RANGER STOOD BY the shopping cart while I threw bags of bread and rolls into it.

“Have you checked with your office?” I asked him. “Do you have any leads on Hal?”

“Nothing I’d call a lead, but it’s early. Right now, we’re gathering information from a lot of different sources.”

“Legally?”

“Sometimes.”

Ranger employed a bunch of ex-cons who had extraordinary skills. Hackers, pickpockets, second-story experts, locksmiths, and safecrackers. His clients were kept safe by men who knew how the bad guys operated and knew how to stop them. These men also had contacts who could be useful at retrieving stolen property and missing deli managers.

“The rye bread feels stale,” I said. “Do you think I should pass on it?”

“I think it doesn’t matter if it’s stale as long as it’s not covered in blue mold. The people who are standing in line to get into the deli aren’t interested in the food. They’re there for the freak show.”

This was true. The deli had turned into a freak show. Workers disappeared without a trace. Weird sandwiches came out of the kitchen. Customers got mooned by the waitress. And the result of the freak show was a packed deli.

“Harry must have mixed emotions about the deli,” I said. “He took possession of it and instantly started having problems. On the other hand, the problems seem to be making the deli a huge success.”

“I doubt Harry would be bothered by any of those problems,” Ranger said. “He’s made his share of people disappear in the past. The only difference is that most of those people were found shortly after they were shot, choked, or bludgeoned with a shovel.”

We moved from the bread aisle to frozen foods and filled a second cart with French fries and onion rings.

“I’m seeing a whole new side of you,” I said to Ranger. “Who would have thought you’d be so at home making sandwiches and shopping for food?”

“Domestic Ranger.”

“Exactly. You’re going to make some lucky lady a wonderful husband someday.”

He wrapped an arm around me and pulled me close. “I have other marital skills. Would you like to see them?”

“Not in the frozen food section.”

Ranger grinned. “Name the place.”

“I’ll give it some thought.”

“You’re playing with me,” Ranger said.

“And you?”

“I’m not playing.”

When I’m this close to Ranger, and his lips are brushing against my ear, it’s difficult to think beyond the desire to rip his clothes off. Fortunately, we were in a supermarket, and by the time we got to the car I would have my mind redirected to other activities . . . like finding Hal.

We added jars of pickles and sauerkraut to the cart and checked out.

“Maybe you should add extra cameras to the deli,” I said to Ranger.

He loaded the groceries into the back of the SUV. “I don’t want to make another kidnapping seem impossible. Our best shot is still for them to go after you or me.”

“You’re sure you can find me, right?”

He looked down at my shoes. “Your shoes are equipped with locators. Both of them.”

“When did that happen?”

“Right after you bought them. About a month ago.”

A couple years ago I would have been incensed and outraged. This afternoon I was resigned. I had no control over Ranger.

“What if I don’t get to keep a shoe?” I asked him.

“Glad you asked. I have a miniaturized transponder I’d like to implant.”

“Implant? Where?”

“You get to choose. I get to assist,” Ranger said.

“No, no, no. No way. No how.”

“It’s small. You won’t know you’re carrying it.”

“How do I get it out?”

“There’s a string attached.”

I felt myself go slack-jawed and bug-eyed for a moment. “Seriously?”

“Hal was wearing a tracking device attached to his belt. We began chasing the tracker down minutes after Hal disappeared. We found it two blocks from the deli. It was in a dumpster along with the rest of his clothes. He didn’t have a tracking device in his shoe, so we don’t know if he was allowed to keep it. Having the transponder buried inside you is the best way I know to keep you safe.”

“Morelli almost had a cow when you taped a wire to me. How am I going to explain this?”

“You can begin by telling him it was the best twenty minutes of your short life.”

“Twenty minutes?”

“I could do the job in less time, but it wouldn’t be as memorable,” Ranger said.

“It’s tempting, but I think I’m going to stick with the shoe.”

“You could also swallow the transponder.”

“What if it gets stuck somewhere?”

“It’s unlikely that it would get stuck, but you would check to make sure it leaves your body.”

“Eeuuww.”

“Babe,” Ranger said.

It was almost five o’clock when we carried everything into the deli. Raymond and Stretch were at their stations doing prep work. Ranger’s housekeeper, Ella, was at the sandwich station.

I looked over at Ranger. “You brought Ella in to make sandwiches.”

“I can’t watch the customers if I’m making sandwiches,” Ranger said. “And at some point, we’re going to have to send you out to the dumpster while I’m watching the monitor.”

Oh crap. The suicide mission. If it went wrong, I’d be stripped naked, written on with a marker pen, and I couldn’t even imagine what happened next.

“Are you sure you’ll be able to get to me in time if you’re watching in here?” I asked him.

“I have men doing undercover surveillance from the building behind the deli. And I have men on constant patrol, circling the block, in unmarked cars.”

“And the instant someone lays a hand on me all hell will break loose, right?”

“Wrong,” Ranger said. “We want them to lead us to the other captives.”

Double crap. I really hated the strip-naked part, and I feared it happening sooner rather than later.

“If you captured the kidnappers right away, you could force them to tell you about the rest of the stuff,” I said.

“Are you sure you don’t want to swallow the transponder?” Ranger asked.

“I’ll think about it.”

“Don’t think too long,” he said.

People were lining up outside the deli, and Lula pushed her way in through the front door.

“You’re not going to believe what I just saw,” she said. “I was coming back here from getting my nail repaired, and I was looking for a parking place. I was driving all over creation being that those idiot people waiting to get in here took up the parking places. Anyways, I went down one of the alleys and all of a sudden something black caught my eye. It was crawling out of a window on the third floor of a building. And then it stood up on the ledge, and I could see it was a man all dressed in black. And then he spread his arms out, and he had bat wings. And next thing he stepped off the ledge and flew away.”

“He flew away?” I said.

“Well, it looked like he was flying because he had his bat wings out, but I guess you could say he was dropping.”

“From the third floor?”

“Yeah, except he touched down on a little awning over a back door, and sort of swooped off to the ground. He folded his wings, turned and walked between two buildings and disappeared. I was a distance away, but I’m pretty sure it was Wulf.”

“I don’t suppose you could have mistaken a cape for bat wings,” I said.

“I guess that’s a possibility,” Lula said.

“Where was the alley?” Ranger asked.

“It was one street over,” Lula said. “The awning he landed on said ‘KitKat.’ It’s a bar. I think there are apartments over it.”

“Someone needs to turn the sign in the door and start letting people in,” Stretch said. “It looks like it’s getting ugly out there.”

Three minutes later, every table was full, and there were ten people in line at the takeout counter. I was the only waitress, and customers were getting surly. The first food came up before I was done taking orders. I grabbed the plates and plunked them down on a table.

“This isn’t our food,” a woman said. “We ordered the number seven and ten.”

I picked the plates up and turned to the room. “Who ordered whatever this is?”

Three tables claimed it. I looked over at Ranger and caught him smiling.

“Order up,” Stretch said.

Crap! I gave the plates away and ran to get the new order.

By eight o’clock no one was smiling. Not me. Not Lula. Not Ranger. Not Stretch, Raymond, or Ella. And certainly not the customers. Turns out, I’m not the world’s best waitress, and Lula’s patience gets thin after forty-five minutes of phone orders.

We shut down at nine o’clock. My feet were killing me and my brain was numb.

“I vote we discontinue phone orders,” Lula said. “I’m underappreciated on the phone. I give these fools my happy sunshine voice and all they do is bark orders back at me. It’s a demoralizing experience, and after a while I find myself getting phone rage and wanting to smash something. Toward the end I was thinking I got a gun in my handbag and I could kill the phone.”

“It does not sound like a terrible idea,” Raymond said. “I often feel just that way about my fries. Sometimes I leave them in the oil too long on purpose because I hate them. Kill the fuckers, I think to myself. Kill the fucking fries.”

“Damn,” Lula said. “Do you kill a lot of fries?”

“No,” Raymond said. “After I kill just one or two I take a break and smoke a big doobie and I feel much better.”

“I guess that’s the difference between you professionals and  us amateurs,” Lula said. “You got good work habits established.”

Ranger was holding a garbage bag. “Someone needs to take this to the dumpster,” he said.

“I’d do it but I just got my nail repaired,” Lula said. “I’m not taking no chances at getting it broken again.”

“Pass me by,” Stretch said.

“I would not do this if all of the earth was on fire with the exception of the parking lot,” Raymond said. “I would not go out that back door. There is evil waiting in the darkness.”

Ranger handed the bag over to me. “Showtime,” he said. “Don’t rush it. We want to give these guys a good shot at you. I don’t know how many more days I can take working in this deli.”

It took me a couple beats to process, and then it hit me. Ranger was sending me out to get kidnapped. Crap!

“Suppose they shoot me or stab me?” I said.

“That’s not the way they work,” Ranger said. “There’s no evidence of violence.”

“Suppose there’s some other miscreant out there, and he wants to rob me?”

“I’m wearing an earbud, talking to my surveillance people,” Ranger said. “They tell me there’s no one in the area. Probably this is a dud night, but we’ll try anyway.”

“And if this miscreant comes along out of the blue and demands to take possession of our garbage, you should give it to him,” Raymond said.

Ranger ordered everyone to stay behind in the kitchen, and I trudged to the back door with my garbage bag. Five minutes earlier I was stupefied tired. Now I was in adrenaline overload. My heart was beating hard, and my hand was sweaty on the doorknob. I opened the door and looked out. The small parking lot was well lit, but beyond it was blackness. Ranger’s men were out there somewhere, and Ranger was watching on the monitor. It was all good, I told myself. I’d be fine.

I stepped out and moved toward the dumpster. I could hear the faint drone of traffic from the cross street. All else was quiet. I tried to pace myself, walking not too fast and not too slow. I tried to look natural. Just another day at the deli. I reached the dumpster and paused. Still no footsteps. No flying saucer hovering overhead. I heaved the garbage into the dumpster and turned. No one lurking behind me.

It’s not over yet, I told myself. You still have to get back inside. I lingered for a moment so Ranger could see I was a brave soldier making an effort, and then I headed for the door.

I stepped in with a mix of emotions. Relief that nothing had happened, and disappointment that nothing had happened. Ranger closed and locked the door, slipped an arm around me, and my knees almost buckled.

“I’m okay,” I said.

He kissed me on my forehead. “Babe.”

“It says on the door that the deli opens at five o’clock on Sundays,” Lula said. “Hallelujah. I need a break from this nuthouse.”

“What about provisions?” I asked.

“No provisions on Sunday,” Stretch said. “We should be okay. Sunday night is light.”

“Saturday was also supposed to be light,” Raymond said. “How did that turn out?”

I slumped in my seat in Ranger’s Porsche. “I’m exhausted,” I said. “I’m not waitress material. I’m glad this day is over.”

“It’s not over yet,” Ranger said. “I’m curious about the Wulf window exit.”

Ranger drove to the KitKat and parked one building away. It was an okay street. Mostly narrow, three-story residential row houses. Lots of graffiti but no gangbangers walking around shooting each other. There were lights on in the apartment above the bar. No lights on the third floor. The upstairs apartments were accessed through a door next to the bar. Ranger walked in, and I followed. We took the stairs to the third floor. There were two apartments up there. One facing front and one facing the rear.

Ranger knocked on the rear-facing apartment. No answer. The door was locked. Ranger took a pick from a pocket in his cargo pants and opened the door. We stood for a moment, letting our eyes adjust to the dark.

From what I could see it was an empty studio apartment. Small kitchenette on one side of the room. No furniture.

“It’s empty,” I said.

“Not empty,” Ranger said. “Look in the corner.”

“I can’t see in the corner. You have better night vision than I do.”

This was an understatement. Ranger had vision like a cat.

He flipped the light on, and I sucked in air. There were shoes in the corner. One of each kind. Ranger closed and locked the door behind us, and we walked to the corner with the shoes.

“There are two security cameras in here,” Ranger said. “One over the door and one on the wall opposite the door.”

“Infrared,” I said. “I saw the red eye when we walked in.”

Ranger went to the window. It was closed but not locked. He checked out the closet, the half fridge, the over-the-counter cabinets, and the bathroom.

“It’s empty,” he said. “I’m going to call it in to Trenton PD. The crime lab might be able to pick something up.”

I was asleep on my feet when Morelli arrived twenty minutes later, ten minutes behind the two uniforms.

“Jimmy Krut has the flu,” Morelli said. “I was next in the rotation. What’s going on?”

Ranger told him Lula saw Wulf leave from the window, so we came to check things out after we closed the deli.

“And the door was unlocked and the unit empty?” Morelli asked.

“It was unlocked and empty,” Ranger said.

This was true. Ranger had unlocked it. “There are nine shoes,” Ranger said. “We only know about six kidnappings.”

Morelli looked happy to hear this. Truth is, Morelli loved his job. He wasn’t happy about the blood and gore, but he loved the mystery. He loved the procedure. He loved solving the crime.

“The crime scene people are on their way,” Morelli said. “Did you find anything interesting?”

“No,” Ranger said. “It’s clean. It’s almost as if this was staged.”

I was so tired I was swaying.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you’re going to have to take her home with you,” Morelli said to Ranger. “I’m going to be here for hours, and she’s not going to last.”

“No problem,” Ranger said. “Let me know when you want her back.”

Ranger’s bedroom is cool and dark, dimly lit by ambient light coming from his office. His thousand-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets are smooth and silky. His pillows are lump-free and perfect. The lightweight quilt is luxuriously soft. I was wearing panties and one of his T-shirts, and I was in my happy place. I was safe and secure in his bed. And I was alone. Ranger was in his office, catching up on work, recognizing that a romantic encounter with me at this time would be like making love to a dead person.

At some point during the night I woke up and felt Ranger next to me. He was warm, and there was the faint scent of his Bulgari Green shower gel. I fell back asleep, and when I woke up again it was morning, and he was gone.