**Author's notes...Just trying something a little different here. I was interested in trying this POV and truly think some of my favorite characters need a little help getting together. So this would take place after Takedown Twenty in the scheme of things so there will probably be spoilers to some of the books up until that point. Let me know how you think it's going and what not. The rating is for language, violence, and some smut that will come up later, but I know it's going to be smutty. Thanks for reading.**

September 3rd

So this is my thought journal, I had one of these when I was in high school, but I called it a diary. This one is supposed to be therapeutic, at least that's what my doctor said. So I'm going to try my best to be honest here. I guess living in denial land is lying to myself and it's making me sick, at least in the head. So I guess I should start at the beginning, that's what the doctor is having me do in my sessions.

I'm Stephanie Plum. On the surface I'm a pretty average person, mid-thirties, single, no kids, cheap apartment and POS car. I have parents that are still married after almost forty years and an older sister that I used to envy, but now realize doesn't have the perfect life either. I come from an average neighborhood, which I'll refer to as The Burg from now on. It's a middle class, Italian, area of Trenton where everyone knows everyone and no one's business is their own. Gossip is almost like a living thing here and I've been a topic of discussion almost my entire life.

I never fit into the role that I was supposed to. Here women are wives and mothers. They have clean homes, cook perfect dinners served at six sharp, and dress conservatively. I've always been more comfortable in a pair of jeans, a tight tee shirt, and shoes to fit the mood. I can clean, I just don't like it. Cooking, however, I just can't do. I never had the capacity for it, in fact I've started fires trying. So I've stopped trying. Having children is a foreign concept to me, I don't hate kids, but I don't want to spend more than a few hours with one. As for a husband, I tried it once and don't think I'm close to wanting to try it again.

After college I met a man, whom I'll refer to as The Dick from here on out. He was a young lawyer with political aspirations. He needed me to be his arm candy. I still couldn't cook or clean worth a shit, but I did an amazing job schmoozing his peers and bosses. It wasn't the life I had dreamed of, but it made my mother proud, which was something I was never able to do as a kid, so I married him.

It wasn't a blissful marriage, but it was I expected of a Burg marriage up until the moment I came home from work and found The Dick fucking my arch-nemesis, Joyce Barnhardt, on my brand new dining room table. I started a bonfire on the front lawn with his clothes and divorced him before the ink was even dry on the marriage license.

In my mother's eyes I had failed again. She couldn't understand why I couldn't allow my husband his indiscretions. I guess part of me felt like a failure too. What kind of woman can't keep her husband interested more than six months? I went through all the what-ifs and tried to bury my depression deep down, but it was hard. He left me with nothing.

I had a job as a lingerie buyer in Newark. I spent most of my time trying to get a good price on cotton granny panties. It wasn't the best job, but it paid the bills. After a few years the company was sold and I was laid off. The job market wasn't the best at the time and I was just another out of work woman with a business degree.

I still had my cheap little apartment on the outskirts of the Burg, a perfect little Mazda Miata that made me look hot, and my hamster, Rex, so life could be worse, but after six months the unemployment dried up and the job market still didn't have anything better to offer. I started to sell off my personal appliances to pay my bills and buy groceries, though mostly I just mooched off my parents every night.

The night my car was repossessed I had to admit to my family that I lost my job and was nearly destitute. My mother came up with a series of awful jobs for me to interview for and a few really disgusting prospects for me to marry. She figured if I had a husband she wouldn't be embarrassed by me anymore and I wouldn't have to worry about getting a job, a win-win in her book, I guess.

I finally decided it was time to pursue something in the way of a shitty job, it was better than having to marry a Kuntz. I had heard my cousin Vinnie was hiring a filing clerk at his office, so I pawned the last of my valuables and bought myself a POS, falling apart, Nova and drove down to Vincent Plum Bail Bonds.

A lot of things happened that first day. First, I met Connie, who has become one of my best friends. She was working as Vinnie's office manager. She told me the filing job was done, but showed me some of the FTA (Failure to Appear) files she had. One of their bounty hunters was laid up and they needed someone to pick up his caseload.

Second, once she explained I'd get a percentage of the bond I decided I had to have the job. My cousin Vinnie didn't go for it at all, but luckily for me I had blackmail material he didn't want his wife to know about. So I suddenly had a job.

Third, as I was sorting through the stack of open files I found one that was extremely interesting and worth a ton of money. I knew I found what I was looking for. I knew the guy, in fact I grew up with him. That was the moment Joe Morelli came back into my life, even if he didn't know it yet, but I'm not ready to talk about Joe yet.

Anyway, the bounty hunting didn't sound like it would be that difficult. Connie said I just go find the guy and bring them back to jail, most of the time they'd just get a new court date and rebonded. How could it be hard to find them? They gave all their personal information including address, employer, and the address of the person posting bond who was usually a relative. So I set off to find Joe Morelli, a Trenton police officer arrested for an off duty shooting and charged with murder.

Since I knew Joe's family so well it wasn't hard to find him. I followed his idiot cousin from Joe's apartment to an abandoned building where I assumed Joe was hiding. I entered the building and found Joe's hide out alright. I tried to talk him into coming back into jail with me. He laughed in my face and left me standing there staring at him. That was the first indication I had that this job was harder than I thought it was going to be.

I went back to Connie and told her that I found Joe, but had no idea how I was going to convince him to go back to jail. I wasn't about to give up though, it was personal now, I wanted Morelli, just to wipe the smirk off his smug face. Asshole thought he could laugh at me and get away with it. Connie must have taken pity on me, because she didn't tell me I was an idiot. She called in a favor to another bounty hunter, she said he was the best. If I could get him to teach me I'd be able to get Morelli with no problem.

So that was when I met Ricardo Carlos Manoso, AKA Ranger, God of all bounty hunters, at a diner. One look at him and I about peed my pants. The guy was six feet of hard muscle packed in mocha latte skin. His dark hair was pulled back into a pony tail revealing about one of the most handsome faces I'd ever come face to face with. His dark eyes met mine in a cool, assessing stare.

I knew if I was going to do this I needed to be tough too, so I squared my shoulders and marched up to him with my brave face on. I listened to all he told me. To say I was unprepared was an understatement. How he didn't turn his back and run the moment he realized I had my FTA, but had no handcuffs or gun to use to bring him in I'll never know. Looking back on it now, I probably amused him. He probably wanted to see what I'd do next, he likes amusement, especially when it comes from me. Now I'm getting off subject again, I promise to talk more about Ranger later too. It wouldn't be a diary if I didn't.

Anyway, he took me out and bought me equipment and taught me to use my gun. He gave me his number in case I needed any help and took off. He was true to his word, he trained me and helped me gather information on Morelli. I ended up solving the case on my own, clearing Morelli's name and bringing him in to collect my bounty, but I knew I'd never have made it without Ranger's back-up.

After that, the bounty hunting became a part of me. As much as I hate getting beat up, thrown around, and tossed into garbage I love the thrill of the chase, putting the clues together and solving a mystery. I know I had a lot of ups and downs over the last few years, but I still felt like I did my job to the best of my ability and had a good capture rate.

So, I guess that's me in a nutshell. I'll write more after my session tomorrow.