by Melissa Good
"Ah huh." Elena entered, scribbling notes as she walked. "That surprise you?"
"Oh yeah." Both Dar and Kerry answered at the same time.
The terminal was mostly empty; just a few techs were sitting around, kicking their heels and waiting for something to happen. "Hey, Ms. Roberts." One of them, standing by the counter with a cell phone in his hand spotted them. "We're gonna do pizza. You in?"
The casual nature of the question charmed Dar to the core. "Sure." She agreed, reminded irresistibly of a much younger time in her life when she'd done what the tech did and lived on pizza and takeout Chinese. "Dominos?
The man nodded. "Yeah.
"Thin and crispy, half vegetarian half meat lovers, extra cheese." Kerry supplied succinctly. "And dots. Two cokes."
"You got it," The man grinned at her.
Dar walked over to him, tugging her wallet out of her pocket. She removed a card and tossed it on the counter. "Put it on that." She instructed. "Tell them they get a ten percent bonus if they get it here and I don't confuse the cheese with a box of rubber bands."
Elena chuckled, putting her pad down by her side as she stood next to Kerry. "You two are characters, you know that?" She said. "My boss told me this morning, after I let him in on some of what was going on, that he wants me to make this a banner story, front page in the business section, in three parts."
"Yeah?" Kerry said. "Is that good?"
The reporter chuckled. "He doesn't know the half of it. Wait till I call him," she said. "Mind if I use your office back there to do that?"
Kerry glanced at the back of the room that was echoingly empty. "No, go ahead." She agreed, watching as the reporter walked away from her. She waited a moment, then headed across the carpet to join Dar, who was sitting on the counter. "Sheesh."
"Long day." Dar agreed, with a sigh. "But it's almost over, sweetheart."
Kerry smiled at the endearment. "Know what? I've really enjoyed working on this with you. Despite everything."
Dar ruffled her hair. "Likewise."
They looked up as the front door opened, and Cruickshank entered, with an unexpected Jason Meyer strolling in with her.
"Ah." Kerry exhaled. "I've got a bad feeling about this."
"Oh yeah." Dar muttered. "Big time."
The two newcomers stopped in front of them. "We need to speak to you," Meyer said, with little trace of his former attitude in New York. "Can we have some privacy?"
Dar's eyebrow arched. "Sure." She slid off the counter and gestured toward the office. "After you."
Cruickshank also stood back. "Sir?" She addressed Meyer. "Please."
Sir? Kerry felt the situation tilt radically, and she was suddenly reminded of the test on the ship. Was this another test?
Or what?
"WHAT THE HELL was that all about?" Shari rounded angrily on Michelle. "You know damn well this thing's ready."
"It's not."
"Bullshit!" Shari said. "What kind of game are you playing now, Michelle?"
"Fuck you." Michelle enunciated the words carefully. "Like I told Cookie Puss, this is my design, and I say when it's ready. Not the techs and not you." She pulled away and started for the elevator.
"Yeah? How much did she pay you off with?" Shari yelled after. "Or did she promise you a three way?"
Michelle turned at the doorway and looked back at her. "You know what? If she asked me, I would." She turned and disappeared into the hall.
"Would what?" Shari shouted.
A door slammed, echoing in the hold.
"Doesn't make any god damned sense!" Frustrated, Shari picked up a discarded tube of cardboard and threw it across the hold, bouncing it off the wall. The heat and the dirt were getting to her, and she went to the edge of the gangway to get a breath of air.
She hated this place. The stink and the noise of the shipyard made her stomach churn, and as she looked out over the cracked pavement, even the color of the faded building made her sick.
Her attention focused on the gate that separated the pier area from the street. A tall figure had walked to it, opened the lock and entered, and she recognized him immediately as Andrew Roberts. "Asshole." She muttered, as the big man ambled across the concrete.
How had she missed that when she'd first seen him? His bastard kid looked just like him, so why hadn't she figured it out? Same body carriage, same eyes, same kiss my ass attitude. She knew Andrew had been in the Navy, and from what she'd been able to decipher from her brief time with Dar, she figured he'd been in some kind of Special Forces.
Well, he looked like it. He was wearing a tank top, and even though he was no youngster, he had an impressive muscularity that reminded her more than a bit of his daughter. As she watched, a short, furtive figure emerged from the shadows and intercepted him.
Andrew halted and looked at him, cocking his head in a listening motion.
Shari squinted a little, looking at the little creep as well. He seemed familiar to her, but she couldn't think from where. She walked out onto the gangway and headed toward them, but they saw her approaching and both turned and walked away.
She stopped. "Aw, what in the hell am I doing?" With a sigh of disgust, she turned around and started for the terminal building with its musty, if efficient, air conditioning.
Halfway there, she stopped, and turned around again. Both Andrew and the other man had disappeared beneath the gantries next to the other ship, but there weren't many places they could have gone. With a sudden narrowing of her eyes, Shari followed them.
MARK WIPED THE sweat from his eyes, surveying the work they'd just completed. "Skanky racks," he commented.
"Yeah." The tech from ship three answered. "Cheapos." He put a hand on one stanchion and shook it, demonstrating the relative flimsiness. "Sucks, but they're squeezing every penny out of this."
"Uh huh." Mark flipped the switches on the equipment and watched as the lights began to dance. The fans sounded almost deafening in the small space. "Loud suckers."
"Glad I don't have to listen to 'em." The tech agreed. "Where the hell did they come from? Johnny said they were hung up in customs coming in."
"We got them from Telegenics," Mark said.
"No shit?"
"Yeah."
"What the F?"
Mark shrugged. "They had extra. My boss kicked them in the ass and made them cough it up."
"Whoa!"
The equipment finished flashing and settled down to a more sedate blinking of its many lights. Mark began methodically plugging cables into the front of the device, following some obscure format known, probably, only to him.
The tech joined him and they inserted RJ45 jacks without speaking for a while. Halfway through, the tech cleared his throat. "So, what's it like working for them?"
"Kickass," Mark replied briefly.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"How long you worked there?"
"Ten years," Mark answered. "You hear bullshit, bullshit, bullshit about ILS, but for IT jobs, it rocks. You get the best gear, the best new stuff, and cool bosses."
"Huh."
"When was the last time you brought a firmware bug to your CIO and they fixed it?"
The tech blinked at him.
"Like, they fucking fixed it. In NVRAM, in machine code." Mark clarified. "Those guys who develop routers? They call her for advice."
"Whoa."
"In fucking credible." Mark went back to plugging in cables. He looked up as the door to the small wiring closet opened, revealing Carlos. "Yeah? You done?"
"This is the last one." Carlos pointed at the machine Mark was working on. "Had some bad fiber patch upstairs, but Manny came over with the terminator and fixed it."
"Cool." Mark nodded. "You hear how it was going next door?"
"Manny said he took care of them. Whoever put that backbone in was sucking." Carlos reported. "He had to re-terminate all the strands. It took him a long time."
"Man, I'm glad we didn't go with those guys." Mark muttered. "
They were pitching Kerry and telling her they could do it for half price, but what bullshit."
"But isn't the whole deal to do this as cheap as possible?" The tech standing next to him queried. "I thought that was the gig, to get the whole contract. Lowball. Right?"
Mark sighed. "Yeah," he admitted. "That was the whole point, but you know, Kerry just can't do it. We threw that around when she was looking at the vendor bids and it wasn't cool to compromise on that stuff. We lose contracts all the time cause of that."
Everyone was silent for a bit. Carlos was leaning in the doorway, scrubbing his hands and working a splinter out of the palm since there was no room in front of the switch for more than two people to plug things into it.
"So, is that cool?" The tech finally asked. "I mean, that's why Telegenics is so big now, right?"
Mark was quiet for a few moments, gazing at the switch as he thought. "For business? I think it's not really that cool," he finally said. "But for me, yeah, it's okay because I like to feel good about stuff I put my name on. I don't put my name on crap, and neither does she."
"Huhh." The tech went back to plugging.
"This whole thing is getting so crazy." Carlos picked up the conversational ball. "I really can't figure out what is going on."
Mark snorted. "Join the club."
"Yeah."
THE REPORTER WAS nowhere to be found. Kerry looked around the small office, then shrugged and closed the door behind her as she followed Dar and the two newcomers into the room. Maybe Elena had stepped outside instead of into the close, somewhat depressing space, and she could hardly have blamed her.
Dar took a seat on the top of one of the desks, trading the comfort of the desk chairs for the advantage of height as she faced Meyer and Cruickshank. She casually braced a foot on the chair though, and rested her forearm on her knee.
What role should she play? Kerry wondered, knowing she had only seconds to decide. Sometimes she and Dar swapped positions, and she took the lead, but she sensed that this would not be a good place to do that. Certainly, their two visitors were focused on her partner.
Hmm.
Kerry took a seat in the desk chair next to where Dar was sitting, and leaned back, resting her elbows on the chair arms and crossing her legs at the ankles. "So." She addressed the two. "What's this all about?"
They looked at Dar.
Dar remained silent, one brow lifted slightly.
"We don't really have the time to play around here." Kerry continued. "And I think you've wasted more than enough people's time, effort, and money already. So, if you've got something to say, go ahead." She read Dar's body posture from the corner of her eye, and exhaled, figuring she'd guessed right.
Dar lifted her arm and draped it over the back of the chair Kerry was seated in, her fingers casually brushing her partner's pale hair.
"Well." Meyer took the lead on his part. "First of all, I guess you can figure out that I'm not quite who I presented myself to be the last time we met." He leaned back against one of the desks, resting his weight on both hands. Cruickshank stood by quietly, her hands folded in front of her.
Dar considered the words. "Are you more or less of an asshole than you were pretending to be?" She asked bluntly.
Meyer chuckled. "Well, depends who you ask." He conceded. "Let me explain."
"Should I take notes?" Kerry inquired. "Because this scorecard's getting big enough to be mounted above the bleachers in Pro Player Stadium."
Meyer looked at her, but didn't respond. He licked his lips and paused a moment, then fastened his eyes back on Dar. "My name is, surprisingly, Jason Meyer. But I'm not an IT executive, though for a few months, I did play one on television." He smiled at Dar. "That's confidential, since the rest of the folks in New York didn't know they were on candid camera."
Dar just looked at him.
"It's a reality concept we're pitching called "Fooled Ya!" Cruickshank supplied quietly. "That was our pilot program," she added. "I'm not a newspaper reporter, either."
"Right." Meyer agreed. "Deal was, I'd get hired on, see how far I could take it. Fake credentials, fake background, fake previous employers. How much could I push it? Well, I pushed it to the limit, and just when I was about to take it over the top, you showed up."
Kerry leaned forward. "You risked a major corporation, and the jobs of thousands of people for a game show?"
Meyer shrugged. "They hired me," he said. "They took a risk, and so did we, and thanks to your interference, my risk didn't pan out."
"My interference?" Dar sounded incredulous. "You've got to be kidding me."
He shrugged again. "You blew my ending," he said. "But interacting with you gave me the idea for this project, and I was able to sell it to my money people. But this time, you're not going to do it again," he stated. "So let's start talking money, and drop all the other bullshit because as you pointed out, Ms. Stuart, we don't have time to play around."
He slapped his hand on the desk. "Cards on the table time, Roberts. Either we're both going to walk out of here winning, or we're both going to walk out of here losing, and trust me, baby, you're gonna lose more than I will."
Dar folded her arms. She eyed the two of them with a dourly shrewd expression. "All right. What's your deal?" She asked. "What exactly do you want?"
Meyer smiled. "That's the answer I wanted to hear. So listen up."
"OKAY, WE'RE DONE." Mark dusted his hands off. "C'mon, Carlos. Let's go. I bet they got pizza left back there."
"You got it." Carlos pushed off from the doorway and stood back as Mark left the room. "So, is this ship okay now?"
"Dunno." Mark turned back. "Is it?" He asked the tech.
The tech was connected to the new equipment via a laptop, and he merely gave Mark a thumbs up rather than be distracted from what he was doing.
"Good deal. Later." Mark was satisfied. He joined Carlos and they walked along the hallway, turning sideways as several of the crew passed in the other direction. "Y'know, I feel kinda sorry for these guys."
Carlos looked behind him. "Those guys?" He jerked a thumb at the crew. "Or the guys in the wiring room?"
"The ship guys," Mark said. "Cause if big D is right, and this is all a scam, it sucks for them, you know?"
Carlos was quiet for a few steps. "I am sorry," he said. "But after they did what they did to us with the ship I do not feel sorry for them. Ms. Kerry could have been very hurt, and one of us did get hurt."
Mark frowned. "Yeah, I know," he said. "That did really suck. If Kerry'd gotten hurt, Big D would have gone ape shit."
"She was very pissed off." Carlos agreed. "She even yelled at her papa."
"Uh huh." Mark thought about that as they walked. "Her pop's cool."
"Si."
"He's crazy about both of 'em. Did you know he was MIA for like, years? They thought he was dead."
Carlos blinked. "Really? I did not know that. How sad."
"Yeah. Big D's been through a lot of stuff in the last few years." Mark lead the way down the gangway to the pier, and headed to the fence gate. "But she's good people."
"Oh yes, I think so too." Carlos nodded. He looked around. "So is this it? Are we done now?"
Mark certainly hoped so. It was getting late, he was tired as hell, and it was Friday. He was looking forward to leaving the pier, getting a shower and a cold beer, and moving on to whatever it was they were going to do next.
Hopefully, it would have nothing the hell to do with boats. Maybe Dar would push out development of the new router thing she'd written. That would be a couple of development cycles at least, and working on Dar's stuff was always a kick.
It worked, even when it was only half baked and undocumented. He was still finding little scripts and programs of hers every time he rummaged around in the systems, nothing huge, but just scrappy bits of code that kept stuff running in the background with little fanfare.
Kind of like Dar, sometimes. "Yeah, I think we're done," Mark said. "Let's go find the boss and wrap thi
s whole damn thing up."
"You know what I think?" Carlos said. "I think we should get together, and we should take our bosses out because they have been so nice to us. You think we could?"
Mark was briefly silent, as they crossed the roadway and entered the huge, now empty, parking lot that separated the two sides of the port. The sun was going down, and the breeze was now cooler, drying the sweat on the back of his neck as he walked.
Taking Dar out was tough. Her view was, she was the boss, and she made the big bucks. So she paid the dinner check. Mark knew it well, because he'd tried it often enough even with something as cheap as a freaking pizza.
But, who knew? Maybe they'd pull it off this time. Maybe he could grab the waiter before they sat down and give them a credit card. "Sure. We can try." He answered Carlos as they walked up the steps to the terminal behind their ship. "What the heck. Worst she could do is whack me one."
Carlos opened the door and they entered, getting several steps into the room before they both stopped and stared.
A huge crowd was gathered, surrounding a television screen on a cart. While they watched, several camera men roamed back and forth, shooting them.
"What the hell?" Mark spluttered. "What's going on?"
"Shh." One in the crowd hushed him.
Mark sidestepped around until he could see the television, blinking as he recognized Dar's distinctive figure on it.
A moment more and he recognized the room she was in as the back office not fifty feet from where he was standing, and as the picture shifted awkwardly, Kerry came into focus as well.
But what the hell was going on?
More importantly, did Dar know what was going on? It looked like she was being interviewed, but with the door closed. Did she have any idea that everyone was listening in?
The huge crowd blocked any approach to the back office door, but Mark knew that crowd wouldn't have stopped Dar, and it sure as hell wasn't going to stop him. "C'mon." He grabbed Carlos' arm.