by Melissa Good
Slowly, faces creased into smiles.
“Don’t work from home, though,” Dar said, after a pause. “One, we don’t want the code out of the building, and two....” She felt her lips twitch. “You should have a life outside work.”
Stan leaned back in his chair with a satisfied expression. “And if we like being early birds?”
“Have at it,” Dar said. “I am.”
“Good,” he said. “So lemme ask you. All this about security and all that. Who’s the customer? For this project, I mean?”
“Department of Defense,” Dar said in a mild tone. “You probably guessed that from the security clearance requirement.”
“Wow,” Celeste murmured.
“But we have other customers that are a lot more mundane,” Dar said. “So don’t worry about it.”
She waited for more comments, but there were none. “So, here’s how it’s going to work. We’ll start on the database. The raw code is already in the repository, and I’ll be posting a structure plan there on what needs to be coded to work. Everyone will check out an assigned section, code it, then check it back in.”
She studied the group. “Any questions about that?” She paused and then went to the white board, picking up a marker. “Let’s go over the basic data structure so you’ll have an idea of what we’re aiming at.”
KERRY RELAXED IN the outdoor chair, one of several they’d bought and put into the central garden area. She kept one eye on Mocha’s scampering while she waited for Dar to arrive, enjoying the sunlight as it counteracted the cool breeze.
A lot nicer than going down to the cafeteria. It felt like she was taking time out in the middle of the day, and the outdoor space felt relaxed and private. She did suspect it would lose some of its appeal once the weather turned hot.
But for now it was lovely. She let her hand rest on her denim clad knee and took a deep breath, exhaling as she heard a set of distinctive footsteps heading toward her from the back alley. She tilted her head and looked, spotting Dar strolling across the grass with Chino in tow.
Mocha spotted them and raced over, yapping excitedly as he reached Dar and went in circles for a minute, then fell down.
Kerry chuckled as she watched Dar carefully step over Mocha, her hands full of paper bags that held their lunch. “Hey, hon.”
“Hi.” Dar put the bags down on the stone table nearby and took the seat next to Kerry. “How’d your meeting go?”
“Pretty good,” Kerry said. “I think I want to interview a few more companies, though, before doing a contract. This guy talked a good game, but there were a couple things he said that made me wonder.” She folded her hands over her stomach. “I have two people from county government coming over this afternoon about a traffic light synchronization program. Can we do that?”
“Sure.” Dar fished around in the bags and pulled out a sandwich, handing it over. “But are you telling me those lights I always suspected were completely roll of the dice random really were?”
“Apparently.”
“Nice.” Dar removed her own sandwich and sat back, extending her legs and crossing them at the ankles. “Mark tells me we need to get a few help desk people on board already,” she said. “So I have the HR team looking for them. I figure we can put them in that small office next to the server room.”
“Did his new assistant start?”
“Yeah,” Dar said. “I saw him running cables in the programmer’s cave. Nerdy little guy.”
“Oh, he’ll be out of place here.” Kerry took a bite of her curry chicken salad and enjoyed the crisp bite of granny smith apple in it. “How’s your skateboarder doing? I saw him bringing in his iguana this morning.”
“He’s doing all right,” Dar said. “This is his first job. He’s never had to code on a schedule before. I’ve got him doing small code sections and then running tests on them.”
“And he’s writing a game?” Kerry seemed bemused at this.
Dar waggled her hand. “It’s more of a gaming system,” she said. “It’s a framework you can use to underlay different kinds of games. Once he’s got to a certain point, I’ll write a controller console for it and we’ll see if we can get some game people on board to market it.”
Kerry chewed thoughtfully. “That wasn’t something I saw us branching out to,” she admitted. “I never even saw you play a video game.”
Dar’s face creased into a brief grin. “I did in my younger years. Just ask Mark.” She offered a bit of her sandwich to Chino and immediately got a very attentive puppy clawing at her kneecap. “I’m not sure we want to go into the games themselves, but the system could be interesting.”
“Okay, so. I got an email earlier from the local small business group. They’ve got a convention next week. They know it’s short notice but were wondering if we want to participate? I guess someone gave them our names,” Kerry said. “I’ve got the booth prices on my desk, they’re not bad.”
Dar looked thoughtful. “We ready to go public like that?” she asked. “I wouldn’t mind going, but I don’t know that I want to put a booth up.”
“Really?”
She shook her head. “Booth makes you one of many,” she said. “Give them a call, see if they’ve got any panels or talking opportunities. Look for a place where we can stand out and shine.”
Kerry stopped chewing and regarded her. She swallowed and washed down her mouthful with a sip of the bottled tea Dar had brought her. “Y’know, you still manage to surprise me sometimes,” she said, seeing the wry twinkle in Dar’s eyes. “This is going to sound ridiculous, but sometimes I forget who I’m married to.”
Dar chuckled. “That’s because you’re used to me sending a gopher to torment you and singing in your ear.” She looked pleased with the compliment anyway. “All jokes aside, if you get me an opportunity to do a keynote or something like that, it would work better for us.”
“Absolutely, maestro,” Kerry said. “I’ll give them a call when I go back inside.” She succumbed to the entreating green eyes at her knee and fished out a piece of chicken. “Only a little bit, you monster.” She offered the piece to Mocha, who nibbled it.
They ate together in companionable silence for a few minutes. Then Dar got up and balled up her wrappings, putting them in the bag she’d brought. “I’ll be upstairs building my presentations for Wednesday.” She moved behind Kerry and leaned over, kissing the top of her head. “Later.”
“Later.” Kerry smiled, reaching behind her to pat Dar’s leg as she moved off. She slowly finished her sandwich, sharing bits of it with her two attentive friends as she listened to the snatches of salsa music coming out of the windows.
That lasted all of five minutes, then another pair of footsteps approached her little haven and she looked up to see their landlord coming at her at a trot. “Hey, there.”
“Hey there!” Marcus sat down in the seat Dar had so recently abandoned. “So, you asked me about the homeless guys around here, right?”
“Right.”
“Are you having a lot of problems with them?” Marcus asked. “I know the cafe said they were causing some issues around here.”
Kerry sipped her tea, watching his face. “To us? Well, it’s just that they were fighting with the maintenance men and then with each other. I don’t want the people who work for us to be nervous going in and out of the building. Especially in the evenings.”
Marcus was already nodding. “I know.” He looked uncomfortable. “It’s just hard, if you know what I mean. I don’t want to get a rep that I’m against vets, or anything.”
“No one does,” Kerry said. “Dar’s from a military family. I’m just not sure what the deal is. People are having to deal with them being rude and yelling and all that. Even the cafe gals are nervous about walking to their cars at night. I’m not against vets. I’m just for civil behavior.”
Marcus sighed. “See, those guys, there’s like, six or eight of them, right? They grew up in the neighborhood and most of them went off i
nto the service together. They were in my brother’s high school class, in fact. So everyone around here knows them.”
Kerry continued to sip her tea. “And? Does that give them a free pass to harass people?”
“Well.” Marcus glanced around and then back at her. “Yeah, actually. People are sort of...they feel bad and they’re sort of embarrassed, because their families kinda moved off when they went into the Army and left them no place to go.”
Kerry blinked. “What?”
Marcus nodded. “It wasn’t like a planned thing,” he said. “I mean, it’s not like they moved away and didn’t tell them, but there were some houses and the shopping center bought them up, you know? The families all moved upstate.”
“And they didn’t want to go with them when they came back?” Kerry stared at him. “So they just stay here on the streets?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Scott, that’s the guy in the wheelchair, says this is his home. He’s not going up to Melbourne. He hates it there. That’s where the family moved to. His buddies call him Wheels. I think he kinda hates it.”
Kerry was still a little stunned. “Yeah, I can see that. Like if they were calling him Stumpy or something. So isn’t there something that can be done for them? The military can’t do anything?”
Marcus shrugged. “I have no idea. Not my area of expertise. I think he likes living on the street, to be honest. He said he tried programs and things like that, but everyone there told him what to do and he doesn’t want anyone to tell him what to do. He gets a check from the government and all that.”
She remembered something Andrew had once told her, way back when, at the very beginning of their relationship and she nodded thoughtfully. “Well, so what are we supposed to do then? We tried talking to them. Told them to stay clear of the building.”
Marcus’s eyes widened. “You did?”
Kerry nodded. “I don’t want to call the cops on them. I just don’t want our staff to be uncomfortable leaving at night. I’ve got some younger women working for me that I don’t want hassled.”
Marcus looked thoughtful. “Let me talk to them. See what I can do. They don’t usually listen to me, though, they think I’m a punk.”
Kerry folded up her wrappings and put them in the bag Dar had left. “Marcus,” she said. “Just between you and me? Try to get them to see reason. Dar’s father is on a trip right now, but when he comes back, if they’re still causing a problem he’ll make them wish they hadn’t.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll try. Gotta keep my clients happy.” He got up. “Wish me luck.”
Kerry waved as he trudged off, looking apprehensive. “Good luck.”
DAR ADJUSTED A frame on the screen, studied the result, then shifted it a bit with her mouse. She compiled and ran the little script she’d just finished and observed the motion on the monitor, nodding after a minute in satisfaction and saving the presentation.
It was dark outside and quiet in the office. She heard the soft rattling of Kerry’s typing next door, and near the window curled up in the big dog bed, Chino was in a Labrador dream, paws twitching and faint grunting whines coming from her chest while Mocha was sprawled across her legs in blissful abandon.
The music system in the corner was playing a soft tune and she absently started singing along to it as she transferred the presentation from her desktop system to her laptop, starting the program up to make sure it would run correctly on the new machine.
While it was moving through its assembled bits, she took out the hard copy of her proposal and thumbed through it, scanning over the pages to make sure she didn’t misspell anything and that the sections were in the right places. With a nod of approval she closed the folder and put it in her backpack.
She heard the faint sound of the zipper on Kerry’s soft sided briefcase, shut down the laptop and got ready to leave.
Outside she heard the wind in the trees, and now that the building was empty there were shifts and creaks in the walls and floors that belied the age of the building. She glanced out the window and saw the branches bending, indicating the storm that the weather channel predicted had, in fact, arrived.
“Glad we brought our jackets,” Kerry said, shrugging into hers as she came to stand in the doorway between their offices. “Nasty out there.”
“So I see.” Dar slid her laptop into the backpack. “Oh well. Even Miami has to have winter storms sometimes.” She got into her own jacket and shouldered the pack. “Let’s go home.”
They got the dog leashes arranged and walked down the steps, snapping off lights as they went. Kerry walked over and armed the building alarm, giving a nod as she keyed it.
Dar opened the front door, hearing the long beep as they went through and she locked it behind them. “You think we’ll be twenty-four-seven at some point, Ker?”
“Depends,” Kerry answered as they walked down the path to the parking lot. “Do we in source a NOC and support desk, or outsource it? How many accounts do we need to make it economical to keep it in house? I know you don’t like outsourcing.”
“Never did,” Dar said. “No one cares as much about your business as you do.”
“And yet we were the outsource for so many support areas.”
Dar smiled. “I was arrogant enough to tell customers that we did care more about their business than they did. And in some cases, that was true.”
“We were different.”
“That’s what I told myself,” Dar said. “And you know, if you’re not a technology company, there’s a point to paying a technology company to do your technology for you.”
“True.” Kerry opened the back door to her car and put her case inside. “But we are a technology company so...c’mon, Chi, up you go.”
“So it probably behooves us to watch our own stuff,” Dar said, sliding into the passenger seat and setting Mocha on her lap. “But not just yet. Let’s wait ‘til we deliver some product first.” She settled back and glanced out the front windshield of the Lexus. “Ah.”
Kerry closed her door and looked up, following Dar’s gaze. “Ah,” she echoed. A group of figures were huddled near the street lamp. “Well at least they aren’t fighting.” She started the engine and flicked the lights on. “Nasty night to be out, huh?”
“Mm.” Dar studied the ragged looking group. Two of them turned and looked at the car, then turned back around and put their back to the light. After a moment they all turned and walked down the path between their building and the next, quickly disappearing past the hedges. “Did you tell me you saw a break in the leaves around back there?”
Kerry nodded, resting her hands on the steering wheel. “You think they’re hiding in the trees back by that other building?”
“Maybe,” Dar said. “There’s enough space there for a shelter, sort of.”
Kerry drummed her fingers. “What do we do about that?”
“They’re not hurting anything being back there, are they?” Dar asked as Kerry shifted the SUV into gear.
“Maybe we can talk to our security vendor about it once we have one,” Kerry said. “Changing your mind about having guards in the building?”
“Mm.” Dar propped her elbow against the window and resting her head against her fist. “I don’t know, Ker. I can secure the data, that’s not a problem.”
Kerry left off the questioning and concentrated on driving instead. She wasn’t in the mood to start a disagreement with Dar, and she sensed they were on sort of different sides on the question. “We’ll work it out,” she said after a brief silence.
“I’m sure we will.” Dar wriggled into a more comfortable position. “Feel like Italian tonight?”
Did she? Kerry pondered the idea as she headed east along the causeway toward the ferry base. “Yeah,” she said. “Seafood pasta maybe and a salad. It’s kinda late to start cooking.”
“Meatballs,” Dar rumbled, going nose-to-nose with Mocha. “You want meatballs, Mocha?”
“Yap!”
“Growf.” Chi
no poked her head between the seats, as they pulled onto the ferry.
“See what you started?” Kerry put the car in park and relaxed. “Now you have to cough up the meatballs, darling.”
“We can order them some.”
“Spoiled dogs.”
“Along with ice cream for me,” Dar said.
“Spoiled human.”
TWO DAYS LATER Kerry pulled into the parking lot early, after letting Dar off at the airport. She got her laptop case and closed the door behind her, having left the two dogs in the condo since she lacked enough hands to wrangle them without Dar’s help.
It was very quiet. She unlocked the door then slipped quickly inside to turn off the alarm, kicking the front door closed behind her as she went past. The receptionist wasn’t due in for another half hour, and she hesitated, then left the alarm off as she went up the steps to her office.
It felt strange to be in the place all alone. Kerry shrugged off her sometimes admittedly overactive imagination and dropped off her laptop bag, then went to the little kitchen on the second floor to put some water on to heat.
She was aware of the silence around her and wished she’d brought at least Chino along to keep her company. The Labrador wasn’t a watch dog, but she was big and had a loud bark. “Am I getting paranoid?” she asked aloud, putting a teabag in her cup and pouring the hot water over it. “I hope not.”
She carried the cup back to her office and put it down, pausing to start up her PC before she sat. She took a sip of the tea, then paused when she heard the door downstairs open and close.
Her heartbeat picked up. She got up, pulled her cell phone from her pocket and walked to the top of the stairs before calling out. “Hello?”
No answer. Kerry cursed silently at herself for leaving the door open and paused, trying to decide what to do. She retreated back into Mayte’s space and quickly texted Dar a message, then went into her own office, locked the connecting door between her space and Dar’s, and then went back into the outer room and stood in the entrance, giving her a view of the upper corridor and the stairs.
