Stormy Waters: Book 10 in The Dar & Kerry Series

by Good, Melissa

  Dar glowered at her reflection in the mirror. Stormy blue eyes were reflected back at her, and she scowled, feeling a mixture of frustration and impatience with herself. Could she really just toss the project off on Kerry's shoulders, knowing how important it was, and how much Alastair was counting on her?

  On the other hand, could she really justify not trusting Kerry to handle it? Dar sighed. "Fuck." She addressed herself. "I think you need a head enema."

  "Yeesh." Kerry interrupted her self-chastisement. "Poor Angie!" She entered the bedroom and halted as Dar turned, her expression altering to one of sultry interest. "Hmm. Maybe I should convince her to try something other than guys for a little while."

  Dar put one hand on her hip. "Oh, I'm sure that'd be a popular suggestion. Especially for Brian," she said. "What happened?"

  Kerry pulled her t-shirt off. "Angie thought she'd blown him off about Andy's blood tests, but I guess he got suspicious. He had DNA tests done without her knowing."

  Dar snorted. "Nice!" She slipped behind Kerry and undid her bra, giving her a scratch between her tanned shoulder blades. "So she's going back home?"

  "No." Kerry folded her bra and set it on the counter next to her already folded t-shirt. "Oh, my mother offered, sure, but Angie, she wants to get out on her own."

  "With Brian?"

  Kerry didn't answer for a moment, and then she turned and faced Dar. "She's not sure."

  Dar cocked her head in question.

  A shrug. "She said she doesn't want it to be a case of he needs to take care of her now. She wants to do it on her own." Kerry put her hands on Dar's waist, rubbing her thumbs on the soft skin there. "Maybe I started a family trend. In any case, she was asking what the housing prices were like down here."

  "Ah."

  Kerry eased forward and brushed her lips over the curve of Dar's breast. She felt Dar's fingertips run up and down her back and it encouraged her to move closer, fitting her bare body to Dar's and reveling in the sensual jolt it gave her. "Y'know, water sounded good..."

  "There's water in that bed." Dar suggested, kissing her neck.

  "Just what I was thinking." Kerry gladly gave up the idea of the hot tub, and started exploring Dar's skin instead. "Mm...maybe I should tell Angie..."

  "Shh." Dar bumped her toward the bed. "If we start telling the heteros, they'll all want to be gay." She tumbled with Kerry into the center of the bed, as they both chuckled.

  "HEY, COL." Kerry carried her teacup into the break room and set it down. "What's up?" She asked, waiting her turn at the hot water spigot.

  "Same old, same old." Her friend replied, with a grin. "Hey, any chance of you making it out to the beach this coming weekend? We've got a 'cue planned."

  Kerry dunked her teabag up and down a few times. "Hmm. Let me get back to you on that. Maybe. Hey listen, are there any units open in the complex?"

  "Mine?" Colleen asked. "Two, I think. Why?"

  Kerry poured a little milk into her tea and put the bottle back in the refrigerator. "Might need one on short notice." She explained. "You going back to your office? I'll fill you in."

  Colleen picked up her coffee mug and followed Kerry out into the hallway. She caught up with her friend a few steps down. "So, what's up?"

  "My sister," Kerry said. "Following my very bad example. C'mon inside and I'll tell you all about it." She entered her office, toasting the newly arrived Mayte with her cup. "Morning!"

  "Morning, Kerry." Mayte smiled at her, as she went to her desk and slid behind it.

  Colleen trailed after Kerry as they both entered the inner office, and Kerry shut the door before going to her own desk and taking a seat. "I get this call last night." She said. "My family's hit the Enquirer again."

  "Oh no." Colleen sat down across from her. "Now what? Is your nephew an alien?"

  "Worse." Kerry sipped her tea. "A bastard and his father found out about it." She watched Colleen's eyes widen in amazement. "Did I forget to tell you my sister had an affair with my ex-boyfriend?"

  "Jesu." Colleen covered her face with one hand.

  "Hmm. Thought for sure I told you that one. Anyway, Richard found out and he's suing Angie for divorce. She was hinting about places down here so I figured..."

  "I get the picture." Colleen held her hand up, palm out. "Let me talk to the landlord and see what he's got open. I know there's a one bedroom, but I'm thinking for her a two would be better, right? How's she going to survive? I thought you told me she's a housewife."

  Kerry sighed, leaning back in her chair. "She is. She can do some light office work, though, and she's not stupid. She knows how to use a PC, do some bookkeeping, that sort of thing."

  Colleen made a face.

  "I know." Kerry acknowledged the grimace. "Honestly, Col, she'd be better off going back to Mom's house, but I'm not really the one to tell her that, you know?"

  "Mm." She nodded. "I know. Is she cut out for Miami?"

  "Was I?"

  "You didn't have a kid, and no skills." Colleen said with blunt honesty. "Not that I'm knocking her looking for something new, eh? It's just that I think she doesn't realize you got where you are because you earned it."

  Kerry looked around at her office, hand-picked and hand-decorated by Dar, filled with knick-knacks and cute, yet mute, symbols of their partnership. A brief grin crossed her face as she sipped again at her tea. "True." She acknowledged. "But I think what she wants is to make it on her own before she lets Brian come back into her life and it reverts to stodgy traditionalism."

  A soft knock came at the door. "Yes?" Kerry raised her voice.

  The door opened and Mayte stuck her head in. "Kerry, the conference room is booked for your meeting at nine, but Mr. Mark says to tell you he is running a little late. Something about a wipe-up."

  "Uh, oh." Kerry winced. "I think he means wipe out. That doesn't sound good. Okay. Thanks Mayte. I'll start the meeting without him. Hope he's all right." She shook her head, and reviewed her page of mails, most of which were marked with red urgent flags. "Yeesh. What a way to start the day."

  Colleen stood, and chuckled wryly. "Well, my friend, I'll be on my way to start my day, and hope it's not nearly as raucous as yours. I'll let you know what the landlord says." She waggled her fingers at Kerry and headed for the door.

  "Bye Col." Kerry turned her attention to her inbox, clicking on the first red flag. It was a plea from marketing--on a new account. She leaned forward and studied it thoughtfully, then shifted her window over and clicked on their network diagram. When it came up, she typed in a circuit identifier and scanned the results.

  Her fingers drummed lightly on the keyboard. "Marginal." She nibbled the inside of her lip. The new account wanted a guaranteed amount of bandwidth, and the minor pipe they were running on, an offshoot of the main network in a far out part of Oregon, was approaching their self-imposed saturation limit.

  Should she agree and hope for the best? Should she ask for a bandwidth increase? They wouldn't get any more money if she had to make a bigger pipe there, unless they could bag more business in the area.

  After a moment's more drumming of her fingertips, Kerry went back to the mail program. She hit reply, and typed a response. "Okay, John. I'll go for the guarantee, but you guys better understand that's a very tight area. Nothing else goes in there for any existing customers and that pipe stays that size unless you book me more business."

  She hit send and then sat back. After a second, she went into her sent mail file and selected the note she'd just delivered, forwarding a copy of it over to Dar. "Juuuuust in case."

  Then she went on to the next note, another plea, another account, another decision to justify. Kerry found herself wondering how long it was before Dar had gotten tired of handling stuff like this? She'd developed a technique of scaring the hell out of everyone so much no one asked her for favors, and so she had a lot less of the kinds of emails to deal with than Kerry currently did.

  Kerry was perceived as 'nice'--she knew it, and she knew t
hat often played in her favor, but in cases like this, it often caused her to have to make calls she really shouldn't have to, just because people knew they could approach and ask her for it.

  So, was Dar's way of operating really more efficient?

  Hmm. Kerry exhaled, then jumped as Gopher Dar appeared, chittering at her from behind her mail window. "Yow. You little stinker." She laughed, clicking at Gopher Dar with her mouse. Today her little pal had on a t-shirt and overalls, and was wearing a baseball cap with the letter K on it.

  Gopher Dar shook his finger at her and then pulled out a placard, sashaying across Kerry's screen so she could read it. "Nerds Rule, huh?" She chuckled. "Dar, Dar, Dar."

  "Yes?"

  Kerry jumped again, despite herself. She turned and gave her boss a mock glare. "Wench."

  Dar sauntered over. She was dressed in jeans again, and carrying a shoulder pouch full of various nerdy things. "I'm going to the main patch closet. If anyone's looking for me, tell 'em I've got my head up a router somewhere."

  Kerry gazed affectionately at her. "You going to be lying on the floor all day again? Here." She pulled a small sheepskin pillow from her large desk drawer and handed it to Dar. "Park your buns on that."

  Dar accepted the fluffy thing and held it up. "You want me to walk through the hallways carrying this?" She laughed. "Kerry, I don't need a duff muff."

  "Well, tell them it's my muff." Kerry replied, with a twinkle. "Actually, it's for your head. It's not good for you to have your head on the cold concrete, honey. I don't want you getting sick."

  Dar tucked the pillow under her arm and sketched a salute at Kerry as she headed for the door. "Oh." She paused with the door half open. "Good decision on Oregon." Then she scooted through and shut the door after her, leaving Kerry in momentary silence.

  "Thanks." Kerry said to the closed door. "Nice hat on the gopher." She added with a grin as she spotted Gopher Dar now sleeping in the corner of her screen, the hat tilted over his eyes.

  With a shake of her head she went back to work, checking her watch for the time. It was nearly eight, and she had to get through the rest of her red flags before she left for her meeting at nine, and for a minute she wished she were working with Dar on her project instead.

  "Bad Kerry." She resolutely clicked on the next mail.

  IT HAD BEEN a very long time since Dar had wandered down to the first floor of their building and into the big central core telecom room. She propped the door open from long habit, looping a piece of old Ethernet cable tied around a conduit, just for that purpose, over the door handle and proceeding inside.

  It was far from a glamorous place, concrete block walls lined with rack upon rack of circuit cards, cables, and routers. It also held two big UPS units to power the room if they lost outside electricity, its own air conditioning unit, and a, thankfully, raised floor so she didn't actually have to lie on concrete.

  The walls were covered in steel conduit that lead to every other floor of the building, and there was a set of bright red pipes that indicated the lines coming in from outside. Those had tiny camera attachments to one side that allowed a fiber optic thread to penetrate the pipe at the top and give the security department visibility through the conduit to its terminus outside.

  There were also cameras pointed toward them inside the patch room, a bit of extra insurance Dar had installed a year or so back. It never paid to take chances, and admittance to this particular room was restricted to four people inside the company, she being one of them.

  Kerry and Mark were another two, and the fourth key resided in Plano in the hands of the corporate security officer, in case of disaster.

  Dar set her bag down and ran her eyes over the racks to re-familiarize herself with the configuration. She'd supervised the original installation in this room, but it had been a while since she'd seen the hardware. She ran her fingers over the patch panels, peeking behind them to inspect the jacks.

  Everything looked in order. Dar circled the room one more time, and then she selected a spot on the floor and knelt, pulling out her laptop and a set of cables. She plugged the end of the cable into one of the two master routers and sat down, leaning against the rack and putting Kerry's pillow behind her head to cushion it.

  It added a bit of unexpected comfort that was welcome, considering the number of hours she suspected she'd be sitting here on the floor working. Dar smiled, taking an Ethernet cable from her bag and attaching the back of her laptop into the network with it. Kerry was so cool sometimes.

  Okay, most of the time. In fact, there were times Dar did wonder what exactly she'd done in a past life to deserve meeting Kerry in this one.

  Ah, well. She booted up her laptop and pulled a can of Yoohoo from her bag, opening it and setting it at her side in direct violation of the strict no beverage rule she'd put in place for this room.

  The screen came up and she started up her analysis program, and then booted the network monitor. She cracked her knuckles and started typing, calling up the router configuration on one screen while she set the monitor running on another.

  An alert flashed. Dar paused and looked at it, surprised. "What the?" She pulled up the monitor and made it full screen, her eyes flicking over the readouts. Her attention zeroed in on one escalating counter, and with a curse, she switched to the router screen and started typing like a demon.

  "Son of a bleeping pissant hacker. Wait till I get you--"

  "YOU OKAY TO walk from here, sailor boy?" Ceci put the truck in park and peered across the bridge leading to the port. "Or you want me to drop you down inside?"

  "Naw." Andy gathered up his hard hat and a small sack lying next to him on the seat. "This here's fine. Don't want them beagle brains wondering nothing." He paused to regard the line of old ships stretching out down the cut while plucking a seam on his jeans.

  Ceci watched him with a faint grin. "Well, go have fun then." She nudged his shoulder. "My husband the corporate spy."

  Andy chuckled turning his head and giving her a light kiss on the lips. "Just doing Dardar a favor." He opened the door and hopped out giving the side of the truck a slap before he moved off down the sidewalk toward the bridge.

  "Hmm." Ceci leaned on the truck steering wheel resting her chin on top of it. "I'm not sure who did who a favor." She made a mental note. Her beloved husband had settled into retirement, but Ceci knew him well enough to know having something to do was coming as a definite relief.

  The fact that it was a truly interesting, actually important task, only made it all the better. Had Dar known that before she asked?

  Well. Ceci mused. The apple didn't fall far from the tree, to quote a hoary old saying, and very probably her daughter had an inside insight into mentally hyper-driven, restlessly active behavior that she, thankfully, didn't.

  In any case, Andy was excited as a kid with a new slingshot, and she found herself surprisingly grateful to Dar for making him that way. She looked around, spotting Bayside just to her right. Hmm.

  Maybe she could get Dar a present to say thank you. With a brisk nod, she put the truck in gear and made a swift U-turn, crossing six lanes of traffic with placid non-concern.

  Andrew walked slowly down the pier, nodding briefly at the few men wandering in to start work along with him. "Lo." He greeted the foreman who was standing near the gangway drinking a cup of coffee.

  "Hey there, ugly." The foreman responded with an easy grin that stripped the insult of most of its sting. "Listen, buddy. The folks inside gave me a good write up on you."

  Andrew stopped at the edge of the gangway and leaned on the chain rope. "Yeap? That so?"

  The man nodded. "That Norskie said it was nice to have someone who spoke English but kept their mouth shut for a change."

  Andy chuckled. "Them fellers inside done chatter a bit, that's true." He allowed. "Didn't seem any too organized, though." He added offhandedly. "Lots of them boxes went all over the place."

  The foreman sighed and shook his head. "Yeah, I know. I heard
that." He frowned. "Problem is the people who ordered all the stuff for the fixing up didn't palletize it."

  "Yeap." Andy nodded.

  "So we've got dishes mixed with plumbing fixtures. What a mess." He showed Andrew his clipboard that held reams of receiving invoices. "Look at this. You're going to have an even bigger mess coming in today."

  Since he so nicely offered, Andrew took the board and examined the papers. "Wall." He leaned on the chains again and pointed at one of the lines with a scarred finger. "See that there?"

  "Yeah?" The man looked at the line warily. "What about it?"

  "Way back when, in the Navy, that there used to be called a source tick." Andy told him. "I ain't got a half clue what them boys back in the office do with it, but all them with the same number done belonged together."

  The foreman looked around quickly. "Yeah?" He studied the number, then flipped a few pages, and looked at another invoice. "Son of a bitch! Look! Cups, saucers, and silverware, all the same one!" His voice rose excitedly. "If we can get a couple of big magic markers we might make sense of this damn crap. Hang on...I'll be right back. Ugly, you're a genius!"

  Andrew watched him hurry off. "Lord." He moved on in search of a roach coach, spotting one outside the walkway. "What the hell these people being paid for I do wonder. Mah kid come in here and this whole basket'd been tossed head over keester by now."

  There was a small crowd around the wagon and he joined it, standing in line to wait his turn, then pointing mutely at the coffee and holding up an apple he'd taken from the back of the coach when he got to the front. The vendor handed him a steaming cup and took his proffered money, then moved on to the next guy in line as Andrew set the cup down and put as much of everything he could to get it to stop tasting like watery coffee.

  It was already warm, and he was sweating under his t-shirt, but as he walked over to stand near the gangway again and sipped his coffee, he felt good to be there anyway. He leaned against the huge cleat the ship was moored to and crossed his ankles, his military issue boots showing dark against the white concrete.