Daniel

We had almost been caught. Hell, we had been caught, but maybe we'd avoided suspicion. Irving had to know he had locked his door. And I'd been able to snag a couple of files that looked promising just before Miranda came busting in.

What had Irving been doing out of class already anyway? He should have been occupied for at least another forty minutes.

There was a crackle in my ear as I continued to let Miranda pull me away from Irving's office, even though I was probably going to have to go back to finish the job sooner rather than later. 

"Looks like we ran into a little diversion, eh, D-dog?"

Fucking Scott. I couldn't answer him without looking crazy. She finally pulled to a stop in front of an office with her name on it, unlocked the door, pulled me in, and locked it behind her.

"Start talking, Daniel."

I liked it better when she called me Danny.

"And no lies, or I'm done and you're gone."

Silence dragged on as her tiny little foot tapped an impatient rhythm.

"D-dog, you're not thinking what I think you're thinking, are you?"

Scott could shut the fuck up. Miranda had never gotten in the middle of a mission before. Could I lie to her again? Yes. Should I lie to her again? Probably. But if I was honest with myself, I had been looking for even the flimsiest reason to tell her the truth for a long time. Lives are at stake. And one of those lives was now Miranda's.

"I'm here on a black ops mission," I said, the relief of telling the truth for once amping my adrenaline up higher than when Irving had entered his office. "Irving is a suspected human trafficker, and I'm trying to find evidence to bring him in."

"Awww, no, D-dog! You didn't! The boss is going to eat your ass for breakfast, lunch and dinner!"

Miranda's mouth dropped open and then she began hitting me, her tiny fists flailing ineffectually against my chest. "Of all the--you could at least respect me enough to try to make the lie plausible. But you never tried, did you, Daniel?" she continued on her litany, even as I captured her hands. She tried to yank them from my grip, yelling at me while Scott railed at me about what a dumbass I was being.

"Enough!" I yelled to both of them. In the silence that followed, I dropped Miranda's hands and pulled out the files I had grabbed from Irving's filing cabinet and dropped them on her desk. "Look if you don't believe me."

She turned to her desk, her eyes lingering on me in suspicion, then flipped the first file open. 

"Judy Turner. Disappeared two years ago when she was fourteen."

"Daniel, I'm begging you, for the love of tacos and Mountain Dew, shut your friggin' pie hole."

There was no way I was leaving before Miranda understood what was at stake. Why she needed to stay away from Irving. And maybe I had a hope that she would look at me, if not with fondness, then at least without anger. Without pain. "Her parents got a phone call from someone we suspect was her a month ago and provided information matching someone who looked like Iriving. The next one is Susan Fields. Disappeared three months ago, sixteen. A hotel clerk recognized her but she and her older male companion disappeared before law enforcement could arrive. Again, the hotel clerk's information could have matched Irving."

"You could have just printed these up," Miranda accused, but her hand and eyes lingered on the papers.

"Dude, get the fuck out before you fuck us all over."

"I got them out of Irving's filing cabinet."

"That would explain..." she trailed off.

That shut Scott up and grabbed my attention. "What? What would it explain?"

She finally looked up at me. "He kept looking at the filing cabinet. It seemed really weird when he was so mad at us..."

"Scott, he's gonna pull a burn and run."

"I'm on it."

"A burn and run? Scott?"

"I'm sorry, Miranda, but I have to go. You need to stay here. Keep the door locked."

"No, Danny, you can't just drop this bullshit on me and then fly away again."

Other voices came on over my headset as the full team activated. 

"Miranda, I promise you, I never cheated on you. I lied to you, yes, but you were it for me. There was no one else." I took a deep breath as I prepared to say the next thing. The guys were going to give me such shit over this later, if any of them were paying any attention. And chances were, Scott was at the least. "There hasn't been anyone else since."

Miranda's next breath was almost a gasp. "You can't tell me you haven't had sex in seven years," she protested.

"That's exactly what I'm telling you."

I grabbed her by the arms and pulled her into a bruising kiss. She returned it with equal fervor, as if she'd been waiting for me, and then I jerked away. "Now for once in your damn life, can you just trust me and stay here? Safe? Out of the way?"