One

I was perched on a barstool in a dark, noisy, overpriced ­restaurant in Princeton, New Jersey. I was wearing a red dress that was too tight, too short, and cut way too low. And I was wearing an earbud that connected me to a guy named Ricardo Carlos Manoso, aka Ranger.

My name is Stephanie Plum. I usually work as a bond enforcement agent for my cousin Vinnie, but tonight I was moonlighting as a lookout for Ranger. Ranger was stalking Emilio Gardi, a man many considered to be untouchable. Gardi had friends in high places, an army of thugs guarding his body, and money to burn, and his enemies tended to disappear without a trace. He was currently facing a racketeering charge in Miami, but he’d decided to keep his dinner date in Jersey rather than attend his court hearing in Dade County. This meant that the idiot who’d been dumb enough to post a bond for Gardi was out big money unless Gardi was dragged back to jail. The idiot happened to be Ranger’s cousin.

Ranger owns Rangeman, a small high-­tech, high-­end ­security firm. Ordinarily Ranger doesn’t do bond enforcement, but tonight he was making an exception. He was standing off to the side at the entrance to the dining room, and he was watching Gardi.

Gardi was wearing a tan sports jacket over a shirt with red and yellow flowers printed on it—­the South Beach–­meets–­JCPenney look. He was in his fifties. He was balding. He was built like a fireplug. He was drinking red wine and eating rack of lamb, having a good time, entertaining three other men who were laughing too hard at his jokes.

Ranger was in his usual black—­a perfectly tailored black suit, and a black dress shirt open at the neck. The Glock at the small of his back was also black. Ranger’s body is perfect. His hair is very dark brown. Cut short. His eyes are dark brown and intense. His skin is the color of hot chocolate, the lucky result of his Latino ancestry. His earbud matched his skin tone and was barely detectable.

Standing beside Ranger was a guy named Tank. Tank is big and solid and lethal. He’d been with Ranger’s unit in Special Forces, and now he’s second in command at Rangeman and watches Ranger’s back.

I didn’t see any of Gardi’s henchmen. They’d waited for him to take his table and then left the room.

“The room is clean,” I said to Ranger via the earbud.

Ranger moved forward, his gaze never wavering from his quarry. Eye of the tiger. I’ve seen him focus like this on other takedowns, and it always raises the hair on my arms and at the nape of my neck.

Tank was steps behind him, surveying the rest of the room. Ranger unbuttoned his jacket to get better access to his gun and handcuffs. He stopped behind Gardi, put his hand on Gardi’s shoulder, and said something to him, close to his ear.

Gardi shrugged Ranger away, said something I couldn’t hear, and everyone at the table laughed.

Ranger didn’t laugh, and even at a distance I knew things were about to get ugly. Ranger made another civil attempt, Gardi got angry and brushed him off, and in one swift move Ranger snatched Gardi out of his chair like a wolverine rooting out a groundhog.

In a heartbeat Gardi’s head was smashed onto the table, everyone grabbed their drinks, and Ranger cuffed Gardi behind his back and handed him over to Tank. Ranger told the table he was sorry for the intrusion and followed Tank and Gardi out of the room. The whole episode had taken maybe a minute.

A Rangeman vehicle idled in front of the restaurant, ready to take Tank and Gardi back to Rangeman headquarters in center city Trenton. In the morning Gardi would be escorted onto a plane and extradited to Miami.

My job done, I turned back to my black sambuca. Okay, I know they put food coloring in the sambuca to make it black. Don’t care. It’s sexy. And I swear the black tastes better. I guess I could also say that about Ranger. Not that he’s my boyfriend or anything, but we have had a moment.

I downed the sambuca, paid my tab, and went outside to meet up with Ranger. The Rangeman SUV was pulling away, and Ranger was waiting for me beside his black Porsche 911 Turbo.

“Babe,” he said.

“Babe” covers a lot of ground for Ranger. It can be a simple greeting, or a warning that a tarantula is sitting on my shoulder. Tonight it came on the heels of a full body scan, and I was pretty sure it suggested he liked my dress.

Ranger slipped an arm around me, leaned close, and kissed me. The kiss was a further indicator that he liked the dress. In fact, the kiss suggested that while he liked the dress a lot, he wouldn’t mind getting me out of the dress as soon as possible. And I was thinking that was a great idea. Fortunately we were in Princeton, and my apartment was at least a half hour away if the traffic was moving. I was going to need that time to talk myself out of sleeping with Ranger.

Ranger keeps me safe from everyone but himself. He’s the panther stalking the gazelle, keeping all other predators away. He enjoys the hunt. And I enjoy being the gazelle, although truth is I’m more prairie chicken than gazelle.

Ranger’s reflexes are quicker, his brain engages faster, his instincts are far superior than the average man’s. My skin heats under his touch, and his kiss sets delicious things in motion in my body. I know from past experience he’s magic in bed. I also know he has dark secrets that take precedence over personal relationships. And I know it’s in my best interests to keep him at arm’s length.

Plus, I sort of have a boyfriend.

Ranger pulled out of the restaurant lot, stopped for a light, and his hand went to my knee and traveled north.

“Um,” I said.

He cut his eyes to me. “Is there a problem?”

“Your hand is moving up my leg.”

“And?”

“We’ve talked about this.”

“Not lately,” Ranger said.

“Has anything changed?”

“No.”

“Well, then.”

“Is that a definite ‘Well, then’?”

“Afraid it is.”

“Too bad,” Ranger said.

Thirty minutes later, Ranger parked behind my apartment building and walked me to my door.

“Call me if you get lonely,” he said.

“I have you on speed dial,” I told him.

A barely perceptible smile twitched at the corners of his mouth, he gave me a light kiss, and he left.

Truth is, I would have liked to invite him in, but that wouldn’t have been the smart thing to do. Not that I always do the smart thing, but tonight I’d managed to keep from grabbing him and ripping his clothes off. Two points for Plum.

I let myself into my apartment and went to the kitchen to say hello to my hamster, Rex. Rex lives in an aquarium on my kitchen counter and sleeps in a soup can. He was running on his wheel when I looked in on him.

“Hey,” I said. “How’s it going?”

Rex blinked his round black eyes at me and twitched his whiskers. That’s about as complicated as our conversations ever get. I dropped a peanut into his cage and he jumped off his wheel, shoved the peanut into his cheek, and scurried into his soup can with it.

•••

My cousin Vinnie’s bail bonds office is on Hamilton Avenue. It’s a one-­story storefront building with some parking spots by the back door. Vinnie has an inner office where he hides from people he’s stiffed, pissed off, infected with herpes, or previously incarcerated. Vinnie looks like a weasel in a pimp suit. His wife, Lucille, is a saint. His father-­in-­law, Harry the Hammer, owns the agency and didn’t get his nickname because he was a carpenter.

Connie Rosolli, the office manager and guard dog, was at her desk when I walked in.

“How’d it go last night?” she asked.

“It was good. Ranger walked up to Gardi, yanked him out of his chair, and cuffed him. Very smooth.”

“And?”

“That was it.”

“No naked Ranger in your bed?”

“Nope.”

“Disappointing,” Connie said.

Tell me about it. “Anything new come in for me?”

“I have a failure-­to-­appear. High money bond. Jimmy Poletti.”

“He owns all those car dealerships, right? He shoots his own commercials. ‘Make a deal with Jimmy!’ ”

978-0345542892

ONE

It was late at night and Lula and I had been staking out Salvatore Sunucchi, better known as Uncle Sunny, when Lula spotted Jimmy Spit. Spit had his prehistoric Cadillac Eldorado parked on the fringe of the Trenton public housing projects, half a block from Sunucchi’s apartment, and he had the trunk lid up.

“Hold on here,” Lula said. “Jimmy’s open for business, and it looks to me like he got a trunk full of handbags. I might need one of them. A girl can never have too many handbags.”

Minutes later, Lula was examining a purple Brahmin bag studded with what Spit claimed were Swarovski crystals. “Are you sure this is a authentic Brahmin bag?” Lula asked Spit. “I don’t want no cheap-­ass imitation.”

“I have it on good authority these are the real deal,” Spit said. “And just for you I’m only charging ten bucks. How could you go wrong?”

Lula slung the bag over her shoulder to take it for a test drive, and a giraffe loped past us. It continued on down the road, turning at Sixteenth Street and disappearing into the darkness.

“I didn’t see that,” Lula said.

“I didn’t see that neither,” Spit said. “You want to buy this handbag or what?”

“That was a giraffe,” I said. “It turned the corner at Sixteenth Street.”

“Probably goin’ the 7-­Eleven,” Spit said. “Get a Slurpee.”

A black Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows and a satellite dish attached to the roof sped past us and hooked a left at Sixteenth. There was the sound of tires screeching to a stop, then gunfire and an ungodly shriek.

“Not only didn’t I see that giraffe,” Spit said, “but I also didn’t see that car or hear that shit happening.”

He grabbed the ten dollars from Lula, slammed the trunk lid shut, and took off.

“They better not have hurt that giraffe,” Lula said. “I don’t go with that stuff.”

I looked over at her. “I thought you didn’t see the giraffe.”

“I was afraid it might have been the ’shrooms on my pizza last night what was making me see things. I mean it’s not every day you see a giraffe running down the street.”

My name is Stephanie Plum, and I work as a bond enforcement officer for Vincent Plum Bail Bonds. Lula is the office file clerk, but more often than not she’s my wheelman. Lula is a couple inches shorter than I am, a bunch of pounds bigger, and her skin is a lot darker. She’s a former streetwalker who gave up her corner but kept her wardrobe. She favors neon colors and animal prints, and she fearlessly tests the limits of spandex. Today her brown hair was streaked with shocking pink to match a tank top that barely contained the bounty God had bestowed on her. The tank top stopped a couple inches above her skintight, stretchy black skirt, and the skirt ended a couple inches below her ass. I’d look like an idiot if I dressed like Lula, but the whole neon pink and spandex thing worked for her.

“I gotta go see if the giraffe’s okay,” Lula said. “Those guys in the Escalade might have been big game poachers.”

“This is Trenton, New Jersey!”

Lula was hands on hips. “So was that a giraffe, or what? You don’t think it’s big game?”

Since Lula was driving we pretty much went where Lula wanted to go, so we jumped into her red Firebird and followed the giraffe.

There was no Escalade or giraffe in sight when we turned the corner at Sixteenth, but a guy was lying facedown in the middle of the road, and he wasn’t moving.

“That don’t look good,” Lula said, “but at least it’s not the giraffe.”

Lula stopped just short of the guy in the road, and we got out and took a look.

“I don’t see no blood,” Lula said. “Maybe he’s just takin’ a nap.”

“Yeah, or maybe that thing implanted in his butt is a tranquilizer dart.”

“I didn’t see that at first, but you’re right. That thing’s big enough to take down a elephant.” Lula toed the guy, but he still didn’t move. “What do you suppose we should do with him?”

I punched 911 into my phone and told them about the guy in the road. They suggested I drag him to the curb so he didn’t get run over, adding that they’d send someone out to scoop him up.

While we waited for the EMS to show, I rifled the guy’s pockets and learned that his name was Ralph Rogers. He had a Hamilton Township address, and he was fifty-­four years old. He had a MasterCard and seven dollars.

The EMS truck slid in without a lot of fanfare. Two guys got out and looked at Ralph, who was still on his stomach with the dart stuck in him.

“That’s not something you see every day,” the taller of the two guys said.

“The dart might have been meant for the giraffe,” Lula told them. “Or maybe he’s one of them shape-­shifters, and he used to be the giraffe.”

The two men went silent for a beat, probably trying to decide if they should get the butterfly net out for Lula.

“It’s a full moon,” the shorter one finally said.

The other guy nodded, and they loaded Ralph into the truck and drove off.

“Now what?” Lula asked me. “We going to look some more for Uncle Sunny, or we going to have a different activity, like getting a pizza at Pino’s?”

“I’m done. I’m going home. We’ll pick up Sunny’s trail tomorrow.”

Truth is, I was going home to a bottle of champagne I had chilling in my fridge. It had been left on my kitchen counter a couple days before as partial payment for a job I’d done for my friend and sometime employer Ranger. The champagne had come with a note suggesting that Ranger needed a date. Okay, so Ranger is hot, and luscious, and magic in bed, but that didn’t totally compensate for the fact that the last time I’d been Ranger’s date I’d been poisoned. I’d been saving the champagne for a special occasion, and it seemed like seeing a giraffe running down the street qualified.

Lula drove me back to the bonds office, I picked up my car, and twenty minutes later I was in my apartment, leaning against the kitchen counter, guzzling champagne. I was watching my hamster, Rex, run on his wheel when Ranger walked in.

Ranger doesn’t bother with trivial matters like knocking, and he isn’t slowed down by a locked door. He owns an elite security firm that operates out of a seven-­story stealth office building located in the center of Trenton. His body is perfect, his moral code is unique, his thoughts aren’t usually shared. He’s in his early thirties, like me, but his life experience adds up to way beyond his years. He’s of Latino heritage. He’s former Special Forces. He’s sexy, smart, sometimes scary, and ­frequently overprotective of me. He was currently armed and wearing black fatigues with the Rangeman logo on his sleeve. That meant he was on patrol duty, most likely filling in for one of his men.

“Working tonight?” I asked him.

“Taking the night shift for Hal.” He looked at my glass. “Are you drinking champagne out of a beer mug?”

“I don’t have any champagne glasses.”

“Babe.”

“Babe” covers a lot of ground for Ranger. It can be the prelude to getting naked. It can be total exasperation. It can be a simple greeting. Or, as in this case, it can just mean I’ve amused him.

Ranger smiled ever so slightly and took a step closer to me.

“Stop,” I said. “Don’t come any closer. The answer is no.”

His brown eyes locked onto me. “I didn’t ask a question.”

“You were going to.”

“True.”

“Well, don’t even think about it, because I’m not going to do it.”

“I could change your mind,” he said.

“I don’t think so.”

Okay, truth is Ranger could change my mind. Ranger can be very persuasive.

Ranger’s cellphone buzzed, he checked the text message and moved to the door. “I have to go. Give me a call if you change your mind.”

“About what?”

“About anything.”

“Okay, wait a minute. I want to know the question.”

“No time to explain it,” Ranger said. “I’ll pick you up ­tomorrow at seven o’clock. A little black dress would be good. Something moderately sexy.”

And he was gone.

“You say I’ll never own you. If I win—you willingly give me that right. You sign not only the debt agreement, but another—one that makes me your master until your last breath is taken. You do that, and I’ll give you this.”