Once again all the characters below belong to JE.

Jenny (JenRar), here we go again! Thank you for agreeing to work on this story as the beta. I owed you a Babe story, and I hope this one will clear that debt.

Chapter 1 – The Power of a Well Written Letter

I walked into Ranger's office and cleared my throat to get his attention. I figured he already knew I was there because…well, he's Batman and he knows everything. Still, it was the kind of thing I wished the guys would do to alert me of their presence when they sneak up on me.

Without looking up, he said, "Can you shut the door, Babe?"

Obediently, I closed the door softly and then sat in one of the guest chairs across from his desk.

As soon as my jeans hit the buttery soft leather of the chair, he looked up at me and smiled. It wasn't one of those full throttle ones that made me feel like anything combustible was at risk of going up in flames, but it was still enough to make me feel warm and gooey on the inside. Kind of like a Cinnabun at the mall when they first come out of the oven and get smeared with creamy icing. I made a mental note to swing by the food court at the mall after we were done here. I could do with a little creamy icing after being shut up in an office this close to a smiling Ranger.

"Babe..." His voice cut through my fog and let me know at least part of what I'd hoped was an inner monologue had somehow slipped into an external speech.

I shook my head in an attempt to clear it and to reset it on why I was here. "Sorry." An apology was always a good place to start.

"For what?" He seemed suspicious of my word choice.

"You said you wanted to meet with me the day after Brett has to go to the hospital with a stab wound from a take down at a distraction. I figured you wanted to talk to me about getting another of your guys hurt," I said simply, laying it out there and confessing why I thought I was here.

In truth, I wasn't entirely sure, but ever since I'd run into him at the bond's office this morning, my mind had been running rampant. I'd been sharing a box of doughnuts with the girls when Ranger had come out of Vinnie's office. He'd walked over to me and used the pad of his thumb to wipe off a little sugar from my bottom lip, and then he'd slowly raised that same finger to his lips and licked off the stolen icing. Sex on legs was as close as I could get to describing that man, but even those words didn't do him justice. Before I'd been able to ask why he was allowing a gram of sugar into his temple, he'd asked me if I could swing by his office sometime today, because there was something he wanted to talk to me about. I'd nodded that I could, and then he'd practically disappeared. Ever since that encounter, I'd wondered what he needed that he couldn't just pull me into the alley to discuss. Honestly, I was rather disappointed that I hadn't gotten an invitation into the alley for him to ask about me coming to RangeMan. I'd never turn down an opportunity to be pressed into the brick wall by Ranger.

"I'll keep that in mind," Ranger interrupted my thoughts to interject, "but Brett isn't why I wanted to meet with you today."

My mind began flying through all the other possibilities before landing on the one I thought was the most obvious. "If this is about Bobby, I didn't realize he was trying to get a look at my shoulder, so when he touched me, I reacted. If I'd known it was him, I never would have thrown an elbow like that."

That little confession caused a slight grin to come over Ranger's face. "That's not why I wanted to talk to you, either, although I am glad to hear that you got one over on Bobby. I'm sure he'll love it when I ask about his slow reflexes in the gym tomorrow."

"His slow reflexes?" I repeated as a question. "Maybe it's that my reflexes are getting so much faster, he can't keep up with me," I pointed out as a reasonable alternative.

Wisely, Ranger only raised an eyebrow as a challenge, saying nothing to contradict my words. "Actually, I wanted you here because I need your help."

Ah, a distraction. Now it made sense. Although he usually just called me and left the details in my voicemail. Maybe this skip was a little worse than the usual so he wanted to brief me himself. Anytime I used the word brief in the same sentence as Ranger, it always made me smile. Those words didn't belong together, because Ranger wasn't a briefs – boxer or bikini – kind of guy. Of course, the image of Ranger wearing a banana hammock only made me smile bigger, so I raised my hand over my mouth in a weak attempt to cover up my amusement.

"Do I want to know what you're thinking about?" Ranger asked, looking amused even without a smile.

"Probably not," I confessed, glad he didn't seem to be pressing the point further.

Then he changed the subject before I had the chance to embarrass myself. "I got this letter in the mail yesterday," Ranger said, passing along a piece of heavy stationary, with a dark, fancy, handwritten script covering the linen page.

I looked at him, basically asking permission to read the letter without using words.

The left side of his lips raised, as though he were enjoying my attempt at ESP. "I wouldn't have given it to you if I didn't want you to read it," he assured me, making a gesture for me to take the paper and look it over.

Realizing he was sharing something important, I sat up straighter and held the paper tightly to be sure I didn't drop it.

Mr. Manoso,

For years, I have heard about the amazing man my husband referred to as Ranger. His praise for your skills had built you up in my mind to be a security expert capable of handling any circumstance and blending in to meet any challenge, no matter how great or small it seemed. It was for this reason that I turned to your firm, assuming your personal standards would surely be passed along to any men you hired and branded with your name. The event of a baby shower might have seemed to inconsequential to merit your finest men, but I still expected more than what was delivered in the name of RangeMan.

Attending this event were five wives of foreign dignitaries, the child of a former president, and the current Secretary of State. While I had not shared the guest list with you in advance, I felt that your exacting standards would deliver regardless of who was involved, so the privacy of my guests was not important. Perhaps I was remiss in that assumption. I also admit that not sharing the layout of the venue beforehand might have contributed to the expectation of how you would secure a group meeting in a hotel. We only had access to the room where we were meeting, which meant some of your men were forced to be in the room with us, instead of at the outer perimeter as they had no doubt planned on being. Additionally, the very short notice you were given might have meant we were given men who perhaps would not have been your first choice had you been more fully briefed in what was going to be expected.

However, on the off chance you have not heard about what occurred, I wanted to be sure you were aware that over the course of the four hours my event covered, I witnessed my guests being glowered at by men dressed in all black. The presence of the men along the wall of the room created a heaviness that did not blend well with the occasion we were there to celebrate. And as my guests left, the husband of one of them was forcibly detained by your men until they verified his identity. I'm sure the ambassador will calm down in time, especially since we're putting so much effort into working on relations between America and Panama.

While I am certainly not interested in retaining your services again after the disastrous event, I know that the circle of friends that my husband travels in all hold you in high esteem, and as a result, you will undoubtedly receive additional invitations to provide security for their families. I write this out of a kindness for my friends that between now and your next service engagement, you might work with your men in softening their approach and finding a middle ground to protect without frightening the people you are being paid to serve.

She'd signed her name beneath a closing of Regretfully.

I set the letter down and looked at Ranger. He was staring at the paper as though he could frighten it into giving up the secret of what had happened at the party to upset this woman enough that she would write a personal letter to him to complain about his company.

"I'm guessing you don't get many letters like that, do you?" I decided to start near the letter, but not directly with it.

"I've been doing security in one form or another since my initial tour of duty finished. During all that time, I've never gotten a handwritten letter complaining about my services," he explained, obviously taking this disgruntled customer to heart.

"Then in that case, your average is fantastic," I pointed out. "I mean, one unhappy woman out of the hundreds you've serviced would be considered phenomenal." As soon as I said that, I realized it sounded like we were talking about Ranger's sex life. I would have corrected myself, but I held back, knowing it would sound like I was rambling and because we both knew there was no way in hell Ranger would ever get a complaint by a woman that he had personally "serviced."

The temporary light look on his face faded when he glanced back down at the letter. "Babe, the ability to blend into a circumstance is more than just good customer service. It means the men can hold a cover – and in some cases, stay alive. If they are relying on their size and strength alone, then they're just tempting fate that someone bigger, stronger, or faster will come along and challenge them."

I rolled my eyes. "Like there's anyone stronger, bigger, or faster than you guys."

"It's possible, and with every year that passes on the calendar, it's even probable," Ranger disagreed. "After reading that letter, I started thinking about the training we do here, and it's geared toward size and strength – the gym, the gun range, sparring, running – all of it is strength-based."

"Which is good, because when you're out rounding up skips or clearing a building of drug dealers, you need all that strength," I pointed out.

"But we've focused on that exclusively, which means there is a vulnerability in our strength, because there are times when only finesse will get the job done," Ranger countered. "When I look at how you manage to get skips to the station, it's rarely because of your physical strength. You have mastered the finesse side – distractions, bribing, explaining; all of those are areas that RangeMan is obviously lacking." As he said the last part, he glanced at the letter once more with an obvious look of disgust, as though admitting there was something he wasn't good at was leaving a bad taste in his mouth.

Silence fell between us for a moment, and then he cleared his throat. "I want to hire you to train my men," Ranger announced.

"You want…what?" I knew I'd heard his words, but in thinking through them, they still made no sense to me.

"I want you to work with the guys to build up their skills of subtlety so that they are more effective in the less physical jobs we accept," Ranger clarified.

"How am I supposed to do that?" I asked, completely at a loss.

"If I knew how to do it, I'd do it myself," Ranger replied, sounding slightly defeated in admitting that. "I'll give you free reign to do whatever you think is best to prepare them for these types of assignments. You can do formal lectures in a conference room, you can set up real-life scenarios, you can have them shadow you in the field. Whatever resources you think you need will be at your disposal."

"Who exactly do you want me to work with?" I wondered, not sure if I believed he was serious about this whole scheme.

"Initially, I want the entire leadership team trained, and then we'll handle others on a case-by-case basis," he replied, obviously taking my question as some kind of acceptance.

"So, just the four of you?" I replied, figuring it might not be so bad if it was just Ranger, Tank, Lester, and Bobby.

"No, that's just the core team," Ranger explained, sitting up straighter in his chair, as though a weight that had been pushing him down had somehow been removed from his shoulders. "The four of us each own a piece of RangeMan, with me being the majority partner. The leadership team has the four of us plus Hector, Cal, Hal, and Vince."

"Were any of you at the shower this woman is referring to?" I wondered, struggling to believe they were.

"No." Ranger seemed relieved to make that concession. "I didn't have the full guest list and was told that I needed to secure the hotel parameter for a private party. Since I only had a short period to get guys there, I pulled in a few contract workers, and some guys from the New York office provided the lead."

"How would it help you to fix this from happening again if the guys involved in the problem aren't getting the training?" I didn't want to challenge him, but there did seem to be a huge hole in his plan here.

"Most of the men involved in that disaster are no longer associated with RangeMan," he quickly reported. "But I want to send a message from the top down to show how important this is. If they hear that Lester and Tank are taking refresher training then they aren't as likely to buck it when I send the team out to the other offices to pass along the lessons to the field at large."

"Why not just send me to the other offices to deal with it directly?" I wondered, feeling like the extra step would make it less effective.

Ranger hesitated before responding, as though there was a debate going on in his head about what to say. "I think someone in New York intentionally sabotaged the assignment. If my instinct is right, there's no way in hell I'm sending you there because I can't trust them to watch over you."

"So while you clean house to be sure nothing like this happens again intentionally, you still want to be sure the guys get the message that if this was a poor response to an assignment, this training will remove that excuse in the future," I mused, trying to sum up what I thought he was saying.

"It's still something we don't focus on in our regular training, and since I see it as equally important, I need to prove that by putting some kind of equal emphasis on it," Ranger said. Then he looked at me with a look of pure determination on his face before saying, "And once we're done and I've got New York under my complete control again, I want to be able to look that woman in the face and tell her that I took her words seriously and that kind of service won't happen again."

I got it now. Someone had betrayed Ranger, which was bad enough. But they had done it in a way that tarnished his reputation, which was worse than if they'd just attacked him directly. He was going to clean out the problem, but he refused to pretend it didn't happen, so I was to provide a bit of insurance that the guys would see that handling all assignments appropriately was vital.

My thumbnail went between my teeth so I had something to do with both my hands and my mouth while I thought about what he was asking. This would be so much easier if I had something to eat, but an oatmeal bran muffin wasn't exactly good thinking food.

"I want to help you," I began slowly, almost reluctantly, before forcing myself to finish the thought. "Okay, I see the need, and I understand why you want to do this, but I don't know how to do it."

"Put yourself in this woman's place and imagine that you were throwing a party for a group of your friends and you needed security," Ranger advised. "How would you want the guys to provide the security?"

That was a good way to approach it. I didn't know anything about being the spouse of a foreign dignitary, but I knew a lot about throwing parties and wanting to contain the guest list to minimize gossip or arguments. If I could figure out how to the make the presence of RangeMan acceptable at a party so that people from the 'Burg wouldn't question why they were there, then that level of scrutiny should pass anywhere.

Then Ranger added to the degree of difficulty. "But don't only focus on that single circumstance. The skills the guys learn need to be transferable in various settings."

"What kind of other settings?" I was nervous enough about agreeing to do this, and if he was going to make it even harder, I wasn't sure I could handle the pressure.

"Anything a family might need," he began, before elaborating, "abduction prevention for a kid on a fieldtrip, bodyguard duty while a woman is in the mall, security while a teenager is on a date – hell, anything that a person of power might want to avoid happening to their family while maintaining a level of normalcy for the people they're trying to protect."

"You can do this," I finally said, pointing out the obvious. "Why aren't you training the guys?"

Ranger ran his hand over his face and let out a breath, as though the question was exhausting to him. "I'd like to think I could, and if I were the one assigned, I probably could, but I don't usually accept these assignments. I pass them off on the men. And when I looked at my own life, I realized that I haven't really done it."

"Of course you have. You've lectured me plenty of times about blending into the surroundings when I'm on surveillance; it's that same skill set, right?" I remembered the countless missions he'd gone on, assuming a persona very different from his own and blending in perfectly.

"Maybe," he seemed reluctant to agree. "But when Rachel has asked me in the past about protecting Julie on trips, I've usually either flown down to shadow her myself or I've told Rachel not to let her go. I've basically refused to let my daughter fully live her life because I don't know how to let her go shopping at the mall without any adults with her and still feel as though she's protected. I want the world to know that there's a fierce team following her around so that she's left alone, but from what Rachel says, that isn't allowing Julie to live a normal life, which, to my daughter, is worse than the possibility of something happening to her."

I shivered at the idea of trying to hit the mall as a fourteen-year-old with two men in black covered with weapons and reflective sunglasses following me everywhere. It wasn't a stretch to imagine, because it happened every time I attracted a crazy and Ranger felt I needed extra backup. Despite how much I admired Ranger, I had to side with Rachel on this one. If Ranger had a reason to doubt Julie's safety, he couldn't send her out with an obvious security force. It would either piss her off or make her feel so insecure that she would be afraid to live her life.

"Okay," I agreed, feeling like the desire to live a normal life while still being safe was the greater motivator. "I'll do what I can to help the guys practice blending in and still keeping people safe. When do you want me to start?"

"Yesterday," Ranger responded, obviously eager to begin rectifying what he saw as a shortfall in his company's services. "But I'll tell the guys about it at today's staff meeting and tell them to expect to get a training schedule from you before the end of the week."

My brain was on overload with all the possibilities flying through of how to help the guys see the world from the eyes of a fourteen-year-old girl or a thirty-year-old woman. "Do I need to build this into their work day, or is this to be outside their usual shifts?"

"There is nothing more important than this, so if I need to bring in a contract worker or two to fill in, I'll do it. You set it up however you need to, and I'll move everything else around to accommodate it." He was certainly making this easy on me. "And there is no cost limit. To be successful in the future, RangeMan has to make a name for ourselves in this kind of work just as much as we have in the hard core missions we've run."

After basically saying I had no cap on my budget, he reached his hand out, holding a rectangular piece of plastic.

"What's that?" I asked, already suspecting the answer.

"It's a corporate card for you to use to cover any necessary expenses. There's no limit, so use it for whatever you need," he explained, setting it face up on the edge of the desk closest to me, forcing me to pick it up and accept what he was giving me.

My name was on the front of the black American Express card. "How did you get one with my name on it so quickly?"

He sat back, reverting to his slightly amused expression at my question. "The amount of business I give to them is enough for them to be very accommodating. But I didn't just request that. It's been in my safe for over a year."

"Why have you kept a corporate credit card for me that long?" I knew I was entering dangerous territory here, but I couldn't stop myself from asking.

"I asked you to come to work at RangeMan a year ago," he replied matter-of-factly, as though that was enough of an explanation. I continued to look at him, not sure how to respond to that. I guess he took my silence as doubt, so he added, "Plus, I had to be sure I had you covered in case something ever came up and you had to leave because of your association with me. I needed to be sure you had access to funds immediately if necessary."

"Couldn't somebody trace the activity on that card to see where I was?" I pointed out a major flaw in his emergency planning.

That got me a smile and a head nod. "There's all kinds of danger, Babe," he replied, before proving why he was the man in charge. "So, just to be sure you were covered, I had this one and four others with fake identities attached to them. Depending on why and where you were headed, one of them would have done the job."

"What other names did you use?" I asked, finding this a lot more fun to discuss than how I could help the guys practice skills.

Ranger didn't blush. It was a fact that I'd learned in the few years we'd known each other. Despite that fact, he still looked hesitant to answer my question. And since I was such a sucker, I decided to let him off the hook.

"How about this..." I began to grin as I thought about a way to still get the answer I wanted. "There are four cards and eight guys for me to train. How about after every two guys are done with whatever paces I run them through, you let me see one credit card as a bonus for my work?"

"I'll let you see two of them when you're finished with all eight guys," he countered, looking wary but still enjoying the idea of negotiating with me.

"Why can't I see them all?" I blurted out instead of suggesting a counteroffer.

"Someday," he replied, as though that were an acceptable response.

I folded my arms, most likely resembling a pouting teenager. "I don't think I like your offer."

That earned me a raised eyebrow. "I will not show you all four," he firmly announced.

"How about you show me one after the first three groups of two are finished with training, and after the last grouping is complete, you show me three of yours?" I don't know what made me say that, but now that it was out in the open, I had to stand by it.

Ranger's eyes narrowed slightly, as though thinking through the ramifications of giving up the names of some of his possible aliases. "Agreed," he finally said, making me smile when he stood up and reached over his desk with his hand stretched out to shake mine. "You drive a hard bargain, Ms. Plum."

I shook his hand, enjoying the farce of concluding a business deal, and then replied, "It was nice negotiating with you, Mr. Manoso, and I look forward to earning each of my bonuses as agreed."

"When you finish this assignment, we can talk about a real bonus for you," Ranger replied, completely serious. Before I could argue the point, he let go of my hand and said, "I'll need you to be at the team meeting at 1500 hours so that you hear what I tell the guys about this new project."

I stood there looking at him, waiting to see if I could force him to talk again just by being silent.

I'd nearly given up when Ranger laughed and said, "Three o'clock, Babe, in the large conference room."

Leaving while I was riding the high of a win against Ranger, I decided there wasn't enough time to go to the mall for a treat before the meeting. Instead, I walked over the cubicle that seemed to stay open for my use and turned on the computer there to run a few searches housed in the inbox. I could swear that box was like an eternal flame. No matter how many searches I ran, it seemed to auto fill so that it was never empty.

While I was waiting for it to come on, I realized I had quite possibly learned a new skill today. Twice I had said nothing, and in return, I'd gotten more information than I usually would have if I'd hit Ranger up with questions. I wasn't exactly sure how to use this newfound knowledge to my favor, but I was going to tuck it away for future reference. I might be on the clock to train the guys, but there was no rule against me learning a thing or two in the process.