I HEARD MORELLI moving around the room in the dark. He was getting dressed. I looked at the clock. Five-thirty Saturday morning. He was right on schedule, even though it was a Saturday. Thank God it wasn’t my schedule. I rolled over and snuggled under the quilt.

“Don’t roll over,” he said. “You have to get up.”

“It’s too early,” I said. “I don’t get up before the sun.”

The bedroom light flashed on.

“That was yesterday,” Morelli said, throwing my clothes onto the bed. “You have to leave with me today. I’m dropping you off at Rangeman on my way to work.”

I squinted at him, my eyes not totally adjusted to the light. “What? Why? Are you serious?”

“It’s the deal we made. You’re either with me or with Ranger.”

“Not at five-thirty in the morning!”

“At all hours of the morning. You set yourself up to be a walking target. I get why you did it. But it was a stupid idea.”

“It seemed smart when I thought of it.”

He flipped the quilt off me and pulled me out of bed. “You’re such a cupcake.”

I pushed my hair out of my face and tried to wake up. “I need coffee.”

Morelli grinned at me. “You don’t have any clothes on.”

“It’s all your fault.”

“Yeah, I remember.” He settled his hands at my waist and drew me closer. “Maybe no one would notice if I was ten minutes late this morning.”

“I need more than ten minutes.”

“I don’t,” Morelli said.

It was almost seven o’clock when Morelli turned me over to the armed guard at the front desk of Rangeman. I took the elevator to the fifth-floor control room and made my way to Ranger’s office.

The office was small. A desk and two chairs. A bank of monitors on one wall. No window. Private half bath. No artwork. No photos of family. Walls were white. Chairs were black leather. A MacBook Pro was open on a glass and ebony desk. Ranger was wearing the standard Rangeman uniform of black cargo pants and black long-sleeved, collared shirt with the Rangeman logo on the sleeve. He stood and came over to me when I entered.

“Have you had breakfast?” he asked.

I nodded yes. I’d had a frozen waffle and coffee.

“I could use more coffee,” I said.

“I have morning meetings,” Ranger said. “I’ll be done around nine-thirty.”

“I’m supposed to unlock the deli at ten.”

“No problem. You can hang in my apartment until I’m done here. There’s coffee in the kitchen.”

My apartment is utilitarian with secondhand furniture and a bathroom that dates back to the fifties. The best I can say is that I try to keep it neat. Morelli’s house is a man cave with a toaster and a dog. My parents’ house looks like the set from All in the Family.

Ranger’s apartment was worthy of Architectural Digest. Small, ultramodern, well-equipped kitchen. Eating nook off the kitchen. The living room was furnished with a few sleek, comfortable pieces. An office that also served as a den, with a two-seater couch and a flat-screen television, was attached to the single bedroom. The bedroom was dark and cool and masculine. King-size bed with expensive linens. A dressing room where his housekeeper had all his clothes neatly pressed and folded. A high-gloss bathroom that always had the scent of Bulgari Green shower gel escaping from the walk-in shower.

Hanging in Ranger’s apartment wasn’t a hardship. I took the elevator to his floor, let myself in, and went to the kitchen. I helped myself to coffee and looked around. Fresh fruit in a bowl next to an airtight glass container of walnuts and almonds. No donuts. Ranger ate healthy.

I wouldn’t mind going back to bed, but I didn’t want to send Ranger the wrong message, so I stayed in the living room and checked my email. I texted Lula I’d meet her at the deli at ten o’clock.

Ranger came to collect me at nine forty-five. He exchanged his Rangeman shirt for a plain black T-shirt, grabbed a handful of nuts from the jar on the kitchen counter, and we left his apartment.

Stretch, Raymond, and Lula were on the sidewalk in front of the deli when Ranger and I pulled up in his black Porsche Cayenne Turbo.

“What’s the drill?” Ranger asked me.

“I open the door for Raymond and Stretch, and they get the deli ready for the lunch crowd. They get the fry station up and running. They do all the food prep.”

“Does any of this involve going into the back by the dumpster?”

“There are a bunch of vendors who deliver to the back door. Laundry, the butcher, Central GP. They all show up before the deli opens for business. One of us goes out and gets the stuff and brings it in and puts it away.”

“What’s your role besides opening the front door?”

“I fill in wherever I’m needed. Sometimes I help make sandwiches. Sometimes I answer the phone. When Hal was here it gave me a chance to step back and watch the customers.”

“Anyone of interest?”

“Not really. One regular caught my attention, but I think he’s probably just a guy who lives in the neighborhood and doesn’t like to cook.”

Ranger and I got out of the Porsche, I unlocked the door, and we all went in and looked around. Everything seemed to be okay. No dead bodies. No extra shoes. No sneakers-up rats or cockroaches. Ranger went to the back door and stepped out. I followed behind him. It was eerily quiet with no sign of Hal. My vision blurred, and I felt like someone was squeezing my heart.

Ranger pulled the yellow crime scene tape down and threw it in the dumpster. He wrapped an arm around me and kissed me on my forehead. “We’ll find him,” he said.

The Central GP truck rumbled down the back alley and swung into the deli’s parking area. Frankie got out from behind the wheel and handed me the itemized bill.

“You’re early,” I said.

“Yeah, it’s a light day. Didn’t take me as long to load the truck. Tell the boys I had to short them on the powdered sugar, but I’ll make up for it on Monday.”

Ranger and I put the groceries away, and I told Stretch about the powdered sugar, which I suspected was drug code.

“What’s up for the morning?” Lula asked me. “We only got one bad guy to look for, and we don’t know where to find him.”

“Steph’s coming with me,” Ranger said. “We’re going for a walk.”

The area around the deli was mixed. There were gentrified pockets, but for the most part, the buildings were neglected, housing marginally legal businesses and a struggling population of dysfunctional, fractured families with gangbanger kids.

We started our walk in the alley and methodically canvassed the neighborhood. We walked slowly, listening and looking for anything out of the ordinary.

“You think the kidnapper is local,” I said.

“I think there’s a local connection.”

It was almost noon when we returned to the deli.

“What do you think?” I asked Ranger. “Did you see anything interesting?”

“The police have already questioned everyone in a four-block grid. They came up with nothing, but I wanted to see for myself.”

“And?”

“Two buildings have vans parked in the alley. And there were four garages that were closed and locked. I’ll have someone check them out.”

“You think they packed Hal off in a van?”

“No stone unturned,” Ranger said. “They immediately disabled his cellphone, so we weren’t able to track him.”

“You didn’t have a GPS gizmo sewn onto the hem of his shirt?”

“We tried that but they kept getting mangled in the laundry.”

I was being sarcastic. Ranger might have been serious.

“These kidnappings are well planned and well executed,” Ranger said. “The victim is quickly removed with little forensic evidence left behind. And so far, no one has stepped forward asking for ransom. No one is bragging on social media. No bodies have been found.”

“Except for Vinnie.”

“Vinnie is an anomaly,” Ranger said.

“Wow, ‘anomaly.’ That’s a big word.”

The barest hint of a smile twitched at the corners of Ranger’s mouth. “I know a few.”

Lula threw her hands up when she saw us. “It’s about time you came back. We got a situation here. We just opened and the place is packed and there’s a line out the front door. That stupid television station ran another special on this place. All about the people getting beamed up and leaving a shoe behind. And it was about me and Hal and how we were connected somehow. And how we were a sight to see. I don’t even know what that means. It might not be flattering in the way they said it. And if that isn’t bad enough, we haven’t got a waitress. Who’s gonna wait tables? I’m telling you it’s chaos.”

“You wait tables,” I said. “I’ll do the sandwiches and Ranger can take the phones.”

“Good luck with that,” Lula said. “The phones won’t stop ringing.”

“I have my fry oil ready,” Raymond said. “Let’s do this.”

Lula was wearing a royal blue bandage dress that was so tight it looked like it was painted on her. It had short sleeves and a low scoop neck that barely contained her massive breasts. The skirt wrapped around her Kardashian butt and hung two inches below her hoo-ha. She sashayed out on five-inch stilettos and distributed menus. She dropped one, bent at the waist to pick it up, and the bandage dress skirt did nothing to hide the full moon. Only a hint of her red thong was visible, the rest being sucked up into the Grand Canyon of Voluptuousness.

There was a collective gasp from the dining room.

“I must now pour bleach into my eyes,” Raymond said. “We are lucky the morality police don’t have jurisdiction in Trenton. They would beat her with a stick many times.”

“New plan,” Ranger said to me. “You wait tables and we’ll put Lula on sandwiches.”

“No one’s going to eat a sandwich she makes after seeing this,” Stretch said. “Give her phones and takeout.”

I handed Ranger a menu. “You’re up for sandwiches. Raymond works the fry station and Stretch plates and nukes. Everything you need to know is on this gravy-stained menu. Your workstation is behind Stretch.”

Ranger eyed the workstation. “Got it,” he said.

I tapped Lula on the shoulder and told her we had a new plan. “We think you’d be better behind the counter.”

“I’m good behind the counter, but it seems a shame people can’t appreciate my new dress when I’m hidden back there.” Lula looked down at herself. “This here’s a bitchin’ dress.”

“True, but it turns out there’s not enough of it for waiting tables. When you bend over all your secrets are on display.”

“Well, anyone would be lucky to see my secrets.”

“Maybe for dessert,” I said, “but not before lunch.”

“I guess you got a point.”

I took the order pad and went to the first table. I was wearing jeans and a girlie pink V-neck T-shirt and sneakers. No secrets were exposed.

It was an easy order. One number sixteen. One number seven with cheese fries. One number seven with onion rings. I stuck the order on the spindle on the service bar in front of Stretch and yelled out the order. We didn’t have computers or iPads or any of that tech stuff. We were old school. I imagine it works great if you have people who know what they’re doing and aren’t dopers. At the Red River Deli it was hit-or-miss.

The second table wanted egg salad, but it had to be on a croissant, hold the pickle, a turkey club on gluten-free, no third slice of bread, and a corned beef with the works. I handed it in and hoped Ranger knew how to do the works.

At three o’clock we were still serving lunch.

“I am out of my freshly cut frozen French fries,” Raymond said. “I cannot go on. You must lock the door and not let anyone else in.”

“Now see, that’s a brilliant idea,” Lula said. “I’m not answering any more phones, either. Some of these calls I’m taking aren’t about food. I’ve had people calling in making inappropriate comments about my mooning incident today.”

“Someone has put it on social media,” Raymond said. “I have seen it. The picture is truly terrible, but you have three thousand likes. I do not even want to come to work tomorrow. I fear it will be hell.”

“I find this inspiring, now that I know I’m a sensation again,” Lula said. “I’ve got an idea for a new creation. I’m going to call it the Lula Moonwich.”

Ranger had been making sandwiches for hours. He didn’t have a speck of mayo, mustard, or ketchup on him. His station was immaculate. Every sandwich had been perfect and cut with precision.

“Impressive,” I said.

He smiled. “I have good knife skills.”

I hung the closed sign on the front door, and the dining room was empty twenty minutes later.

Ranger was hands on hips. “What happens now?”

“I chipped a nail answering phones,” Lula said. “It was my best nail too. It was the one with the stars-and-stripes decal. I’m going to have it repaired before we start with the dinner people. I gotta look my best in case the television crew comes back.”

“We can turn the door sign around at five o’clock,” Stretch said. “That’ll give us an hour and a half to reorganize. Someone has to make a store run. We’ve never done this many covers before. We’re out of everything.”

“I’ll make the store run,” I said. “Give me a list.”