Ranger opened his door and looked me over. “Pretty.”

“Thank you. I was at a viewing.”

“I heard.”

He was still dressed from work. Black T-shirt, black cargo pants, black running shoes. Five o’clock shadow. His apartment was always cool and pristine. Subdued lighting in the hall. Fresh flowers on the narrow hall table. All the work of his housekeeper. I followed him to the kitchen, and he poured me a glass of red wine. His kitchen was small but state-of-the-art. Stainless steel and black granite.

“What are the minutes about?” he asked. “Is this visit personal or business?”

“Business.” I sipped the wine. “Nice,” I said.

Morelli would have offered me a beer. Ranger always offered me wine I couldn’t afford to buy. Ranger knew the value of temptation and bribery.

Ranger leaned against the kitchen counter, arms crossed over his chest. “I’m guessing this is about Vinnie.”

“We managed to raise the money to buy back his debt, and we were all at the office and the president of Wellington called and said he wanted to talk to Vinnie.”

“This was today?”

“Yes. This afternoon. So Vinnie and I went to Wellington. The offices are in the Meagan Building. And the offices were empty. The president, Roger Drager, was there, and a couple guys in suits playing online solitaire, and a kid working a giant paper shredder. Drager said the company was on flex hours, but the cubicles and offices didn’t look used to me. No clutter, nothing in wastebaskets. And Drager was nervous. His hands were sweaty.”

“What did he want?”

“Money. He knew about the phony bonds, and he wanted his money back.”

“He didn’t shut Vinnie down? Didn’t go to the police?”

“No. Vinnie said the setup looked fishy. Like it was a shell company. He was worried he was scamming someone who was an even bigger scammer.”

“That’s not good,” Ranger said.

“It gets worse. We got back to the office and three goons came in and tried to snatch Vinnie at gunpoint. One of them shot Lula, but it just knicked her, and then Connie shot one of them in the knee and they left.”

Ranger smiled. “Connie’s probably been shooting men in the knee since she was twelve.”

“So what do you think about Wellington?”

“I think I wouldn’t want to work for them.”

“Should I go to Morelli?”

“Only if you want second best,” Ranger said.

“I’m talking about police action.”

Ranger took my wine from me, tasted it, and set it on the counter. “Let’s look in on Wellington.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

I followed him through his living room into his bedroom.

“The building will be empty,” Ranger said, moving into his dressing room. “The cleaning crew should be gone by now.”

“What about the alarm?”

“Rangeman installed the security system in the Meagan Building.”

RANGER’S BEDROOM WAS masculine luxury. Dark woods, ivory walls, tans and browns, king-size bed with expensive Italian linens. There was a large bath en suite and a walk-in dressing room as big as my bedroom. He opened a drawer in the built-in dresser, removed a utility belt, and buckled it on. He selected a gun from another drawer. Handcuffs, stun gun, defense spray. He handed me a penlight and took one for himself. He shrugged into a windbreaker with the Rangeman logo clearly visible. He selected a second Rangeman jacket and handed it to me. “Swap your sweater out for this. If someone sees us, I can say we’re doing a security check.”

We rode the elevator to the garage, where Ranger chose a fleet SUV. The Meagan Building was only blocks away. Easy to find on-street parking at this time of the night. We parked directly in front of the door. Ranger used his fob to enter the building and to diffuse the alarm. No need for the penlight. The lobby was dimly lit, as were the halls and elevator.

“Fifth floor,” I told Ranger.

We entered the elevator, he pushed the button, and he looked over at me. “You’re very calm,” he said.

“It’s easy to be calm when I’m with you. I feel protected.”

“I try,” Ranger said. “You don’t always cooperate.”

The doors opened, and we walked the hall to Wellington’s door. Ranger fobbed it open, we stepped inside and closed the door behind us. The interior room was pitch-black. No path lighting. The outside offices showed ambient light but not enough to guide me. Ranger clicked his penlight on.

“Let’s try to use just the one light,” he said. “Hang on to me if you can’t see.”

I curled my hand into the back of his cargo pants just above his gun belt. “I’m good to go.”

He was still for a beat. “You could have held on to my jacket,” he said.

“Would you rather I do that?”

“No. Not even a little.”

He flicked the light over the cubicles and into the offices. He stopped and opened a file cabinet. Empty.

“You were right,” he said. “None of this is being used. Where’s Drager’s office?”

“There’s a hall at the end of this room. His office is at the end of the hall.”

Ranger flicked the light at the shredder room door. “What’s in here?”

“Paper shredder.”

“And this one?”

“It’s an office. Drager said he had a meeting. He went into this office, and we let ourselves out.”

Ranger opened the door and flashed the light around. It was a boardroom. Large oval table. Chairs pulled up to the table. Unoccupied at the moment.

We continued down the hall to Drager’s office. The door was ajar, and Ranger stopped before entering. He knew what he was going to find inside. I did, too. We could smell it. Decomposing body. It doesn’t take long after death. The body evacuates. Blood pools. The smell is unmistakable.

“Wait here,” Ranger said.

“It’s okay,” I told him. “I can deal.”

Drager was on the floor by his desk. Probably fell out of his chair. Bullet to the back of his head. Execution-style. Like Kulik and Dunne. Ranger pulled on disposable gloves and methodically went through the file cabinets.

“I’m not finding anything here,” he said. “This office has been stripped.” He moved to the credenza. “Uh-oh,” he said when he opened the top drawer.

“What uh-oh? I hate uh-oh.”

“Leave the room.”

“Excuse me?”

“Explosives,” Ranger said. “On a timer and a trip wire. If I’d opened the drawer another half inch, your hamster would be an orphan.”

“How much time do we have?”

“Seven minutes.”

“Shit!”

I turned and tripped over Drager’s briefcase.

“Take it,” Ranger said, grabbing my hand, yanking me forward into the hall.

We ran flat out down the hall and through the room with the cubicles. We burst out the door and ran to the elevator. Ranger had it on hold. It was still at our floor. We jumped into the elevator, and Ranger hit the button for the ground floor.

“How much time do we have?” I asked him.

“Four minutes,” he said. “Plenty of time.”

We exited the elevator into the lobby, crossed the lobby, and left the building. Ranger reset the alarm with the fob, and we got into the SUV.

“Two minutes,” Ranger said, pulling away from the curb.

The fifth-floor windows blew out when we reached the corner. Ranger hooked a U-turn and parked so we could watch the building. There was a second explosion, the alarm was wailing away, and fire spilled out the open windows.

Ranger called his control room. “Tell all responders to the Meagan Building alarm to secure the exterior of the building. Under no circumstances are they to go inside until the fire marshall declares the building safe.”

Two Rangeman SUVs arrived and parked half a block from the burning building. A police car was simultaneously on the scene. Ranger made another U-turn and drove back to Rangeman. He parked in the garage and looked over at me.

“You can really haul ass in those heels,” he said. “The memory will give me sleepless nights for a long time.”