Page 53 of Her Honorable Hero

Miranda didn’t even remember closing the door, but she had a memory of Lilah finding her slumped on the couch and worrying about why she wasn’t in bed. By the time Griff got home that night, it was as if it had all been a horrible dream.

“Answer me,” she bit out again, back in the present. “What the hell do you want? Is it money? Because you’re not going to get a cent.”

“I just want to see my sweet girl.”

“So your brilliant idea has been to send me creepy flowers, to try to get me to see you, huh? I don’t believe you. You want something, and it’s not going to happen.”

“Miranda,” he sputtered. “You’re getting it all wrong. I’ve been trying to establish a relationship with you from the very beginning. You broke my heart when you threw me out of that SEAL’s house three years ago. I saw how upset you were, I never wanted that. That’s why I left you alone for two years.”

Why in the hell was she even listening to this drivel? Oh yeah, because she wanted him out of her life once and for all so there’d be no more secrets.

“Just tell me what I have to do to make you dead to me like you were for the first twenty-eight years of my life, Heinrich.”

“Can’t you at least call me Roger?”

“No,” she snapped out.

“I need to see you. This isn’t something I feel comfortable talking about over the phone.”

“There is no way I’m going to meet with some monster from my past who sends me threatening flowers, and calls me from a blocked number. Just tell me what you want, so I can scrape you off my shoe, once and for all.”

“So there is no way I can get you to relent? No way I can appeal to your better nature?”

Was he serious?

“I want you out of my life. For twenty-eight years, you’ve been dead to me. I want those blissful days back. Crawl back under your rock. If I call you Roger, will you go?”

“Angel, I don’t believe you. I think you do care.” Roger Heinrich’s voice had changed, he sounded more confident. “You would do a lot of things for me. You taking the time to have me investigated, and taking this call, proves it.”

“Think you’re kind of smart, huh? All that proves, is that I want to analyze all the bugs that crawl out from underneath the rocks near me. Low and behold, your shell is one of the most fragile I’ve ever come across.”

“When did you get so allergic to sunflowers, Angel?”

Miranda felt her breath saw out of her lungs. She had trouble taking in the next one. Her mind scrambled to think of who in the TAID building would have been aware of her sudden allergy to the flowers she’d received.

Her head swiveled around, looking at the window that showed a beautiful cloudless blue sky. Her office couldn’t be bugged, it was swept for surveillance equipment twice a week.

“I can hear you breathing hard. Be careful, I would hate for you to trigger another migraine.”

She hung up the phone.

It was two o’clock. She grabbed her purse and marched out of her office. Susan looked up, startled.

“Where are you headed?”

“Heading home. Call me if anything pops up.”

Susan looked like she wanted to ask another question, but she ignored her as she walked by the receptionist’s desk and headed for the elevator. Griff was at base. She was headed to the daycare to pick up Livvie. She needed to see her daughter, and take her home. How in the hell had that monster known what the fuck was going on in her office?

How had he known?

Her shoulder hurt. That’s when she realized she was pulling on her purse so hard that the shoulder strap was digging a deep groove into her flesh.

Think, Slade. Think.

She was on the fourteenth floor. Second from the top. The entire building was filled with TAID employees. The technology center had eight buildings and TAID took up three of them. Even with thirty-two hundred people, the rumor mill was rife with petty gossip. Hell, she would bet her bottom dollar that at least fifty people knew that she and Griff were trying to have another baby, maybe even as many as a hundred knew.

So if Susan gave away her flowers to some lucky employee because she had an allergy, that little nugget of information could have gotten to any number of people. But what about the migraine?