The Heist

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 an 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 wouldn’t get run over, and said they’d send someone out to scoop him up.
    While we waited for the EMS to show I rifled the guy’s pocketsand 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 that I had chilling in my fridge. It had been dropped off as partial payment for a job I did for my friend and sometimes 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 doesn’t totally compensate for the fact that the last time I was Ranger’s date I was poisoned.
    The champagne had been left on my kitchen counter yesterday,and I was saving it for a special occasion. Seemed like seeing a giraffe running down the street qualified.
    Lula drove me back to the bonds office, where 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 overly protective of me. He was currently armed and wearing black fatigues with the Rangeman logo on his sleeve. That meant he was most likely filling in for one of the men on patrol.
    “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 could be the prelude to getting naked. It