The characters below belong to JE. I'm giving her the credit for creating them so that I can take them and make them do what I wish they would do in her stories.

Jenny (JenRar) I can't thank you enough for volunteering (okay, accepting me drafting you) into working as the beta on another story.

Chapter 1 – Just to Hear Your Voice

Stephanie's POV

When I was little and used to draw, I was amazed at how many colors Crayola included in their big box of crayons. Sure, it was nice to have options, but how many different shades of orange did you really need? As I sat on the curb and watched my little Volkswagen Bug burn, I realized there were a lot of color variations in fire. If I wanted to truly capture the flames in front of me, I just might need the entire orange, red, white, and blue options to get it right.

As I was pondering how you could begin to break down the different hues of something in motion like a flame, I heard a familiar voice behind me. "You hurt my Joey, and now you get what you deserve."

I didn't need to turn around to know that Grandma Bella had her black purse on her arm, near the elbow, and her arthritic index finger was pointing in my direction. But I was technically in the 'Burg, which meant I had no choice except to stand up and turn to face one of the few people who really scared me. It's not that I worried she would start beating me with her hand bag – although I guess the way she clung to it, that might be a possibility. I was more worried that she'd have a vision and begin to spout off things that were going to happen to me, and then I'd have to live in fear that they would come true.

"Hi, Grandma Bella," I said, trying to sound glad to see her.

"You look horrible," she replied, obviously feeling that at her age, she no longer had to be polite.

"The blast from my car knocked me over," I explained, looking down and seeing the scrapes on my knees and palms before reaching up to attempt to control the hair that had worked its way out of my ponytail.

"No," she disagreed, as though I always looked like this. "You aren't sleeping."

While it was true that I wasn't sleeping well, I wasn't about to admit that to her.

"You are awake at night looking at your life and seeing that you are alone of your own making. You turned my Joey away, and now he is gone and you will never have another like him." She was getting really close to saying she'd had a vision about it.

"Actually, Joe and I decided together that we weren't right for each other," I attempted to explain, not sure why a break up always had to have a person to blame. We couldn't get along; we wanted different things out of life, so staying together was ridiculous. After a few nights of great break-up sex, we'd decided to make a clean break and quit trying to force something between us that we agreed was never going to work. It took a month before we could be around each other without it feeling odd, but over the last few weeks, we'd finally hit a nice place where we could be friends without sex, and it felt natural.

Grandma Bella made a sweeping gesture with her hand in an attempt to stop me from explaining any more. "You'd never be good enough for him, but he is loyal and wouldn't walk away from you, so you pushed him."

I was about to tell her how wrong she was, but a warm voice behind me jumped in, "Actually, I didn't go anywhere. I'm right here."

Speak of the devil, and up he walks. We might not be a couple anymore, but every time I saw Joe, I had to take a minute to appreciate the way he looked in his jeans and work boots. There was a reason Lula insisted on calling him Officer Hottie.

Joe walked right up to me and threw his arm around my shoulder in a casual way, giving me the chance to wrap my arm around his waste and lean into his side. After giving my hair a quick kiss, he asked, "Do I want to know?"

"The car or your grandmother?" I asked, not sure which part of my crappy day he was referring to.

"Either," he replied with a smile. Then he looked up at his grandmother and asked, "Do you have a way to get home? I'm going to have to stick around here for a while, but you're welcome to wait in my car, and I can drive you back when I'm finished."

She smiled at him, an expression few people earned, and replied, "No, I will walk. Only a lazy person feels the need to drive everywhere when they have two perfectly good legs."

I felt like that was a veiled insult, but I wasn't fast enough to pick up on it. "You're getting thin," she said to Joe, adding, "I'll fix you dinner and have your mother bring it over tomorrow."

"I'm sure it will be delicious," Joe replied, knowing better than to argue that Friday night was his poker night and any food she brought wouldn't be eaten then because he and the guys would be eating pizza and drinking beer all night.

After she left, Joe tightened his arm around me and asked, "Did she give you a hard time?"

"Nah," I lied. "Just the usual... I hurt you, I'm alone because no one wants to be around me, and my car blowing up is punishment for how I treated you."

"Oh good, as long as she didn't say anything outrageous," he quipped, quickly letting go of me and stepping back before I could get my fist to connect with his stomach.

"Could you at least tell her the truth?" I asked, wishing he'd set his family straight about what had happened between us.

He shrugged as though it were no big deal. "I told them, but she's only going to believe what she wants to, so there's nothing I can do about her."

As much as I wanted to argue the fact, I'd been around his family enough to know he was right. Both of our grandmothers had a propensity for getting thoughts stuck in their head, and no amount of arguing about it would talk them out of it.

"So what can you tell me about your car?" Joe asked, changing the subject.

"Not much," I regretted to say. "I was in the store when a kid came in and said there was a car on fire in the parking lot. I didn't even have to look to know it was mine. I got outside just in time for the fire to hit the newly-filled gas tank." I think I was more pissed about the fact that I'd wasted money filling up with gas than I was that my car was gone.

"So you got out just in time for the big boom but not in time to see anything," he summed up, slipping effortlessly into his cop role. He looked around, as though searching for someone in the crowd of gawkers standing around the scene. "There are a couple of cameras." He pointed to a pole at each end of the parking lot. "The angle isn't great, but there might be something helpful."

"Will you let me know what you find out?" I hated that I had to ask, but despite our past, Joe wasn't really one to volunteer information, so if I didn't push about it, I might not hear much.

He ran his fingers through his hair, and I wondered how it was possible for it to always look like he needed a haircut without it ever looking like it was too long. "I'm going to be honest with you, Cupcake. This is a low priority crime, and the trouble of getting a warrant and devoting man hours to watching tape that may or may not pan out to be helpful isn't going to happen fast."

Then he lifted his hand and pointed to a small black sticker on the bottom corner of the storefront window. "If you wanted to do a little digging yourself and could deliver a snapshot of anything interesting from the surveillance, then we could definitely act on it for you."

I recognized the RangeMan decal they put on all the stores they monitored. There was no doubt in my mind that if I showed up and told the guys there what had happened, they would let me see the footage, but Ranger was in the wind, and I tried to stay out of the office when he was gone. I never wanted it to seem like I was taking advantage of Ranger's generosity. Therefore, I didn't like to hang around when he wasn't there and risk giving the impression I was helping myself to RangeMan resources when Ranger wasn't around to approve or deny it.

Taking a deep breath, I coughed a little from all the smoke I'd inhaled, nearly choking at the end. Joe found my episode funny and patted my back as though I'd eaten something that went down the wrong way. "Take it easy, Cupcake," he said as I began to pull myself together. "And let me know if you find something for us to follow up on."

It would have been tempting to get mad at Joe for dropping by and then blowing off what had happened by saying I'd have to catch the guy that did this myself. But I'd read in the papers about the cuts in the police department and their crackdown on the guys working any overtime, so I knew man hours were precious and the major crimes division was swamped. Generally speaking, an exploding car might warrant investigation, but since it was mine, this wasn't even front page news anymore. He was just being realistic in pointing out there was no push to solve this most recent highlight in my car ownership record.

The fire department had the flames under control, and I knew from past experience that at this stage, most of the flammable liquids had burned off so they would have it down to a smoking hunk of metal and wet ash soon. I was just about to pull my phone from my purse to call my dad for a lift when I saw a black SUV pull up.

My heart skipped a beat at the possibility of what could be behind the tinted glass. Ranger had gone in the wind a few weeks before and had stopped by my apartment to warn me that this was going to be a long and difficult mission. He'd tried to make light of the danger by saying, "Everything I do is a risk of some sort – I've even ridden in one of your cars."

In light of the scene behind me, that might have been more accurate than I cared to admit.

It seemed too soon for him to be home, but I still couldn't help but wish the driver's side door would open and Ranger would step out. I had long ago accepted these kinds of events were a part of my life, but I felt like they were easier to handle when Ranger was around to check on me.

No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than the door opened, and a black boot hit the pavement. The door was blocking my view of who was coming, but I knew just from the shoe that it wasn't going to the man I wanted it to be. Ranger's body was flawlessly sculpted, with everything in perfect proportion. The boots coming out of the SUV were way too big to belong to his five foot eleven inch frame. Even before the sun glinted off the reflective sunglasses and shaved head, I knew Tank was the RangeMan who'd drawn the short straw to check on me.

Moving with more grace than should be possible in a man of his size, Tank moved straight to me using the path in the crowd that split to make room as he walked through. "Need a lift?" I could always count on Tank to get straight to the point and not waste time with much small talk.

There was nothing I could say to argue that I needed some kind of help at the moment, so I nodded and followed him back through the mass of spectators, all trying to see my latest car flammability study.

Once I put on my seat belt, Tank pulled away from the curb and asked, "Where to?"

I needed wheels, but I wasn't ready to face my mother. She was already stressed because she had Lisa, Mary Alice, and Angie all week while Albert and Valerie took a second honeymoon. If I went over there now, I could probably score dinner and borrow the car, but she'd guilt me into watching the girls so that she could get a break, and I wasn't in any mood to deal with my sister's perfect little prodigy, an infant, and a girl pretending to be a horse. Picturing me being stuck trying to feed Lisa while Mary Alice whinnied in the background was enough to make me tell him, "My apartment would be great."

The beauty of traveling with Tank was that he didn't feel the need to talk unnecessarily. The down side was that if he asked a question, he expected an answer, and he had some kind of uncanny gift for knowing when people lied, so you had to be honest with him.

"Was it an accident or intentional?" he asked first.

This might seem like a standard question, but the fact that he entertained the option that my car exploding near a convenience store could be a complete accident was evidence that he knew me well enough to understand that sometimes, these kinds of things just happened to me. And while we both knew it was more than likely an intentional act of some crazy skip or criminal, there was still the possibility that because of my less-than-good-luck, it was a fluke.

"I have no idea." Knowing he'd call me on it anyway, I just laid it out there and explained how I'd been inside until someone came in and announced a car was on fire. Then I went on to share what Joe had said about the police most likely writing it off as unsolved unless I could come up with a lead for them to track down.

"You want me to have one the guys take a look at the tapes, or do you want to do it?"

"Don't take one of the guys off what they're working on just because of my car," I blurted out, hating the idea of Ranger bleeding money because of my crazy life.

"Boss man would be pissed if we let this go without looking into it," he calmly stated. "You've got a window of time the incident occurred, so it wouldn't take long to review the tapes to see if there's something there."

"I can stop by and do it so that you don't have to tell the guys," I offered, not entirely sure I knew how to do it but feeling like I had to keep him from wasting time on me anyway.

"Hector could look faster than he could show you how to do it yourself," Tank countered, as though he knew exactly what I'd been thinking.

If getting my own set of ESP receivers was standard gear for joining RangeMan, then I might have to reconsider the job Ranger had offered me several times over the last year.

"Probably," I had to agree. "But then you'll have to tell everybody that I've lost yet another car, and there will be money changing hands when somebody wins the pool."

"What pool?" Tank asked, sounding surprised and intrigued.

"You know..." I wasn't going to let him play dumb with me. He might look like all brawn and no brain, but I knew better. "The fire department, the police department, and the ER staff all have betting pools about my cars exploding. Surely RangeMan has one, too."

"They damn well better not, or we're going to have to find a way to bring the dead back to life, 'cause I'll kill them, and when the boss gets back, he'll want a chance to do it again," Tank told me, sounding completely sincere.

"Really?" I found it hard to doubt what he was saying but equally hard to believe it was true.

By this point, we were at my apartment, so he stopped the truck and turned in his seat, lowering his head to peek at me over the tops of his sunglasses before replying. "Really. Nobody at RangeMan bets on you." Then he lifted his head and added, "Besides that, if we were going to bet on you, it wouldn't be about exploding cars. It would be something more interesting to us."

"What's more interesting than an exploding car?" I wondered, recalling the size of the crowd swelling around my latest mishap.

He almost smiled at that question, but the look of amusement faded almost as quickly as it had come. After going through the usual routine of me attempting to tell him my apartment was fine and Tank insisting I stand aside and let him clear it anyway, I relented and handed over my keys. Two minutes later, he agreed everything was clear.

"I'll have Hal drop off a car for you," he said as I dropped my purse on the counter.

That's when I remembered I had no food in the apartment. The only reason I had gone out was to pick up a few emergency Tasty Cakes, and I'd run out of the store without getting them. Dealing with the loss of my car was a lot easier than the dealing with no snack food in the apartment.

I turned around with the frustration I felt at still not having a snack, despite needing it twice as badly as I had earlier.

Tank must have misunderstood my expression because he held up a hand and said, "Ranger keeps an extra car in the fleet for you anyway, so this isn't taking anything from anybody. And it will keep you from having to borrow something while you're waiting on your insurance check to come through."

"It's covered in trackers and other ways of keeping tabs on me, isn't it?" I asked, trying to raise a single eyebrow.

"Consider it making my life easier, too," Tank offered, as though that were an answer to my question. "I'll have Santos call you if there's anything on the tapes that could be useful," he added as he turned to leave.

I would have argued the point, but I decided he was really trying to help me. Plus, I'd already taken enough of his time today, so I let him go without another word.

After locking up behind him, I realized I was stuck here until somebody dropped off a vehicle for me. In the fridge, I had a fresh bag of baby carrots I'd picked up last week for Rex, and in the pantry, there was a big bag of cheese doodles. Maybe it wasn't the most practical lunch, but desperate times called for uni-color meals, so I had no choice.

The longer I was in the apartment with the knowledge that I couldn't go anywhere due to my lack of a mode of transportation, the more I wanted to leave. If Ranger were in town, I could call him and ask for a faster delivery of wheels, and if I was lucky, he'd deliver the car himself.

Thinking about Ranger made me miss him all the more. He might have a strange stance on relationships, claiming they weren't possible for him now, but he was still the most stable and dependable man in my life, even if he was gone for months at the time. Maybe that's part of why we got along so well. About the time I might start to get on his nerves, he had to go save the world, which would give him a little break from me and allow me to seem fresh and charming when he returned. Hell, who was I kidding? Even my closest friends would never call me charming. And the only person to say I was fresh was my mom when she was telling me not to talk back to her.

Without thinking it through, somehow my cell phone ended up in my hand with my thumb poised over the speed dial number for Ranger. I knew he couldn't answer, but I needed a friendly voice. Even though his greeting was short, hearing his voicemail message would be enough, so I pushed the button and waited.

There were many times that I was grateful Rex couldn't talk, and this was definitely one of them. Nobody ever needed to know just how often I dialed Ranger's phone when he was out of town. I lifted a finger for each ring, knowing after four it would pick up and I would hear him tell the caller to leave a message. It always amused me that he didn't say hello or thank the person for calling, and he certainly didn't promise to return the call.

Just as my third finger lifted, the phone went live, catching me off guard because I'd thought there would be another ring.

"Yo," came a soft, almost weak voice.

"Ranger?"

It couldn't be him, but who else would have his phone? Maybe it sounded strange because my brain had finally snapped from the near constant stress I lived under, and this was like a mirage in the desert. It was wavy and not clear, but my mind wanted it to be real badly enough that I thought it was.

"Babe." His response removed any doubt that he'd really answered his phone.

"You answered," I pointed out the obvious.

"You called," he logically reminded me.

"Why do you sound weird?" Clearly, the shock of him answering had caused my editor to leave the building.

There was a shuffling sound, like he was repositioning the phone. "Can't talk loud right now."

"Shit, Ranger," I blurted out, realizing that by talking to me, he could be giving away his location to an enemy waiting to take him out. "Please tell me I didn't just blow your cover and put you in danger by calling."

I almost thought I heard him laugh, and then the sound stopped abruptly and he said, "No, you aren't blowing my cover." Ever the man of mystery, that was all he gave me as an explanation. "Everything okay?"

"Yes," I lied, but knowing he was somewhere in parts unknown, I couldn't bring myself to complain about being stuck in my apartment.

"Try again." The distance between us obviously didn't diminish his ESP.

"My car blew up today," I confessed.

"You all right?"

"A few scratches, but nothing needing medical attention," He knew me well enough by now to know that in my world, that mean all was well. My car going boom was no big deal. My car going boom combined with stitches was highly upsetting.

"Tell me about it," he prompted.

"I'm sure you have more important things to do right now than listen to me prattle about my day," I reminded him.

"Not at the moment," he disagreed, his voice still so quiet that I had to really listen to not miss what he was saying. I didn't speak right away, which caused him to encourage me, "Just talk so I can listen. Tell me anything."

Every signal in my brain was going off, telling me something was wrong, but I also felt in my gut that he needed a distraction and I was the only person that could provide it. So I opened my mouth and started talking, because really, how often did a woman have a man practically begging her to ramble?

I took him at his word that he really wanted me to talk, and I told him all about my day, from doing a little research on my latest batch of skips through to my failed trip to the store for a snack cake. When I finished with all it, I'd been talking for nearly half an hour and suddenly wondered if I'd put him to sleep.

Just before I asked if he was still with me, I heard him say, "Told you those things would kill you."

I couldn't stop myself from laughing out loud. My gut might be telling me that he needed something from me, but at the moment, that joke was exactly what I needed. "Are you sure I'm not keeping you from anything?"

"Nothing," he answered, giving me the assurance I needed. "What made you call?"

"I'm not sure," I answered. "I was a little down about everything that happened, and when I'm upset, your voice usually makes me feel better, so I called your phone just so I could listen to your voicemail message. It was a gut reaction without really thinking it through kind of thing." I paused before judging myself with what I figured he had to be thinking, "It's pretty pathetic, I know."

"No," he disagreed. "Completely understandable."

"Aren't you super busy saving the world or overthrowing some evil dictator?" I gave him the two options Lula seemed to think were equally possible for what happened when Ranger went in the wind.

"I was," he answered, sounding amused for the first time in this conversation. "But now I'm in a bit of a holding pattern." He stopped, as though his air had run out. "I'm glad you called."

"Me, too," I admitted, no longer feeling the walls closing in on me from my forced captivity.

Without another word, he hung up. I knew it was too much ask for him to say goodbye. Theoretically, the conversation had come to a natural conclusion, but a goodbye would have been nice. Then again, Ranger didn't exactly have a nice guy reputation, so I should have known better than to expect a polite closing.

Still, it felt like he was saying a lot more than just "thanks for calling" at the end. I thought back over everything I'd said and realized I hadn't really talked about anything of consequence. For his comment to have been sincere, he would have been saying he was just glad to have heard from me – regardless of what I was telling him. That would explain why he'd seemed to accept my excuse for calling... I'd just needed to hear his voice to feel okay. I decided not to think on it anymore so that I could content myself with the dreamy idea that Ranger had needed to hear from me, too.

Ranger's POV

"Captain," the nurse called to me from the hall. "Are you ready?"

I looked at the phone in my hand that just seconds ago had brought me Stephanie's voice. If I had ever doubted the existence of God, her calling me at that exact moment with what seemed like a completely coincidental excuse would have made me question my beliefs.

"Yeah, I'm good to go," I told her, knowing it was true. I'd heard Stephanie's voice one more time, which was really all I needed to face whatever the surgeon was going to tell me when I woke up the next time.