“Pik?” She rolled her head and pushed up so she could look up at her mom. She gave a wobbly smile. “Pik, Mama.”
It was a new word for Livvie. She loved pink.
“Hurry up. I don’t have time for this shit.”
Livvie whimpered.
Miranda responded in a singsong voice. “If you stop being an asshole, I might be able to clean, feed and get my daughter to sleep. Then I can see about getting my assistant to send the files to my home e-mail. So how about it Daddy, think you can keep your shit together?” All the time she nuzzled Livvie as she stepped through the nursery door to the far wall where the changing table was. But it wasn’t working, Livvie started to squirm and squeak her displeasure, once again sensing Miranda’s mood.
Miranda almost dropped Livvie onto the table when the gun was jabbed into her back.
That was going to leave a bruise.
“Bitch, you know your mother had a smart mouth too. I didn’t like it. So shut up. Shut your kid up, and get me what I need. I don’t like kids, and I’m not above hurting yours to keep you in line.”
At Heinrich’s staccato delivery, Livvie stopped making any sounds, it was like her little girl knew that there was trouble and she needed to keep quiet. She was her father’s daughter.
“Okay. I just need three minutes, then I’ll get to the office desk,” she said quietly.
“We’re in.” Dex thrust his phone at Griff. The app worked the same way.
“So did Miranda turn on camera’s for the entire house?” he asked as he looked at his living room.
“No,” Dex and Clint said simultaneously. Clint spoke through Dalton’s phone.
Griff started flipping through the pictures on the app, and when he got to Livvie’s room, spiders crawled down his spine. The camera was set at an angle where you could see his baby girl’s crib. He could see Miranda’s back where she was bending over Livvie at the changing table, and behind her was Roger Heinrich. Because of the position, he couldn’t see what was between them, but his body language indicated he was holding a weapon.
Dex was pressed up against Griff. “Blow up the image,” Dex said.
Griff shook his head, clearing it. He enlarged the picture on the phone. He still couldn’t see the weapon that was trained on Miranda, but he could see that she was unharmed, her shoulders were tight under the light sweater she’d worn to work. He could see her pulling on leggings for Livvie.
Griff looked up to see where they were on the freeway, he saw the slow down ahead. Too damn far away. “Who’s close to Poway?”
“I’ve been checking,” Clint called over Dalton’s phone. “I’ve already got the cavalry going over to your place. “Commander McAllister and Captain Hale were in a meeting at Miramar, I pinged them. The Captain is going to be calling Dex’s phone.”
“Well stop him,” Griff yelled. “I don’t want to interrupt this feed. Why the hell isn’t he patching through you?”
Griff did a quick calculation in his head. Miramar was definitely closer to his house in Poway, than the base in Coronado, and looking at the traffic ahead of them on The Fifteen freeway, they were going to be another hour.”
“Dalton, in about five miles is the Pamerado exit. Take that.”
Dalton blasted his horn, and started squeezing over. People took one look at his truck and figured he wouldn’t care if he banged into them, so they got the hell out of his way. Soon he was driving on the shoulder, once again going way, way faster than anybody else was going. Dalton took the Pamerado exit on two wheels, and Griff suppressed a groan as the seat belt cut into his rib.
“What now?” Dalton asked.
“The main intersections are Sprint, Scripps then take a right on Poway. Dex, take the call from Josiah, I don’t have time for that shit until he gets to the house.” He lowered his head and sucked in a breath as he saw his beautiful wife pick up their precious baby.
A grin spread over his face as he saw her head to the crib. Livvie was having a fit, she sure as hell didn’t want to be put down for a nap, but Miranda didn’t care. She set their crying daughter on her plump butt and gave her a pacifier.
Go Miranda!
He saw Heinrich get in Miranda’s face, it was clear he didn’t want Miranda to leave Livvie in the nursery. He watched his woman throw her hands on her hips and go nose to nose with the guy. Good for her. God he loved his wife. Finally Heinrich gave in, and he followed her out the nursery door. Griff’s heart sank when he got a good look at the Glock he was holding on Miranda. It made it all real.
Griff switched to the hallway cam, and watched as they went to the living room. There were two in there, one that showed the main seating area, and one near the corner with the desk. Why was he not surprised that’s where they ended up? This had to be about the project she’d been working on. He didn’t know what it was, but it was big.
He watched as she sat down at the desk. She looked up at him. Then he saw it. That damned mutinous expression.
No Baby, cooperate. Please, come on. It’s not worth it.
Heinrich was getting all worked up. He saw it. The picture was in black and white, but Griff imagined he could see him getting red in the face as he started to yell. Miranda tried to get up from the chair. He shoved her down.
She shouted back at him.
Time came to a slow crawl as Griff saw him take his pistol and slash it across her cheek. Her head whipped backwards, and she fell out of the chair. He could swear he had heard a crack. Had the monster actually broken her cheek?
When Heinrich bent down, Griff saw him use his left hand to tangle it in Miranda’s hair to wrench her up. She grabbed his hand and pulled him down, her feet in his stomach and he waited with baited breath.
Come on. You can do it. You can do it.
But Heinrich countered the move. He didn’t let her push him over her head. Instead he broke her hold, stood up, and kicked her in the ribs. Then he grabbed her arm and shoved her back into the chair. She sat there sullen. He made a move to the hallway, in the direction of Livvie’s room. Griff saw Miranda struggle to stand. She was screaming. Heinrich turned, a look of satisfaction on his face. He meandered back to her, his gun pointed at her. She bowed her head and sat back down.
Griff looked up to orient himself. Two more stoplights and they would be taking a right onto Poway, then ten minutes to home.
Things were soft around the edges.
She just knew she was going to need some of her crowns re-done, the fucker. Miranda chose to focus on anger and hate. She would not give into pain and fear.
She would not.
After all, she’d managed to talk him away from Livvie…again.
Where was Griff?
Stop it. He’s going to be here.
“Hand me my purse,” she pointed to the black bag that she’d dropped near the hallway. I have my VPN tag on my keychain.
He gave her a questioning stare.
“It is my little fob that has numbers that are constantly changing, so I can access our virtual private network securely. Every employee has one, mine allows me a higher clearance than most. But I can’t download anything to this hard drive, nor can I make copies or screenshots.”
She damn near rolled her eyes at his look of desolation. Seriously, it didn’t occur to him to take pictures with his I-Phone of her computer screen? She couldn’t possibly be related to this numbnut.
He grabbed her purse and rifled through it. When he found the keys, he thrust them at her.
“Get the files up. I want to see them. I want to make sure you’re not jacking me around.”
“Who’s your client, Dad?”
“None of your damn business.”
“This is big stuff. Are you getting your money’s worth?” Her words were coming out slurred. She wouldn’t be able to talk much longer. She looked down at the numbers on the VPN, they weren’t clear.
Please God, say she wasn’t about to lose consciousness, she needed to stay awake to ensure her Hope’s safety.
Keep it together, Miranda. You’re in your home, and this is about Livvie. Not Hope. You’re not on the train.
“I’m getting more than money, I’m getting my life back. Now hurry up, I want to see those plans.”
She connected to her secure home internet, and then used the company VPN fob. She saw her desktop. She was in!
“Show me.” He had his phone out. Was he going to take pictures?
She opened up the overall Pegasus file, but moved to the one from four weeks ago, the one with the flaws. She opened up that schematic. She got up real close to her screen so that she could see the screen clearly. Her right eye was almost swollen shut.
Heinrich was on the phone. “Mr. Cheong,” Heinrich said deferentially. “I have the Pegasus schematics. I’ve done as you’ve requested, Sir.”
Miranda watched Heinrich’s entire demeanor change before her eyes, the bully was gone, in his place was a man who had obviously been bullied. He was the lowest person on the totem pole.
“Yes Sir.”
He nodded again.
“Yes Sir.”
He pulled a pen out of her cup, then grabbed an envelope off her desk and started writing notes.
“Uhmm.” Heinrich was silent.
Finally he continued. “She says that can’t be done.”
Slowly he lowered the phone and pressed the button so that it was on speaker. “He wants to talk to you.”
“I know you, Miranda Porter, you have an important role with Pegasus, you don’t work with the Lartronics, but you’ll do.”
“Who are you?” Miranda demanded. She squinted to see if she could recognize the number. She couldn’t see. It too was blocked. What she did notice is that it had only been fifteen minutes since she’d looked at the car dash clock. Dammit, Griff was still probably another twenty minutes away, and he had no idea how bad it had gotten.
“What do you mean, I’ll do?” Her words came out garbled.
“You’re the Project Manager at TAID, you have Top Secret Clearance. My government is interested in what you can provide. Mr. Heinrich has been promising to deliver us these plans for quite some time. It wasn’t until we started taking more drastic measures that he knew we getting impatient.”
He saw Heinrich pale. “Burning down my house wasn’t necessary,” he whined.
There was the whiner she had first known.
“Nonsense, we’re finally close to getting the deliverable. Now Mrs. Porter, please upload these files to the location that Heinrich has written down.”
She let out a broken laugh to go with her broken face. “Look, I told Henrich.” She sneered at the toad. “Our system has too many fail-safes. It doesn’t allow you to download to any computers other than four secure comps at TAID headquarters, and it sure as hell doesn’t allow you to make copies.” The last word sounded like she said coffees. She pulled out some tissues from the box on her desk and pressed them against her mouth.
“Then it’s you I need.” Cheong said easily.
“What?”
What was he talking about.
Her doorbell rang.
“Answer the door Mr. Heinrich.”
Her father looked like he was going to throw up.
“If you don’t do this, it will only get worse.”
Heinrich hung up the phone.
“Is there a back way out of here?” he demanded hoarsely.
Miranda stumbled up out of her chair and ran to Livvie’s room. She burst through the door, and God love her, Livvie remained asleep. She frantically looked around.
“Hurry up,” as the doorbell sounded again.
She picked up Livvie who was dead weight. Perfect, it was better than her squirming. She also snatched her baby blanket. She veered to the master bedroom, and yanked open the top drawer of the dresser. She found Griff’s light weight body armor.
She placed Livvie on the bed.
“Mama?” Her baby girl hated it when she tried to encase whole body in the too big black vest.
“No.”
“It’s Daddy’s.” Miranda smiled, then wrapped the blanket around her squirming girl. This so wasn’t going to work, but it was the only thing she could think of.
“Bitch, let’s go.” Heinrich was at the bedroom door waving his gun.
The room was spinning, but Miranda could do anything for her daughter.
The sound of Heinrich’s voice startled Livvie from the start of a tantrum. Once again, her daughter caught on that there was a problem.
15
“We’re on Poway, now what?” Dalton demanded.
“Four lights, then a left,” Dex answered absently. He was looking over Griff’s shoulder at the drama playing out on the small phone screen.
“Beautiful,” Griff breathed out through gritted teeth. He only wished he’d had two vests at home. How had Miranda gotten Livvie to put up with that shit? His wife was brilliant.
“Griff, why are they headed to your patio door?” Dex asked. “Check your porch.”
He did. He didn’t like what he was seeing. Three big Eurasian men were standing on the porch. One started to pound on the door with his fist, he was yelling something. It was the first time Griff regretted being able to afford a property that was further back from the street with space between his neighbors.
The one pounding at the door, pointed at the other two, and they took off going on either side of the house.
“It’s not far to your neighbor’s backyard if they go out your backdoor,” Dex said as Heinrich followed Miranda to the sliding glass door. She pointed to the computer and asked a question. Heinrich grabbed her and then pushed her toward the door.
Dalton blew through a red light, oblivious to the horns honking. Dalton’s phone rang.
“Is that your piece of shit truck that just ran the red light?” Josiah Hale wanted to know.
Dalton glanced in his rear view mirror.
“Is that your NSX behind me?”
“No, it’s Liam’s. He wants to know what you have under your hood.”
“Quit with the chit chat, we’re three minutes from the house,” Griff ground out loudly. “We have one bad guy with a gun trained on my wife and baby inside the house. Three bogeys outside, one at the front door, two went to scout the perimeter on either side. Bad guy and Miranda are heading out the back door.”
“What else?” Josiah demanded.
They were coming up on Maple.
“Dalton, we need to slow down, your truck’s too loud.”
“I’m way ahead of you,” Dalton said to Griff, as he downshifted and took the vehicle down to a purr. “Where should I park?”
“Dalton, we’re going to go one more street down and actually take a right onto Evergreen. I want to get to the back of the yard.”
“Gotchya.”
“Josiah have Liam park two houses before my home, on Maple,” Griff said.
“Affirmative.” Josiah answered.
Griff watched as Miranda and Livvie and the piece-of-shit Heinrich stepped out of the patio door. Heinrich was hit from behind, not on the head, no the big man went for a kidney a hard kidney punch for maximum pain, and Heinrich went down like a sack of potatoes. Griff grinned ferally.
He then grabbed Miranda by the hair and yanked downwards so she went to her knees. Griff felt like he was falling off a cliff when he saw the man pull out a sub-machine gun from his jacket. He jammed it into her side, right next to Livvie. He whispered into Miranda’s ear. She nodded, and nodded again, clutching a crying Livvie to her bosom. He saw the tears streaming down his wife’s face.
He needed to get to her. Another man came up beside her. He had a gun trained on her too. Griff swept right twice on the app and saw that the first guy was still on the porch, now he had a phone to his ear. But then he took a leap off the porch, and went to hide behind the big agave and other succulent plants that grew to the right of the of the house’s exterior. Fat lot of good it did, since there was a huge Escalade in the front driveway, it was a bit of a
giveaway.
“Josiah, bogey to the right of the porch. Just pulled a sub-machine gun. Bizon. Fucker looks like he’s one of the Gurkha mercs we’ve been hearing about. Watch yourself.”
“On it,” Liam said.
“What in the hell is Miranda working on?” Josiah asked.
“Top Secret, with DOD. I know she’s giving her findings to a general who’s presenting to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”
Liam whistled.
“So this could be the Chinese or Russians who want this,” Josiah muttered.
“Yep,” Dex answered.
Dalton pulled to a stop where Griff pointed. They had pulled up at the Norton residence. Peggy Norton was a widow, and she always knew what was going on, but he hadn’t heard Peaches, her dog for the last three days, so maybe she was out of town.
Please, say they’d caught a break.
“What’s the plan?” Dalton asked.
“We’re going through the side fence,” Griff said as he hopped out of Dalton’s truck. He ignored the stab of pain in his ribs. “Follow me.” He hot-footed it to the gate and reached over for the latch. Nope, no barking. This was good.
He looked behind him. Why the hell was Dalton crouched in the back of his pick-up truck at his toolbox? They didn’t have time to spare, didn’t he realize that?
Fuck him.
Dex followed Griff through the yard. They peeked over the fence, their guns drawn. It was hell on the other side. Miranda was wrestling with one of the men as he tried to pull Livvie from his arms.
“You want my help, then don’t take my daughter,” she yelled.
He had her head tipped back, gripping her hair. He was damn near spitting in her bloody, swollen face.
“Maybe I just cut baby, make you work faster? Huh?” He laughed. “Cheong wants the files, and if you don’t give to him, I kill baby.”
“You kill her, and you can kill me too. I won’t care what you do to me, it won’t matter anymore.”
Heinrich was lying on the grass. He grabbed the second man’s leg. “I can help. Tell Cheong I’m useful. I know how to get into her files.”
The man holding Miranda looked down for just a moment. Griff hesitated, he wanted to take the shot so badly, but he couldn’t risk it. He needed to separate Miranda from the mercenaries. How?
Her Honorable Hero (Black Dawn Book 7) Page 15