Stormy Waters: Book 10 in The Dar & Kerry Series

by Good, Melissa

  She could almost hear the bubbles of her own breathing.

  So a warm, solid weight settling over her lower body nearly scared the shorts off her until she managed to get her eyes open and her hands untangled from the machine and found Kerry sitting on top of her dressed out for the gym and looking amused. "Bah!" She yelped in surprise, dropping flat on her back again.

  "Hi there." Green eyes twinkled. "You didn't wait for me, you punk!"

  Dar blinked, trying to get her tongue to work properly after having bitten it. "Abu." She cleared her throat. "Wait for you when? I had no idea you were coming home this fast." She protested. "I thought you'd be later at the port." Jerked so quickly out of her peaceful day dream, her body now didn't know whether to jump or completely relax and she felt like hiccupping.

  "I answered your last note." Kerry replied. "I didn't realize when I was in the bowels of the ship my signal was cut off. I got topside and saw I had messages from you." She wiggled the fingers she had laying on Dar's stomach, giving her a friendly scratch. "So I answered them right there on the gangway, and annoyed the heck out of some really big guys trying to move wood onboard."

  "Oh." Now that Kerry was here and more than paying attention to her, Dar felt a little abashed. "No problem. I figured you got tied up in details. Thought I'd come over here for a while then grab us some dinner." She looked around. "My PDA's in the locker."

  "Details." Kerry eased herself up and off her living bench. "Oh, my god did I get details. I got introduced into the world of people who live on ships." She paused and adjusted one of her wristbands. "Please, please don't tell me the Navy is like this, because if it is, I can't believe your dad survived in it as long as he did."

  "Eh." Dar watched as her partner went to the first machine, the bicep curl, and sat down in it, carefully adjusting the weight stack before she fit her hands to the handles and began her exercise. "People. Politics. Can't have one without the other. You know that."

  "Hmm." Kerry grunted a little with the effort of bringing the weighted bar up. "More I see people, more I love Chino."

  "Gruff." Chino trotted over and licked her knee.

  Dar got up and decided she'd had enough of the crunches. She went over to the pull down machine and sat under the bar, sticking the pin into a fairly significant amount of iron plates. Fitting her hands over the handles of the bar, she carefully pulled it downward, wedging her knees under the supports as she tested out how her shoulder was feeling about the weight.

  So far so good. Dar flexed her arms slowly and brought the bar down, glad the ache had finally faded from her injury. It had taken a long time, though Kerry had probably been right in telling her it would have been shorter if she'd done the physical therapy she'd been told to.

  "How's that feel?" Kerry asked.

  "Good." Dar straightened her arms and let the weight up. She pulled it down again, a little faster this time.

  "You look great when you sweat."

  Dar opened one eye and peered at the triceps machine. Kerry winked at her, and stuck her tongue out. "Everything going alright at the pier?"

  "Yeah, it's coming together." Kerry straightened her arms out, forcing the machine lever down. "You find the hacker?"

  Dar grunted, and released a little snort. "No, but if he comes back, he'll have a surprise waiting." She said. "But I spent some time in our gateways today and I gotta admit, Ker. I'm a little worried."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah."

  Kerry sighed. "Well, to be honest, I'm a little worried about how I'm going to pull off this project competitively, so we're even."

  They were both silent for a few minutes, concentrating on their respective exercises. Finally, Dar let her bar up and sighed. "Know what I think?"

  "What?"

  "Ice cream." Dar got up from her bench and picked her towel up, extending a hand toward Kerry. "We can finish this later."

  Kerry got up and took her hand without hesitation. "You're on. Let's go." She followed Dar out the door, not giving the room a single backward glance.

  ICE CREAM ACTUALLY turned into dinner on the beach club's ocean facing deck. A nice breeze made it very comfortable sitting outside.

  Kerry let her head rest against one of the roof supports, her eyes lazily taking in the waving palm fronds down the beach. "I don't know, honey," she said, "maybe it's a blessing in disguise. If you hadn't issued that challenge, you'd have never found the weaknesses you just told me about."

  "Maybe we--maybe I--should have been looking for them before now." Dar was also leaning against the wall supports, one long leg slung over the chair arm.

  "Dar, you're the chief information officer of the company. I think a lot of other people, like Mark, should have been looking for this stuff. Not you." Kerry replied honestly. "It's ridiculous that you need to be sitting on the floor in some closet trapping hackers, you know?"

  A slightly stronger breeze made itself felt, whipping their hair around. Some sea grape leaves blew across the tile floor, one of them ending up on Kerry's foot. She reached down and picked it up, twirling it in her fingers. "Kinda windy."

  Dar leaned to one side and looked out at the sea, spotting whitecaps. One eyebrow hiked up. "Don't tell me another damn storm snuck up on us." She checked her PDA, but there were no ominous looking messages on it.

  "Mm." A slightly dreamy smile crossed Kerry's face. "Oh, man, I'd love it if it did."

  That made Dar smile back, a frank grin of appreciation that lightened her entire face. "I'll take that as a compliment."

  "It was." Kerry impulsively reached across the table and fit her hand into Dar's. "Want to go down to the cabin this weekend?"

  Without even thinking, Dar nodded agreement. "Yeah."

  "I have a meeting on Friday afternoon. How about we do this..." Kerry's mind raced over the details, thinking about their dual schedules. "How about we ride together Friday morning, and I get a ride over to the port, then you can pick me up and...vroom."

  "Absolutely." Dar agreed instantly. "We can stop for dinner on the road somewhere and watch the sunset."

  Kerry glanced at her watch and sighed mournfully. "It's only Tuesday."

  Dar's cell went off before she could suggest something crazy like going after dinner. She took it out and checked the caller ID. "Uh oh." She opened it. "Yeah, Mark. What's up?"

  "You in the building, boss?"

  Dar glanced around her. "Me? No. I'm home. Why?"

  "Shit. Someone's messing around in here and I thought it was you...looked like what was going on this afternoon." Mark cursed. "Okay, thanks. Lemme get back to you. Hey you like...locked that door, right?"

  Dar's gaze went inward briefly, as she carefully traced her actions from the afternoon. "Yes. I went up to a meeting on fourteen, then came back down and did a few more scans. I left the closet around four. Shouldn't have been any access after that."

  "Gotcha. Bye." Mark hung up hastily, cutting off a yell in the background, and the sound of a buzzer going off.

  Dar looked at her cell, looked at Kerry, and then they both got up and headed for the condo at a run.

  DAR COULD HEAR the beeping of the alerts as she cleared the doorway into her office and put her hands on her desk, vaulting over it to land near her chair on the other side. "Son of a bitch!"

  Kerry forced herself to slow down enough to close the door behind them, making sure not to slam it on Chino's tail as the Labrador bounded in after her, tongue lolling out. She hesitated, then grabbed her briefcase from the dining room table where she'd left it, carried it into Dar's study and took possession of the couch.

  As she hit the leather, it started raining, and for a brief second she had a flashback, startling and vivid, of the first time she'd been in the room. But it only lasted that one second, because then she was yanking her laptop out of its case and opening it, waiting impatiently for the machine to boot up. "What's going on?"

  "Fuck if I know." Dar's fingers were nothing but a blur on the keyboard. "Something's loose
in the network. Jesus Christ I hope I didn't do something stupid and leave something open today."

  "The door?" Kerry was rapidly logging in.

  "No...no, that I know I shut. Something in the router...I was doing those changes so damn fast." Dar's brow was furrowed. "When I was talking to you, when Mark was seeing the blocks."

  "Oh." Kerry called up her network monitor and keyed it, sitting there for a minute as it started registering and lines began blinking red across the screen. "Holy cow." She looked quickly at Dar, seeing the tension scrawled across her face.

  Dar hesitated, her fingertips flexing above the keys, undecided on what to do. She hated not understanding what was happening. As far as she could tell random data was flooding the network and she could not find the source of it.

  She could shut everything down, and by definition that should stop the flood, but it also would take down everyone and everything using their network including the remote monitoring consoles.

  Kerry watched the emotions cross her partner's face, and decided she should do something more productive. She started up her analyzer and grabbed the main switch, opening up the data stream and focusing her attention on what it was showing her.

  A lot of garbage. Kerry flipped to her filters and cut off the standard network traffic, keying back to see what was left. "Dar."

  "Uh?"

  "It's not coming from outside."

  "What?" Dar got up and sprawled on the couch arm to peer over Kerry's shoulder.

  "It's coming from inside the office." Kerry traced a line with her finger. "Look. Here. I don't know what that is."

  Dar blinked slowly, exhaling a little. "Neither do I." She admitted. "Worm? Better tell Mark."

  Kerry hit enter on the text message she'd already been composing. "Done. Dar, what would put out that kind of traffic?

  Dar slid back into her seat and continued her scanning, slamming filters into place on interface after interface, attempting to staunch the flow of traffic. "Son of a son of a son of a..."

  Kerry got up and peered over her shoulder this time, her machine telling her nothing new other than the traffic was continuing to build. "That must be pretty damn close to the core, Dar. You want me to start shutting down the building floor by floor?"

  "Might have to." Dar felt herself starting to sweat. She could imagine the calls beginning to come in to the ops center, and speculated on how long it would take before her phone, and Kerry's, started ringing. "What if it's directly in the core?" She pulled up another access list reviewing the results. "God damn it, where is this thing!"

  Kerry slowly backed off then went to her laptop, acting on a hunch. "What switch is the conference center in, Dar?"

  "Conference center? Ten. Why?"

  "Let's just say I smell rotten fish." Kerry logged into the switch and checked the top traffic port. One switch out of twenty seven in the building. What were the odds? "Dar."

  Dar scrambled out of her chair and nearly crawled into the seat next to Kerry, her eyes avidly searching the screen. "Bingo. Shut the damn thing off."

  Kerry rapidly disabled the port, as Dar jumped up onto her desk and swung the monitor toward her, watching the read-outs in tense silence. The signals jumped for a moment more then slowly settling down to a more even keel.

  Dar slapped the desk, and turned her head toward Kerry. "Talk to me."

  "Okay." Kerry felt her heart rate slow down, though her fingers were still shaking a little. "Inside the office."

  "Yeah."

  "Security audit just completed two weeks ago, and it was clean. No new hires since then."

  "Right."

  Kerry got up and went over to sit in Dar's chair folding her hands together on the desk. "I think this is my fault." She paused, then looked right up into Dar's eyes. "Because I'm the jerk who had four competitors sitting in our conference center with laptops and gear, and didn't ask for a security scan afterward."

  Dar's face remained absolutely still for a very long instant. Then she slowly released her breath, her shoulders relaxing as she leaned on one elbow. "Quest's meeting."

  Kerry nodded.

  "There was a lot going on then, Kerry."

  "Don't make excuses for me," she replied. "There is no excuse for that, Dar, and we both know it." She watched her partner's expression carefully, a little surprised to see the strong planes relax, and a faint, almost sheepish, smile cross her lips. "Don't we?"

  Dar traced a random pattern on her desk surface with her finger. "I'd like to agree with you." She finally said, in a quiet voice. "Except that I'm finding it hard to forget what you were being distracted by the most."

  Mm. Kerry nibbled the inside of her lip. "Well."

  Dar's cell phone rang. She picked it up and opened it. "Yeah?"

  "Did you do that? You stopped it? What was it? Where is it? What'd you do?" Mark's words spilled out so fast and so loud Dar almost dropped her phone. "C'mon, Boss! Don't tell me it just stopped, please?"

  Without answering, Dar just handed the phone over to Kerry. "Have him find whatever it is, and secure it. We'll do an analysis tomorrow."

  Kerry took the phone as she watched Dar get up and wander out of the study into the living room. "Hi, Mark." She finally sighed. "I...um...found the problem. It's in the number ten switch, blade six, port thirty."

  Rattling keys. "It's disabled!"

  "Well, yes."

  "That's the big conference room. I'll get some techs down there. What ya think--the projector system go nuts again?" Mark's voice sounded utterly relieved. "Son of a hoota...that scared the crap out of me. I thought we were getting slammed."

  "We were." Kerry hardly knew how to feel inside. "I think we might have gotten something planted on us during that meeting we had here in the blackout. Remember?"

  Silence. "Oh, man!" Mark nearly howled. "I had that on my schedule. I had a damn sticky note here to check... oh, crap. Crap. I'll go check it myself. Crap. Sorry, Kerry."

  "S'allright."

  "Call you right back." Mark hung up the line, still obviously very upset.

  Kerry folded the phone shut and sat there for a moment. She heard a sound and looked up to see Dar standing in the doorway, leaning against one edge of it in almost the same pose she'd seen her in the very first time they'd met. "Did you ever think we'd come to a point where we both needed to quit?" She asked.

  Dar pushed off the door jam and came over, flopping down in the couch and patting the seat next to her. Kerry got up and settled onto the cool leather, hitching one leg up over Dar's left knee. "You thought it was your fault, I thought it was my fault, Mark thinks it's his fault? The hell with it, Dar. Let's just all go open a taco stand down on Card Sound road."

  "You like tacos?"

  Kerry leaned against her partner. "Not particularly. I like fajitas better but a taco stand sounded easier and more fun."

  "Would we have to get a Chihuahua?"

  "No, but Chino would have to wear a hat." Kerry appreciated the quiet humor very much. She was upset at herself, but like Dar she was finding it very hard to regret her choices and so indulging in their light banter at least distracted her mind. "You think she'd like wearing a hat?"

  "Sure." Dar leaned closer and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "Don't beat yourself up, Ker."

  Kerry sighed.

  "Did I ever tell you about how I found out about the outage the night you ended up coming over and helping me fix it?"

  More banter. Kerry gave in and snuggled up. "The night we kissed?"

  "Uh huh."

  "Mm...only thing I remember about that whole thing is opening the door, seeing you in your pajamas, and forgetting what my name was."

  Dar chuckled softly. "Well, the ops center called me, and told me the whole damn network was down. You know what I said to them?"

  "What?"

  "No problem, guys. Just go on home."

  "Oh, you did not." Kerry started laughing, despite herself. "C'mon, Dar. I know you're trying to make me feel better, but really." />
  "Really." Dar went nose to nose with her. "I told them to go home, no sense in them sticking around if everything was down, right? Made sense to me at the time."

  "Really?"Kerry tried to imagine that, and just started laughing again. "Oh my god."

  Dar gave her a hug. "Let's wait to see what Mark finds, and instead of beating ourselves up, figure out how we're gonna get even."

  Would they? Kerry wondered seriously if they should. Oh well.

  Tomorrow would be yet another day.

  "HEY UGLY!"

  Andrew looked up from the crate he was methodically ripping apart; correctly assuming the voice was addressing him. "Yeap?"

  The supervisor hurried over to him. "Hey listen...remember that thing you told me about those invoices? You got any more tricks like that?"

  Andrew leaned on his crate and considered the man, eyeing him with shrewd thoughtfulness. "Maybe. You got something better for me to do than mess with these here boxes?"

  The man chewed his lip. "Well, I could...I'd hate to lose you out here because you're the only guy I got who doesn't bitch all the time, but I could do like a half day here, and half day in the office, how about that?"

  "They got coffee inside there?"

  The man chuckled. "Sure."

  "All right." Andy nodded. "Saw them big trucks coming in this morning."

  "No kidding. All that damn high tech crap with ten thousand little pieces and no manifest. C'mon." The supervisor motioned him to follow. "Let's see what we can do so it doesn't become a cluster."

  Andrew followed him willingly, leaving behind his crate full of bolts and nuts and emerging from the dockside warehouse into the sun. It was early yet on Wednesday morning, but he was glad to get out of the noisy, chaotic building with an opportunity to do something more interesting.

  Not that he'd never unpacked boxes. He'd unpacked more boxes than Dar had brain cells, but the action had limited opportunity for mental exercise though it did provide plenty of physical work.

  They went into the trailer being used as an office. It was small and only barely cooled by an overworked wall air conditioner, and the four men sitting at old, scarred wood desks inside it were sweating as they worked.