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Ranger went to my brown bear cookie jar, lifted the lid, and removed my S&W .38. He spun the barrel. Empty. No bullets. He looked at me. “Babe. It’s hard to shoot people when your gun isn’t loaded.”
“I don’t want to shoot people.”
“In that case, you’re in good shape.”
He stepped closer and kissed me. His lips were soft against mine, his hands found my waist, and desire curled in my stomach.
“Do you want me to stay?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “No.”
“Want me to decide?”
“No! And Lula says kissing is cheating.”
“What do you think?” he asked, his lips brushing against my ear, his hands moving up my rib cage.
“I think I’m going to rot in hell.”
“That’s encouraging,” he said.
I put some distance between us. “Do you really believe that we’ll get Connie back?”
Ranger’s phone buzzed and he looked at a text message. “Ramon has a visual of two men. One of them is carrying what looks like a drone case. He has them entering and exiting a building in the right time frame.”
“How did Ramon get this?”
“There are cameras everywhere. Some are DOT. Some are owned by individual property owners. Some are city of Trenton. We thought we knew the block where the drone touched down, so it made the camera scan easier.”
This is why I went to Ranger for help. Ranger isn’t hamstrung by rules and regulations and privacy issues. Ranger just hacks into whatever system he thinks will be helpful.
“I’m going back to Rangeman,” he said. “I want to see what we’ve got. Do you want to come with me?”
I hesitated. I wanted to see the men with the drone kit, but I knew if I went to Rangeman I’d spend the night.
“You’re already going straight to hell,” Ranger said. “You might as well make the most of it.”
“Tempting,” I said, “but I’m going to stay here. Keep me in the loop.”
Morelli called at midnight. “Bella’s home,” he said. “I had to pay off a judge, and I made a bunch of promises I don’t ever want to keep.”
“Bella made a scene at the viewing and the funeral director begged me to take her away.”
“She said you put her in handcuffs.”
“She insisted. She said she wanted to go to jail. It was the only way I could get her out of the funeral home.”
“She got her wish,” Morelli said. “I was tempted to leave her there.”
“She would put the eye on you if you did that.”
“I’m her favorite grandson. She would never put the eye on me. She’d put the eye on you in a heartbeat. She said she put the eye on Ranger’s car, and it caught fire.”
“It had a head start.”
I said good night to Morelli, and I went to bed with my laptop. I pulled up a map of Trenton and zeroed in on the area where the drone supposedly landed. I switched to satellite view and examined the buildings. This was all commercial real estate, packed together. No yards or parking lots. None of the buildingsappeared to have balconies, so the drone probably landed on a rooftop. Several rooftops looked like they could hold a couple guys and a drone.
Ranger would have pinpointed a building by now. He would be tapping into internal security cameras on the building and checking out cars parked on the street. He had pictures of suspects. I gave myself a mental head slap. I should have gone back to Rangeman with him. Stupid, stupid, stupid. On the other hand, I was virtuous. Mostly. I hadn’t done thebig thing. And it’s not as if I would have been any help. I would have been a bystander. Okay, so it was a wash.
