“And once he was in, he demanded more money, yes?”
“Correct.”
“And that’s when our rapid response team arrived to help, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And then Connor and Tabitha West arrived, correct?”
“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 S?ren 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 S?ren 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?”
“Back up, I missed something,” says Downs, irritated.
“The software,” explains Miranda. “InSight. I didn’t develop it. S?ren did. It was my way to get a real foothold in the industry, to crush my competition, all of whom were men.”
Downs looks at me. “You’re spooky.”
I lift a shoulder. “I know.”
“No, I’m serious. You’re scary. I swear it’s like you’re the first guy who looked up in the sky and saw half a dozen stars two hundred million light years apart and went, ‘Hey, that looks like a really big dipper!’”
“Instincts, I guess.”
“Sheesh,” says Downs, shaking his head. “Remind me never to try to blow smoke up your ass.”
Miranda makes a noise of disgust. “Let me know when you two are done jerking each other off and want to get back to the questions.”
When one of the quadruplets sets the tip of his shotgun on her desk, Miranda says scornfully, “Typical male response when faced with an outspoken woman: threats.”
After a tense moment, Downs motions with his chin. The shotgun is reluctantly removed.