Page 71 of Her Honorable Hero

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.”