Page 117 of Wicked Sexy (Wicked Games 2)
“Yes.”
“After which there were several communications between Tabitha and Killgaard, am I right?”
“Yes.”
“And the information gathered from those communications led to a team being deployed to Miami, yes?”
“That’s right.”
“And when did you first meet Søren Killgaard?”
Miranda answers without hesitation, “Two thousand seven.”
I stop dead in my tracks. Deputy Director Downs stares at Miranda. The quadruplets tighten their grips on their guns.
It’s several long moments before Miranda realizes her mistake. When she does, her face drains of color.
“No. Wait. I-I didn’t…I meant—”
“You meant that you first met Søren Killgaard in two thousand seven.” Downs speaks evenly, quietly, with a dangerous edge to his voice, the friendly, aw-shucks act vanished. “Mr. Hughes, it appears your gut instinct was correct.”
Miranda shoots to her feet. “No! That’s not what I meant! I was confused!” Outraged, verging on hysteria, she looks at Downs. Her eyes bulge with fury and desperation. “You were deliberately misleading me! You were trying to put words into my mouth!”
Like a deer that suddenly recognizes it’s in the hunter’s crosshairs, Miranda skitters back from her desk, panicked, arms flailing, stumbling awkwardly in her high heels, bumping first into her chair and then the wall of windows.
Downs rises. When he snaps his fingers, the quadruplets leap into action.
You’ve never seen four men in trench coats move so blindingly fast.
Stoic, her mascara-streaked cheeks pale, Miranda sits at her desk in handcuffs.
She’s waived her right to have an attorney present in exchange for a promise of leniency for her cooperation. She changed her tune of innocence as soon as she had a few shotguns jammed in her face.
The quadruplets didn’t take kindly to finding out she’d been hiding knowledge of the man who murdered nine of their own. Law enforcement folks are funny like that.
The quadruplets, Downs, and I stand in a row in front of her desk, bristling and seething as one.
“Let’s pick up where we left off,” says Downs. His entire demeanor is that of a man barely holding himself back from committing an act of violence. His hand rests ominously on the butt of his sidearm, a fact Miranda doesn’t miss. Her face bleaches a paler shade of white.
“You met him in two thousand seven. Where?”
She sniffles, looking down, somehow still elegant and regal despite the handcuffs and raccoon eyes. “In Seattle. I was attending the annual meeting of a professional women’s organization called Ellevate. I’d recently founded my own studio and had been invited to speak about young women in business.”
“What about them?”
Miranda looks up at Downs, a glint of defiance shining in her eyes. “About how difficult it is for them to be leaders because of all the cocks blocking their path to the top.”
With a heavy dose of snark, one of the quadruplets observes, “Feminist.”
She snaps, “You try fighting against the patriarchy as a woman in this country and see how far it gets you! If you don’t have a dick, the boys club won’t let you in unless you’re twice as smart and ten times as ruthless. And even then they’ll call you a bitch and a cow and a frigid, stuck-up twat, all because you’re simply better than they are.”
“You have a valid point,” I say.
That surprises everyone in the room, including Miranda, who blinks at me in surprise.
“But that’s a shitty excuse for getting in bed with a terrorist.”
Her eyes swim with moisture. She bites her lower lip and then whispers miserably, “You think I don’t know that?”
