Please God, let it work.
She texted 505 to Griff’s phone. He had promised that no matter what, somebody from one of the teams would always be monitoring this and would call them back.
Her phone rang, and she didn’t recognize the number. She answered it.
“Miranda? This is Kane McNamara. I’m Dex Evan’s communication counterpoint on the Night Storm SEAL team out in Virginia. How bad is it?”
“I need my husband. I don’t know how bad it is.” She saw her white knuckles on the steering wheel and she forced herself not to cry in fear and frustration. “My estranged father is DHS, he’s taken pictures of my daughter. She’s almost two.” She choked back a gasp just thinking about it.
“I’m listening.” There was a click on the line.
“Who’s on the phone?” Griff demanded.
“Griff! It’s me.”
“This is McNamara with Night Storm. Miranda was just explaining how her father has been taking pictures of your daughter and threatening her. You’re worried for her safety, is that right Miranda?”
“Yes.” Miranda sped up to whiz through the yellow light.
“Why didn’t you answer your phone?” Miranda demanded.
“I’ll get someone to the daycare,” Griff said steadily.
“I’m on my way there now.” She honked her horn at the car that decided to take a right from the left hand turn lane.
“Why aren’t you at your office?” Griff roared.
“I’m here at the daycare.”
Miranda parked in the teacher-of-the-year parking spot at the front and slammed out of the car. Her phone fell into the footwell of the passenger seat. She could hear Griff still yelling. She grabbed her purse since she was going to need her identification.
13
“Miranda!” Griff shouted into the phone. It was no use, she wasn’t answering. This was un-fucking-acceptable.
“Kane, get her back on the line!” Griff shouted above the pounding of the surf. He was on the beach in Coronado near the BUD/S Grinder.
“Porter, the line’s still open. She’s just not talking.”
“Griff.” He shrugged off the hand on his shoulder.
“Griff, listen to me.” He twisted and shoved Dex’s hand away.
“What?” he roared. He wanted to yell loud enough for heaven to hear. Hell, it sounded like there was a roaring in his head right now. It was as if an ordinance had gone off beside his ear, and he was dealing with the percussion.
Livvie.
He scrolled through the numbers listed in his phone. Then realized it wasn’t his phone, it was Dex’s. Dammit, he needed the number to the Little Handprints Daycare. God, that log must have landed on him harder than he’d realized. Goddamn tadpoles! Not only had the log they’d been supposed to be carrying landed on him, it had busted his phone. Dex had been steering him toward the base medic because his friend thought he might have a busted rib.
How long since Miranda stopped talking?
“Not even three minutes,” Dex said. Griff must have asked the question aloud.
“What’s your passcode?” he demanded of Dex now that the screen was locked.
“What do you need?” Dex asked.
“Little Handprints Daycare,” Griff answered.
In a minute, Dex was shoving the phone at him and then he left him.
“Home of Little Handprints,” a too-sweet voice answered.
“Is my wife there?” he demanded. “I need to speak to her. I’m looking for Miranda Porter.”
“I need to put you on a brief hold, is that all right?”
“No, it’s not. Answer my question.”
“But I asked you to hold, you were supposed to say yes,” the young woman said.
“I said no. Find Miranda.”
“Oh. Okay.” The receiver clattered and he imagined a startled fairy princess and it pissed him off.
A different voice spoke next. “Who is this?”
Finally, an adult. “This is Griffin Porter. Put my wife on the line. I need to speak to her immediately.”
“Griff, this is April Marsh. Miranda just left with Livvie, but I made her show her I.D. as requested. She assured me that the two of you had everything under control.”
Griff looked up and saw Dex running back to him. He’d been talking to one of the Instructors who’d been leading the tadpoles on their run. Dex came back with a phone to his ear.
He made a motion with his arm for Griff to follow him.
“April, how long ago did Miranda leave? Was she under any duress?” Griff asked as he started a slow run after Dex. He would have run faster but he wouldn’t have been able to hear April.
“Absolutely not. I asked her almost that exact question. It concerned me that she had made the request. And in answer to your other question, she left, at the very most, five minutes ago. She was moving fast.” He heard April chuckle. “But Miranda’s been telling me for weeks about that deadline of hers. So I know time is of the essence.”
“It sure is. Thanks, April.”
He disconnected and sped up to Dex. “What’s the plan?”
“We don’t have the time to waste running the four blocks to base. Somebody’s going to meet us near in the Grinder Parking lot.”
“Who?”
“Whoever can get their ass there the fastest.”
Livvie had to be picking up on her stress levels, because she normally didn’t cry like this. She was a happy baby. Of course, she wasn’t in her normal car seat, either.
“Sweet Girl, we’re almost home,” Miranda crooned.
She hated this. She looked at Livvie in the rearview mirror. Her daughter’s face was scrunched up, her tiny hands clenched into fists as she struggled against the belt on the booster seat.
“Out,” her little girl sobbed.
“I’ll make you smores when we get home,” Miranda bribed. She had always sworn she wouldn’t stoop to bribery if she’d had a child. That had flown out the window real quick.
“Out,” Livvie cried again.
Miranda saw Maple street coming up. Thank you, Lord.
Her phone rang.
Shit, shit, shit.
She saw it over there in the footwell. She pulled over to the curb and put the car into park. Then she snagged the phone.
It wasn’t the blocked number, it was Kane’s number.
“Where’s Griff?” she answered.
“Where are you?”
“I’m on my way home. My ETA is two minutes. I’ll be safe there. Our security system is state of the art, and I’m getting the gun out of the gun safe. I’m not taking any chances with my daughter. When will Griff be home?”
“Stay on the line this time,” Kane commanded.
Miranda rolled her eyes. These men. As soon as they thought it was some kind of mission, they all sounded the same.
“I told you, now that I have Livvie and I’ve got my house in sight, I’ve got this under control. I just want my husband.”
She reached up to depress the garage door opener and realized it was Susan’s. Her lower lip started to tremble in frustration. She slammed the car into park and shoved on the emergency brake when she pulled into the small driveway.
“Out,” Livvie shouted, when Miranda opened her door.
“In a second love, Mommy’s got to open the garage door the manual style.”
She ran up to the keypad by the door and pressed in the code. Then she ran back to Susan’s mini-van while the garage door started to open.
“Out,” Livvie shouted again.
“Dammit.” Miranda managed not to raise her voice as the stuffed giraffe hit the back of her head.
“Miranda, what’s wrong?” Kane demanded.
“I have a pissed off almost-two-year-old who’s throwing things.”
She pulled into her garage.
“Let me call you when I’m in the house and have Livvie settled. In the meantime, get my husband on the call, too.” She pressed the button on the side of he
r phone to end the call. She got out of the driver’s door and ran up to the front of the garage and depressed the garage door button. In the dim light of the garage she gave a sigh of relief. They were locked in. She opened the door to the house and turned on the hallway light and propped it open with her purse, then turned back to the car.
“Honey, we’ll get you a smores, and juice, and check your diaper. Heck, I’ll do anything you want, if you’ll just quit crying. What can Mommy do for you?” Miranda asked as she opened the backseat door.
She leaned in and unbuckled Livvie who was sobbing.
“Ahhh, Honey. We’re home now. It’s going to be all right.” And it was. She was home. She was safe.
She hoisted Livvie’s diaper bag over one shoulder, and then gently picked up her daughter who slumped into her arms.
“Oh, you just wanted to be held, didn’t you, Sweetheart?” She breathed in Livvie’s scent. God, she loved her daughter. She felt her bottom. Yep, she definitely needed a new diaper, Miranda grinned. It was nice that things were normal.
She hipped checked the car door to close it.
“Smore?”
“You betchya. I’m going to have one too. Mommy’s due.”
“Can I have one, too? I like smores.”
Miranda whirled around, hugging Livvie for dear life.
“How’d you get in here?” She demanded of her father.
“I love garage doors. They go up, and you come in while the car drives in. So simple. Can I hold my granddaughter?”
“What do you mean she hasn’t called you and now you can’t get ahold of her?” Griff shouted at Kane.
Griff was shoved into the front seat of Dalton’s beat-up, rusted, baby blue, 1990 Chevy truck, along with Dex. Dalton was going the speed limit in the little town of Coronado, because sure as shit, they’d get pulled over. They’d be able to make up time on the freeway.
“I’m saying that she’s not picking up.”
“Dex, do your fucking magic. I have my security system app coded into my phone. The outside surveillance is always on, so is the baby’s room. If Miranda activated, the rest of the house is monitored, too.”
Dex looked at him for a moment. Griff saw the exact moment where it clicked with his friend.
“Shit, Griff, I could definitely tap into that and get it downloaded to my phone if I were at my computer. I could do it fast. But I can’t do it fast from my phone.”
“Kane, you’re a hotshot. What about you?” Griff barked.
“I’m out of the country in a shit-hole. My security sucks.”
“Call Clint,” Dalton said, referring to Clint Archer of Midnight Delta. He was the third communications guru of the SEAL teams. “They’re not deployed.” Dalton handed Griff his cell phone.
Griff went through Dalton’s contacts and dialed Clint.
“What do you need, Dalton?” Clint answered.
“This is Griff Porter, I have an emergency.”
“Spill it.”
Griff put the phone on speaker and he explained what was going on.
“Your biggest problem is going to be overriding the system so that we can see what the hell is going on in all rooms, whether Miranda turns on that capability or not,” Clint said.
“You can’t,” Griff said. “It’s foolproof.”
Dex and Clint laughed.
“Give me your passcode,” Clint said. “Dex, is all the info I have on your phone still the same?”
“Fuck no, I change that shit daily.”
“Sorry, stupid question. I’ll pull it off of our encrypted site.”
“How long is this going to take?” Griff asked.
“I’ll have this app up on Clint’s phone in seven minutes. We’ll have visuals in every room you have a camera.”
Griff would get upset about the invasion of privacy and the fact that he was sold a shitty system, some other time. Right now, he’d promise to wash Clint’s truck in a bikini if he could pull this off. He looked up and realized they were about to cross the Coronado bridge. After they crossed, it would be twenty to forty-five minutes to get home, depending on traffic and speed.
Please, God.
Please, God.
As soon as they hit The Five, Dalton put on the gas, and they were going forty over the speed limit, where everyone else was going twenty over.
His hand hit the dash as Dalton veered around a cement mixer. The seatbelt cut in hard on his ribs. The pain only made his focus clearer.
“Dalton, I need to stay alive to save my wife and kid, you got it?” he yelled.
Dalton’s only response was to go faster.
He had a gun. It was Glock thirty-six, must be department issued. It was pointed down, not at her baby.
“Let’s go inside.”
“I’m not going anywhere when you have a gun near my child.” She slumped against her car. It was negotiation one-oh-one. She needed to start exerting power from the get go.
“Move now. I’m not kidding.”
“What aren’t you kidding about, Heinrich? Isn’t it about time you told me what you want? You certainly aren’t here at my house with a gun because you want some father/daughter bonding time. Now spill it.” She pretended he was an employee that she was getting ready to fire.
“I heard you were a ball-buster. Not at all like your mother. However, you’re stupid. Apparently you didn’t inherit my brains.”
“I just want to hear you spell it out. I’m not going to assume a damn thing where you’re concerned.”
“Smores,” Livvie kicked out.
“In just a moment, Baby.” Miranda cradled her little girl’s head. “You’ll get smores in just a minute.”
“No she won’t, because you’re going to be busy uploading all of the files for Pegasus to my virtual private server.”
Miranda snorted. She’d thought as much. “You’re delusional.”
“No, I’m not. Many children take care of their parents in their old age. You’re just taking care of me when I’m in my prime, and I appreciate it. I really do.” His smile made her skin crawl.
“Not going to happen. Hell, even if I wanted to. Even if you put that gun to my head and threatened to blow my brains out, I couldn’t do it. I don’t have access to the files at the house, and the encrypted files are of the type that they can’t be copied. My God, how stupid are you?”
He lifted the gun and took five swift steps toward her, aiming at Livvie, Miranda twirled around and hunched over, sheltering her baby against the safety of her SUV and her body. He wormed the gun between them, pressing it against Livvie’s squirming body as the little girl screamed.
“Just try me. I’ll kill her. You don’t give me what I want, I’ll kill your brat.”
The word ‘brat’ echoed in her brain.
“You mean like you wanted my mother to kill me?” she hissed.
He smiled slowly. “Guess that would have been a mistake, what with you being in a position to help me. But your brat is of no use to me, and don’t you forget it.”
“Yes she is. She’s your leverage.” A fear like she’d never known racing through her body. She had to be smart. She had to be brave. It was the only thing that would keep her daughter alive. That and Griff.
“Then bitch, you better think of something to give me what I want. Because, me being in a situation where I have nothing to lose, means I’ll kill her for sport. You better do something to give me some hope.”
She desperately wanted to put some of the self-defense moves that Griff had hammered home into play. He was so close she knew he’d had garlic at lunch and hadn’t flossed for days. Couldn’t she turn around and kick his nuts into his lungs?
Thousands of years of maternal instincts overrode everything else and she spoke.
“I need to think, Roger, You need to let me think.” Her voice was quiet.
“Dad. Call me Dad.”
“Dad,” she choked out a whisper.
“Good girl,” he slowly withdrew the gun from Livvie’s
side. The little girl’s sobs were heartbreaking. Heinrich walked carefully backwards, his gun trained on the two of them. “You go on ahead. I’ll follow,” he said in a jovial voice.
14
She slow-walked into the house.
“Speed it up.”
“I can’t. I’m in heels. Livvie’s squirming too much.”
She went down the short hall to the living room and dropped her purse and the diaper bag then made a turn to the left.
“Uh-uh, I see a desk over there in the corner.”
“I have to change her, otherwise we’re never going to get a moment of peace.”
Heinrich kicked at the diaper bag. “So change her.”
“I’m going to her bedroom and getting her changed, washed and into a change of clothes. She’s soaked through. Deal with it. You want me to think of something, then I need a moment to actually to do just that!”
She needed ten moments to think, and she needed to stall for time. Griffin would come through, she knew he would. Somehow, some way, her husband would be here.
Stall, Miranda, Stall.
“Fine, let’s go to the kid’s room.”
Miranda went down the hall with Livvie crying and snuffling into her neck. She was so tired that she couldn’t even keep up a good tantrum.
“It’s okay, Love. It’s all going to be okay,” she whispered softly so only her daughter could hear. She stroked the silky strands of black hair on her hot head. Maybe she could get Livvie into her crib and close the door and wrestle the gun away from Heinrich. Anything to stop the asshole from harming her child. What did it matter if she died, as long as Livvie were alive?
What was she thinking? She was damn well going to live and raise her daughter!
“Smore?” Livvie said drowsily against her neck.
“In a minute, Love. In a minute.” She forced her voice to be upbeat. “First we’re going to get you cleaned up and sweet smelling, how does that sound? What would you like to wear? Pink?”
Her Honorable Hero (Black Dawn Book 7) Page 14
