Tank didn't say anything on the drive back to Rangeman. He knew better. But there was little chance he hadn't figured out on his own what had happened. They pulled into the Rangeman garage and Ranger took the elevator up to his penthouse apartment.

It was usually a calm, cool bastion of serenity. This time it just felt empty.

He dropped his keys in the tray on the sideboard. Set his gun beside it. Flipped through the mail in a mindless effort to find normalcy. Didn't work.

He thought about calling her. Just to make sure she was safe. But he knew, given the way she'd fled the island, that seeing him was probably the last things she wanted. He needed to rest anyway. Seventeen hours on a plane wasn't exactly a picnic.

He scrubbed a tired hand over his face before he gave in and pulled up her GPS signal again. He watched it for a minute before he stepped away, heading into his cavernous walk in closet. He opened his gun safe.

Ranger looked at the beautiful white gold and diamond ring for a second before he closed the ring box and set it in the back corner of the safe, swinging the door shut.

Hope you enjoyed DARK PASSION

Now continue Ranger's side of the story in FEARLESS

The companion piece that runs parallel to PLUM SCARY

Starting Monday!