502Wow guys, you're really invested in my story and I've been blown away by your comments! If I haven't had time to reply and say thanks in person, please accept my apologies, bit busy here…
Anyway, here we go again, with more of the puzzle pieces being slotted into place…
o0o0o0o0o
"I'm sorry, Stephanie. I'm going to have to let you go." The manager said as he pushed an envelope across the table towards her. "Thing is, I can't afford to keep you."
"Is it because of what that asshole did?" she asked, stoicially, knowing that she was about to be shat on from a great height. She was a nobody and, well, nobodies were expendable.
"I'm just surprised at you. Disappointed really. I didn't think you were like that." He replied sadly with a strange look on his face – a mixture of sadness, pity and shame.
"I'm not! I haven't done anything wrong…" she exclaimed passionately, angry at the injustice of his words as she stood up, wringing her hands in one last ditch attempt to prove her innocence.
"Don't make this any worse!" he bit back. "I can't trust you! Just be lucky that I'm paying you till the end of week. I don't have to you know." He added forcefully, though they both knew he was lying - that he was paying her off to ease his conscience.
She'd been a good employee. Scratch that, an excellent employee. Dependable, regular, popular and trustworthy. But he couldn't afford the bad publicity that he'd get if the senator got involved. Plus the upstanding (cough) and so, so honest (cough) politician's lawyers were bigger and better than anything 'Dave's Diner' could come up with. "Now get out! I don't ever want to see you round here, you understand?!" He added roughly as he dismissed the best waitress he'd ever had.
A tear fell from Steph's eye and she angrily swiped the back of her hand over her cheek as she reached over and snatched up the brown envelope he shoved across the desk at her. If she hadn't been so desperate she'd have torn it up and thrown it back at him.
He was lying, they both knew it. She'd done nothing wrong but somehow the hot shot, senator's son had twisted the events and managed to point the finger at her. He'd turned the tables and accused her of doing exactly what he'd been doing - she'd caught him with his hand in the cash register - with the lack of witnesses it was his word against hers. If it had ever gone to court who would the jury have believed? Him? An upstanding member of the public with a Teflon-coated politician for a father or her - a single mom, down on her luck...
Nope, he'd used his father's reputation to get the blame levelled at her and she knew she didn't have a leg to stand on. There was nothing she could do and she knew it.
Dropping her shoulders in defeat, she turned and fled, leaving the little bit of dignity she still had left scattered over the cheap linoleum floor.
Oblivious to the almost silent "I'm sorry, so fucking sorry" that her boss whispered, with glassy eyes, as she disappeared.
o0o0o0o0o
"I miss her, ya know." Les said wistfully.
Bobby gave him a knowing look. "Don't!" he added with a growl. "don't say her name… out…. loud" he ground out pleadingly. "Ranger may not be in the building, in fact fuck knows where he's gone this time to save the world, but he'd know", he added with sorrow filled eyes.
Everyone at Rangeman agreed that although Ranger may be a total idiot, his radar was not nor had ever been on the fritz. He'd somehow know they'd been talking about her. It was as if the walls had ears and would tattle tale on anyone who was stupid enough to utter those three immortal words: 'Stephanie Michelle Manoso'. It was rumoured that someone had once been stupid enough to say her name in his presence and had been shipped to Siberia armed with a toothpick. And even though it was probably only a rumour… probably… well, it was better to be safe than sorry.
These days and despite their paranoia, Bobby knew they'd be in for a world of hurt if they ever reminded their friend and boss that he'd screwed up the best thing that had ever happened to him or hinted that she'd once been such a vital and integral part of Team Rangeman.
And now she was gone.
To who knows where.
He just hoped she was happy. Away from the man who'd forced her to leave and the family who had let her go.
He missed her badly. Missed her tasty cake runs. Her attitude. Hell, even the battles they'd had with getting her into the gym or onto the gun range. But it was all gone. Just like her. It was as if she'd never existed. All traces of her erased in a single moment. Everything fed to the flames of hate and destruction that Ranger had unleashed when he'd literally thrown her out of the building.
Even now, he still had vivid dreams about the look on her face when she'd left. Struggling to stand upright as Ranger's tirade threatened to topple her…
God! He hoped she had survived and somehow bounced back in the way that only Bomber could and was having a good life, filled with love and laughter and good people.
She deserved nothing less.
o0o0o0o0o
Hunkering in on top of the tumbled down building that doubled as a hospital to the poor bastards who called this God forsaken hell hole 'home', Ranger grunted.
The imagined ache in his shoulder from the bullet that ended his life as he knew it a constant reminder of the place he'd once thought of as home and the once welcoming arms that held him close to its pumping rhythm.
Damn that woman!
But Jeanne Ellen was gone, cold in the ground where he'd dumped her body once he'd meted out his own form of justice. But it had all been for naught and had come far too late.
Too late to save his marriage.
Too late for him to take back the things he'd said when drunk on whisky and falsehoods.
Too late for him to catch her before she ran.
And run she did.
Stephanie was gone to God knows where – not that he'd ever tried to find her – he couldn't believe she would ever forgive him and the idea that she'd tell him to go to hell for a second time would just about finish him off.
But she'd learned from the best and had vanished into thin air, taking the best parts of him with her he thought blackly as he tried to focus on his surroundings even as his heart ached, reminiscing about the wondrous light filled life he'd fleetingly held in his arms.
For the future they'd so nearly had. The life they'd planned with mutual love and respect, children...
He'd never loved anyone like he'd loved her and now…she was gone.
From his bed, from his life and it was all.
His.
Fault.
He should never have listened to the vipers that crawled into his brain – seeds of doubt planted by Burrows.
Goading him, needling him, leeching his love and replacing it with jealousy. Making him believe things that weren't true. But somehow. Somehow he'd believed the hateful lies, believed the falsehoods and fabrications. He'd deceived himself into thinking he was an innocent victim and that it was all his Babe's fault. Her fault that his much younger, innocent half brother was dead.
But he knew, he knew it had all been a figment. Stephanie Michelle Manoso, née Plum had not done anything wrong. He might as well have pulled the trigger himself.
He only had himself to blame.
He spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. Finally! His target had arrived. Ten days in this fly infested sweatbox had fried his brains and he was ready to go home. Home! Ha, that was a joke! He had no home, just a place to rest his weary pathetic bones. She had taken home with her, along with his heart.
He angled his MK15 on the rock that doubled as a stand and slowed his breathing as he began to ready himself for the kill shot just as his target started climbing out of a beaten up old army jeep. This was a job he'd done so many times and it became second nature as he slanted his head in readiness and returned to his thoughts.
They say no man is an island, but he knew he was as close to being one any person could be without being completely dead. It was just his whole fucking…everything that had ceased to be when his Babe had fled Rangeman three years, 1 month and 17 days before.
When he'd fucked up the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Thinking back to his last session with Barnaby – the Rangeman shrink who'd he'd paid good money to over the last two years as he sought to dig up and destroy some of his many, many demons – his final words were indelibly stamped in his mind.
Flashback:
"Ric you need to take on this last final demon face to face. Find your woman and talk to her. See which way the land lies and explain things. Not just with one word statements but with full sentences and you need to talk her through how you saw things and how they affected your judgement in the run up to and including Chico's death and then what happened after It's going to get ugly but if half of what you've unloaded on me in the last couple of years is ever going to be completely annihilated from your cupboard full of skeletons she needs to know.
She deserves to know.
What a fuck up you've been.
How stupid you were to believe Burrows and how you've dealt with the aftermath.
"She may never totally forgive you but at least she might just understand that in your own stupid way it was because you cared too much."
"Payback will be a bitch, all right." Ranger replied sadly. "I certainly don't deserve her forgiveness and I doubt she'll ever trust me again, but you're right. Full and frank disclosure is the only option."
Barnaby nodded sadly as he looked at his watch and then stood up with Ranger mirroring his actions. The psychiatrist clasped Ranger's upper arms momentarily before wordlessly dismissing him with a searching look and a nod which Ranger returned before crisply turning and leaving the room as silently as smoke.
End flashback
A glimmer of something unknown flickered in his heart as he readied his rifle. A trickle of resolve danced round his head as he took his final steadying breath. A new determination as he squeezed the trigger and a sense of satisfaction and purpose blossomed as he watched the fanatic drop to the floor, red blooming from a tiny black circle that appeared between the man's startled eyes even as his brains were ejected through the back of his skull.
He was going to find his way back home.
He needed to atone for his sins, stupidity and misjudgements and claw his way back into her heart. If she'd have him.
And if she didn't, he'd learn to cope.
Somehow.
He knew he had to find her first and put together a plan to make her see that he was no hero (Christ, he'd proved that already and by the bucket load) but a stupid, simple man who'd fucked up royally.
Steeling his resolve as chaos reigned within the scene unfolding in the small square two thousand and thirty eight metres away, panic rising, guns drawn, distant shouts for help as muted screaming filled the air, he stood quickly and silently. Swiftly leaving the scene as he pulled out his phone to dial up the exfil team.
Wishing instead he had the courage to dial up the love of his life instead.
o0o0o0o0o
So, dear readers, more of what happened has been explained (Ok, well perhaps a tiny percentage but enough to let you all start joining some of the dots)
Thank you so much for your amazing comments. I know I haven't replied to all of you but things are frantic at this end. Only upside is that the less time I have, the more I want to write (does that make me a mosochist?!)
R&R please... mwah
xox