Page 8 of Gryphon

Miranda nodded and sat down again. Then her attention re-riveted on the speaker’s slide of the shortcomings of navigation electronics when landing a heavy helo on a moving object like a towed oil drilling platform.

He left her sitting beside Holly with Tad on the far side. Jeremy had ended up beyond Tad, as good as a mile away. Meg lay on her back across Miranda’s toes with her paws in the air and her head thrown back, fast asleep as usual. What did the little beast know that he didn’t? She hadn’t bothered to wake up when Miranda stood, already knowing she wasn’t going anywhere.

“I was expecting Ms. Chase,” the elegant woman waiting by the conference room’s back door looked anxiously over his shoulder. Tall, slender, her hair Nordic blonde (a true one, based on her roots and eyebrows), and the softest blue eyes versus Holly’s golden hair and gem-blue gaze. She had a slight Swedish accent, placing Chase closer to Shase. She’d been built to tick every box on the master entice-Mike list. Including, she could be a twin of ABBA’s Agnetha Fältskog at her peak.

The band had broken up before he was born, but as a kid, he’d shoplifted every cassette of their music. He hated disco, but Agnetha had been his first major crush and this woman awoke every one of those dreamy memories.

“I’m Mike Munroe, the Human Factors specialist on Miranda’s team. She’s fascinated by the current lecture.” He didn’t bother explaining that, courtesy of her autism, Miranda was fascinated by anything she chose to focus upon—to the exclusion of all else.

Klara, by her attendee badge, used those big blues on him. “By your tone, you are not so intrigued.” Her handshake was firm and warm despite her slender fingers.

“Human factors,” he tapped his chest and tried not to think of Tad Jobson’s massive pecs. “Oil platform electronics,” Mike waved at the screen, then offered a friendly shrug.

“Klara Dahlberg, Swedish SHK. Very technical, I’m afraid, airframe design engineer before I move into Swedish Haverikommission.” She said it with a bit of humor and a dazzling smile, as if teasing that Two such as us, so different, there would be no future.

He returned the smile that said it might have been fun to find out, but it didn’t feel right on his face.

As if she sensed the internal miscue, she continued, “I am to be requesting Ms. Chase’s—”

That soft Shase sound was going to kill him.

“—attendance to a crash site in Sweden. A Boeing 737 has gone down, the airline’s first accident in two decades. The next flight from here to Stockholm is in two hours, but I’ve arranged to reserve the last two available seats and a late check-in if we can escort her to the airport in time. A helicopter will be awaiting her at the other end.”

“Why us? Why not your own people?”

Her lovely face turned grim for a long moment, but such a face couldn’t sustain it for long. “Our Minister of Defense and her husband were on the flight. Your government offered any support. I’m supposed to mention that a General Drake Nason recommended we contact Ms. Chase.” Shase.

“Oh, that certainly explains it.” The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had become a great champion of Miranda’s team, with reason for the number of times Miranda had bailed him out. Over the years, Miranda’s success rate had made her in high demand for politically urgent investigations.

Mike glanced back at his team.

Tad was leaning in close to Holly whispering something. Mike wanted them apart…in different directions. Not a chance would he send Miranda without himself along, but leaving Holly and Tad here together looked like a crap idea as well.

Mike turned once more to face Klara. “Miranda has a talk scheduled tomorrow morning.”

“I will speak to the organizers about moving it to the end of the last day in case she can make it back in time.” Her tone filled with sorrowful doubt, but she didn’t know Miranda. She had a habit of tracking down the cause of crashes faster than most.

Mike gave himself a seventy-thirty odds bet Miranda would return within the three-and-a-half remaining days of the conference. “You can let the plane go. We can do you one better than that. Are you coming with us or remaining here? Plenty of room.”

“I will be remaining here.”

Mike paused for a heartbeat, then two.

Klara Dahlberg was everything a man might ask for. Tall, breathtakingly lovely, smart, a sense of humor, and no ring. And a young Agnetha’s twin.

And Mike felt not a single thing about her not joining them.

Now was not the time to wonder why he wasn’t doing everything to sweep her off her feet and onto her back, but it was like an itch he knew he’d have to come back to unless he remained very careful to avoid it. He vowed to hide from it as long as humanly possible.

It wasn’t as if he and Holly were in a monogamous relationship, at least not a declared one. Holy Christ! How long had it been since the last time he’d looked seriously at another woman? Way too long! And here stood one to look at and he felt nothing that could be construed as a proper attraction to—

A round of applause marked the end of the talk. There would be a brief window in which to break Miranda free as the session leader did the obligatory gift presentation of a boxed pen and posed for a handshake photograph.

“Wait a moment, please.” He went to fetch the team. Time to break up the dance going on there.

He wasn’t going to pay any attention to Holly’s quiet laugh shared with Tad.

Mike leaned in to block Miranda’s sightlines to the stage. Some part of him had noted that the poor presenter had never rediscovered his true stride, flashing through the last eight slides in the final fifteen seconds. It was unlikely that anyone, other than perhaps Miranda, absorbed their content.

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