AN: Thank you all for the love you showed Thursday! I'm aiming for weekend-ish updates, hope you like Friday! Anything familiar belongs to Janet, any mistakes are all mine.

I had nobody to blame but myself for the predicament I was facing. There was no way I was escaping this time either. I was in an actual cell, with full surveillance, guards, locks, no chatty egomaniacal villain and no help coming from Ranger.

"I didn't actually say he was going to be there," I said to my guard. "I said that I was willing to bet that his math teacher knew where he was, and there was no harm in us going to ask. If you just let me out..."

"Sorry, but I can't do that; I really like my job. It pays well, and it has full dental. I have three kids with serious orthodontic issues," he said, with a shrug.

"He said there would be cake," I mumbled and sat down on the hard bench/bed thing. I folded my arms across my chest and slumped against the cold cinder block wall.

"Can't speak to that ma'am," he said.

The door to the cell block opened and in strolled my captor. He held out a pink pastry box, and I glared at him. He unlocked the door and put it on the bench beside me and then leaned against the cell door, arms folded, staring impassively at me. I looked down at the box and opened it. I stared silently at the contents, for a minute. If he were anyone else, he probably would have just thought I was taking some time to compose myself, so I didn't yell at him. He knew me better; he knew I was trying not to laugh.

"You're such a jerk," I said, "Did you ask them to write this on the cake?"

"Nope, it was supposed to be picked up yesterday," he said.

"How could you resist?"

"Precisely."

I liked to keep birthday cake in my freezer for emergencies; I usually bought birthday cakes that were commissioned, personalized and then never picked up. This one was covered in little icing roses and had 'Happy Birthday Stanley' written on it. It was just about identical to the one I'd bought him as a get well soon, present. It almost mitigated how pissed off at Ranger I was. Almost. I was pretty fucking pissed off.

"I didn't try to take him down," I said, "I was going to approach a Math teacher at a high school to see if I could get a bead on Gimbal. I am allowed out of the building, and I wasn't going to go without backup. I was even about to call you to see if you were cool with that when your goon squad decided that I needed an intervention. Apparently I have an addiction to free will, and walking under my own power."

"Babe," Ranger said.

"No honestly! I was actually going to call you!" I said. His response was to stare at me, looking like he was thinking about, thinking about smiling. Okay, so I wasn't going to call him because there was absolutely no reason why I couldn't have gone, and we both knew it. I narrowed my eyes at him, in response to his lack of response.

He crooked a finger at me, and I stayed mutinously on the bench. I was really fucking bored. Like really super bored. Like I had nothing to do and if I had to stay at the house one more second I was going to do something stupid, like pull a Brittney and shave my head.

I was persona nongrata in our gated community because it got out that I was investigating everyone in the neighborhood, and several prominent members of our community ended up getting arrested. Our original target had been a bad guy who was into exposing dirty little secrets, and as a result, everyone was afraid that I now knew everything there was to know about them.

We looked at like fifteen people in depth, max. There are around 4000 people living, at least temporarily, in the neighborhood; did they really think that I memorized all of that data in the week we were there? I mean wicked that they think I'm that smart, but it was a pain in the ass not being able to go anywhere without people either angry, or afraid that we were going to out their secrets if they weren't nice to us. Which meant there were a lot of plastic smiles aimed at me, followed by polite, fake reasons why they needed to be anywhere but where I was standing.

Ranger didn't have this issue. One, because he was drop dead sexy and carried a gun. Two, because he was largely behind the scenes, while I was the one ferreting out information under the guise of making friends, and three Ranger was used to people being scared of him, so he could really give a shit.

I started staying in the house and became far too invested in reality tv. When I found myself getting a little too pissed off at the contestants on Chopped, I decided, that maybe it was time to go back to work. I had already tried it once before, but after a couple of days at work, I felt like I had mono, so we decided to give it more time. When I brought up going back to work again, Ranger and I discussed it, and he agreed to see how I handled a week of research and light office work before we discussed getting back to the more strenuous aspects of my job.

Then this morning, Ranger came by my desk and dropped Gimbal's file in my inbox, and said, "There's more going on here than it looks like; look into it. I'm out of the office today; if you want help with it, talk to Bulldog, and he'll hook you up."

A couple of hours later, I had a lead, and when I couldn't get the teacher on the phone, I suggested to my cube mate, Jack, that it might be a good idea to swing by the school to question the teacher before we picked up lunch. That's when I found myself in my current predicament, and a little hangry if I'm honest. If we were at home, I probably wouldn't be in this mess, and if I were, I'd probably have an accomplice in here with me. I was really, really starting to hate Florida.

"Give me the truck, I'll drive back to Trenton and round up bad guys on my own turf," I groused.

"The doctor said one more week, and you were cleared to fly again," he said. My recent brush with what was apparently borderline severe hypoxia had the doctors reluctant to let me in a pressurized aircraft until they were certain I was fully recovered.

"Come get me in a week then," I mumbled and flopped down on the bench, "Just be a dear and see to it that there's peanut butter with my bread and water." Okay, so the dramatics were a bit much. I'll admit that, but honestly, if I didn't do that, I was probably going to cry out of pure frustration, and I was too pissed off to let myself do that.

"No bread and water. Too many carbs not enough protein," Ranger said. He walked all the way into the cell and crouched down beside me, "You're looking pretty crazy, Babe."

"Of course I am!" I yelled, the effect was maybe lost by the fact that I was lying on my back, "You had your men lock me in a cell, because I wanted to go to a high school, in a good neighborhood, to speak to a fucking Math teacher! A Math teacher with no criminal record, no suspected history of violence, no registered weapons, no firearms training, he's never even taken a self-defence class at the Y! He volunteers at an animal shelter rehabbing injured kittens! Tell me how the hell was I in any danger?"

"I'd be very surprised if you were," he said.

"Seriously, it's my job to go after guys who are a hell of a lot more dangerous than this guy. Sure, yeah there's a tiny chance I'd be at risk, but I was going to go with back up! That wasn't a lie; I really was."

"I know."

"Just because we're married doesn't mean I'm going to stop working. The doctor said I couldn't fly or go scuba diving, but otherwise, I was cleared to do everything else, so why the fuck can't I do my job?"

"You can do your job; I wouldn't have given you Gimbal if I didn't think you could handle him. I only threatened you with incarceration a couple of weeks ago because you were still getting winded walking from the pool to the kitchen. In top form, you couldn't handle the three men in those files, on your own,"

"Ranger, like three days later I was the one to put the fucking cuffs on Jankowitz!" Big money skip, more or less thought of as a lost cause, I figured out where he was, semi-accidentally, and we brought him in, on our wedding day. I swung my legs back over the side of the bunk and sat up.

"I was there."

"Then you're going to have to help me out here, because if I could participate in that take down, and I can handle Gimbal, and you're cool with me working, WHY THE FUCK AM I DOWN HERE!?"

"Because I didn't think to rescind the order, since I never actually made it to anyone but you, in private, in my office. One of my men, and I'll find out which one, overheard the conversation and they decided that I was serious. They got it into their heads that I would do something so asinine as lock my wife in a jail cell after I've brought her in on many, much more challenging, cases in the past."

"You've locked me up before Ranger," I said and folded my arms across my chest.

"There was a hit man out to kill you; it was my apartment; not a cell, and I left you the keys to my car," he said. "If I were serious about keeping you in the building against your will, you wouldn't have made it out of the garage, and, because you're wiley, I'd have had you sedated."

"Did you just use the word 'wiley'?" I asked, half laughing and he winked, "Didn't they call you to tell you I was down here?"

"They left a message a couple of hours ago, my phone was off," he said, "I didn't get it until half an hour ago."

"So why didn't you spring me when you picked it up?"

He reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone and handed it to me. I went to turn it on and got the dead battery symbol. My mouth dropped open, and I stared back up at him, in utter shock, "How does this even happen to you? This thing gets charged every night, and you plug it in, whenever you get in the car."

"Somebody kicked the docking station last night, and the cord came partially dislodged from the wall. The phone was at 30% when I left the house this morning, and I haven't been in the car for more than ten minutes at a time today."

"Oh no, don't go blaming me for that. You were the one who put me in that position in the first place because you wanted to get all creative."

"If I were blaming you for it, there wouldn't be cake right now."

"I'm still pissed."

"I'll redirect you to the cake, and there's something else," He walked to the edge of the cell and looked at my guard. "Go."

He didn't bark the order. It was said in a quiet, even tone. It was kind of like when you did something wrong as a kid and instead of your mom yelling at you, she calmly told you to go to your room. That's when you knew you'd really fucked up, and just accepted that you were probably grounded for the next year.

Ranger waited until he was gone and pointed his fob at the security cameras, scrambling the feed.

"Before I came down here, I took five minutes to call Lester. He's getting on a plane later today, he's bringing Hal and Cal back with him, and between them, they are coming up with a revenge plan."

Okay, Ranger was forgiven. 100%, not even mad at him anymore. It wasn't his fault, he was apologizing (with cake) for not springing me the second he found out I was in jail, and he was strongly encouraging revenge on the Miami Men. Yeah, I was good.

"You're really good at sucking up," I said, "I never knew that about you."

"If you're going to bother doing something, be the best at it," He said, and I laughed. He clicked the security cameras back on, "Let's go talk to your Math teacher."

"You're coming with me? I know you're busy Ranger, I can take one of the men. I'm sure right now they're all going to be bending over backwards to be super helpful," I said.

"I don't think they are prepared for you yet," Ranger said.

"Why? because I'm Calamity Jane?" I asked.

"No, because they are upstairs shitting themselves over what my reaction to their stupidity is going to be when you're the one they need to worry about," he said.

We took the elevator up to the fifth floor and stepped out. "Boss, we…" One of the men started, and Ranger glared them all into silence. I followed Ranger into his office and sat down at his desk where I pulled up my information on James Gimbal. Ranger looked at it over my shoulder.

Gimbal was 18, from a middle-class neighborhood, not unlike the Burg but without the aging wiseguys. His parents went through a nasty separation, and during that time, he went a bit off the rails. His Math teacher brought him back in line by getting him big into computer programming. His parents reconciled after about a year apart, but Gimbal moved out of the house and got a place in Hialeah. A few months ago he moved from there, to a Condo in Palmetto Bay. He told his parents that his sudden change in fortune was due to a new job. In reality, it turned out he had some 'backers' helping him finance the development of an App that allowed him to control the slots at any Casino.

He did well with it until he decided, like all teenagers, that he knew everything, went against his backers' instructions and did something stupid. Rather than gradually win oodles of money under the radar at the casino, he would go for the Jackpot three times in one night, and got himself caught. Getting caught turned out to be a not so good thing for Gimbal on many levels, but mainly on the scary-Russian-Mafia-is-pissed-about-losing-their little-cash-cow, level.

The best thing for him would be to come back in and make a deal, because really, there were bigger fish to fry than an 18-year-old punk with no priors, who was just looking to walk on the wild side a little. He put his car up as collateral for his bail and then he promptly disappeared. I didn't really blame him; if I were a freaked out teenager, with the mob after me, I'd be doing a disappearing act too.

My thought was maybe he was hiding with a friend from school, and the person who would most likely know who that might be would be the Math teacher.

"The teacher's name is Phillip Robarts," I said, "He's fifty-four, and I was going to try to find his picture on the faculty website when the goon squad locked me up."

I found his picture; he was about as harmless looking as I expected him to be. He had a round pink face, friendly smile, big brown eyes behind little wire glasses, and in his bio, it said that in addition to being a youth councilor, he was a Disney Golden Apple recipient because he was such an amazing teacher.

I folded my arms on the desk and looked at Ranger, "Are you sure you want to do this?"

"It's either that, or stay here and take half of my men to the mats, and right now that would be a bad idea," he said.

"Are you pissed?"

"Pissed doesn't begin to cover it," Ranger said.

"Oookay then," I said.

The drive to the school took about twenty minutes, and we pulled into the lot just as the final bell rang. Ranger found a spot at the back; there were spaces closer to the school, but we were in the truck, and it didn't exactly fit in most spaces, Ranger's Porsche was not exactly low key, and we didn't want to draw more attention than Ranger was already likely to. I was wearing a pair of cut-off shorts and a girly t-shirt.

Ranger was going to be attracting attention because he was dressed like it was entirely possible that once he finished with what we had to do, he was going to go out for a quick bite and then to maybe topple a dictatorship for dessert. In other words, he was more heavily armed than usual, "Where were you before anyway?"

"I told you, I was in a meeting," he said.

"With who? Deadpool?" I said.

"Deadpool is Marvel; we're DC," Ranger said. I giggle snorted and half stumbled as I got out of the truck. Ranger came around to my side of the vehicle and unlocked the drawer under the seat and stashed two of his four visible guns. "Are you armed?"

"No, why would I be? We're going to talk to a Math teacher. Look at this place; there aren't even metal detectors on doors."

He pulled a .22 from the armory and shoved it in the back of my shorts. "Ranger!" I said.

"Something doesn't feel right," he said. I looked around to see what had put him on alert. There was a cheerleading practice going on and some kids were running track. Everyone else was hanging out on or in their cars, or smoking under the bleachers; it was high school. Sure, high school was no cakewalk, but it wasn't exactly a war zone. Then again, Ranger and I had vastly different scholastic experiences; maybe he was having a flashback to that.

We went in through the main doors and asked directions to Mr. Robarts office. The school's secretary, introduced herself as Anne Needham, and offered to take us directly to him. The school was very modern, all of the classrooms were equipped with smart boards, and the desks in the classrooms were all set up to accept laptops. I commented on this too Mrs. Needham.

"Oh yes; this is all brand new. This class will be the first class to graduate from this new facility. You see our old building was becoming dangerous, and they found mold and asbestos in the parts of it, major cracks in the foundation, basically it was a mess, and it was decided that it would be cheaper to just build a new structure than to try and repair what we had. So we were given the funding to build from the ground up, and then some alumni pitched in and decided to make it as modern as we could."

She led us up a flight of stairs and knocked on a classroom door. "Hello Mr. Robarts, you have visitors."

"Oh come in!" he said, standing as we entered the classroom so he could shake our hands. He looked exactly like his picture, his smile pleasant and almost effusive, "I thought I knew all of my students' parents, but there are a lot of them; it's possible that I've missed a couple."

"They wish to speak to you about Lonnie," Anne said.

"Ahh, I see," He said, "Thank you Anne; I'll see them out when we're through."

She left and closed the door behind her.

"My name is Stephanie Manoso; this is Ranger. We represent Mr. Gimbals bondsman, Ben Brisbane," I said, "We were wondering if you might be able to answer some questions?"

"Of course, of course," he said, "Would you mind if we didn't do it in here, though? I would like to keep the vibe in here pretty relaxed, and this is such a horrible business, I feel like it would taint the place."

"Sure, I'm okay with that," I said. Ranger didn't say anything. Robarts put some papers he needed to grade into his briefcase and we followed him out of the classroom.

"There's a nice picnic area just beyond the parking lot, that should be free of students by now," he said as he took us through the school, "This new facility is exceptional. It's been up and running for a year and already the number of kids applying to, and getting accepted by colleges is up from sixty percent to almost ninety. The number of students applying to colleges in the Sciences is up from ten percent to forty."

"What about the students who can't afford a laptop?" I asked.

"One of our students has a father who owns a chain of electronic stores," he said. "In September each student was offered the laptops at less than wholesale cost, and those who couldn't afford it, had their's donated. You cannot hope to be successful in this day and age without access to computers. This way we don't have to worry about the cost of maintaining a computer lab, and for our seniors, it's something they can take with them to University."

"You have very generous alumni," Ranger said, "I was under the impression that the students who come to this school are largely from middle class families. I didn't realize there was this sort of wealth."

"We have a very talented developments office," Robarts said, "And of course our steering committee is top notch."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but this goes above and beyond what is normal for public school fundraising?" I asked.

"Truthfully I don't know," he said, "I started working here when I was fresh out of teacher's college, so I have no frame of reference. I've seen this school through some not so good times, and now the school is at its pinnacle."

We got to the parking lot, and he pointed to a wood paneled PT Cruiser, parked away from now nearly empty lot. "That's me, let me just put my things in the back and I'll meet you two over at those tables."

He gestured toward some picnic tables underneath some trees. He was right, it was the one area of the school yard that wasn't occupied by high school kids. Ranger and I were about half way to the tables when there was a familiar click, and then Ranger was shoving me hard to the left. My knees scraped across the ground, and I scuffed my hands and knees on the pavement as I made impact. That was the least of our problems, though, because there was the thunderous rapid report of what I could only assume was an enormous machine gun.

Ranger had jumped for cover in the opposite direction and was taking shelter behind another truck. He motioned for me to stay low and to head towards our truck. I did as ordered and caught sight of the trees and the picnic table, which appeared to now be on fire. Holy shit was whoever was shooting at us, using tracer rounds? Not only that but whatever it was that he was using was a large enough caliber that one of the rounds blasted a hole through part of the metal picnic table frame.

I looked for Ranger, and of course, there was no way I was going to see him. He'd turned himself into smoke. I climbed into the truck and radioed Rangeman, to let them know we were under fire and got them to co-ordinate with Miami-Dade. That done, with a break in the firing, I chanced a peek out of the window, and nearly froze in shock. Robarts was standing on the frame of his car, with a fifty cal machine gun on the roof of his PT Cruiser, and he was reloading.

I relayed the information to Rangeman over the radio, "Are you sure it's a fifty cal?" Bulldog asked incredulously.

"Oh yeah," I said.

"No offense Mrs. R, but.."

"Oh for fuck sake, hang on," I grumbled and used my phone to take a video of Robarts as he resumed fire with his gun, getting a clear shot of the tripod mounted gun. I caught a glimpse of Ranger behind Robarts. I sent the video to Bulldog and then watched as Ranger approached. The gun fire stopped again, and it looked like Robarts was waiting to see if we'd come out from under our cover. Ranger was too far away to intercept Robarts, and Ranger must have wanted to take him down without killing him, or he'd already be dead. There was no way he was going to be able to do this, without coming out into the open, and unless Robarts' attention was elsewhere, Ranger was going to be a sitting duck.

I pulled out my phone and sent Ranger a text.

Going to distract him-S

Don't get shot. I've grown attached. -R

I took a deep breath, and staying crouched down, I started the truck and slammed it into reverse, backing out of the space, cranking the wheel as I did. I threw it into gear and slammed on the gas creating a moving target for the Robarts. He started firing again but managed to miss the massive quad cab truck and nailed an empty POS Ford instead. The interior of the Ford caught fire and lit up like a Christmas tree.

I didn't want him to start shooting in the direction of the students' so I really wanted Ranger to stop him before I came to the opposite side of the lot and had to turn around. The gunfire stopped, and I looked over to see Robarts on the ground being cuffed by Ranger, and then looked back at the car that was on fire. Yeah, that was going to blow up any second, I drove the truck to use it as a shield to protect Ranger and Robarts from the blast and then scrambled out of the passenger side of the truck and onto the ground next to Robarts.

"Hey," I said, leaning forward to look around Robarts, "How's it going?"

"You're bleeding," Ranger said. I looked down at my hands and knees. I was bleeding, and there were little bits of gravel in the scrapes on my knees. They would sting like a bitch later when I cleaned them up.

"I've had worse," I said, "And on the bright side, I'm relatively clean, and my clothes don't need to be thrown out. I'm calling it a win."

Then there was a loud BARRROOOOOOMMM as the Ford exploded, taking out the cars on either side of it. We were both far too experienced with car explosions to get up just yet as we waited for the secondary explosion. Robarts however went to stand up to gawk, Ranger and I each grabbed him by the back of the pants and yanked him back down, just in time for the next Barrrooom, the sound of screaming metal and then a loud crash. It was followed by the sounds of sirens filling the lot, and the whop whop whop of a news helicopter flying overhead.

Ranger hauled Robarts to his feet, then helped me to mine. I whistled as I looked around the lot. The car carnage was impressive, they were a twisted pile of dead car, sort of all fused together in one massive ball of fire. The parking lot, that had been pretty much empty, was filling rapidly with police cars, ambulances, and news vehicles.

"So, when we get back, I'll just go ahead and lock myself in the basement," I said.