Finger Lickin' Fifteen by Janet Evanovich Page B

information down to the fifth floor, grabbed a sandwich from the kitchen, and went to my cubby. After a couple minutes, I realized my cubby didn’t give me the privacy I needed, so I commandeered Ranger’s office. The items taken were similar in all the houses. Jewelry, cash, iPods, laptop computers, handheld electronic games. The map showed the houses in three different neighborhoods. I saw nothing to tie them together. I was about a third of the way through the men’s employment files when Ranger came in.
    “I expected you’d stay in my apartment,” Ranger said.
    “I was worried about the later thing.”
    “And you think moving from my apartment to my office will save you?”
    “I’m doing good so far.”
    Ranger slouched into a chair on the opposite side of the desk. “Is this move into my office permanent?”
    “Is that a possibility?”
    “No.”
    I looked around. “It’s a really nice office. It has a window.”
    The corners of Ranger’s mouth curved into the beginnings of a smile. “Would you like to negotiate for this office?”
    “No, but I’d like to stay here until I finish reading. I have no privacy in my cubicle.”
    “Deal,” Ranger said. “When you’re done reading, I’d like you to find a way to talk to the four men who have access to the computer that holds the codes. Roger King, Martin Romeo, Chester Deuce, and Sybo Diaz. I don’t want you to interrogate them. I just want you to make a fast character assessment. Chester Deuce is on the desk until six o’clock. Sybo Diaz will take the next six-hour shift. Romeo goes on at midnight. You should be able to catch him in the kitchen early afternoon. He occupies one of the Rangeman apartments and prefers Ella’s cooking to his own.”
    “Okeydokey,” I said. “I’m on it.”
    It was almost four when I finished reading. Ranger’s men were a motley group, chosen for specific skills and strength of character over other more mundane attributes such as lack of a criminal record. From what I could tell, Ranger employed safecrackers, pickpockets, computer hackers, linebackers, and a bunch of vets who’d served overseas. He also had on his payroll a second-story burglar who the papers compared to Spider-Man, and a guy whose murder conviction was overturned on a technicality. I wouldn’t want to be caught in a blind alley with any of these guys, but Ranger found something in each of them that inspired his trust. At least until a couple weeks ago.
    I pulled two men out of the group for a closer look. One of them was Sybo Diaz, the evening monitor for the code computer. He was with Special Forces in Afghanistan and took a job as a rent-a-cop in a mall when he got out. His wife divorced him two months later. His wife’s maiden name was Marion Manoso. She was Ranger’s cousin. I didn’t know the details of the divorce, but I thought there was the potential for some bad feelings. The other file I pulled was Vince Gomez. Vince wasn’t one of the men with code computer access, but he caught my attention. He was a slim little guy with the flexibility of a Romanian acrobat. The inside joke was that he could crawl through a keyhole. He did system installation and troubleshooting for Ranger. I flagged him because he lived beyond his means. I’d seen him around, and I knew he drove an expensive car, and when he wasn’t working he wore expensive jewelry and designer clothes. And he liked the ladies, a lot.
    I left the paperwork in Ranger’s office and returned to my desk. I worked at my computer for a half hour and wandered out to the kitchen. No one there, so I stopped in at the monitoring station and smiled at Chester Deuce.
    “I’ve always wondered what you guys did out here,” I said to him.
    “There are always three of us on duty,” he said. “Someone monitors the cars and responds to the men off-site. Someone watches the in-house video and is responsible for maintaining building integrity. And I watch the remote locations and respond