Page 79 of Now or Never

“They’re working on him now,” Jules said. “They said it wasn’t necessary to take him to the operating room. They just shot him full of a local and gave him a tranq. His name is Clay Wong. He’s sixteen. Street kid.”

We found seats in the waiting room and forty-five minutes later, Ranger was able to go back to talk to Clay. Jules and Ipassed the time with hangman and twenty questions. Ranger reappeared, went to the desk, filled out some forms, and finally came back to Jules and me.

“He’s getting discharged,” Ranger said to Jules. “He has some scripts that need to get filled. After that he’s going to Rangeman. McKinney will bring him out in a couple minutes.” Ranger looked down at the pad with the hangman scribbles. “You don’t ever want to play games with her,” he said to Jules. “She’s vicious.”

“Tell me about it,” Jules said.

Ranger wrapped an arm around my shoulders and steered me out of the building, to the SUV.

“Why is Clay going to Rangeman?” I asked him.

“He’s a runaway. Living on the street. No money for antibiotics. No place to recover from a gunshot wound. Says he’s clean. Just can’t go home. I’ll let him stay in one of the dorm rooms until we sort it out.”

“What did he say about Zoran?”

“Not much. Zoran saw him sleeping in a doorway and said he’d pay him to get drugs for him.”

“That was it?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a bummer. Why do you suppose Zoran didn’t get his own drugs?”

“Maybe he didn’t want to get shot.”

“Does that happen a lot?”

“Often enough,” Ranger said.

Rangeman occupies an entire building on a quiet side street in downtown Trenton. It’s seven stories, with the top floor devoted to Ranger’s apartment. The fifth floor contains the control room,offices, and a pleasant lounge with tables and chairs and a twenty-four-hour buffet. The ground floor has a small lobby and more offices. Ella and her husband have an apartment on the second floor, the third floor is a state-of-the-art gym, and floors four and six are dorm rooms and miscellaneous-use rooms. There’s an ultra-secure garage and a shooting range belowground.

Ranger pulled into the Rangeman garage and parked in a space reserved for fleet cars.

“I rushed you out of your apartment this morning,” Ranger said. “You have a firearms session with Skip now, but you can go upstairs and have a shower and get clean clothes and breakfast, if you want. Or you can grab something on the fifth floor and go straight to the gun range.”

“I’ll get something on the fifth floor,” I said. “Wouldn’t want to keep Skip waiting.”

We took the elevator to the fifth floor and Ranger texted Skip that I was in the building. I went to the buffet. The food is constantly being refreshed and changed. It’s organic or natural and healthy. Fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, sandwiches, hot selections, snacks. No doughnuts. Ever. There are some huge, muscle-bound Rangemen, but there are no fat Rangemen.

I grabbed an orange juice and a bagel with cream cheese. Ranger got coffee. I suspected he would go upstairs to his apartment once I got settled with Skip. Ella would have Ranger’s breakfast waiting. A fresh fruit plate, salmon with capers or caviar, toast points. Sometimes breakfast would be a vegetable frittata.

Skip walked in and suggested we take a table off by itself, in a corner.

“We’ll talk about guns before we go downstairs to shoot,” he said. “If it’s okay with you, we’ll pretend you’re a beginner.”

“Great,” I said. “Iama beginner. The truth is, I hate guns.”

“You don’t have to love them,” Skip said. “You just have to know how to use them successfully and safely.”

Already, I liked him.

“You eat and I’ll talk,” he said. “Do you have your gun with you?”

I pulled it out of my bag.

“Nice choice,” he said.

“Ranger gave it to me.”

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