Page 37 of Her Honorable Hero

Hope reared backwards, falling on her bottom, and then she started to cry.

“It’s okay, Honey. I’ll be right there, and then we’ll get you some milk.”

Hope continued crying. Then she lifted her closed fists to rub her eyes, and smeared sand into them.

Ah, hell.

The kid was just making everything worse, and her cries turned into sobs.

“It’s okay, Baby, I’m almost there.” Miranda kept talking, almost in a sing-song voice. “It’s going to be just fine. I’ll take you to your mom and brother, we’ll get you some milk, and get you dressed in warm clothes.”

Almost there.

“Then we’ll—”

Her body jerked to a stop because of the band around her ankle. She turned and looked behind her. She saw Griff’s expression, fierce and sympathetic. Hope turned her dirt-smeared face to see what she was looking at.

“No!” the baby screeched.

“Griff, get back in the train, you’re scaring Hope.”

Miranda watched as Hope rolled onto her side, trying to get away from her and Griff.

Enough of this shit.

She reached behind her, losing precious seconds tugging and unknotting the fucking nylon rope. When she turned, Hope was only a foot away from the cliff’s edge. Miranda lunged.

“Gotchya.”

“No! No! No!”

“I hate the terrible twos.” Miranda laughed and cried at the same time as she held the warm little body close to her.

“Dammit, Miranda, you get your ass back here.”

“No!” Hope howled the word again.

“You’re going to have to learn a new word.” Miranda told the child as she turned back toward the train. She spat out some of the sand that had gotten into her mouth, and Hope continued to struggle and say, ‘No’.

With her arms full of wiggling child, her feet encased in nylons, and her leg throbbing like a son-of-a-bitch, Miranda was having a hell of time gaining purchase in the sand to get back toward the train.

“Griff,” she called out just as the rail car groaned again.

Miranda watched in horrified fascination as the steel behemoth started to lower even more. Would it roll completely on its side, closing off their ability to get back in through the window?

“Griff, come grab Hope,” she begged.

Somehow, someway, he was already beside her at the cliff’s edge, taking the baby out of her arms.

“Can you follow me?” he asked as he started moving.

“Yes,” she assured him. “Just hurry.”

As he got Hope to the relative safety of the train’s interior, Miranda pushed out with her feet, pushing at the crumbling sand and dirt to follow them. Why was it crumbling? What the hell? She felt the earth begin to give beneath her knees.

Oh God, she was going to go over the side of the cliff!

She made a desperate grab for some sea grass.