Chapter 11 - Ranger
RANGER
The second I heard her scream, my heart leapt into my throat.
She knew the woman in the video?
“Everyone!” I bellowed as I ran toward the sound of her rushing footsteps. “Get me your damn tech! We have to burn it!”
“Rangeeeeer!” Marla exclaimed.
I turned the corner and there she was, all wild hair and stumbling limbs, like a fawn that just dropped to the ground.
“I gotcha,” I said breathlessly as I scooped her into my arms, holding her trembling body. “I gotcha. It’s okay.”
“Oh God, noooo,” she cried into my shoulder, “they have Lizzie. They can’t have Lizzie. We have to get her. We have to help her.”
“Shhh, sh, sh, sh, sh,” I shushed as I knelt down and felt her wrap her legs around me.
Her legs.
Around me.
Good thoughts. Plain thoughts. Non-sexy thoughts.
“How did this happen?” Cap demanded as I heard him coming up behind us.
“I need your phone, sweetie,” I whispered. “We have to get you a new one. These are compromised.”
“Okay,” she squeaked out as she sniffled against my shoulder.
“Range,” Cap barked as he wrapped around us and came into my view. “I need a sitrep.”
I glared up at him. “I need everyone’s tech. We have to burn it.”
Cap glared right back. “You’re going to have to be more—”
I stood with Marla in my grasp. “You heard me, Cap. I don’t know how we’ve been compromised. I’m not sure what happened. I won’t know until I dig, all right? But for now, we have to assume everything is compromised. Wreck!”
“Yep!?”
“Start the fire in the furnace!”
“On it!”
Marla clung to me, whimpering and sniffling, and it broke my heart.
Cap stormed past me. “I need phones! Laptops! Any Bluetooth object that stores data, even temporarily! We’ll have to start from scratch!”
Gone were the questions on how in the fuck our information had been disseminated like that. Fucking hell, there were a million ways we could’ve been compromised. But, nothing held a candle to my worry over Marla.
She knew the woman in the video.
“Who’s Lizzie, sweetie?” I asked as I turned back toward the chaos.
I held her tightly as I walked back toward it.
“She’s my best friend,” Marla mumbled into the crook of my neck.
I rubbed my hand up and down her back. “How long have you guys been friends?”
Her voice crumbled, but she stayed strong for me. “S—since we were, um, little.”
“So, childhood.”
“Yeah, pretty much. We, um… met when we got into middle school.”
“Ah, the lanky years. I had braces then.”
“Me, too.”
I grinned as I walked into the common room where Wrecker and Cap were busy taking apart all of the technology thrown at them.
Marla clung tighter to me, and I saw Doc peek over at her.
He made a motion, wondering if he needed to check anything out on her.
He made the sign for taking her pulse, maybe even listening to her breathing. But I just shook my head.
“Wreck?” I asked.
“Yep?”
“Make sure you cut those SIM cards in half before burning them.”
He grinned as he held up the shears from the kitchen. “Brutus is gonna kill me.”
I snickered. “Tell him I’ll buy him a new set. This is an emergency.”
“I still need theories, Range,” Cap said as he started taking apart Ariel’s laptop.
“Give me a second, Cap,” I said as I eased down onto the couch.
With Marla still in my lap.
No sexy thoughts at all. Think of grandmas with their grandkids. Flowers in the rain. The smell of rotted chicken. No, too gross.
“Miles?”
Marla’s whimpered voice pulled me out of my head as she lifted hers from my shoulder. I reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Yeah, sweetie?”
She wiped at her face. “We’re going to get her, right? Like Amanda went and got her sister?”
“Hey! She remembers our stories!” Amanda exclaimed.
I smiled softly at her as I allowed my thumb to trail along her cheek, scooping up a tear trail that dribbled from her eye.
“She’s like my sister, if it helps,” she whispered.
God, this woman would be the death of me. “We’re going to get her back. We just have to figure some things out around it.”
“We are absolutely going after her,” Cap said, sealing the argument.
“Okay,” Marla said with a sniffle before her head dropped back to my shoulder.
I looked over at Cap, and he just looked at me.
He gave me a nod, and in return, I gave him one as well.
The fire raged and crackled with anger as we tossed the more sensitive components into it.
The SIM cards that were cut in half. The RAM modules.
Anything that could have stored even an inkling of information at some point in time in the electronics’ life was pulled out of the motherboard and tossed into the fire.
I had plenty of components to replace the ones we’d have to burn.
Much less pricey than just buying all new tech.
I’m gonna have a lot of work to do tonight.
“Oh, Lizzie. What have you done, girl?” Marla whispered against the crook of my neck.
“Tell me about her,” I said as I leaned back against the couch.
I stroked my fingers through her hair, and I felt the bones of her body settle against me. It reminded me of how much weight she really lost.
“Are those my fucking shears?” Brutus asked.
“Not now, Bee,” Cap ordered.
“I’ll get you a new pair,” I said as I peeked over at him.
He shot me a look. “You better. They’ll be bent after all this shit.”
Marla sniffled against me, and I shot Brutus a look. His eyes fell onto Marla for a moment before he grumbled to himself.
“Guess it’s for a good cause, though,” he mumbled.
“Yes, it is,” I said as I turned my attention back to Marla. “Hey.”
“Yeah?”
“Tell me about her.”
“Lizzie?”
“Yeah,” I said as I continued stroking my fingers through her hair. “Tell me about her.”
“Brutus, do one more round on the clubhouse. Check every room. Take Ghost with you. Make sure this is all of our memory tech.”
“On it,” the two men said before shadows passed over us.
“Well,” Marla said as she shifted in my lap a bit, “she’s in the Navy.”
“Hooyah,” Cap muttered beneath his breath.
It made Marla giggle a bit. “Lizzie says that all the time. Says it pisses the SEALs off.”
“Why do you think we do it?” Cap said with a chuckle.
Marla snickered a bit, and it warmed my heart. “What else?”
“I don’t know. She’s just… Lizzie, you know? She’s loud, and boisterous. Weirdly clumsy, for someone in the military.”
“I know a lot of people like that,” Wrecker said as he sheared through another SIM card.
“Because you are someone like that,” Amanda said with a giggle.
He stuck his tongue out at her, and even that made me chuckle.
“What?” Marla asked as she lifted her head. “What happened?”
I smoothed some hair out of her face. “There you are.”
Her cheeks blushed just a smidge when she looked at me, and I took a mental snapshot of the memory for my own RAM module banks.
She was beautiful when she blushed. Her skin turned this lovely little shade of pink, and she got this little smile on her face that plumped up her cheeks just a little bit.
For a moment, she looked like the woman I had in my grasp months ago.
The woman ready to face something new while in the throes of doubt within her head.
“Lizzie’s amazing, you know?” Marla asked as she sighed and sat back against my lap a bit more, sitting up on her own. “She’s kind. That’s how we met. I was bullied for my weight. I’ve always been kind of bigger, and she came right up to the boy who was teasing me and punched him in the nose.”
“Hell yeah,” Doc muttered as he fiddled with another one of his cell phones.
I swear to God, the man had, like, thirty of those fuckers.
“Yeah,” Marla said with another sort-of giggle. “She’s always been a firecracker, you know? Always ready to go do something. Always—”
Her face sank and my heart shattered again.
“They cut her hair,” she whispered as those watery eyes of hers unfocused. “She’s gonna be so mad. She’s always had her hair long.”
“Hey, hey, hey,” I said as I wrapped my hands around her waist. I slid her closer to me on my lap before my hands lifted from her waist to her face, giving her eyes blinders. I leaned my forehead against it. “Hey. You with me?”
“Mhm,” she whimpered out as our eyes sat only inches from one another’s. “Her nose, Ranger. I think… I think it might be…”
I felt her fiddling with her hands in her lap, practically pressed against my stomach, and I wanted nothing more than to take them into my own hands and kiss the nervousness away.
I knew we’d find Lizzie. I knew we’d get to her.
We had so far, and nothing stood in our way when we wanted something. Ever.
But I had to convince her of that.
“You’re safe here,” I whispered, keeping the blinders up with my hands. “And soon, she will be safe here, too.”
She blubbered out a sob she was clearly trying to hold back. “You promise?”
“Promise.”
The word chorused around us when the rest of the crew answered in kind. She flinched for a moment, but then she willingly pulled away from the blinders herself. I took the cue and almost immediately dropped my hands to hers, taking them within mine.
Only to find that she picked at the beds of her nails.
What the hell was wet on her hand?
“Doc,” I said when I looked down.
“What’s up?” he asked as he came over.
I cradled Marla’s hands in my own, her fingernail beds, picked to high hell until they were bleeding.
Doc took one look over my shoulder. “I’ll get my kit.”
“I’m sorry,” Marla whispered.
I closed my hands back over hers. “No need to be sorry. Picking when nervous is very common. We’re just gonna get them cleaned up, all right?”
“Sorry,” she whispered again.
I just shook my head. “No need to be sorry.”
For basically the first time since I carried her into the room, she looked around.
First, her eyes went up, studying the ceiling and the wood paneled walls.
The fan, twirling about our heads, squeaking every so often.
But when her gaze wandered around the rest of the room, she found all eyes on her.
Everyone from the club, stealing glances over at us while they continued to work away at dismantling and stripping our electronics.
Seriously, it was going to be a busy night for me and my hands.
And not in the fun kind of way.
“Oh,” Marla said as she crouched into me a bit.
Like she wanted to be smaller under their gazes.
“Here,” I said as I reached for a blanket and wrapped it around her, “let’s try this.”
“Everyone, stop staring,” Cap ordered. “She doesn’t like it.”
I shot him a grateful look, and he nodded his head toward me before getting back to work.
“Anything else we should know about Lizzie?” I asked as I petted the back of her head.
“She’s a fighter,” Marla muttered as her head went back to my shoulder. “She’ll give them hell, and I’m so scared we are going to be too late.”
“It won’t be,” I said. “We’ll find her in time. Right now, whoever is doing this is trying to intimidate us. And as weird as this sounds, that’s a good thing.”
“What?” she whimpered out.
“Means we’re on the right track,” Cap said. “Means we’re tracking them correctly, so we can rest assured that the info we’re passing to the DOJ is going to hold weight.”
She paused for a moment. “Okay, that makes sense.”
I had to resist the urge to kiss her forehead. “Want to know the best part?”
She lifted her head and looked at me with a quizzical stare. “What’s that?”
I smiled. “When we find her, we’ll still be on lockdown. Which means she’ll have to stay with us.”
Marla giggled. “Oh, she’s gonna hate that.”
I smiled even brighter at her giggle. “Which means you guys will get unfettered time with one another under this roof.”
Marla blinked before her eyes widened. “Oh my God.”
“Oh my God is right.”
Cap barked out an order. “Brutus! Ghost! Sitrep!”
He made Marla flinch back into me.
I scooped her against me without a second thought. “Bring me the electronic carcasses once you guys are done. I’m gonna go lay her down, then I will get started on replacing the guts.”
“We still have to strip down the desktops we’ve got!” Brutus called out.
“Bring us the towers!” Cap called out.
“Wait, wait, wait, wait!” I called back out. Marla flinched, but I had to ignore it. “We have to see if the desktops got the video first!”
Ghost poked his head around the corner. “Does that matter?”
“Actually,” I said as I shifted Marla a bit in my arms, “it does. It’s easier to hack into a wireless network than it is a grounded network, and our desktops are grounded. Check local emails on all of the towers. See if they got the video. If they don't, leave them as is.”
“What are you thinking?” Cap asked.
I turned back to our president. “A lot. But when I’ve got more tailored information, I’ll start talking.”
Cap barked over our heads. “Range is in control of what happens with tech from here on out! Reference him!”
“On it!” Brutus and Ghost yelled out in unison.
I made my way out of the common room with Marla in my arms, ready to settle her back down into her safe space. She was so brave, running out like that, going from not talking to anyone to wanting to do anything she could to help her friend.
It showed me the kind of heart she had.
The kind of heart that couldn’t be raped or beaten out of her.
“I gotcha,” I whispered as we turned the corner and left the chaos of the common room behind us.
“And church in five!” Cap bellowed.
“Be there in ten!” I shouted back.
I breached the door of my bedroom and kicked it closed behind me.