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None of the town houses had an attached garage and there was no on-street parking. I circled the block, looking for an alley with rear-access parking. None. This was a good central location, and one of the town houses would make a good Bat Cave, but I couldn't see
Ranger parking his truck any distance from his house. I was idling in front of an office building with underground parking. Ranger could park in the underground garage, but even then he'd have to cross the street to get to the town house. Not a big deal for an ordinary person. Seemed out of character for Ranger. Ranger sat with his back to the wall. Ranger never left himself exposed.
The other possibilities weren't as much fun. The computer could simply have run out of allotted space, and Haywood Street meant nothing. Or Tank could have taken Rangers truck and parked it convenient to the Tank Cave.
Lights were on in most of the town houses. The office buildings were mostly dark. The building with parking was a relatively small seven-story structure. The foyer plus floors six and five were lit. I rolled back a couple feet, so I could see through the large glass double door. The foyer looked newly renovated. Elevators to the rear. Reception desk to one side. There was a uniformed guy behind the reception desk.
A two-lane entrance to the underground parking garage sat like a black gap in the building facade. I pulled into the parking garage entrance, but I was stopped by a machine that demanded a passkey. A heavy iron gate barred my way. I squinted into the dark interior and got a rush. I was pretty sure I was looking at a black
Porsche parked nose-in to the back wall.
I hit my high beams, but the angle of the truck didn't splash a lot of light around the garage. Fortunately, Ranger carried a full array of bounty hunter toys. I retrieved a three-pound Maglite from the back seat, swung out of the truck and played the light across the expanse of the garage. The back wall held a stairwell and elevator.
There were four parking spaces in front of the elevator. The first two were empty. Ranger's Porsche Turbo filled the third. A Porsche
Cayenne filled the fourth. His Mercedes was missing. And I had the truck. Two black SUVs were parked on the side wall.
It's the Bat Cave,' I said to Rex when I got back behind the wheel.
Kind of fun to finally hav
e found it... but now what? Ranger was off somewhere, and I still didn't have a place to spend the night. I stared into the dark garage. I had no place to stay, and dollars to doughnuts, sitting in front of me was a building with a vacant apartment. Don't even think about it, I said to myself. That's like a death wish. This man is fanatical about protecting his privacy.
He won't be happy to find you've broken into his apartment and done the Goldilocks thing.
There was a part of my brain that was in charge of stupid ideas.
When I was seven it told me to jump off my parents' garage roof to see if I could fly. It also encouraged me to play Choo Choo with Joe
Morelli when I was a kid. Morelli was the originator of Choo Choo.
Morelli was the choo choo train, and I was the tunnel. And as it turned out it was necessary for the train to spend a lot of time under my skirt. Later in life the stupid idea part of my brain encouraged me to marry Dicky Orr. Orr was a slick talker who had a roving eye. Less than a year after the wedding, other body parts that belonged to Orr started roving as well. And that was the end of that marriage.
The stupid-idea part of my brain was now telling me I might be able to break in and go undetected. Just for one night, it said. Do it for Rex's sake. Poor Rex needs a place to spend the night.
I backed out of the garage entrance and drove around the block, hoping the stupid-idea department would shut down.
Unfortunately, it was still up and running when I returned to
Ranger's building. I had his truck. He hadn't bothered to remove his gun. Maybe he hadn't bothered to remove his passkey. I checked the visor and the console. I checked the side-door pockets and the glove box. I was looking for a plastic credit card-type key that would slide into the machine. I backed out a second time, drove to the corner, and parked under a streetlight so I could better see the interior of the truck. Still couldn't find the passkey.
I looked down at the key in the ignition. There was an extra key and two small black plastic devices attached to the key ring. One was a remote to unlock the truck. The second was also a remote of some sort. I circled the block, pulled into the garage entrance, pushed a button on the second remote, and the gate slid open.
Stephanie, I said to myself, if you have any sense at all, you'll turn tail and get out of here as fast as possible. Yeah, right. I'd gotten this far how could I possibly not want to explore further?
I mean this was the Bat Cave, for crying out loud.
There were two SUVs parked to the side. That meant Ranger wasn't the only person to use this garage. It would be awkward for
Tank or one of Rangers other men to discover Rangers truck had wandered home, so I retreated from the driveway and parked on the next block. Then I walked back to the garage, let myself in, and remoted the iron gate closed. I stepped into the elevator and looked at the panel. Seven buttons plus garage. I bypassed the security guard at the desk on the first floor and pressed number two. The elevator rose two floors and the doors opened to a large darkened reception area that I assumed led to offices. Floors three and four were similar. I skipped five and six since these were the lighted and presumably occupied floors. And the seven button wouldn't work. The elevator would go down, but it wouldn't go all the way up to seven.
The penthouse, I thought. The dragon's lair. It needed a passkey.
Just for the hell of it, I aimed the garage remote at the panel and hit the remote button. The elevator silently rose to floor seven and opened. I stepped out to a small reception area with a patterned white-and-black marble floor and off-white walls. No windows, a breakfront on one of the walls, one door in front of me.
I'd like to say that I was very cool about all this, but the truth is, my heart was pounding so hard it was blurring my vision. If the door opened and Ranger looked out at me, I'd fall over dead on the spot. And what if he had a woman with him? What would I do? I wouldn't do anything, I reasoned, because I'd be dead, remember?
I held my breath and remoted the door. I turned the knob.
