by Melissa Good
She stretched a little under the soft quilt and snuggled closer, feeling really rested for the first time in two weeks.
They had managed to get Dar’s clothes washed and hung up in the bathroom, but it had been pretty late before that happened, and she wondered if the darn things would even be half dry by now.
The sun peeked in and Kerry peeked back, then put her head down on Dar’s shoulder, using her lover’s body to block out the intrusive rays.
A soft chime made her look up again to see her mail icon blinking.
She made a face at it. Dar had done a very quick review of her initial findings last night and, with a grim look and a shake of her head, immediately sent the files off to Duk’s auditors.
Not good.
Though, watching Dar browse Allison’s data files in the nude certainly had lent a piquant note to the proceedings. Or maybe surreal was the word she was looking for. At any rate, her instincts had been confirmed by her lover’s experience and now that bleeping blinking icon was probably Duks having a multiple coronary over the prelims.
But she didn’t want to check it. She didn’t want to move one inch from where she was, or tear her ear away from the soothing sound of Dar’s heartbeat, slow and steady under her.
Dear Lord, I’ve missed this. She hadn’t really acknowledged just how much until now, after becoming used to it for the several months of their intimate relationship. She wondered if Dar felt the same way.
The laptop chimed again, this time causing Dar to stir, and Kerry looked up to see her lover open one clear blue eye to stare at the PC in irritation. “Probably from our notes.”
“Grumph.” Dar sighed, then rolled over and wrapped Kerry up in her arms. “To hell with them. I want a longer night.”
Mmm. Guess she did feel the same way. Kerry smiled. “Me too.”
The phone rang, and they both groaned, then Kerry reached over and pulled it from the cradle. “Hello?”
“Morning, Kerry.”
“Hey, Mark.” Kerry stifled a yawn. “What’re you doing up this early?”
“The usual. Can I talk to the boss, please?”
Kerry snorted. “Excuse me? You call me at my hotel room in Vermont, when Dar is supposed to be in Houston, and you expect her to be here?”
“Yup.”
She covered the receiver. “How does he do that?”
Dar just held out a hand. “Don’t ask. You’ll be a happier person for it.” She took the phone and cradled it between her ear and shoulder.
“Yeah?”
“Good morning, Boss.”
Dar considered that. “Yeah, it is. Thanks.” She gave Kerry a squeeze Eye of the Storm 35
and smiled.
There was a momentary silence, then Mark cleared his throat. “Ah, right. Anyway. Listen, those circuit diagrams of yours finally came in over the CAD server.”
“Mmm, ’bout time.”
“Yeah, and the Cisco rep is busting my ass to try and convince you to upgrade the regional hubs to 7000’s.”
“Now?”
“Uh huh. He’s one of those granola and sunshine nerds. Gets up at dawn and goes to commune with the squirrels or something.”
“Good for him.” Dar rested her forearm over her eyes. “All right.
Have the print shop mount those diagrams on foam and get them up in my office…and tell Mr. Granola I’ll think about it.”
“Cool.” The sound of a keyboard came through the phone. “Oh yeah.
María’s looking for you.”
“Put me through.” Dar made a face and covered the mouthpiece. “I forgot to tell her I wasn’t going to be in today.” She waited through a moment of the company’s incredibly annoying hold music, then heard María’s voice. “Morning, María.”
“Ay. Dar. Where are you?” The secretary sounded worried.
“Vermont.”
“Ah, good.” María came right back. “This is good. Very good. Is Kerrisita there?”
Dar eyed the disheveled blonde head resting on her stomach. “Yes, in fact, she is.” Kerry looked up in question. “What’s up?”
“Is a policeman here. He has some papers. He says she must sign for them,” María responded.
“Police?” Blue and green eyes met. “A regular policeman?”
“No, no. In the plain clothing.”
Dar muffled the receiver. “You’re being served papers.”
“Shit.” Kerry mouthed, tightening her lips. “Only one thing that could be.”
“María, is he a federal policeman?”
“Sí.”
“Ah. Okay. It’s all right. Have Penny notarize your signature on them and take ’em from him.” Dar sighed.
“Is not trouble?” María’s voice lowered. “I could tell him she went to Cuba. He will not be back then.”
Dar chuckled wanly. “No. It’s…more complicated than that, María.
Kerry’s not in trouble, but they need to ask her some questions. She’s got to testify. That kind of thing.”
“Ay. Is for her familia?”
“Yes.”
“I will take them, Dar. You will be gone all day, no?” María now sounded briskly businesslike. “I have canceled your two meetings and Mr. Draefus is pacing in little circles here waiting to talk to you.”
Kerry felt a weight settle on her, as she considered the newest devel-36 Melissa Good opments. Not that she hadn’t been expecting the summons. She had. But she’d hoped the matter would take the usual government forever.
Guess not. She wondered briefly what the investigators would get into, remembering the last few she’d seen on CNN. Fortunately she’d been on her own for the last several years, without her father’s support.
That, at least, they couldn’t dispute.
College. Well, they’d all gone, though she’d taken at least a three quarter scholastic scholarship the whole four years. Michael, though…
Kerry winced. Angie had, at least, been only the Bachelors degree.
Well, she could honestly go in there and say she’d never had any idea her father was involved in the illegal acts—legally she was in the clear, and she actually couldn’t give any evidence against him, as a matter of fact.
Should be a short ordeal.
Might even be a little...satisfying?...to see her father squirm.
“Okay, Dukky. Lemme know what they find. I figure they won’t get anything before I’ve got to get out of here tonight.” Dar sighed. “We’ll keep them in a holding pattern. But tell Mari to push on those security checks.” She paused. “Right.” She pause again and looked down. “I’ll tell her. Thanks. Bye.”
Dar hung up the phone and exhaled. “Ho boy.”
Kerry traced a bare rib. “Had to come sooner or later,” she remarked.
“I can’t tell them much. It won’t take long. Did María say when it was for?”
“Three weeks from now,” Dar replied. “Duks pulled the auditing team off T and T and reassigned them to us. He says it’s gonna take time to figure everything out, though.” She considered. “And, it may be that some of those numbers just cross check strangely. Though I doubt it.” She tapped her nose. “Something stinks.”
Both blonde brows shot up. “I should be insulted.”
“Not here.” Dar slid her hands under Kerry’s arms and pulled her up until they were chin to chin. “Do you have a local lawyer to go up there with you?”
“No. Do I need one? I’m not being investigated, Dar.”
“Tch. Someone as politically savvy as you saying that, Ker? You know how out of hand those things get.”
“Mmm.” She sighed. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Dar rubbed noses with her. “Okay. I guess a shower is in order. And let’s see how we can play your friends at Allison.” She tilted her head. “I could just go in there and kick them around a little.”
Kerry thought about that, then smiled. “Nah. I’ve got a better idea.”
KERRY DUSTED THE sleeve on her silk shirt off and
twitched her gray linen jacket straight before she entered the conference room, aware of the tall, silent figure that followed her. She motioned to a chair then proceeded across the room and circled it, giving the other occupants a Eye of the Storm 37
brief smile as she did so. “Good morning.”
Eyes had flicked to the casually dressed woman sprawled in the chair near the door, but now they focused back on her. The attitude was wary, but lacked the nervousness of the day before, and even held a hint of complacence.
“All right. Thank you for getting me those reports. I’ve reviewed them and referred the findings to our main office. Our personnel department is processing the security checks, so things are in a holding pattern until those two items are completed.”
Kerry paused. “However, since the interconnectivity takes a while, we’re going to get started with that. We borrowed one of our local field technicians and asked her to come in to give your IS people a hand in the network migration. I’d like to get that started as soon as possible.” She stared pensively down at her briefcase, trying to ignore the mischievous face Dar was making at her. “I’m sure…um…Bunny here will get you up and rolling in short order.”
Paybacks. Kerry peeked up at her lover, who was giving her one of those “I’m gonna get you later” looks. She returned it with a charming smile. “Right, Bun?”
“Aaabsolutely,” Dar drawled, adding a hint of the South to her voice.
Sam swiveled in his chair, then tapped his teeth with a pencil. “Sue, can you get someone up here to show our guest the server farm? I’m sure she wants to get started.” He looked pleased. “In the meantime, I thought maybe you’d like to sit in on a client briefing, Ms. Stuart. Since you’re here, and all. Perhaps you’d like to see our methods firsthand.”
Kerry let him wait for a few seconds, while she considered the request. “All right. I’d like that.”
They all stood, and Sue brushed herself off, then walked over to Dar.
“Come with me, please?” Her voice was pleasant, but held a note of con-descension.
“Sure.” Dar unfolded her length from the bucket shaped chair and stood, towering over the smaller woman. She was dressed in her jeans and short sleeved shirt, the rolled sleeves exposing her toned arms, and had pulled her dark hair back into a tail at the base of her neck. “Lead on.” Her eyes flicked to Kerry’s face, then followed Sue out, pulling the door shut behind her.
“Funny,” Sam drawled. “I thought you people liked to present a much sharper image.”
Kerry bit the inside of her lip to keep the retort from emerging, then cleared her throat. “Well, it’s Bunny’s day off. She’s doing us a favor.”
The accountant shook his head. “I hope she knows what she’s doing.
We can’t afford down time today.”
“Oh,” Kerry scratched her nose, “don’t worry. She does.”
Chapter
Five
DAR FOLLOWED HER officious guide down a long, gray carpeted hallway, passing offices on either side full of paper covered desks. Eyes looked up as they passed, then dropped, and Dar sensed a feeling of reti-cence that made her spine prickle.
“Nice office,” she commented.
Sue glanced at her. “Thank you.” She led the way into a larger room, full of cables and other telecommunication gear. “Roger?”
A tall, lanky man in a painfully white shirt and blue pants ducked his head from under a rack. “Yes? Oh.” He straightened up and ran his fingers through bushy brown hair, blinking out from behind a pair of very thick glasses. “Can I help you?”
“The new company sent a technician over to start getting us hooked up to them.” Sue waved Dar forward. “All yours.” She turned and walked out, leaving them regarding each other.
“Hi,” Dar finally said. “So you’re Roger, huh?”
He seemed to realize he was staring. “Ah…um…yeah. Hi. Roger Milken. Yeah. And um…there’re a couple of others around here. Bill, and Tom and Squeeziks.”
One of Dar’s eyebrows lifted. “All right.”
He scratched his neck under an ill-fitting collar. “Did you want to see something or…um…what’s your name, anyway?”
Dar held out a hand, deciding on her middle name rather than the label Kerry had pinned on her. “Katherine.” She released him. “I’d like to see your setup. W…they’ve got certain things they like to see before they let you connect.”
“Mmph. Okay.” Roger waved at her. “C’mon. I’ll give you the five cent tour. Watch your step. We’re redoing the patch panel.”
Dar strolled along behind him, her eyes taking in the room’s equipment and evaluating it as he rambled on about the hardware. An NT
server farm, a chugging AS400, and a bank of routers on one side of the room, with the rack of Ethernet hubs mounted next to them. “Nice.”
“Uh. Thanks. Yeah, this is the main box.” He indicated the AS400.
“We keep all the database stuff in there. And that’s our webserver and we just got these two new Cisco 7000’s…”
“Mmm.” Dar stopped in front of the routers and leaned on the con-Eye of the Storm 39
sole that programmed them. She idly signed into one and browsed its statistics. “Send a lot of traffic out?”
“Uh, yeah. They do lots of searches. That kinda thing.” Roger now sounded just a touch evasive. “You know.”
“Mmm.” Dar pointed. “What about those?”
“Oh, that’s the SQL servers. I wrote ’em.” Roger walked over and signed into one. “See? It runs concurrent copies. Saves all the stuff to the RAID arrays. They go bonkers about downtime.”
Dar signed out of the router and patted it. “Firewall?”
“You bet.” Roger went to the next machine. “All our access in and out is logged. Make sure no one’s downloading nudie pics.” He laughed lamely. “So. What is it you want so we can get hooked up?”
Dar sat down on a chair. “Got a pad?” She started listing off require-ments as he scrambled for a pen.
KERRY CAUGHT UP with the fair haired, heavyset woman as they took a break, and wandered into the coffee room. The clients had been quiet, almost passive, and she’d been curious about the attitude which seemed more cowed then anything else.
“Hi.”
The woman glanced at her. “Oh, hello. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name in there.”
“Kerry.” They shook hands. “I’m with ILS.”
The faded hazel eyes darted around the almost empty room, then settled back on Kerry’s face. “Oh.”
“We…um…we bought Allison Consulting. You knew that, right?”
“Oh, yes. Yes, I did. Um…excuse me. I’ve just got to use the rest room.” The woman edged around Kerry’s slim form.
“Me too,” Kerry agreed pleasantly. “C’mon. It’s this way.” She guided the way to the bathroom and held the door open politely. “That’s a nice dress.”
The woman looked a little startled. “Um, why, thank you.” She walked to the sink, turned the water on, and washed her hands quietly.
Kerry waited, leaning against the door with both hands behind her.
“So, are you here just to watch?”
“Something like that. To observe. To get reports. Start putting things together, that kind of thing,” Kerry replied. “Find out what they do right.
What they do wrong.” She watched the broad shoulders twitch. “Why they’re successful.”
The woman slowly straightened, wiping her hands on a paper towel.
“Is that why your company bought them? Because they were successful?”
“Mmhm,” Kerry agreed. “There’s always a lot of questions to ask, though. We want to make sure we give their clients the service they contracted for.”
Hazel eyes turned and regarded her with an emotion startlingly like wan hatred. Kerry’s nape hairs prickled and she wondered what nerve 40 Melissa Good she’d struck.
“And he promised it wouldn’t go any further,” the woma
n hissed, advancing on Kerry. “Now all of you know? That bastard…”
“Hold on.” Kerry lifted a hand. “I’m not sure—”
“Get out of my way, you little…” The woman grabbed Kerry’s arm and shoved hard, throwing her against the door. “If it’s over, it’s over.
He’s going to get what I owe him.”
“Wait!” Kerry caught her balance, confused and startled. “Ms.
Andrews. Please. Hold on a minute. I think there’s some mistake.” She took hold of the hand that reached for her again and held it, tensing muscles strengthened by months of activity. “Please don’t do that again.”
The woman tried to wrench her hand free, but found it held very securely. “Let me go, you bitch.”
“Ms. Andrews, I am not your enemy,” Kerry told her forcefully.
“Now calm down, please.” She kept her voice low. “Just take it easy.”
They stared at each other in silence.
“Okay. Now, listen. We know something’s going on here. We just don’t know what it is yet.”
“We?”
“My boss and I, yes,” Kerry replied. “So, if you tell me what happened, maybe I can help.” She released the woman’s arm and straightened, just as the door opened and Ann breezed in.
“Well, well. Is this a party?” the petite executive inquired, with a smile. “Getting an early start, aren’t you, Ms. Stuart?”
“I’m not one for parties.” Kerry opened the door and waited for Ms.
Andrews to escape out in front of her. “Excuse me.”
“Funny.” Ann chuckled. “That’s not what I heard.”
Kerry watched her enter a stall and close the door, and she backed out, pausing in the hallway to consider the words.
Wondering what they’d meant.
Suspecting it was nothing good.
“SO.” SAM LEANED back in his chair. “What did you think?”
Kerry stood near his office window, gazing out. Now, she turned and leaned against the wall. “They seem very quiet.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, they’re nice enough folks, but not very lively.”
“I was a little surprised they didn’t question some of the outline, though.” Kerry watched him carefully.