by Melissa Good
Kerry’s eyes narrowed slightly against her will. “Well, you know how it is,” she responded politely. “When I’m responsible for something, I take it very seriously.” She paused. “Old-fashioned attitude, I guess.”
Clarice ignored the barb behind the words and shook her head in mock dismay. “Well, I can understand that. You working...so closely...with Paladar and all,” she said. “If I were in your shoes, I’d have lost my sense of humor, too.” She patted Kerry on the shoulder and walked on past. “Later!”
Kerry took a breath, then headed for the stairwell, passing Clarice up as she opened the door. “Lucky me,” she commented, making sure she caught the black woman’s eyes. “I’m the only one who fits in my shoes.” With a pleasant smile, she let the door close in Clarice’s face with a satisfying snick.
“Yeesh.” Kerry scrubbed her hand across her face, exhaling a little of the frustration out. “Dar, we need to talk.” She turned and started up the steps to the fourteenth floor, shaking her head the entire way.
“DID YOU GET that last packet?” Mark’s voice emerged tinnily from the cell phone. “I think that’s it.” There was a pause. “Dar?”
Pale blue eyes were fastened intently on the laptop’s screen, flicking over the data it displayed. “What?”
168 Melissa Good
“Did you hear what I just said?”
“No.” Dar looked up and glared at the phone. “What was it?”
Mark sighed. “I’m done here.”
Yeah, yeah. Dar braced her chin on her fists. “All right.” Her eyes didn’t stop scanning the lines of code, though, as she attempted to find the pattern that was just—barely—eluding her. “Did you suck out the attack program?”
“Sure.”
“Decompile it and dump it down to me, willya?”
Mark was silent for a little bit. “Wouldn’t it be easier if you just did the analysis back here?” His voice sounded a touch odd.
“No.” Dar’s brow creased. “Why would it?”
“We’ve got more cycles here.”
“Bullshit, Mark. Just send it down.” Dar called up another file and split the screen, displaying both files and scrolling them at the same time. After a moment, she stopped scrolling and put her chin back onto her fists, studying the results. What the hell is going on?
The door to the office opened, and Chief Daniel entered. “Figures.
The damn bastard’s on some lame-ass trip up to Baltimore.”
“Mm.” Dar traced a single line with one long finger. “What about Ms. Pit Bull?”
“Says she doesn’t know anything about it.” The chief perched on the edge of the desk. “Nobody knows anything, nobody saw anything, no vendor was cleared on base, no guards saw anyone carrying a thirty-five-pound hub out of the building.”
Dar looked up. “Either someone’s covering up, or you’ve got the worst security outside of the White House.” She rubbed her eyes.
“Damn it, Mark, facilities don’t materialize out of nowhere. Don’t tell me you can’t locate who installed that pipe.”
Mark sighed audibly. “Am I in trouble again?”
“Where the hell is Kerry?” Dar was aware she sounded like a cranky child, but she didn’t care. “Have her start calling up the chain at BellSouth, it’s their POP.”
“Um.”
“Well?” the CIO snapped. “Get on it, Mark!”
“Hey, honey.” A warm voice suddenly emerged, an octave higher than the MIS chief’s.
An awkward silence ensued, then Dar cleared her throat. “Hi,” she said. “You’re on speakerphone.”
“Uh-oh.” Kerry replied. “Don’t tell me you’re in a room full of macho sailors, are you?”
“Two hundred of them.” Dar felt her annoyance fading. “They all want your phone number.” She exhaled. “Listen, I need you to—”
“Shake BellSouth’s cage, I heard.” Kerry’s tone turned crisper.
“What’s going on down there?”
Dar wished she knew. She was aware of the chief’s now somewhat Red Sky At Morning 169
chilly demeanor and guessed the prickly woman was smart enough to figure out that subordinates didn’t usually greet their bosses in quite that manner at ILS. “Something,” she admitted. “I just can’t figure out if it’s someone who’s just curious as to what we’ve found, or someone...”
Dar stopped speaking as her eyes finally found something in the pattern of code on her screen. Her brow contracted and she leaned closer, blinking as her vision blurred slightly, then cleared.
“Dar?” Mark asked, hesitantly.
“Hang on.” Dar typed in a command, then studied the result.
“They’re using a stepped algorithm.”
“Huh?”
“What?” Chief Daniel walked around behind Dar, but conspicuously not too close.
“Right there.” Dar pointed. “It’s a programming trick you can use to shift data from one field to another in database design.” She folded her hands together. “Question is, why?”
Everyone held their tongues. “You still want that dump?” Mark finally asked.
Dar rested her lips against her clasped hands and allowed her eyes to close. The nagging headache she’d picked up after the attack on the network was making her a little sick to her stomach, and she just spent a moment breathing to settle it. “No,” she said at last. “Put it on my drive at home, Mark. I’ll look at it this weekend.”
“Do you want me to get after BellSouth?” Kerry murmured. “I’ve got some contacts that will probably open up for me.”
“Yeah.”
Kerry’s voice strengthened. “Okay.”
“Eh.” Dar kept reviewing the damning bit of data. She carefully saved the data and leaned back as the chief scurried out of range.
“Mark, take that entire database and run it through the C1F program.”
“For real?” Mark sounded a touch puzzled. “I didn’t think—”
“Just do it,” Dar ordered crisply. “If Duks is in there, tell him I need the CPU cycles.”
“All right,” the MIS chief agreed. “I’ll do it. You coming back here?”
Should she go? Dar considered the question. There was something very wrong, that much her experience was telling her. But what if it was just something like what she knew went on during her adolescent years? When the petty officers and lower-ranking crew found ways in and out of the system to hide a few barrels of this here, and a box of that there, just to make life a little easier.
For her, it’d been peanut butter. She’d traded blocks of her nascent programming talents for Number 10 cans of the stuff in the informal black market that had also produced her Navy shirts and boots.
She’d never seen anything wrong in that, really. Even her father had taken advantage of it, getting little luxuries for her mother and 170 Melissa Good using the trading system to save up a few bucks for a toy for her birthday.
No way was she going to blow the whistle on that.
Was she?
Dar sighed. “Kerry, let me know if you get any answers from BellSouth. I’m going to put this to bed for a while and go review the recruit program.”
“Will do,” Kerry replied. “Talk to you later.”
Dar folded her cell phone up and slid it into its clip at her belt.
Then she sat back and turned her head, regarding Chief Daniel in silence.
The naval officer’s lip was curled into an almost unconscious snarl of distaste. “I knew there was something wrong with you,” Daniel said.
“No wonder you didn’t make it into the Navy.”
Asshole. Dar felt her temper stir. She hitched a knee up and circled it with both arms. “The Navy?” she laughed. “You’ve gotta be kidding.
I’m married to a gorgeous woman, I live in a five-million-dollar condo, I make a seven-figure salary, and I don’t have to wear ugly clothing that doesn’t fit right. Why the hell would I want to be in the Navy?”
Chief Daniel stepped
back. “You’re sick.”
Dar got up and closed the laptop, after setting its security. “Save your ignorance for someone who gives a crap about what you think.”
She turned her back on the chief and walked out of the office.
HER PHONE RANG. Kerry hit the button. “Operations, Kerry Stuart.”
“Howdy there, Kerry!” Bob Terisanch’s booming voice entered the room, making her desk ornament rattle. “Sorry it took so long, but hot damn, lady, that circuit was buried so deep under a pile of rat poop, it took me the whole day and a jackhammer to pull it on out.”
Colorful, Dar had often called Bob. “Great, Bob. Thanks for the effort. What do you have?” Kerry pulled her pad over and poised her pencil over the white ruled paper.
There was a rustle of shuffled paper. “Well, ma’am, the private company that installed that sucker’s called Fibertalk Associates, and they’re based right down by you in Miami, matter of fact.”
“Great. Do you have a billing address for them?”
“Sure do. 1723 NW 72nd Avenue,” Bob provided cheerfully.
“They’ve done a bunch of little high-priced jobs round town, mostly fiber optics, a little sat.”
“Thanks, Bob. I owe you one,” Kerry told him. “Lunch, next week?”
“Heh. I’ll never say no to lunch with such a pretty lady. You’re on, Kerry. See ya!” Bob hung up, leaving Kerry to nibble thoughtfully at her pencil. The office was one of those little miniwarehouses out behind the airport. Odd. Curiously, she brought up her database search and Red Sky At Morning 171
entered the company name in it. Then she sent the little bot on its way and set her pencil down. “Well, that’s that. Let’s get outta here, okay?”
WHAT IN THE hell are they recruiting these days? Dar rested her arms on the railing and studied the group of new sailors. Kids out of grade school? The twenty new swabs were clustered around the admitting petty officer, looking hapless and mostly bewildered. Watching their painfully earnest faces made Dar suddenly feel older than her years. She put her chin down on her crossed wrists and sighed, wondering if she’d ever really been that young and feckless.
“Can you people not stand up straight? What the hell are your spines made of, Jellah?” the petty officer barked loudly. “Pick up them damn bags and get in line!”
The new sailors looked at each other. “Which you want us to do first, Sarge?” the tall, crew-cut boy closest to Dar drawled. “Gotta get out the line to get them bags.”
Dar’s lips quirked faintly, as the petty officer’s neck veins started to bulge. The kid sounded a lot like her father, and she imagined briefly what she’d have been like in just this sort of lineup, smartass that she’d been.
“Are you finding this funny, ma’am?” The petty officer’s attention had been drawn suddenly to his unwanted observer. “I’m not sure what the joke is.”
Your toupee? Dar had to clamp her jaw shut to keep the words from emerging. The smart-assed kid she’d been snickered at her. Been? “If I were you, I’d just take care of the problems you have right there, not look for more with me,” she warned the man. “Those problems you’ve got a chance to do something about.”
The petty officer glared at her, then decided the tall, dark-haired woman he’d been told to be cursorily polite to wasn’t going to go away.
“All right, you lot of useless baggage. Go to that pile of bags, pick up the bag that has your goddamned name on it, then walk back to where you started and get in line. Is that clear enough, or d’you want me to stamp it in Braille letters on your goddamned useless foreheads?”
Dar resumed her position leaning against the railing as the swabs picked up their gear and shuffled into place. Six of the new sailors were women, and she found herself studying them, making mental guesses as to their backgrounds and reasons for joining.
The two nearest her, she considered, were probably from poor families in tough neighborhoods. They were almost twins: medium height, Latin complexion, dark curly hair, and a permanent suspicious look in their eyes.
The redhead in the front of the line with the pugnacious chin and smattering of freckles looked like an only girl raised with a pile of brothers, some of whom were probably already in service.
172 Melissa Good One of the remaining three was, Dar suspected, a cheerleader. She had the wholesome good looks and feathered blonde hair of one, along with a perky snub noise and a perfect smile.
Dar wondered what wrong turn she’d taken, and when she’d realize she’d taken it. Next to her was a short, heavyset girl with a bulldog attitude, who reminded Dar strongly of Chief Daniel.
Great. Dar exhaled and turned her head slightly, startled to find the eyes of the last female swab fastened firmly on her. For an instant, clear, pale gray eyes met Dar’s with startling clarity, and then they dropped as the petty officer started to yell more orders.
Dar blinked. The girl was facing forward now, her blonde head cocked to one side as she listened. She was fairly short, shorter than Kerry by an inch or so, and she had a wiry, but very slender build. She held herself with a sense of secure confidence, despite the intimidating petty officer, and Dar felt an unusual curiosity prick her.
But not for that long, as the petty officer shoved them out the door and toward the processing center. Dar pushed off the railing and ambled after them, pushing the hinged doors open and moving to one side of the room as the new sailors picked up their new uniforms.
A computer terminal was on a table to her right, and Dar went directly to it, bringing up a login screen and entering a collection of letters and numbers in a rattle of keystrokes.
“Hey.” The petty officer was at her shoulder. “Are you supposed to be in there?”
“I have a password,” Dar replied. She scanned the information she was looking for and keyed in a further request. “Your swabs are unraveling.” She waited for the man to leave, then examined the record.
Chapter
Eleven
THE BOAT’S BOW bobbed up and down gently in the surf, a soothing motion that made the woman painting on its fiberglass surface smile. Ceci Roberts dipped her brush into a swirl of acrylic color, studied the canvas for a moment, and then continued her work. The underwater seascape had a wash of blue in a dozen shades and the floor of the sea with its coating of coral, and now she was going back in and putting in the vibrant colors of fish and leafy ocean foliage.
Nearby rested a small tray with a pitcher of iced tea and a bowl of fresh fruit. The slim silver-blonde woman paused again and selected a bit of melon, sucking on it as she considered her next stroke.
The sun splashed over her tanned skin and she idly watched the golden light, taking a moment to simply live, adoring the present and giving a silent thanks to the goddess for perhaps the thousandth time.
The boat rocked a little harder, and she looked up to see a pair of large hands clasping the lower railing, long fingers tightening on the metal then straining as the hands were followed by a large, wet, partially neoprene-covered body. Ceci smiled. “Hey there, sailor boy.
Find the problem?”
“I surely did.” Andrew pulled himself up and over the railing, then removed a bag slung at his waist and dumped its contents onto the white deck. “That there fish got stuck in the intake valve.”
“Ew.” Ceci grimaced. “Andy, if I wanted sushi on the boat, I’d have ordered out. Can you toss it overboard?”
The big ex-SEAL snorted, but scooped the messy item up and neatly chucked it over the railing. Then he squished over to where his wife was seated and peered at the painting, careful to avoid dripping murky salt-water on Ceci’s palette. “I do like that.”
Ceci tickled his exposed kneecap, then leaned over and kissed the spot, tasting the tang of the sea. “I do love you,” she told him. “I still think this has to be a dream.”
Andrew seated himself on the deck. “Seems that way sometimes, don’t it?” his deep voice rumbled quietly. “Been through a lot, you and I have. Maybe it’s
just the good Lord’s way of saying we done all right.”
Ceci studied the scarred, weathered face next to her, its piercing blue eyes standing out with startling clarity. She traced a grizzled 174 Melissa Good eyebrow gently. “Maybe.”
The cell phone resting on the deck next to her warbled. They both glanced at it, then Ceci sighed and picked it up. “Yes?”
“Ceci.”
And then again, Ceci gazed plaintively up at the sky, the goddess has ways of reminding you just how easily karma can change. “Hello, Charles,”
she replied. “To what do I owe the honor of this call?”
Charles Bannersley was her older brother, the head of their family, and one of the largest ambulatory anal orifices Ceci knew. She was pissed at him, though she didn’t think he really understood why, and wanted to hear his voice about as much as she wanted a salt-water enema.
Andrew merely narrowed his eyes as he recognized the tinny voice coming from the phone Ceci was holding between them.
“I’d like to see you,” Charles answered. “Candy and I are here, in Miami.”
“Sorry,” Ceci replied crisply. “I’ve got plans tonight.”
“Fine. Have a drink with us first,” her brother came right back.
“Can’t you spare ten minutes for your family?”
Andrew rolled his eyes. “Lord.”
“My family?” Ceci decided to allow her spleen its moment. “My family’s sitting right here next to me. Of course I can spare any amount of time for Andrew.” She paused. “And Dar and Kerrison, of course.
Why do you ask?”
A sigh traveled through the cell phone’s speaker. “Cecilia, please.”
Andrew and Ceci exchanged looks. Andrew’s eyebrows lifted in amused surprise, giving him an expression very much like Dar’s would have been in the same situation.
Ceci considered, then shrugged. “Fine. There’s a tiki bar just off the marina here. Meet me in a half-hour. I can only stay a few minutes, though, Kerry’s picking us up for dinner after that.” Poke, poke. Ceci enjoyed the jab at her family’s straight-laced sensibilities.