“Griff, it has to be me. I need to be the one to go out there and get her,” she said as she pushed up to look him in the eye.
Griff hesitated. She put her hand on his chest. “Please help me do this.”
“I don’t want to,” he answered, soft and honest.
“But you will, won’t you?” She knew this man.
He nodded.
He turned from her. “Billy,” he bellowed. “Bring the leash! Bring it fast. Follow the light circling on the ceiling.” He flashed his light at the ceiling.
“Who’s Billy?”
“Never mind,” he said as he took a peek under the makeshift bandage on her upper arm. She knew that it was still seeping blood. “Dammit, woman, you sure did a number on yourself.”
She sucked in a deep breath as he gently touched her wound.
“Griff? Captain?” A young man’s voice sounded somewhere nearby. She saw a gangly blond teenager slowly come into view.
“We’re here, what’s the ETA on your brother?” Josiah asked.
“They see the train. He said to tell you both that they’re coordinating with someone named Dex from your team, Griff.”
Miranda watched as the young man in a wetsuit and tennis shoes climbed over two seats and thrust what looked like a rope at Griff.
“How’s Scarlett?” Miranda asked Josiah.
“She’s in and out of consciousness,” he said in a tight voice.
It had been a stupid question.
Josiah pulled out his phone and pressed a number. “McAllister? What the fuck is going on?”
Miranda watched as emotions played over the older man’s face. Finally, she saw a look of relief. “Yeah, requesting some of the equipment from Camp Pendleton is great. You go to the Admiral if you need to.”
Josiah actually grinned at something the man on the other end of the phone was saying. Miranda would bet her bottom dollar that the man said he had already gone to the admiral.
Okay, that was one aspect of the rescue handled, but what about the rest? “Griff, why aren’t we swarming with Emergency personnel?” Miranda asked.
“Honey, it might seem like hours, but it hasn’t even been a half-hour.”
That couldn’t be right.
“But, shouldn’t they be here by now, even if it has been just a half-hour?” she asked.
“We’re not near a road, it’s hard for them to make it. But they sent a helicopter, and we heard them pounding on the side of the train.”
“And—” Josiah started to say something.
“What?” she demanded. Both men stayed silent. “Tell me, I need to know.”
“There’s smoke coming from the rail car next to this one, and fire coming from the lead engine,” Billy blurted out. “That’s the one they’ll be working on first.”
“Thank you for telling me.” She gave the teen a tight smile. “Okay, then we’re on our own. Got it. I’m used to that. Now help me get to Hope,” she said, looking up at Griff.
This big man who had come to mean so much to her looked down at her, his eyes dark with resolve. “This is how it’s going to work. No deviating from the plan, got it, Slade?” When he didn’t continue, she reluctantly nodded. “I’m going to tie this leash to your uninjured foot. Then you’re going to crawl out there, keeping your body as low to the ground as possible. That will help keep the earth stable. You with me?”
She nodded again.
He turned so that his back was to Billy and Josiah. Then he bent down so that their eyes were just inches apart. “You are not going to let one bad thing happen to you. I want a whole hell of a lot more than just a date. I haven’t chased you for nine weeks to let you slip away this easily.”
Miranda barked out a laugh, then clapped her hand over her mouth. She felt like shit that she had actually laughed at a time like this.
“This? This is slipping away easy? You need your sense of reality checked, Mr. Porter.”
He bent down and brushed a kiss against her lips.
How in the hell could she be laughing and responding to a kiss in the middle of hell?
“You stay safe. Now let me get this secured.” He started to bend down to tie the leash on her ankle, when she gripped his wrist.
“It’s not long enough.”
“It’s plenty long enough.” He cupped her cheeks and stared deep into her eyes. “I’m going to be hanging out the window holding onto the leash, I’m six foot two, add the length of my arm, and that’s plenty of extra length.”
“You can’t come outside. If she sees you, she’ll freak. This is all predicated on you staying out of sight. Just your long-assed arm can be outside. So, I’m telling you, the leash is too short.”
“Under no circumstances do you take off the leash, are we clear?”
At least this time she remembered not to bite her lip. “Do you want me to lie to you, Griffin?”
“What?” His voice was a low rumble.
“I’ll lie if I have to. Is that what you want?”
“No.”
“Good, because I’ll do anything to save this girl. Please trust me to do what’s smart. Put the leash on me. But know this, if push comes to shove and I need to untie this damn thing in order to save that little girl, I’m going to damn well untie it.”
She’d never seen dark eyes shimmer with such heat. “Fine,” he ground out. “But you know this, I’ll come after you.” And somehow, she did know it. Here in the middle of all this uncertainty, Miranda was absolutely positive that Griffin Porter would move heaven and earth to reach her if she should need him.
She put her hand on his shoulders and he got down on his knees as he securely fastened the nylon around her ankle. He helped her out the window, after ensuring that all of the glass had been removed. As soon as she got a good look outside, her heart sank. The toddler had moved even farther away from the train.
Miranda crawled just a little, then she propped herself cross-legged on the ground, like she had seen day care teachers do on television. “Sweetie,” she crooned. “Can you come here?” The toddler looked at her with a lost and frightened stare. Carefully and slowly, so as not to scare her, she held out her arms in the universal gesture of welcome. “Your mommy’s waiting for you. We have milk. Aren’t you thirsty?”
Finally she got a small nod.
Success!
“Can you come closer?”
The little girl moved slightly toward her, but then stopped as she slipped in the sand. She held out one chubby little hand.
“Well okay then, Sweetheart, I’ll come to you.”
Miranda used her elbows to propel herself forward. She was feeling claustrophobic with the side of the train just a mere foot above her head.
Don’t think about it, Slade.
Sand was getting inside her blouse, and underneath the top of her skirt. Everything about this was making her skin crawl.
“Milk,” Hope said as she continued to hold out her arms and snap her hands open and shut.
“Yes, your mommy has milk waiting for you,” Miranda lied easily. She would promise anything to keep the girl happy.
“Wan’ Mama.”
“Stay right there, and I’ll get you and take you to your Mama.”
Miranda continued to use her elbows to crawl toward Hope, but then the little girl got anxious and decided to move in Miranda’s direction. She plopped down on her hands and knees and tried to go forward, but she was having trouble gaining traction in the sand and sea grass.
“Stop. Hope, wait for me.”
The little girl got a stubborn look on her face and grabbed some of the grass and tried to use it to pull herself forward. Yanking the grass pulled it out of the ground and splattered sand and dirt up into her small face.
Hope reared backwards, falling on her bottom, and then she started to cry.
“It’s okay, Honey. I’ll be right there, and then we’ll get you some milk.”
Hope continued crying. Then she lifted her closed fists to rub her eyes, and
smeared sand into them.
Ah, hell.
The kid was just making everything worse, and her cries turned into sobs.
“It’s okay, Baby, I’m almost there.” Miranda kept talking, almost in a sing-song voice. “It’s going to be just fine. I’ll take you to your mom and brother, we’ll get you some milk, and get you dressed in warm clothes.”
Almost there.
“Then we’ll—”
Her body jerked to a stop because of the band around her ankle. She turned and looked behind her. She saw Griff’s expression, fierce and sympathetic. Hope turned her dirt-smeared face to see what she was looking at.
“No!” the baby screeched.
“Griff, get back in the train, you’re scaring Hope.”
Miranda watched as Hope rolled onto her side, trying to get away from her and Griff.
Enough of this shit.
She reached behind her, losing precious seconds tugging and unknotting the fucking nylon rope. When she turned, Hope was only a foot away from the cliff’s edge. Miranda lunged.
“Gotchya.”
“No! No! No!”
“I hate the terrible twos.” Miranda laughed and cried at the same time as she held the warm little body close to her.
“Dammit, Miranda, you get your ass back here.”
“No!” Hope howled the word again.
“You’re going to have to learn a new word.” Miranda told the child as she turned back toward the train. She spat out some of the sand that had gotten into her mouth, and Hope continued to struggle and say, ‘No’.
With her arms full of wiggling child, her feet encased in nylons, and her leg throbbing like a son-of-a-bitch, Miranda was having a hell of time gaining purchase in the sand to get back toward the train.
“Griff,” she called out just as the rail car groaned again.
Miranda watched in horrified fascination as the steel behemoth started to lower even more. Would it roll completely on its side, closing off their ability to get back in through the window?
“Griff, come grab Hope,” she begged.
Somehow, someway, he was already beside her at the cliff’s edge, taking the baby out of her arms.
“Can you follow me?” he asked as he started moving.
“Yes,” she assured him. “Just hurry.”
As he got Hope to the relative safety of the train’s interior, Miranda pushed out with her feet, pushing at the crumbling sand and dirt to follow them. Why was it crumbling? What the hell? She felt the earth begin to give beneath her knees.
Oh God, she was going to go over the side of the cliff!
She made a desperate grab for some sea grass.
Miranda stopped talking and looked up at Griff.
“Do you remember falling?” he asked.
Miranda shook her head.
He had been holding her, swirling designs on her skin with his thumb. But as soon as she talked about taking the leash off her ankle, he’d been frozen. It had taken everything she had to continue talking. She rushed through the last little bit of the story. Well, at least Griff didn’t have to ask if she was done. Her ending was kind of clear.
“So you don’t remember anything but clutching at sea grass?” he asked.
Apparently it wasn’t clear.
“No. The doctors were surprised I remembered as much as I did. They said in a lot of cases like mine that the hours before and after the event would be wiped out of the patient’s memory banks.”
“Hmmm.”
What did that mean?
“Griff?”
“I’m hungry.” He pushed up from the bed. “I’m going to make some eggs. Do you want some?”
“It’s three-thirty in the morning.”
“I was just on the other side of the world four days ago, my hours are all screwed up. It feels like time to eat.”
He wasn’t looking at her, and his jaw was so tight it looked like it might shatter. Miranda turned on the light and scrambled to the dresser. She pulled on a pair of pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt, then followed her husband into the kitchen.
She watched as he pulled food out of the refrigerator. She’d bet her next paycheck that if Livvie weren’t around, he’d be banging the frying pan onto the stove.
“Are you mad?” she asked tentatively.
He carefully cracked the eggs into a mixing bowl. “How would you like your eggs cooked?” he asked politely.
“I’m not hungry. Answer my question. Are you mad at me?”
He looked sideways at her. “I can’t be, now can I? That’d just make me an irrational asshole.”
Noting that he’d scrambled enough for the two of them and poured them into the pan, she sighed and put bread into the toaster.
She came up behind him, wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek against his back. “I love you, even if you are irrational. Tonight’s our night for truth-telling. The good, the bad and the ugly.”
She felt him tense.
He kept stirring the eggs. “If I tell you how fucking mad I was at you for taking off that leash, even though you ended up saving Hope, what then? I was scared out of my head. But the guys and I make those kinds of decisions every day. I wouldn’t bat an eyelash if Dalton had made that call, fuck, I’d have applauded. But you?”
She kissed his spine.
“Keep talking,” she coaxed.
He turned off the gas and moved the pan off the burner. He turned around so he could look down at her.
“Most days.” He winced. “Scratch that. For almost three years, I’ve looked at that little girl and she brightens my life. But today, my heart twisted. For a few seconds, I remembered what it was like when you handed me her warm body and I watched you grapple not to fall.”
“Did you resent her, or were mad at me for making the choice to save her?”
She watched him struggle to answer.
“I’m not going to judge you, Griff. Tonight is for truth. You’ve been holding this in for three long years, Honey. Just tell me.”
“God,” he bit out. “I was mad at God. Fury raced through me at that instant. I was mad at him for punishing my dad, for killing those people, for damn near killing this baby in my arms. And the worst was for forcing you to make the only choice you possibly could.”
He dropped his forehead down onto hers. He continued, his voice hoarse. “I wanted to scream. But I had to just do the job. I’d never been so out of control in my life, then I was mad at me. I almost lost it at the most crucial time of my life.”
His anguish shone through. “How can I have such an ugly truth and be any type of father to our daughter?”
Miranda was stunned. When they’d started talking this through tonight, she’d been sure she’d find he was holding deep-seated anger at her. She should have known better. She leaned forward to lay a kiss on his heart, but he stopped her.
“No. Don’t try pawning me off with some bullshit comfort. Answer the question.”
“I’m not comforting you. I’m thanking you. I’m thanking you for not screaming. For not losing it. For not resenting Hope. For understanding why I did what I did and loving me. This isn’t comfort, this is love.”
She looked up at him and his eyes gleamed. This time he didn’t push her away when she laid a kiss over his heart.
7
“I don’t deserve you.” He felt like a weight that he hadn’t even known had been perched on his shoulder was suddenly gone. He hooked his arm around her shoulders. “Let’s go to bed.
“Now I’m hungry. How about pancakes?” Miranda suggested.
Oh, he was fucked. If she was buttering him up with pancakes, then she wanted something, and he knew what it was.
“Seriously, I’m tired.” He faked a yawn.
“I want pancakes,” she said as she reached in the pantry for the syrup and the pancake mix.
“You want to talk some more,” he sighed.
“Correction, I want you to talk some more. I spilled my guts, but you’ve neve
r really told me what it was like when you climbed down the cliff.”
He thrust his hand through his hair. “Please, I’m begging you, let’s go to bed.” He kept a smile in his voice. Maybe charm would work. She watched as she continued to mix the batter.
“I’m making pancakes. I’m making enough for both of us, you can stay up and eat some with me, or you can go to bed. Your choice.”
God, she was a stubborn wench!
“I already told you I was mad at God. What more do you want from me?”
She set down the whisk and leaned her elbows against the counter and looked at him. She bit her lip. “I remember bits and pieces of what you told me when I was in the hospital, but that’s all. It’s just bits and pieces. I guess I unconsciously knew this was a tough subject for you, so I didn’t ask more. I didn’t ask the tough stuff But now that we’re at it, I just want to know. Is that so wrong?”
“You didn’t remember what we talked about in the hospital?”
She shook her head.
How come he hadn’t realized that?
“I want five pancakes,” he said.
She gave him a relieved grin and turned back to the batter.
Three Years Earlier
Holding onto Hope, Griff saw Miranda’s desperate attempt to stop her fall. Her pale hand clutching blanched green stalks of sea grass was the last thing he saw before she toppled over the side of the cliff.
He knew it was at least a hundred foot drop, but it was graded, so it was possible she’d landed on some resting spot before hitting the beach below. He had to get to her.
“Billy, take Hope.” He tried to thrust the baby at the young man, but now she was hanging on for dear life.
“No!” Hope shouted with a tearful scream as he pried her hands from around his neck to give her to Billy.
The train was making a deafening sound as it tipped even more. Griff heard the tortured yell ‘No’ rip out of his throat right along with the child’s cries. He looked down at the window at his feet. The space between the window frame and the sand was now miniscule. There was no way he could possibly squeeze through.
“Billy, I need you to find this girl’s mom. She should be that way.” Griff pointed the opposite way from where Billy had come.
Her Honorable Hero (Black Dawn Book 7) Page 8