"I'm on it," Rosie said.
Dar hung up, tapping the cell phone against her chin. Her PDA went off at that moment, almost scaring her out of her wits, and she just barely kept from tossing the cell phone across the room. She pulled the PDA out and examined it.
Sorry, sweetie. I was downstairs on the ship. What's up?
Dar wondered where to start. Is the reporter still with you?A couple things just went down I'd rather not expose to the Herald in this lifetime.
The PDA was briefly silent then flashed. Be right there.
Dar nodded a little, and then opened her cell phone again and dialed. She waited. "Hi. This is Dar Roberts. I need a list of everyone who is logged into the building right now, and everyone who entered and exited within the last twenty five minutes."
THEY PARKED RIGHT in front of the office and walked side by side to the door. They passed together through the electronic portals, getting a nervous nod from the security guard on duty.
"Evening, ma'am's."
"Evening." Dar greeted him briefly for them both. She followed Kerry across the huge lobby to the elevators and they both went inside. "Jesus."
"Not how I wanted the night to end," Kerry confirmed, punching the button for the tenth floor. "But at least you stopped them, Dar."
"By pure god damned luck."
"Honey, whatever works." Kerry sighed. "I'm just glad you were there."
Dar stared morosely at the closed elevator doors until the conveyance stopped, and they were admitted to the tenth floor. She followed Kerry out and to the right, heading for the operations center.
"Just goes to show you how much we need your program." Kerry went on, with a touch of hesitance, "And you."
Dar paused with her hand on the door latch of the ops center, and cocked her head to one side. "You really mean that?"
Kerry looked right back at her. "If you mean personally, I'm going to kick your ass for even asking."
An unexpected smile appeared on Dar's face. "I love it when you talk to me like that." She opened the door and indicated Kerry should precede her, the wide open portal preventing Kerry from framing a suitable answer.
Kerry stuck her tongue out instead, and walked into the room, where the console operator was already standing up to greet them. "Hi, Rosie."
Dar followed her inside, and gave the woman a nod as well. "Got the PC?"
"Right there, ma'am." Rosie pointed toward a worktable on one side of the operations desk. "I went right out and grabbed it after you called me."
Dar walked over to examine their prize. The operator had certainly taken her words literally, and the computer, mouse, keyboard, and assorted cables were neatly wrapped in enough plastic to cover half the room they were presently standing in. Duct tape secured it, and she suspected it would take the sharp end of her Leatherman tool to free the poor captive. "Okay."
"Did you see anyone around there when you were getting it, Rosie?" Kerry asked. "Anyone in the hall or anything like that?"
"No, ma'am." Rosie shook her head. She was twenty-something, a middling height and hair color kind of woman who often reminded Kerry of a cocker spaniel. "There shouldn't be anyone up there this time of night, and it was empty as a graveyard when I was there."
Dar checked her watch, and decided to leave the wrapped PC where it was. She limped over to the big console desk and picked up the phone, dialing Duks' extension. "You there?"
"I am here." Duks answered. "Are you here?"
"Yeah."
"Good. Now that this important piece of business is concluded, would you come to my office?"
"Right." Dar put the phone down. "Ker let me go talk to Louis. I'll be back in a few minutes.?"
Kerry took a breath, then merely folded her arms. "Okay," she agreed. "I'm going to go upstairs and see what I can sniff out."
"Good idea." Dar winked at her, as she made her way to the door and bumped it open with an elbow. She limped out and the door closed behind her, leaving Kerry by herself with the console operator.
"Ms. Stuart?"
"Hmm?" Kerry had wandered over to examine the PC in its wrapping.
"How come Ms. Robert's is limping? Something happen to her?" Rosie asked.
Kerry turned her head to regard the operator, whose round, innocent eyes gazed back at her with a marked lack of guile. "Matter of fact, she got that saving me from a barracuda, Rosie."
If possible, Rosie's eyes became a lot rounder and a lot bigger. "No kidding!?"
"No kidding. "Kerry turned all the way around and faced her. "There we were, in the ocean, right?"
"Right."
Kerry waved her hands, mimicking a swimming motion. "I was swimming with our dog, and we swam under the dock. I felt something brush against me, then all of a sudden Dar jumped in, picked me up out of the way, and kicked a barracuda that was about to bite me right in the mouth!"
"Wow!"
"Yeah, but she got bit for her troubles." Kerry went on blithely, "But it was very brave of her."
"Sure was!" Rosie agreed fervently. "Wow. Were you scared?"
Kerry stuck her hands in her pockets. "Didn't have time to be."
"Wow," Rosie repeated. "That's amazing."
"Dar usually is." Kerry went to the door. "Well, I'm going to go check out our offices. I'll be right back." She left the Ops center and closed the door, pausing outside to grin and grunt contentedly. "If you don't like the rumors about you, my father always said, start some you do like."
She walked down the hall toward the stairwell. "Bet you never thought you'd ever use any of his advice willingly, huh, Ker?" With a slight shake of her head, she pushed the door into the stairwell open and started up the four flights to their offices.
DAR ENTERED DUKS' outer office, crossing the soft carpet and opening the inner door to an office that pretty much mirrored hers. "Evening."
Duks was behind his desk, leaning back with folded arms. He watched Dar as she took a seat opposite him. "How is your fish bite?"
"Eh."
"I see that you are favoring it."
"Hurts like hell," Dar allowed. "I went and got an antibiotic shot, but I've been running around on it all night."
"And I have made it worse." Duks said.
Dar shrugged.
"We have narrowed this down to four possibilities, Dar." Duks dispensed with the chit chat. "Tomorrow, I will call all of them into this office, and we will find out which one it is."
Dar cocked her head to one side. "You mean none of the four were here when it happened?"
"No. The job was set to run at this time," he said. "I am thinking someone imagined no one would be here to see it and remark on it." He laced his big fingers together and studied them. "It is hard to believe from any of these people. They have worked for me for many years."
Dar knew what he meant. You liked to trust the people who worked for you, but she'd found out the hard way over the years that loyalty really didn't generally exist. "That's rough," she said. "You sure it's one of them?"
He shrugged. "They are the only ones who know this login. It is the one we use to enable the reports to select from all four databases."
Hmm. "Logins and passwords can be obtained," Dar reminded him.
"Dar, what can I say to that? Perhaps it was me, then!" He stood up and paced behind his desk. "Is it not bad enough I have to find one of my most trusted staff is possibly a thief?"
"Hey." Dar held up a hand. "I'm just bringing it up, because it's true," she said. "How many times have we been in Mari's office because one person gave someone else their password?"
Duks dropped into his seat with a disgusted sigh. Then he looked at Dar squarely. "And what of you? Have you done so, my friend?"
Dar didn't even hesitate. "Kerry has all my logins, and I have hers," she replied easily. "Take it easy, Louis. Wait until you talk to these guys, and go with your gut."
"Thank you, Dr. Ruth." Duks gave her a droll look. "It's just infuriating."
Yes, it was, Dar silently
agreed. "Least we stopped it." She fell back on Kerry's conclusion. "I'm not really--" She stopped, as a far off yell penetrated the walls of the office. "Shit." Dar bolted from her seat and headed for the door at a dead run, no trace of a limp remaining.
Caught in shock for a brief moment, Duks closed his jaw on an exclamation and got up to run after her.
Chapter Thirteen
DAR TORE THROUGH the empty hallways, circling the fourteenth floor around the central elevator stack. She could hear scuffling ahead of her and she sped up, hurtling around the last corner into the corridor that held her office.
Ahead of her, in the semi darkness, she could see two figures wrestling, only one of which was familiar. "Kerry!" She let out a yell.
"Son of a bitch!" Kerry barked back. "Get this piece...ow!"
Dar reached the fight and didn't even slow down. She plowed right into both struggling figures, gently shoving Kerry back out of the way toward one wall as she took the person she was fighting with up against the other one.
"Let go of me!" The stranger yelped. "Hey!"
"Go to hell!" Dar said. "You're lucky I don't open the window and toss your ass out."
"Oh yeah, I'm scared."
The two were evenly matched in size, but Dar pinned Kerry's adversary against the paneling, resisting the urge to shake the woman like a terrier with a rat. "Hold still or I'll break your damn arm." She growled. "Ker, you okay?"
"Yeah." Kerry closed in behind her and put a hand on Dar's back. "I found this little creep in your office."
"My office?" Dar pressed harder. "Get the lights on."
"Dar, they're controlled by computer." Kerry reminded her.
"You're an IT professional." Dar gritted her teeth. "So go hack them."
"Yeesh. Okay." Kerry ducked into Dar's office, disappearing from view.
Her captive began to struggle, attempting to throw Dar off her. "Let me go, or you'll be sorry!"
Dar wasn't sure what was more painful, the cliché or the ache in her foot. The woman got an arm free and swatted at her. Dar blocked the blow with her forearm, then she grabbed hold of the other woman's shirt and swung around, slamming her opponent against the opposite wall.
"Bitch! You're so going to regret this!" The woman growled, grappling with Dar and trying to kick her.
"Not as much as you're going to regret this, or I'm going to enjoy it." Dar wrenched her arm free and took a step back, setting herself before she let loose with a right cross. It smacked into the woman's jaw, bouncing her head against the wall and knocking her out.
Dar simply released her and allowed her to slide down the wall to the ground. She shook her hand and flexed the fingers, silence once again settling over the darkened hall. "Ker?" She called out, wanting very badly to have the lights come on so she could see if she knew the woman.
"Hang on." Kerry's voice drifted in from her office. "I hacked into the wrong subroutine. Give me a minute."
"Hmm." Dar glanced around. "What'd you hit, the music system?"
"Plumbing."
Dar winced. "Oh boy." She leaned against the opposite wall as Duks appeared from the darkness to stand next to her. "It's gonna be a long night."
"Ah." Kerry rattled a few more keystrokes in, and was rewarded by a flood of light that made her wince. She straightened up from Maria's desk and stepped around it, heading for the door to the hallway. Rounding it, she hastened to Dar's side and they stood together looking down at the intruder.
It was a woman, tall with a lithe build and short cropped dark hair, dressed in a non-descript Dickeys shirt and trousers with well worn work shoes.
"Know her?" Dar asked.
"Um...no," she replied. "She's not the usual night gal on this floor."
"Considering the night gal is a night guy, no," Dar agreed. "I don't recognize her either."
"Hmm." Kerry rubbed her jaw. "That's a cleaning staff uniform."
"Uh huh," Dar agreed. "Please don't tell me she was cleaning my office."
Kerry snorted. "Maybe, if she was cleaning your desk drawers from the inside with a flashlight." She looked around. "Where did Duks go?"
"Calling the cleaning supervisor," Dar said. "They've got some explaining to do."
They certainly did. Kerry folded her arms over her chest. "What do we do with her? She's going to come around any minute Dar."
"Call security, I guess. I don't want to tie her up, but we don't know what she's going to do when she comes around, either." She leaned against the wall with one hand, pondering their options. "You okay?" she asked suddenly, looking at Kerry in some concern.
"More or less," Kerry murmured. "You want to duct tape her?"
Dar grimaced. "I'm probably bucking a lawsuit as it is for clocking the little bastard. I'd rather not have cruel and unusual punishment added to it."
"Huh?"
"You ever had to remove duct tape from any part of your body?"
"No." Kerry shook her head, then paused. "Have you?"
"Yes."
"Hmm. How about we lock her in the cleaning closet?" Kerry suggested. "Seems appropriate, and it's close by." She pointed to one in a series of identical doorways. "I don't really want to wrestle any more tonight. I think I pulled something in my back."
"Huh." Dar tried the door and found it open. She pushed it inward, and flipped the lights on, finding nothing more exotic than a mop bucket and a stack of cleaning cloths. There was room in the closet for a cleaning cart, but the cart was missing, presumably elsewhere in the building. "Good idea. Give me a hand."
They dragged the woman's limp body into the closet, laying her down on the tile floor and backing out, pulling the door shut behind them. Dar fished in her pocket and retrieved her keyset, trying the master key on the door and grunting when it turned to a locked position with a satisfying snick. "There."
"Ugh." Kerry leaned against the wall, wincing as she stretched out her lower back muscles.
"Is that the less part of the more?" Dar limped over to her. "You scared me half to death."
Kerry shifted and leaned against Dar instead. "My knight in shining armor," she said. "Boy was I glad to hear you calling my name. I grabbed her and she got away from me."
"Ah."
"I ran after her and got the back of her shirt, and next thing I knew, I felt like I was in a wrestling exhibition."
Duks emerged from a side hallway and walked toward them. "Ah." He looked around. "Did our little friend escape?"
"We put her in the closet." Kerry pointed. "Is the supervisor coming up?"
"He is, indeed," Duks reported. "Especially since he informed me that there should be no person on this floor at this time. I have been told they start cleaning on this floor and work downwards."
Dar nodded. "Makes sense, since I usually see them before I leave."
"Yeah," Kerry agreed.
A hammering from behind the closet door startled all of them. "Let me outta here!" A voice emerged, outraged. "You little bastards! You can't do this to me!"
"Shut up," Duks hammered back. "Or we shall leave you and go get ourselves a beer."
"Count me in," Kerry added. "I was in the copy room when I heard a noise coming from your office. I went in, and there she was, rooting through everything. Who in the hell is this, Dar?"
Dar exchanged glances with Duks. "Should we call the cops?"
Duks pondered this. "Let us wait to see what the cleaning supervisor has to say. He said he...ah." Duks nodded, and looked past them. "Here he is now."
They all turned as a tall, slim man with salt and pepper hair joined them. "Ma'ams, sir," the newcomer said. "I do not understand what is going on here. I signed off on this floor two hours ago."
The hammering started on the inside of the door again. "Bastards!"
The cleaning supervisor started, and took a step back away from the door. "What is this in my closet?"
"Someone in one of your uniforms," Dar informed him. "A woman."
"I have no women on staff this evening." The
supervisor protested. "Certainly, I do not keep them on this late. It is not safe. I take care of my girls. They go home no later than eight p.m." He pointed down the hallway, where a cleaning cart, being pushed by an older man was approaching. "See? There is Carlos. He is my man here tonight."
Carlos spotted all of them outside the cleaning closet and stopped, looking puzzled. "Senor?" he asked hesitantly. "Hay un problemo?"
Duks stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. "I think perhaps we need to call the police then," he admitted. "If this person is not part of your staff, then it is an intruder, and the authorities must be notified."
"You don't want to do that!" The woman's voice inside the closet was muffled. "I'm warning you!"
Kerry put a hand on Dar's arm. "Maybe we should talk to her," she suggested. "The way she's acting is very strange, Dar. I'd expect someone to either be scared poopless, or else be asking for a lawyer."
Dar considered the thought, and had to concede she had a point. The woman's actions had been strange, and maybe there was something to be learned from her. "Okay." She addressed the cleaning supervisor, "I'm going to assume this person just stole one of your uniforms, and maybe someone's ID. I'll find out, and let you know."
The man nodded. "It is good." He motioned Carlos to move the cart in the other direction. "Vamanos."
"Senor?" The older man was confused. "Como?"
The supervisor took him by the arm and led him off, leaving Duks, Dar and Kerry in the hallway facing the closet door. "Well?" Dar held her key up. "Do we?"
Duks shrugged his broad shoulders.
"Ker?"
Kerry also shrugged, lifting her hands slightly.
"Hey, you in there." Dar banged on the door. "If I open this, so we can talk, you cool it or you're gonna hit the dirt again, got me?"
"Ah." Duks exhaled gently. "That is the Dar I know."
"You better open this door! Don't worry, I'll talk. I'm not into physical abuse like you are."
Dar shook her head and stuck the key in the lock, turning it and shoving the door open. She spread her arms out and flexed her knees a little, wondering if their erstwhile captive was going to come out swinging.
Stormy Waters: Book 10 in The Dar & Kerry Series Page 36
