Page 72 of Her Honorable Hero

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.