Page 16 of Kiss of Wrath

“I heard that.”

Mordr frowned with frustration. “Can you not give me any more details?”

“Thou wilt know when thou wilt know.”

Mordr muttered a foul word under his breath. Just so long as he did not take the Lord’s name in vain, Michael could ignore the rudeness. For now.

Michael stared down the resistant man.

“As you wish,” Mordr finally agreed.

“Now,” Michael said. “Which one of you is guilty of the sin of lust?”

Six faces turned blood red.

All except Mordr, who had problems in that regard that would soon be tested. Mightily.

Some bribes are sweeter than others . . .

“Darla?” Miranda said into her cell phone as she barreled down the Strip in her green minivan toward Caesar’s Palace, where P. Jack was apparently having a meltdown.

“Uh-oh!” Darla, her best friend since she’d moved to Las Vegas, said at the other end of the phone line. “Two-thirty in the afternoon? Can mean only one thing. An emergency with the rug rats.”

Miranda couldn’t be offended. At one time, she would have referred to kids in general as rug rats. She still did, at times. “P. Jack is having a crisis,” Miranda said. “He’s about to marry wife number fourteen, a stripper he met last night who is his soul mate for life. I’m on my way for an intervention.”

“Good luck!” Darla laughed. Miranda had been telling her P. Jack stories from back when they’d been roommates in a one-room apartment five years ago on moving to the gambling mecca. A petite five foot two, compared to Miranda’s five foot ten, Darla, a former karate instructor, was a bouncer, of all things, at one of the smaller casinos, Lucky Lou’s. She knew P. Jack, too; in many ways Las Vegas was a small community, where the residents and employees all knew one another. In fact, Darla was the one who had referred P. Jack to Miranda’s clinic. Darla had, of course, also been the recipient of one of his marriage proposals . . . between wives eight and nine, as Miranda recalled.

“What’s up?” Darla asked.

“The agency is sending over the answer to my prayers this afternoon,” Miranda continued. “A world-class household manager, please God. She does everything from child care to laundry to carpooling to homework supervision. Even cooking.”

“Sounds like a wife to me.”

“Exactly. And for what she charges, there may very well be a division of assets. Just kidding. But, really, I’m willing to pay for the right person.” She paused. “This person has another unique qualification that I’m in need of. Ex-military.”

Miranda’s words were met with silence. Then a worried “Roger’s out?”

“No, but he soon will be. Good behavior and all that. A halfway house at first.”

“Maybe he’s reformed. Maybe he’s sorry for what he’s done and will leave his kids alone. Maybe he’ll wait for the kids to grow up and contact him, if they ever want to.”

“Do you think so?” Miranda asked hopefully.

“No.”

They both laughed, halfheartedly.

“Anyhow, the job applicant will be there at four.”

“So you need me there, not so much for the kids, as to arm wrestle this Mrs. Doubtfire to the floor so she won’t escape ’til you get home.”

“Yes. And to make sure the kids behave.”

“The first I can handle. Not so sure about the latter.”

“Oh, Darla, you know how much the little gremlins love you.”

“Don’t try to butter me up.”