Author's Note: Hi! I haven't been around for quite some time. Like a long time. I haven't read a JE story in forever. But ... I got to thinking about this idea and before I knew it, chapter one was small but written. It's just a teaser mostly. I've been writing some original stuff so I'm a little rusty with JE and her characters but I know them so well, they're kind of like old friends. I miss them quite a bit at times.

So please be gentle with me and let me ease back into the writing world of JE. Please let know what you think. I will eventually add a epilogue to the ending of my last story, but that story is painful to even think about so be patient please.

Oh and this is a tart story... Enjoy

Chapter One

June of 2015

"Please don't do this."

She struggled against him but he was so much larger than she was. And she was so tired. She'd had a long day and she'd been working longer hours to fill the void.

He held her wrists in one large hand as he used his other hand to undo her jeans. She kicked her legs and bucked her hips but he wasn't budging.

She was alone in her apartment. Her neighbors were older and hard of hearing. But she screamed anyway. Again.

He back handed her hard across her face. "Shut up…" he growled.

She blinked away the tears and continued to struggle.

"Don't do this. Please don't do this." She continued to beg and plead with him, but her pleas were going unheard. She threatened him too, but he only laughed.

He pulled his erection from his pants and she felt the vomit come up in her throat. There were no longer any barriers between them. She was about to be raped. She had been alone in her own apartment, in her bathroom, minding her own damn businesss, when she felt another presence. At first she thought it was Ranger or Lester or she would have even welcomed Joe. But this presence felt different. In the blink of an eye, he had her on the floor of her bedroom and at his mercy. She had no way to contact anyone for help. It was her own fault. She had no one to blame but herself.

She didn't even know this man.

She opened her mouth to give it one more shot. To scream again but he didn't give her a chance. He slammed her head against the floor and everything faded to black.

December of 2015 – 6 months later

Stephanie Plum slowly entered the bonds office with a dozen donuts and a smile she didn't feel. But they didn't notice. They never did.

"Hey!"

They both called out a greeting and she returned it with a nod. She placed the donuts on the desk and gently took a seat next to Lula who was thumbing through a Cosmo magazine. Lime green spandex disguised as a dress covered her large figure. Her hair was pink today. That was different. Yesterday it was yellow. A neon yellow. It had been yellow for awhile now. Guess she needed a change.

"How come you didn't get any Boston cremes, girl?" Connie asked, her head hidden behind the donut box.

Steph looked up and blinked. "Oh, I guess I ate it." She lied. She hadn't eaten any donuts.

Connie looked confused. "There's still twelve here though."

Thankfully Lula jumped up, making Steph wince with pain but saving her from having to reply to that because she was clueless as what to say.

"Save some for me." Lula shouted as she yanked the box away from Connie.

Connie rolled her eyes as she bit into a rather large white iced donut. "Steph, did you get Perkins yesterday?" She asked.

Steph got up carefully, having forgotten about Perkins despite the pain she was in; she pulled the receipt from her large hand bag and handed it to Connie.

"I did. He was drunk. Didn't put up much of a fight." She lied once again.

Connie handed her a check and nodded. "Good. He was a large bond."

Steph took the check and smiled slightly. She needed this money for more reasons than one. For the past several months she had been taking the easy ones. She just didn't have it in her. But now her bank account had dwindled to nothing and her rent was due. She needed some gas money and money for food. And maybe some more clothes. And pain medicine for sure.

This check would not only pay her rent, fill her up cabinets with food, and her tank with gas but it would also put some money back in her account. And all it took was a few bruises and maybe a broken rib or two. At least he didn't get her face.

She put the check in her hand bag and turned back to Connie. "Any more skips?"

Connie slowly nodded and pulled two folders from beneath a large stack. "There's two." She handed them to Steph.

Opening the first one, she nodded. He was a regular. Busted for drugs usually or occasional drunk in public, Barry Cooper was always facing some kind of jail time or court date or something. He would be easy. She would just lure him with some Pino's or something. She stuck that file into her hand bag and opened the other folder.

She sucked in a hard breath and almost passed out from the pain. She closed the folder with a snap and took a slow deep breath. And another. Anything to stop the pain, the vomit, and the black spots dancing in front of her eyes.

"Is something wrong, Steph?" Connie asked, barely breaking Steph's panic.

Steph shook her head. "No." She spoke quietly and reopened the folder.

Benjamin Kenny. She finally had a name to go with the face that haunted her day and night. He was arrested for raping a woman in a bar bathroom. He was now a failure to appear. She now had to bring him in. Steph swallowed the vomit down and put the folder in her hand bag.

"Steph, are you sure you're okay? You're kinda green." Connie commented, watching Steph closely.

Too close for comfort.

Steph nodded. "I'm fine. Just tired is all. And I gotta go meet with my mom and pick up Grandma for bingo or something." She rambled on, backing up towards the door, trying to keep the pain off her face and the vomit down her throat. At least until she got home. Both Lula and Connie were watching her with confused expressions on their faces.

She managed to get out the door before Lula or Connie stopped her, but ran, literally, into Lester. She gasped in pain as her ribs took a hit. Lester gripped her upper arms and frowned down at her.

"Beautiful, you okay?" He asked, concerned.

She pulled away immediately, hating his touch. A shiver ran down her spine, causing Lester's frown to deepen.

"I'm fine. Just late." She muttered quickly before almost back to her car. Well, running as much as her now screaming ribs allowed her. She needed to get out of there before she threw up all over the place. She was so focused on running away, she missed Lester's shrug, Tank's irritated expression, and Hector's worried eyes following her as she pulled away.

Tart Story – Tart Story – Tart Story

He didn't say much. He didn't care to talk or chat. He like to watch instead.

He rarely left RangeMan but something told him today to go with Tank and Lester when they threw him a half hearted invite. Now he knew why.

He was pretty sure he was the only one that noticed. How the others didn't, muddled him. He was beginning to wonder if they had lost their touch. But he noticed the change in Stephanie. She pulled away from everybody. There was a few days that she all but disappeared from Trenton. Her trackers showed that she was at home, in her apartment, but she didn't leave for days. When she did, it was to her parents and then immediately back home.

And when she did finally show up at RangeMan, she didn't really speak to anyone and she didn't want anyone touching her. She was friendly, polite, and had a smile on her face, but that smile didn't reach her eyes. Her eyes were haunted. Her bright blue eyes had been dark and stormy a lot lately. And her smiles were never real anymore. And she had lost weight. Her clothes were hanging on her small frame, her cheeks were almost sunken in and so were her eyes from lack of sleep.

At first he thought it was because of Ranger. Ranger had come back from a mission married to a woman he barely knew and none of them had ever met. Hector knew it wasn't a love match. Those two didn't touch each other and hell, they rarely talked to each other. It was a business arrangement that Ranger didn't share with any of them, Tank included. But it hit Steph hard and she threw herself into finding skips.

And Joe was a cheating bastard who had turned into his father. When Stephanie caught him cheating, she told him they were over for good. He shrugged it off and fall head first into a relationship with a cashier from the Victoria Secret's store. Two weeks into their relationship, she was sporting a black eye and a broken arm. When that happened, he was approached by several people. Steph's father, Frank, Ranger, Eddie, and himself. He was told to leave Steph the fuck alone or he would find a new home at the bottom of the Atlanta Ocean. He just nodded, his eyes blood shot, and walked away.

But… something told him that it wasn't either episode that caused such a drastic change in Stephanie's behavior. He liked to watch the world around him and he had been watching her for a long time. He was done watching.

Tart Story – Tart Story – Tart Story

She barely made it home in time before she lost the little bit of toast she had eaten that morning… all over the floor in front of her door. She didn't make it to the bathroom, but at least she made it to her apartment. Her dirty, tainted apartment. She hated it here. She pretty much just lived in her living room. When she slept, she did so on the couch. Her bedroom door had been shut since that night. Her clothes and shoes were still in the closet. She had just bought new stuff at the local goodwill or brought stuff from her parents' place. She couldn't make herself go in there. She tried multiple times and had never made it past the frame of the doorway.

After cleaning up the mess in her hallway, she gave Rex a carrot before curling up on the couch. Only there did she finally let the tears fall. She cried until the pain became unbearable. She cried until she could barely breathe. She cried until her throat hurt and her eyes burned.

She had no one to turn to. No one she could tell. Mary Lou was too busy with her own life and her own problems. Lula would just tell Tank who would tell Ranger and Connie would just tell Ranger. Ranger was now married and didn't want her in his life. Her mother would only say I told you so. Joe wasn't the Joe she knew anymore. Eddie and the rest of the guys probably had a bet going as to when this would happen. And the guys at RangeMan would look at her differently. They would treat her differently.

She was nothing but a failure. A joke to them all. And she had no one to blame but herself.