by Melissa Good
“Really? Why?”
She folded her arms. “Because most of it was bullshit.” The words were spoken matter-of-fact. “You can’t deliver the services you sold them and they’re being left without any back up whatsoever.”
“Now, you look—” Sam’s face darkened.
“So either those clients were completely ignorant, or they were being quiet for a reason.” Kerry crossed her ankles. “I think you’d better level with me, Mr. Gershwin.”
Eye of the Storm 41
Hostility bristled across the desk at her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Kerry shrugged. “You can say that. But I need to tell you we’re going to eventually find out what’s going on and what it was that woman was so afraid would get out.”
Sam Gershwin went very still, as he studied her in silence. “You sure you want to do that, Ms. Stuart?” he finally asked. “If I were you, I’d just leave things alone. You’ll be a happier person for it, I promise you.”
Kerry chewed the inside of her lip, wondering how far she should push. “I’m not sure what you mean by that.”
He steepled his fingers. “Aren’t you? Perception is such a fluid thing, Ms. Stuart. I’m sure your company has a perception of you as a fine, upstanding woman, a credit to their reputation, don’t they?”
A chill ran up Kerry’s spine. “Is that a relevant question?”
“Well,” he stood up and strolled towards her, “it’s your job to use your judgment, isn’t it? To find a way to, oh, bring us in the fold, so to speak. They must think highly of your decision making skills, don’t they?”
“Yes, they do.”
Sam stopped and leaned against the wall next to her, his taller form throwing a shadow over her body. “Would it take much to change that?
Say…what if they found out their fine, upstanding operations director…oh, got drunk and had to be carried out of a bar? Hmm?”
Kerry’s eyebrow lifted. “The subject’s not likely to come up, so I have no idea how they’d react.”
“Really?” Sam smiled. “Well, I’ve got ten people who’ll swear that’s exactly what happened last night, little Ms. Kerry.”
The reaction wasn’t what he expected. Kerry burst into laughter.
“You’re not seriously threatening me with that, are you?”
He was a little disconcerted, but retained his slightly mocking attitude. “Is it so farfetched? You’re a pretty little thing and I bet you know how to have fun, don’t you?” Then he picked up a folder on his desk and flipped it open. “And they say a picture’s worth a thousand words.”
Kerry glanced at the folder, then blinked, startled to see an image of herself, very obviously out of control in an unfamiliar setting. “Nice piece of editing,” she finally stated, her voice taking on a harder edge. “What’s your point?”
“Ah.” He smiled. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Tell you what. It’s really easy, and no skin off your nose, Ms. Kerry. You just put in a nice report on us and go on your merry way, and we’ll just never have had this conversation.”
“And if I don’t?” Kerry asked.
“Then I’ve got no choice but to contact your boss and put in a formal protest. I can’t have my company being evaluated by someone who shows such…lapsed judgement.” He lifted the picture. “What would your boss say about that, hmm?”
Kerry rubbed her jaw. “I don’t know. I guess you’ll have to ask her,”
42 Melissa Good she told him, her chin lifting in challenge as she met his gaze. “But you’re putting your eggs in a flimsy basket, Mr. Gershwin.”
“Am I?”
“You’re assuming I was alone last night.” Kerry smiled.
He laughed in delight. “Oh, that’s even better. You’re going to pull out some flannel shirted bum you found in a bar to defend you?” He snapped the folder shut. “If that’s the way you want to play it, fine.” He looked up as the door opened and a tall, dark haired form slipped in.
“Excuse me, but this is a private meeting.”
Dar continued across the room, with every step shedding her casual persona and taking on the dynamic fierceness that was part and parcel of who she was. “Meeting’s over,” she enunciated sharply. “You’ve got six minutes to pick up your personal effects and be out of the building.”
“What?” Gershwin stared at her. “Have you lost your mind? Get the hell out of my office before I call security. Who in the hell do you think you are?”
Dar pointed a thumb at her own chest. “Me? I’m Dar Roberts.” She paused for delicious moment. “And you’re unemployed. Now get out.”
She got between the comptroller and his desk. “My people have all your accounting records and the client files and by the time they finish sifting it for chargeable offenses, you’re going to be more than out of a job.”
He was in shock. “You’re Dar Roberts?”
Dar pulled her wallet from her back pocket, fished her Florida driver’s license out, and showed it to him. “Three minutes.” She poked a finger at him. “Out.”
“You’re out of your mind. You can’t just walk in here and fire me,”
Gershwin rasped. “I’ll slap a lawsuit on you so fast…”
Kerry picked up the folder on the desk. “Hmm, yeah. This’ll make an interesting exhibit when I testify.” She showed the picture to Dar. “This is where I was last night.”
Dar took one look at the picture, then at Sam, putting two and two together and going from irritated rumpled executive to borderline murderous lover in the blink of an eye. “You stinking son of a…” She stepped forward and curled her hands in his lapels as she shoved him against the wall.
“Get your hands off me you…”
“Dar.” Kerry put a hand on her back, taking a nervous breath.
Dar stared into his eyes, her own ice cold. “Time’s up. You’re out of here right now, before I do something we’re both going to regret.” She released him and stepped back. “Now.”
He straightened his lapels, then gave her a hateful look. “You’ll hear from me. This isn’t the end of this, you can be sure of that.”
They watched him walk to the door and go through it, brushing by Charlie Efton on the way out. “Good bye, Charlie.”
The thin, bespectacled man stared after him puzzled, then looked inside the office, clearly at sea. “Ah, did I miss something? What’s going on?” His eyes went to Kerry and he was clearly surprised when whom he Eye of the Storm 43
considered a common field tech answered.
“Get your people in the conference room in five minutes,” Dar growled.
Charlie stared at her in bewilderment.
“Please,” Kerry added, folding her arms, “let’s get this over with.”
He walked out shaking his head, closing the door and leaving them alone.
Dar opened the folder and stared at the picture in disgust. “Pig.”
Kerry put out a hand and rubbed her back, feeling the warm tension under her fingers. “I thought it was sort of funny, Dar. I mean it’s so obviously doctored. You think this is how they got those accounts?”
“Pig.” Blue eyes narrowed intently as she studied the photo. “I should have kicked him in the nuts.”
“Um, Dar.” Kerry laughed a bit. “Take it easy, okay? Not that I don’t appreciate the noble protection of my honor, but…” She massaged Dar’s back. “What brought that on? What’d you find?”
Dar sat down on the desk, rubbing her temples and sighing. “Sorry. I um…he just hit me the wrong way, I guess. I was able to get Mark in to their system and he did a complete dump for me, then started parsing records and he found this dumb bastard’s damn online Filofax.”
Kerry’s jaw sagged. “You’re telling me he put illegal stuff he was doing in his computer?”
“No. Worse. He put it up on a network server, with multiple backups.”
“Oh, my god.” Kerry covered her eyes. “That’s worse than the illegal sales to China we fo
und in that export company last month. At least they only kept those records on their Powership PC.”
Dar exhaled, as her body relaxed after its unexpected call to arms.
She’d been finishing up her inspection and the initial stages of conversion in the operations center when she’d gotten a cell phone call from Mark.
That had led to a guarded conference outside the office door, confirming Dar’s vague suspicions and marking the largest target of wrong-doing. She was sure that was what caused the sudden knot to form in her guts and sent her to Sam’s office, knowing she had to get him out of the building before he had a chance to cover any tracks.
That was what had caused it, right? The fact that the son of a bitch had been in here, threatening Kerry was just a coincidence.
Right?
“You all right?” Kerry’s voice held a note of concern.
Dar looked up, and allowed herself a very brief moment of drowning in those sea green eyes. “Yeah. This is going to be ugly, Ker. I don’t know who knows what right now. I think it would be better to call in a team and lock the management out of here until we get some answers.”
“All right.” Kerry straightened. “That’s what I’ll tell them.”
Dar tilted her dark head. “Why don’t you let me do that?”
“Because this is my job.” Kerry put a fingertip on her bosses well shaped nose. “That’s why. You can come and watch, though.”
44 Melissa Good Dar stood. “Let’s get it done, then. You and I have a plane to catch and a place to go to.”
“Yeah. Home.” Kerry allowed a big smile to take over her face. “I can’t wait.”
A hand ruffled her hair affectionately. “Me either. C’mon.”
They left the office and headed down the hall, aware of the tense silence surrounding them.
“THEY JUST FIRED him?” Ann hissed in disbelief. “Charlie, how could that happen? I thought he—”
“I don’t know.” The company president paced up and down nervously. “He just walked out. Told Carol he’d been fired. I have no idea what’s going on.”
“Shit.” Ann played with her pencil. “Maybe that plan of his back-fired. I told him not to mess with that Stuart woman. She’s a lot more than a fluffy blonde cheerleader.”
The short, dark haired assistant comptroller cleared his throat. “Um.
She’s Roger Stuart’s daughter. You knew that, right?”
They all looked at him. “Oh shit.” Charlie covered his eyes. “That stupid bastard Sam. How could he miss something like that?”
“Oh, well, I figured when you saw who was with her—” the man started to answer, but the door opening silenced him.
Kerry strode in and motioned for Dar to take a seat in the back of the room, which her boss did, folding a leg under her and leaning on the arm of the chair.
“Thank you.” Kerry circled the table and went to its head, stood behind the chair, and let her hands rest on it. “This is going to be a very short meeting.”
“Look,” Charlie interjected. “Would you mind telling us what’s going on? What happened to Sam? What are you people doing?”
Kerry took a breath. Now that it had come down to it and she was looking these people in the eye, she found it hard to say the words. Not that she felt sorry for them. No, she didn’t. They weren’t nice people and she had a feeling the deeper they dug into the company, the worse they’d find. But they were people, and she was a person, and she held their fate in her hands for this one, timeless moment.
It was a very odd feeling and it sort of reminded her, just a little, of how she’d felt when she’d sent the damning information about her father to the press.
Sad. And relieved.
A little scared.
“The review of your systems has turned up a number of extensive irregularities,” Kerry stated quietly. “Our auditing department is reviewing them. Until they complete their review, I’d like all of you to leave the building and go home.”
They stared at her in utter shock.
Eye of the Storm 45
“Are you firing us?” Ann blurted.
Kerry had a sudden flashback to a phone call and a sinking feeling.
“I’m asking you to go home and wait until we contact you,” she replied.
“Your pay and benefits will continue until our management makes a final determination.”
“You can’t just—” Charlie objected angrily.
“I can,” Kerry’s inflexibly precise tones corrected him. “Now, please.
Just go home and don’t make this harder than it has to be.” Kerry took a breath. “An operations team will be here Monday morning to take over.”
There was a stunned silence.
“Son of a bitch.” Ann got up and threw her papers down. “I’m calling my lawyer.” She pointed at Kerry. “I don’t know who you people think you are, but you’ve pissed off the wrong person here.”
A soft scraping sound followed her words, then fabric shifting, and soft footsteps as Dar circled the table and came around to Kerry’s side.
“In fact, I don’t think you have the authority to do what you just did.
I want to talk to your boss, right now!” Ann slammed her hand down on the desk.
Kerry tilted her head in faint amusement, then half turned and lifted her eyebrows. “Okay. Dar, she wants to talk to you.”
“Oh really,” the tall executive drawled, turning her eyes on the now silent woman. “I don’t think you have anything more to say.” Dar spoke into deafening silence. “Ladies and gentlemen, you got caught. Now go home and hope all you get is fired.”
“You…are Dar Roberts?” Ann’s voice held a strange hint of amusement.
Dar merely looked at her.
“Interesting.” The woman picked up her folder and walked out.
“Let’s go, boys. I guess we know when we’re beaten.”
Dar and Kerry watched them file out and the door close behind them.
“That was really weird.”
“Gotta agree.” Dar shook her head. “What a mess. I locked their accounts out on their domain controller and forced a reset on everyone else’s passwords.”
“Mmm. You pull everyone except for you out of the domain admin group?”
“Uh huh.”
“That’ll do it then. I guess we’d better get out of here. It’s almost five o’clock anyway, so I think we can just send everyone home and let the ops team take over on Monday.” Kerry sighed. “This feels really strange, Dar. Like there’s something here I’m not seeing.”
“Well, if you’re not seeing it, I’m not either,” the taller woman confessed. “Maybe Mark’ll find something. C’mon. We’ve got a chance to get a snack before we’ve got to get on the plane.”
“Yeah.” Kerry shouldered her briefcase and followed her lover out the door, still thinking.
46 Melissa Good THE SMELL OF pancakes woke her up. Dar lifted an eyelid, and examined the room, it’s cool, blue walls lit with tiny stripes of sunlight from the blinds. She stretched and regarded the ceiling with sleepy contentment, as subtle sounds from the kitchen indicated her missing bedmate’s current location.
Mmm. Kerry’s home. A smile spread across her face. I missed her. Dar yawned and stretched again, then rolled up out of the waterbed and went into the bathroom, threw a little water on her face and brushed her teeth.
“Mmm.” She chewed the toothpaste curiously, having picked Kerry’s up by mistake. “Grape. How did this woman find grape toothpaste?”
“Dar?”
“Hmm?” Dar hastily swallowed and wiped her mouth off, then padded out of the bathroom and found her blonde haired lover leaning in the doorway to the bedroom. “Morning. You’re up early.”
“Not that much.” Kerry tickled her navel with a finger. “Just long enough to get breakfast started. I wanted to make sure you got something other than coffee and Frosted Flakes before you went out to win trophies.”
“Speaks the woman who uses
grape toothpaste,” Dar responded dryly, as Kerry blushed and laughed. “Gotcha.”
“Weeell. It was all they had in the airport, Dar. It was that, or that baking powder stuff, and you know I hate how gritty that is.” Kerry pulled Dar’s baseball shirt off the back of the loveseat and handed it to her. “It’s a gorgeous day out.”
“Oh yeah?” Dar slipped the garment on then curled her arms around the smaller woman, pulling her into a hug. “It’s pretty nice in here, too.”
She released Kerry and followed her into the kitchen, where Chino was patiently waiting. “Oh, I get it. There must be food somewhere.”
“Gruff.”
“Mmm. Certainly was spotless in here.” Kerry poked her friend with the end of her spatula. “Did you even make coffee while I was gone?”
Dar looked suitably penitent. “Um…I was out late most nights at the gym,” she offered. “Just picked up something on the way home.”
Kerry eyed her. “Chicken wings?”
Dar gave a faint hint of a grin. “Among other things.”
“Dar.” Kerry turned back to her pancakes and flipped one expertly.
“I was worried about you. Though that’s kind of silly, I guess. You’re a grown person, who can certainly take care of herself.”
Dar slid her arms around her and rested her cheek against Kerry’s hair. “Yes, I can do that,” she murmured. “But I’m glad I don’t have to.”
She nipped an ear. “I’m glad you’re back.”
“Mmm.” Kerry smiled. “Even though I make you eat vegetables?”
She felt Dar’s head nod against hers and she leaned back. “So what do I do for two weeks? I pig out on tacos and shrimp toasts.”
Dar chuckled. “Hotel food is kinda limited.”
“Don’t make excuses for me. The limited menus included salads,”
Kerry retorted, flipping another pancake and then turning the bacon in Eye of the Storm 47
the next pan. “You’ve corrupted me, Dardar.”
The chuckle turned into a full laugh, rumbling down Dar’s chest and making a pleasant vibration against Kerry’s back.
The phone rang, and Dar released her, then wandered over to the portable phone and lifted it up. “Hello?”