“Sorry, Zoe, I had stuff I needed to do. You know I did the counseling gig so I am fine. I was pissed when I found out about a cop being involved and I would have come to you then, but like I told you on the phone, I didn’t want to give someone a chance to get to you,” I said quietly and she nodded then looked at the two guys sparring in front of us.
“Brooklyn and Petal are both getting antsy about what is going on. It seems like we all come back and suddenly the place is exploding at the seams with crap that has wormed its way in when no one was looking. They love it here, I love it here, so we are prepared to do what we have to do in order to make sure we are not a distraction. Okay, let me rephrase that, Brooklyn and I are going to make sure we are not a distraction, Petal is getting her conceal and carry license because she is sick of people pissing her off around here. So she may be a distraction, but she is Bry’s and Reed’s so they don’t count.”
I chuckled and shook my head. “Yeah, she is totally a Denold. Maria and I are new, like new new, so I didn’t have much to say but apparently everyone knows about it already anyway.”
Zoey chuckled and leaned to the side and pushed me with her shoulder. “Look at us, all grown up and dealing with our issues like adults.”
I laughed. “Well, we will see about that. But right about now, I can tell you that since meeting her I have not been so happy since Noel, she is different, gives me what I need and is up in my face about it. I don’t love Noel any less, just differently.”
Zoey shrugged. “I get it, and I am glad she makes you happy and I am glad Rucker is thrilled, so much so I heard he started calling her mom.”
My mouth opened and I looked at her and then shook my head. “Yeah, didn’t think that was gonna take long. My boy wants a mom and he picked her. Nothing else is gonna do so it is a good thing I am hip on his plan or we would have issues.”
Zoey smiled and said, “I was worried when I first came here you know, I could see the shadow in your eyes, but lately it has been lifting and I gotta say, I am happy. Our parents would be happy, and I know that Noel would. She wouldn’t want you to be alone, she knew you sucked at cooking so I figured that about now, she is smiling down on you.”
“I think so too,” I said then Zoey stood and held out her hand.
“Come on, I need ice cream and you are buying.”
“I am? Now why would I do that?” I laughed and stood.
“‘Cause I wanna get Cold Stone, and I happen to know Maria likes their cakes, so if you bring her one home she will probably throw herself at your feet and declare her love for you without you needing to show how you can’t cook at all, and making her rethink this whole thing since she will need to work eight hours a day and come home and cook for you. Not sure that is a good selling point, brother.”
“She knows I order food really well already. Showing her tonight my mad skills of how I fix dinner.”
“God help her; she still needs ice cream.” Zoey laughed and pulled him behind her out the gym.
Chapter Fourteen
Maria
It had been a long day, like a way long day, all of the files were looking the same by the end of my day. The good part was we had a lot of info on all of the assholes so when push came to shove, one of those bastards were going to roll over.
I crawled out of the car and then waved at Mace who was glaring at me again from his SUV, I almost flipped him off, I mean why drive a car with a fast engine if you aren’t going to use it. It is pointless, he needed to chill out. I really should have looked into the back parking area before I even walked in the door, I knew it, but still I didn’t, thinking only Rucker, Velma, and Ranger would be home at the time. I could not have been more wrong.
The clue should have been the smell of amazing pasta coming before I even opened the door, but I figured Ranger ordered from a local place and picked it up. But when I opened the door, the local place would be my mother, and he hadn’t picked it up, she and the whole entire world brought it over. When I say world, of course I meant everyone in my world that meant anything to me, but who I could easily kill and not flinch at all at this point.
“Ma?” I snapped and my mother smiled big and held out her arms.
“Look, Maria is finally home from work. Look at her being so professional, I love to see you in your battle attire.”
“You saw me a million times dressed like this,” I snapped and she frowned.
“Not when you were involved in a relationship with an amazing man who had an amazing son.” My mother shrugged.
I glared at her and said, “What are you talking about?”
“Ranger,” she laughed and shook her head. “Is he so forgettable in bed? I think maybe we need to talk about that.”
“Oh my God!” I yelled and turned and saw Ranger smirking in the doorway and I pointed at him. “You! Did you tell her, what is wrong with you, did I not explain about my mother, you can’t tell her anything without the whole world knowing.”
“Maria!” My mom laughed.
“What? It’s true, see who is here, I bet she called them all over to torture me,” I said and glared at Ranger who was now flat out laughing.
“Babe,” he said and I shook my head.
“Nope, do not babe me. You have no idea what you did, first she invites everyone over, then she will announce that we are together, then she toasts, by dessert our wedding will be planned and there will be no backing out of it,” I said hysterically.
“Babe, come here,” Ranger said and I shook my head.
“Nope, I have decided I am moving.”
“Moving where?” Ranger said smoothly and then began walking to me.
“Antarctica,” I snapped.
He reached out and grabbed my arm, looked at my mother and then said, “We will be right back, Sonia, maybe you can keep everyone in the living room.”
“Of course,” Sonia said and walked by me and winked. “I am so happy.”
I growled and then my chin dropped down to my chest and I said, “Seriously, you don’t know my mother that well. I am not kidding; we should have planned this before you told her. Maybe taken a vacation and sent her a postcard. She is relentless.”
Ranger pulled me into his arms and he whispered, “Listen, your father and I talked, he is going to run interference with your mom. We are taking this slow, I already told him that, told your mother that, told Olivia that, and finally told Velma that. They know this is about us, and Rucker, and that is it. No more. But, babe, with all the crap flying around right now, I really don’t care who knows about us because it is us. We are the ones doing this, not them, us. Now, we can set the rules for however fast or slow we want, but your family and the rest of these people, they are going to be pains in our asses for a long time. It won’t matter how far we run, they will find us. I know it and you know it. Now, we can either embrace it, or we will go crazy because honest to God, your mom and her friends took Rucker out today and bought him a whole new wardrobe because they said it was their duty as grandparents to make sure Rucker was set with the latest style. Your father and his friends took him to Hooters last night for dinner, where apparently he received a lesson about the difference between fake boobs and real ones, via your father and he has decided real ones are better. Now, we can certainly try to run, but I think they had a GPS inserted into Rucker’s arm today, but I can’t be sure. The only thing I care about is we are safe, we have this shit under control with the 8-3-0 and we are ready for anything that is thrown at us.”
“I told you they were nuts,” I said sadly and Ranger chuckled.
“They are nuts but they are good. This shit is fine, they eat, we chat, they leave, Rucker goes to bed and then we have alone time. I am focusing on that, because right now, we are good, Rucker is good. Now, they will not stay all night because Mel and Brit are with Falon and he is begging for someone to come and save him. So far he called like five times and the moms are worried he is gonna do something stupid, which apparently they think will include him p
issing off Mel so much she hates him. This is good for us and not so good for them. In their eyes we are settled.”
“How, we have literally been together for twenty-four hours. That is it,” I said.
Ranger frowned and shook his head. “Then you haven’t been paying attention. We have been together the first time I saw you smile at my son, then smile at me. That was it, so that was weeks ago. Up till now we were learning each other, I like what I learned and I know you did too.”
“Sure of yourself!” I snapped.
“Nope, sure of us,” Ranger said and then said softer, “So sure of us I want you to know, if this stays like this, we are going to last.”
“What if we don’t?” she whispered. “You have Rucker, I don’t wanna fuck this up but I could. I am very self-centered, I spend way too much time at my job, I never and I mean never, get up on Saturdays before eight o’clock, and cleaning to me is having a service come in and do it.”
“You trying to scare me now?” Ranger said.
I shrugged and said, “It is just, well, we are doing things backwards, you know.”
Ranger laughed and said, “In this family, that seems about right.”
I groaned and said, “Fine, but they better leave before seven, I need to soak and I promised Rucker we could watch Fast and Furious 6.”
Ranger grinned and then said, “Woman after my own heart.”
“Not after, own,” I said softly and then Ranger kissed me softly and said.
“Face the fire together. But just know, I have Cold Stone ice cream, we do not share that.”
“Now look who is trying to get MY heart.” I laughed.
“Nope, I already own it too, that is just icing,” Ranger said.
I nodded and he took my hand and led me into the living room. I realized then, I would follow him anywhere. When we entered the living room I looked around and saw everyone just sitting quietly and waiting. I frowned and Brooklyn said.
“You need to talk louder, we were all sitting in here trying to listen and you were talking too quietly.”
I rolled my eyes and said, “Yeah, well, sorry not gonna happen.”
Tony laughed and put his arm around me and said, “I wasn’t trying to listen, I don’t care, I am hungry. Ma, is dinner almost ready?”
My mother stood and glared at her son and said, “Hush you. Dinner will be done in a minute. Now, Rucker, can you help me get drinks for everyone put on the table?”
I looked for Rucker and saw him leaning against my father’s chair and I grinned and winked at him. He took in his father and my hands linked together and he smiled, then ran and hit me, wrapping his arms around my waist. “Hey, Mom.”
“Hey, sweetie,” I said and kissed the top of his head. “You have a good day?”
“Yep,” he said and then looked over his shoulder and said, “I got some new clothes and shoes. Nonna and Nonno said I looked like a real Roark now.”
“Oh did they, and why did they say that?” I asked, smiling, and Rucker stepped back and showed her his shirt that had been hiding under his zipped hoodie. Ranger leaned over and burst out laughing while I glared at my father and mother and said.
“Really? You just had to do that?”
My father shrugged and said, “What, he needed to have the shirt.”
I looked back down at Rucker who was holding out his shirt that said Hooters and I rolled my eyes and said, “No wearing that to school, Falon did once, and he got sent home.”
Rucker grinned and said, “They told me already.”
“Of course they did,” I said and then glared at my father who was smiling. “Go help my mom.”
He nodded and then ran into the kitchen. “So, anything new?” Tony asked and I looked to make sure Rucker wasn’t listening and then I nodded and looked at Ranger who nodded.
“Okay, so we have them all on various charges ranging from possession of a controlled substance, to outstanding warrants, and possession of weapons. It is not gonna be hard to get one of them to roll over. Right now I am looking at one especially, he only has his grandma, I think if we press that issue he will be the one to go, his name is Tito Evans. We are looking tomorrow to talk to her, see if she has any insights into what will help us. She apparently doesn’t like the gang her grandson is in, but since he is eighteen she can’t do anything,” I said and they all nodded.
“They are preying on the young people with no family to speak of, they are drawing them in, trying to get them to buy into their family,” Fin said and I nodded.
“Add that to showing them they can make money, not legally but easy, which is appealing. Selling drugs, intimidation, all of it.”
Ranger sighed and said, “I still don’t get how Noel comes in, I mean, sure I caught the case of the kid who was killed by the gang, I get that, but why is that case so damn important. It was the one to set stuff off so there is still something we are missing. I don’t know what, I have been pouring over the original case and it still just looks like a regular case. It would have been hard to actually find the killer, so it doesn’t make sense.”
“Well hopefully we may get an answer for that,” I said and Ranger agreed.
“I hope so, but for some reason, I don’t think it is going to be that easy.”
Cal leaned forward and said, “Let me just throw this out there.” Everyone was silent as they turned to him and he said, “Mace, Reed, and I have been talking.”
Reese leaned forward and said, “Let me preface by saying we do not have proof of anything. We would need to do a lot more putting together the pieces.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Do you know what apophenia is?” Cal said and everyone looked at each other and looked confused. “Sorry, I didn’t either until I actually called a few people I know and asked them about this. One of the guys explained it, what it means is a connection between seemingly random phenomenas, which in this case is actually borough activity. Most of the time you can see a connection in everything. But there are more than just the three murders we are talking about. So much more.”
Ranger leaned forward and said, “Okay, what are you talking about?”
“Like I said we are still looking at things, we are mostly flying blind because we are looking at a bunch of small crimes, as well as large ones. Mace is writing a program to help us, because we think we are missing something somewhere. We planned on showing you before all of this blew up but we haven’t had the chance. Mostly because the parameters for the search are impossible to set, so we need to think outside the box when we are searching. But for example, there is a random carjacking one day, and somehow it is related to a wedding the next. A murder is connected to someone who loses their cellphone, it is just so farfetched no one would ever put them together,” Cal said quietly and I stared at him intently.
“What does all this have to do with the murders?” I asked slowly.
“I can’t guarantee it, because there is a lot of stuff coming up when we look at it, but in addition to the some of the basic things we can connect, there are other things and I gotta say, the some of the major crimes coming out of the Bronx are tied together in a way they shouldn’t be. Well, when Reed, Mace, and I were talking, trying to make sense of the data, we plugged one parameter into the search and it connected a lot of things, including the three shootings, the fighting ring, and the gang 8-3-0 activities, we just can’t figure out yet why. Because the fighting ring is high-end wealthy people, the gangs not so much, and the shootings, all over the map,” Cal said.
“What is the parameter?” Ranger asked.
“The 48th, 45th, and 42nd precincts,” Cal said and I looked at Ranger who frowned and sat back.
“All of them?” he asked and Cal shrugged.
“We don’t know, that is just what we have right now. We can probably get more specific, but really I am not going to do that until I am able to look at more things, namely, finding specifics to see if we can connect anything. Right now, I couldn’t tell you if it is b
ecause parking tickets were issues to the people I found. We just don’t have enough information.”
“Dinner!” my mother yelled and my father stood.
“No talk of this at the table, nothing will happen tonight, we are going to eat, talk, and celebrate,” my dad said and walked away.
“I am just saying, that we are getting on in our years, and it would be nice to see everyone settled and giving us grandbabies before we need to enter a nursing home,” my mother said and smiled at everyone around the table.
“The thought of you and Dad in a nursing home is frightening. If we add in Olivia, Reilly, Velma, and Maddie, we are looking at the next apocalypse, I am pretty sure they will kick your asses out after they find your stun gun,” Tony said dryly.
I looked at Ranger who was smiling big, the meal had been torturous since the topic of conversation was Zoey’s pregnancy, the lack of grandchildren in the room (even though Rucker announced since he was going to be the oldest grandchild, he would make sure they towed the line), and Hooters. The last, because Rucker explained to us the art of ordering chicken wings from the waitresses and then accidently spilling the sauce on the floor next to the table so they would bend down and clean up his mess, which apparently happened four times, at which time the waitress adorably kissed him on the cheek. Rucker was now calling it his first real kiss. I was not impressed with my father and Reilly who laughed loudly at Rucker’s explanation.
So when dinner was done and my mother wanted to corner me to talk about sex, I decided enough was enough and I pointed them to the door and began moving them out. It took an hour, but they were finally gone, Rucker was tucked into bed, of course by the grandparents who said this was also their new job, which caused me to roll my eyes once again.
Cuffed and Briefed (KO Ink Book 4) Page 10
