Disclaimer: I do not own Stephanie Plum or any other of Janet Evanovich's characters. Nor do I make any money from the posting of this fanfiction.

Epilogue

Ranger walked into his office, seeing a large manila envelope sitting on his desk. If not for the writing that he knew was Maxine's, he would have called Hal into the office to check it out for him. He went over and opened it up, pulling out the receipts and a letter.

Dear Carlos,

When I received your call, I have to admit that I was more than a little shocked. Hector had told me in the past that you kept a keen eye on your 'Babe' and that losing track of her was next to impossible due to that. But hey, who was I to question something that would have Lester back in my life? But seeing as you had always seen me as someone that wanted to take over your cousin's existence, this struck me as off to say the least. So I came into this "investigation" with some questions.

New Jersey was nicer than I thought it would be, given all the jokes I always hear about it. Obviously I've put too much weight into them than I should have. I think I know why you settled here. It sort of makes sense. A calm washed over me when I first got here and I managed to pull in the first normal breath in what felt like ages. The office is well laid out, well maintained, and runs like a German train schedule. I asked Lester later just how often the office was cleaned up. He, of course, told me every night. Which is why I thought it so weird to have found the receipts I did in the trash bin when I was thinking this investigation over later on to write up this report/letter to you. They should have been gone that first night. Later on, I checked the dates on the receipts.

Did you know that when a store makes a copy of an older receipt, the date it is copied is on the receipt as well as the older date? Yeah, I didn't see it the first time, but I did the next time I checked them. It was all too easy wasn't it? It was a nice set up, Carlos. Real nice. But far too easy to see it for the set up you had going. And if I hadn't have been as desperate as I was to be with my husband, I probably would have seen it for what it was. You managed to do for us what our damn pride wouldn't allow us to do for ourselves.

Thank you.

Maxine Santos

Ranger grinned to himself, as he looked at the receipts where she had highlighted the items such as the pregnancy test, burner cellphones, and minutes for said phones. In the upper corner, she circled the newer date in a different pen. Yeah, she was good, he thought. Tossing away the now irrelevant "clues", he buzzed Tank and went about coming up with a workable contract to offer his cousin's wife a job.

The end.

And that's it! Thank you to everyone that's taken the time to read, reviewed, and followed/favorited. This has been a blast and having all of you along for the ride has made it all the better. I'm currently working on the sequel to this and with any luck it'll work out. We'll see. Thanks again and have a brilliant day.