Page 54 of Her Honorable Hero

She surged out of the elevator and rushed to her cross-over SUV. She drove within the speed limit to get to Livvie’s daycare. By the time she got there, she was breathing normally and thinking rationally. She’d blown this out of proportion. Heinrich had just used a dumb little DHS trick and found out a tiny bit of useless information about her. Still…

“Who’s my good girl?” Miranda asked as she buckled her daughter into her car seat.

Livvie giggled. Miranda knew it was probably because of the toy giraffe she gave her daughter more than her teasing. She hopped back into the driver’s seat and touched the connection to her phone, dialing her friend, Ellen.

“Hey, Miranda. What’s up?”

“Remember that guy Roger Heinrich I had you check out?”

“Sure.”

“The first order of business is that you need to cash the check I sent.”

“Not going to happen,” Ellen laughed. “You were my mentor at TAID, there isn’t a chance in hell I’m going to take your money.”

Miranda knew it was a losing battle. “Fine, but this time I want you to cash it, because I need more info.”

She heard Ellen’s chair squeak. “What’s up?”

Miranda needed to tread carefully. Ellen was bright. So far she hadn’t asked any questions, she’d just taken Miranda at face value. But if she thought she was in trouble, she’d start pressing her.

“I just think there’s a little bit more than meets the eye,” Miranda said casually.

“Can you be more specific? Is it about his job?”

She should have figured she would zero in on the topic.

“Got it in one. He seems to be a little more plugged-in than I originally suspected.”

“Miranda, is he a threat to you?”

The giraffe landed on the passenger seat in front of her. She had about two minutes before Livvie would let loose.

“Nah.”

“Who is he to you?”

Miranda pulled up to the stop sign two blocks from her house. She looked to her left and tried to come up with something plausible, and failed.

“Ellen, can I ask a solid?”

“You’re not going to tell me, are you? How much trouble are you in? What does he have over you?”

Miranda scraped out the best sounding laugh she could. “Ellen, your imagination is out of control. He has nothing over me. Nothing at all. If I thought he was a threat, I’d tell you and pull in Griff. I promise you.”

There was a long pause. “Dammit, Miranda, you’d better. If I find out anything that points to him having a proverbial gun to your head, all bets are off, got it?”

“Hell yeah.” And she meant it. She had far too much to lose to be stupid. “I just need you to dig a little deeper. There’s more going on than just him being a deadbeat. He actually has a brain. I want to know what his job was at the DHS. Was it always the same thing? Did he have anything to do with Intelligence?”

“I’m not liking this.”

“I promise you, Ellen, I’ll call you and let you know if anything hinky is going on. In the meantime, can you make this a priority?”

Her friend took a while to answer. “Of course I’ll make it a priority. But if one flag comes up, I’m flying in from Denver.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything else,” Miranda put a smile into her voice. “I’ll talk to you later.” She disconnected the call and hit her steering wheel. “Dammit!”

Livvie let out a startled cry.

“Sorry, Baby Girl. Mommy didn’t mean to be loud.”