Winds of Change Pt 1 (Dar and Kerry Series Book 12)

by Melissa Good

  Dar released the intercom and chuckled, then the chuckle faded as her phone rang and she saw the caller ID. Ten seconds to make a choice. She took a breath, released it, then keyed the answer button. “Dar Roberts.”

  “Ms. Roberts, this is Dr. Bridges assistant. He would like to speak to you.” The woman’s voice was crisply professional. “Are you available for a call at this time?”

  Might as well. “Sure,” Dar said. “Put him on.”

  A buzz and a click, and a clearing throat “Roberts?”

  “That’s me,” Dar said, putting her pen down and concentrating on the call. “Having a good Monday?”

  “No idea yet. You thought about my offer?”

  There was, Dar acknowledged, straightforwardness about the advisor that she appreciated. “I have,” she said. “I don’t think I’m either qualified or suited to be your czar.”

  “Huh,” Bridges grunted. “Thought you would be interested in the power part of it.

  “Not a talking head,” Dar said.

  “So it’s no?” Bridges asked.

  “To the job,” she said. “The programming, on the other hand, that maybe we can discuss. I’ve got some experience doing that kind of system.”

  The smile in Bridges voice was very evident. “Well now, the day’s getting better. Mind you, I don’t want that organization of yours involved,” he said. “You’ll have to do this on the side or somesuch. I’m sure that’s gonna be a legal nightmare, but it’s too big an exposure for us. You got me?”

  “I no longer work for that organization,” Dar said. “So that’s not an issue.”

  “Better and better,” he responded. “You quit?”

  Dar smiled. “Actually, they fired me. But I was going to resign in any case.”

  “Ah. Figured you were getting too big for their britches.” Bridges chuckled softly. “So you don’t want a government job, Roberts? Got good benefits.”

  “I’m opening up my own company. But thanks,” Dar said. “If we can agree on the framework, we might be able to do business together.”

  “We might at that.” Bridges now sounded dourly delighted. “Roberts, that’s good news. Let me get together a paper from these idiots here and we can set up a meeting. For what it’s worth, I agree on the czar thing. You’d be the biggest pain in the ass around here. Maybe this is a win, win.”

  “Maybe,” Dar said. “I’ll be looking for that meeting request.”

  He hung up.

  Dar regarded the phone and sighed. “That’s going to end up all right, or a complete disaster. Let’s hope we get lucky.”

  THE BOARD ROOM was full of very agitated men, seated around a long, teak wood table dressed in business suits. They all looked up as the door opened, and then started to take seats as a man dressed in a faded flannel shirt entered, followed by a tall, urban figure in a well fitted suit.

  “Hello there, boys.” Alastair went to the end chair, which was obviously left free, and sat down. “I’ve got a rodeo my grandkid’s riding in to go to, so let’s make it short if we can, huh?”

  “Try not to be so fucking smug, huh Al?” John Baker glared at him.

  “Kiss my ass,” Alastair answered, in the most congenial voice possible. “Boy have I been waiting years to say that.” He turned his head and winked at the man who followed him in. “Right, Ham?”

  Hamilton Baird, ILS’s senior corporate council, gave him a wryly amused look, and sat down, having arranged some papers to his satisfaction. “No doubt, having heard it often enough, Al.”

  Baker ignored them. “Okay, so. We’re not going to get any cooperation from Roberts, so what are our legal options?” He looked pointedly at Baird. “I hope you found something we can use for leverage.”

  Hamilton leaned back in his chair. “What would you fine gentlemen have liked me to find? You all did fire her.” He lifted his hands. “You all want me to turn back time?”

  “We have to have legal options. You’re a lawyer,” Baker said.

  “I am, indeed, a lawyer,” Hamilton agreed. “So as a lawyer, and as the senior legal hack here at ILS, I will tell you there is not much you can do about our ex-employee doing whatever it is she pleases, because you all, like wet noodle idiots, decided to fire her. It’s a little late to be calling in Mr. Louisiana Lawyer now.”

  Alastair chuckled. “If you all had a single piece of sense, you’d just go with her offer. Let her go open a business. Take her package, and not end up being a thorn the size of a space shuttle in your ass.”

  “Well said, Al,” Hamilton complimented him. “What he said.” He pointed at Alastair. “That is also my legal recommendation.”

  “No way,” Baker said. “I’m not giving her a fucking cent.”

  Hamilton lifted his hands and then let the drop. “All righty then, we could have done this over a text message. Al, you free for dinner?”

  “Sure am.”

  “It’s your job to find a way to nail her,” Baker said. “Or did you sleep with her too?”

  Baird’s demeanor changed. He stood up and put his fingertips on the table, leaning on them. “Listen, you moron. It’s my job to keep ILS out of trouble and make sure we do things in a legal way that keeps us out of the eyes of regulators. It is not my job to make up stuff and then have it crammed back down my throat in a court of law.”

  Baker stared at him in frustration.

  “Dar Roberts and I have a long, long history of hen and cock fighting the likes of which God has not seen the end of. But.” Hamilton held up his hand. “There is no person in this company, not you, not the rest of you morons, not even Al, who I respect more as a person, and as an employee who gave two hundred percent for this crack shack, than her.”

  Alastair smiled to himself, twiddling his fingers and regarding them as he nodded along with the words.

  “So if you don’t want to have my size elevens shoved so far up your ass you’d have to tie my shoelaces with your uvula, then do not repeat that statement.” Hamilton sat down. “Now. I have given you my legal advice. You got any other idiotic thing to say?”

  Jacques leaned forward. “You’re serious, aren’t you, Hamilton?”

  “As a heart attack,” Hamilton responded. “It’s a damn disgrace what you people did. Not only was it stupid, not only was it knee jerk, shortsighted, and counter to the best interests of this damn company,” his voice lifted to a yell, then paused to let the echo fade, “it’s against the grace of God what you did to someone who gave so much to make ILS what it is. You all should be damned ashamed of yourselves.”

  “She was going to take those contracts!” Baker yelled.

  “She earned them,” Alastair spoke up. “Those contracts were ours because of her raw talent and ability.” He folded his hands on the table. “But even in that, she didn’t ask for them.”

  “Oh, bullshit.”

  Alastair shrugged. “Let’s go get that beer, Ham. I’ve not got much more to say. I’ll save what I do have for the press, and for the shareholders when they ask me.”

  Hamilton’s eyes twinkled. “Nice being retired, ain’t it?”

  “You betcha!”

  “Okay, hold on.” Jacques held a hand up. “Yes, it is true. We overreacted.”

  “Now you, too?” Baker fumed. “None of you have balls!”

  “That is not true,” Jacques said. “I have a right to speak my mind, as you have, John, and has Pier, and Richard, and Toby, and also our two friends here. It takes a big person to admit fault. We did overreact.”

  Baker stared at him. “The shareholders are going to lynch us. Is that what you’re bucking for?”

  The Frenchman lifted his hands and then put them back on the table. “That is what comes with the responsibility. We have to stand behind our decisions. Perhaps this was a bad one.”

  Baker just sighed and shook his head, leaning it against a fist propped against the table. “Fuck.”

  Alastair spoke after a small silence. “Dar said to me that she’d go along with
a package, and public silence, but she couldn’t stop her business since it was already in place and going forward.” He paused, and reflected. “Gentlemen, that’s the best offer you’re going to get.”

  “Sure she agreed. She gets money, and freedom and we just get shit,” Baker said.

  “John, you fired her,” Alastair said, in a gentle tone. “She did not ask to be fired. She gave us six months notice she was going to retire from here.”

  Baker sighed again. “I just hate her,” he said, bluntly. “If I had a gun, I’d have shot her the last time I saw her.”

  “Uh huh. Better hope you killed her on the first shot then, you weaseling jackass,” Hamilton said. “Cause she’d break you in half otherwise, and if that didn’t happen, then you’d get a knock on the door by her very Southern, very black and white, very Navy Seal father, and we would never find your body.”

  “Mm.” Alastair nodded. “That’s true. Y’know, the most relaxing time I had during that whole mess in New York was taking that train ride out to Long Island with Papa Roberts.”

  “Did I tell you I got cornered by those no neck lovelies from the Governor downstairs,” Hamilton asked him. “They were doing a grand old Mafia family discussion with me up until Andy showed up and short sheeted them right on out of there. Gorgeous old salt.”

  “If you let her take this deal,” Alastair said, “she will honor it, and not entertain the press with what will be hundreds if not thousands of stories about how we did business.”

  “You really believe that?” Baker asked.

  “With all my heart,” Alastair replied. “I’ve been in business all my life, John. I can count on my one hand’s fingers how many people I would say that about across the length of my career.” He pondered a moment. “And by the way, John?”

  “Yeah?” Baker sighed again.

  “Me personally? I won’t ever forgive you for making my last act as an employee of this company firing those two,” Alastair said placidly. “So do yourself a favor, and don’t get in front of my truck when I’m driving on out of here.”

  “Alastair, the decision was all of ours,” Jacques said, quietly. “It is not fair to let it stand on John’s back.”

  Alastair merely smiled at him.

  Toby Peterson cleared his throat. “Gents,” he said. “It’s hard to swallow. I was one of the first ones to agree with John on the firing, because it seemed to me that we were in danger of letting someone who was leaving take our customers with her.”

  “And that might be true,” Hamilton remarked. “But firing her sure as hell wouldn’t stop that.”

  Toby held a hand up. “We were mad. If we lose those armed forces contracts we’ll have to go back and re-forecast the entire year. You think that’s going to be fun?”

  “If you treat Dar fairly, she might just tell them to leave those contracts with us and move forward with something else,” Alastair said.

  “Oh please.” Baker rolled his eyes.

  “He’s right,” Hamilton said. “If Al asked her to do that, she would.”

  Alastair glanced at him.

  “She would,” Hamilton insisted. “C’mon, Al. She could have sat in that hotel and watched you fry. You pulled that whole team off the job. Didn’t have to do no crazy stunts, or nothing. No harm to her at all— you told her to do it.”

  “True,” Alastair said.

  “That was for you,” Hamilton said. “Kerry risked arrest, and bodily harm to get that cable in place, with old Dar sitting on the floor with a pair of rocket scientists typing so fast you couldn’t hear the keys. I saw it, sweat flying everywhere.”

  Alastair nodded, but didn’t speak.

  “Okay,” Toby said. “I get it. You don’t have to keep hammering me over the head, Hamilton.”

  “Don’t I?”

  “We should take the offer, the deal,” Jacques said. “Really, we have no choice, if, as you say, there is nothing we can present to anyone as an excuse for what we did.”

  “You don’t,” Hamilton said. “The minute you all agreed to let those two women have a relationship and not say anything about it, you lost any ability to put that card on the table. That is, boys, the only thing on either of their dance cards that could possibly have given you leverage, and you let that go on for years, and gave them both bonuses and all that.”

  “That was your fault.” Baker pointed at Alastair. “You told us to ignore it.”

  “I did,” he agreed. “It was the best thing to do for the company at the time, and the yearly results that came after that validates the decision.”

  Jacques sighed. “You know what the worst of it is?” he said. “We will not have that...how do you call it? The magic to rely on anymore. We will have to do our jobs.” He held his hand up. “I vote to accept the offer.”

  “Seconded,” Toby said. The rest of the board grumbled but lifted their hands.

  Baker looked at them. “I want it on the record I object,” he said. “I will not vote for that.”

  “Unfortunately, you ass, we just need a majority,” Hamilton said. “I will record that this board voted to accept the offer from old Dar, and I suggest that Al deliver the message, even though he doesn’t actually work for us anymore.”

  Alastair nodded. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

  Baker rolled his eyes. “So have we found anyone to go take charge of that nut house in Miami?” he asked. “The agency that’s looking for us said they had one candidate, but they called and said they got another position.”

  Hamilton leaned over and whispered to Alastair. “Steak? I think our work here’s done.”

  “Sounds good.” Alastair stood up. “Folks, I’ll deliver your message. If you keep your tempers and be nice, I might even agree to go over to Miami and hold the fort there until you can find a new CIO. Those people there trust me at least.”

  “That mean we have to pay you again?” Baker said, but his expression was mollified. “Least it’ll give us some breathing room.”

  “Thank you, Alastair,” Toby said, with a brief smile. “That would be nice.”

  “Right. Ham, let’s go.” Alastair dusted his hands off. “You ever see a rodeo?”

  “Lord, I’m in deep cheese grits.” Hamilton picked up his papers and followed as Alastair made his way toward the door.

  KERRY BRUSHED A bit of dust off the sleeve of her sweater and took a breath, letting it out as she stood in line to go into the courtroom. She had a folder with papers clasped in her hand, and she glanced at the clock, as the doors opened to let them in.

  There were about twenty people with her, and they all had sheets of paper like hers. She watched them all start shifting and moving as the clerk of the courts stepped back to let them go forward.

  Thursday. Hard to believe it was already Thursday. They’d had two days of hurry up and wait, as things jerked into process from their standing start and now, finally, she was reasonably confident they could actually have Mayte and Maria come in on Monday and be able to do the things needed to make them employed.

  Sort of. They still had a lot of stuff like medical benefits to work out and policies. Kerry rubbed the bridge of her nose and wondered if Dar would go for bringing an HR person on board yet.

  She followed the line of people inside and found a seat, barely getting into it before a tall figure hopped over the row of chairs and joined her. “Oh. Hey!” A smile appeared as she recognized Dar. “Didn’t expect to see you here, thought we were going to meet at the office?”

  “Hey.” Dar settled into the seat. “Didn’t think I’d let you do this by yourself didja?” she asked. “C’mon, Ker.”

  “Well.” Kerry ran a hand through her hair. “It’s just a five minute thing, they said. I thought you were busy with Richard.”

  “All done.” Dar leaned back and folded her hands on her lap. “We just got back from the bank picking up the checkbooks.” She smiled briefly. “We better get that electronic fast. I can’t remember the last time I actually signed a
check.”

  Kerry smiled, feeling both more relaxed and happier now that Dar was at her side. She’d been halfway hoping Dar would show up for the court proceedings, but she didn’t want to ask since Dar had been crazy busy for the last three days getting everything rolling.

  And so had she, of course. “A&T will be out this afternoon for a site survey,” she said. “I told them I’d meet them when I was done here.” T

  “Good.” Dar regarded the courtroom with some bemusement. “Alastair said the board meeting was called for this afternoon. He thinks Hamilton might try to convince them to shut up and cut a deal.”

  “Hamilton?”

  “Yes.” Dar looked slightly embarrassed. “Apparently he came down on our side.”

  “Really?” Kerry had to smile. “I think you grew on him.”

  “I think he didn’t want my father to show up at his townhouse with a baseball bat,” Dar demurred. “There’s going to be conditions I’m sure. Just remains to be seen if we’ll agree to them.”

  Kerry pinched the bridge of her nose. “Hm. When’s the meeting with Briggs supposed to be, tomorrow afternoon? Things are moving really fast, Dar. Sheesh.”

  Dar patted her back. “By the way, Gerry’s due here tomorrow morning to talk about the contracts, and deliver our puppy. He just called me before I walked in.”

  Gerry. Puppy. “Bu...wh—”

  “Kerrison Stuart?”

  “I need a beer.” Kerry stood up and edged past Dar’s long legs. “Be right back, hon.”

  “You’ll get one,” Dar promised, watching Kerry make her way up the aisle and show her papers to the clerk, who stepped back and allowed her to go forward to face the judge.

  Her PDA buzzed and she pulled it out to glance at it.

  Hey, boss. Found a rad datacenter all the waysouth near the cutoff to card sound. Empty. The guyswho were supposed to take it went bankrupt and it’sours for a song. M

  Ah. Dar grunted softly, putting the device away and returning her attention to her partner. Kerry was now standing up near the judge’s bench, her hands clasped behind her, fluorescent lights reflecting slightly off her pale hair.