Winds of Change Book Two

by Melissa Good

  “Wow,” Kerry said. “Is he going to sue Kristie’s father now?”

  “I’m thinking he’s gonna be evicted himself,” Charles said. “But I heard Big Jim say he was going to come talk to you ladies so I thought I should let you know that.” He paused, looking a touch uncomfortable. “He’s an old fashioned kind of guy.”

  “Here we go again,” Kerry said. “You know, it’s not against the law to be homosexual.”

  Dar cleared her throat. “Not so much with our variety, no. But I think sodomy is still illegal in Broward County.”

  Kerry covered her eyes and the two guards blushed in embarrassment.

  “Anyway, he can come talk to us all he wants. But this place is paid off and we own it. There’s not a damn thing he can do about it,” Dar said. “Thanks for the heads up though, guys. We appreciate it.”

  The guards finished their cider and got up. “You ladies have a nice night,” Charles said. “And keep out of trouble.”

  Kerry saw them to the door then returned, dropping onto the couch with a frown. “I’m not sure I liked that conversation.”

  “He can’t do anything to us.”

  “No, I don’t think so either, but it’s just not cool, Dar.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s not even cool that he’d try it with that butt load. Guy has a right to live where he wants to live. Most he should do is file charges for him grabbing Kristie.”

  “You’re defending him?”

  “I’m saying he needs to be dealt with via the legal system. Kicking him off the island for what he did is the same as kicking us off for being gay,” Dar said. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t cheer if he got tossed into Government Cut.”

  Kerry sighed. “Yeah.”

  “Let’s wait to see what he says to us,” Dar said. “I can hold my own in any verbal ass kicking contest.”

  That brought a smile to Kerry’s face. “And most other kinds.” She got up and collected the cider cups. “I’m going to get in the hot tub. Interested?”

  Dar got up and flipped off the monitor, leaving it behind without a second glance. “Go baby go.”

  THE COCONUT GROVE convention center was small but stylish and Kerry liked it a lot more than the Miami Beach facility, which was huge and echoing and gritty. She picked up a cup of hot tea at the café and wandered over to the presentation area where Dar was getting ready to speak.

  It was all small companies. No one probably knew who they were. Kerry liked the idea of that and exchanged smiles with another woman about her age in a business suit nearby.

  There were a lot of booths set up representing a lot of small companies. Kerry had already earmarked three or four she wanted to talk to and she was planning a route through the hall after she listened to Dar’s presentation.

  Quite a few people were gathering and Kerry imagined she felt Dar’s nervousness building up, seeing the restless motion of her tall frame up behind the podium.

  Dar wasn’t fond of public speaking. Kerry actually didn’t mind it and of the two of them, she was the more skilled. They both knew that. But Dar volunteered for the event and if there was one thing that overwhelmed any nerves, it was her standing tall in defense of her own ego.

  Kind of adorable, actually. Kerry gave her a thumbs up and saw the rakish, wry grin that told her Dar knew perfectly well what she was thinking. Adorable, because Dar was.

  They were both dressed relatively casually. Slacks and collared shirts. In Dar’s case an embroidered vest and in Kerry’s a long sleeved sweater she had draped around her shoulders at the moment.

  The morning was half over and they’d just come out of the keynote speech. Kerry was of the opinion that Dar would have done a far better job at it, but she’d clapped with the rest as the owner of the local television station went on about innovation and the American dream.

  Now the crowd was settling down and Kerry carried her cup of juice into the auditorium, taking a seat in the back row, which was a little elevated, and gave her a view of her partner. Dar had stepped up to the podium and was standing there quietly, waiting for everyone to focus on her.

  Just as they did Kerry’s Handspring started to buzz. She quickly removed it and got up, ducking out of the room to answer it. “Hey, Maria.”

  “Ah, Kerrisita.” Maria’s voice came over the wire. “I am so sorry to disturb you at your meeting but there is a person here who is insisting on speaking with you. It is a customer. Mayte has told me she thinks they are interested in doing a program.”

  “Sure, put them on.” Kerry positioned herself in the doorway so she could keep an eye on Dar, finding another smile appearing as Dar’s rich and slightly melodic voice emerged from the microphone. “I didn’t think information technology was that sort of spur of the moment on

  demand thing, but you never know.”

  “Si, you never do know,” Maria said. “Please wait one moment.”

  Kerry watched Dar put her hands on the podium. She knew how much self control it took for her to leave them there and not fidget with them. Dar did that when she was nervous. She would flex her hands and crack her knuckles, stick her mitts in her pockets and tap her thumbs on any flat surface.

  She gave Dar a thumbs up for her discipline and got a smile back in return, along with the slightest cock of the head that made her realize Dar was wondering what she was doing on the phone.

  Ah well. “Yes, this is Kerry,” she said into the phone as a voice came on. “Sorry, it’s a little loud here. I’m at the small business conf— what?”

  “Yes, hello? Kerry? Did you hear me?” the voice said. “This is Evelyn Chambers, from Dade County public schools?”

  Kerry paused and frowned, then shook her head a little. “Yes...um...oh, right,” she said. “We met at the gym a while back.”

  “Right. My sister’s son works for you there. He was talking about your company. We want to hire you. I mean the school system does. We were given a lot of money to upgrade all the computers and we can’t think of a better person to do it than you.”

  Kerry pulled the Handspring away from her face and stared at it. Then she put it back to her ear. “Okay, Evelyn—sure. I’d be glad to talk to you about that...but you know we’re not hardware vendors.”

  “But your new company is about computers, right?”

  “Well, sure. All the things we do generally involve computers but we don’t...I mean, let’s talk about it,” Kerry said. “I’ll be in the office tomorrow morning and we can sit down and look at what you need, okay?”

  “Could it be early?” Evelyn said. “We’ve got a meeting about the budget at nine. Can I see you before then? I want to have you ladies do this because I am so freaking tired of the men in the office telling me only guys can buy computers. They are driving me out of my cotton picking mind!”

  Ah. The light bulb went off over Kerry’s head with an almost audible bing. “Gotcha. No problem, Evelyn, I’d be glad to meet you at seven or eight. Or if you want, we’ll be back in the office this afternoon after Dar’s speech so—”

  “Oh perfect! I’ll go get some lunch and come back.” Evelyn sounded utterly relieved. “See you in a little while, Kerry! Thanks!”

  “Uh...no problem. Bye.” Kerry removed the Handspring from her ear and peered at it then put it back in her pocket. She started back into the auditorium only to halt when she spotted Peter and Mark entering the building from the other direction and looking around.

  “Oh, bet that’s not good.” Kerry backpedaled and waved. Sure enough the two men looked relieved on seeing her and headed in her direction. “Poor, Dar.”

  MARK STEERED THEM all over to the snack area where there were high top tables he put his laptop down on. “Pete, you want to start?”

  “Not really.” Peter looked glum. “Mark said I should come over if they booted me, and they did. There was some big huge blow up again today and that big jerk came in and told me to clear out.”

  “No problem, Peter,” Kerry said. “We said we’d take care o
f you and we will.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” He looked a little more confident. “My wife about gave birth prematurely when I told her. She gave up her job when she got pregnant and this whole thing’s been near killing her.” He stuck his hands in his pockets. “I don’t even know what I did to tip the scales. I didn’t make any changes, you know? I just gave them the configs and said what I thought we should do.”

  “The man you worked for is an absolute moron,” Kerry said. “They had one chance to turn it around. Dar even told the board of directors’ new head what to do. I guess they didn’t do it.”

  Peter’s ears visibly perked. “Whoa, maybe there was something going on with that because David was totally torked off. He said something like if they think they can just throw us out they’re mistaken, or something like that.”

  “Hm.” Kerry glanced up as she sensed Dar’s presence, to find her emerging from the room, heading their way. “Save the story for Dar,” she said. “Let me get her some milk. Looks like she’s going to need it.”

  “I could get a complex.” Dar looked from Mark to Peter. “What’s going on?” She glanced behind her. “I have to go back to finish a question and answer session.”

  “Pete got booted, boss,” Mark said. “You put a cat in the chicken coop? Sounds like they freaked out this morning.”

  Dar cleared her throat. “I had a conversation with Jacques Despin,” she said. “He just took over the chairman’s position. Wanted to let me know about that.” She put her hands on the high top as Kerry came back with two large cups. “What happened?”

  “Here.” Kerry handed over the milk.

  Dar’s eyes grew round and alarmed. “How bad is this that you got me a quart of milk?”

  “Well, David was pissed off,” Peter said. “It was like a tomb in there this morning. There were only like five of us there and they threw us all out.”

  Dar put her hands on her hips. “That leaves no one there to run the place.”

  “Except the dorks,” Mark said. “Maybe we’ll be getting a bunch more customers along with more employees.”

  They all looked at each other for a moment, then Kerry sighed.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” Dar took a long swallow of milk. “Let me go do ten minutes of Q and A, then we’ll get back to the office. “Just in case?” “Just in case.”

  Chapter Eleven

  BUT THE AFTERNOON was almost preternaturally quiet. Kerry munched her spicy chicken sandwich at her desk, glancing at her email as she listened to Mayte talking to their phone vendor in the outer office.

  Or really, her own office. Kerry thought about the open spaces they still had, pondering whether or not to move Mayte out and into her own space. She was working on three projects now and it was probably time for her to get her and Dar an actual admin since they’d promoted theirs.

  Mark came in the door with a fistful of papers. “Hey, Kerry. I got Pete through his paperwork. You mind if I make him my assistant?”

  Kerry swallowed hastily and wiped her lips. “Not at all. You’re a director. Make him a manager if you want to. We’ve got more than enough projects to need one.”

  “Yeah, no kidding.” He sat down. “You think they’re doing funky stuff back at the old place? Or maybe they’re just bringing in a whole new crew?”

  “I find it hard to believe that they’d be doing something malicious,” Kerry said. “It’s a business, Mark. They probably promised they’d turn everything around and they wanted to clear out anyone who could tell them any different.”

  Mark nodded. “That’s what I figure, too. Pete was the one who was pushing back on them. He’s pretty sharp. I think he’ll be okay for us.”

  “And now that they’ve done that, I’m fine with putting the word out to anyone who left there to come talk to us,” Kerry said. “We can’t hire everyone, but with these four new contracts, and the Dade County schools thing, we need bodies.”

  “Will do.” He got up and handed over the papers. “Maria said you and the boss are going up to the Hill Wednesday.”

  “We’ve got to demo the database for the feds,” Kerry said. “Not the real thing, a mock up. Politics.”

  “Kinda creepy.”

  “Kinda. But worse comes to worse, Dar will tell them to kiss her ass and we can’t worry about it. With this new business we don’t really need it.” Kerry looked at the folders on her desk. “It’s a lot of prestige, but yeah. Creepy.”

  Mayte poked her head in. “Kerry? There is a reporter here to speak to you? It’s from the paper.”

  “Speaking of creepy,” Kerry muttered. “That didn’t work out so well last time.” She drummed her fingers. “Okay, give me ten minutes to finish this and I’ll see them.”

  Mark made a face and mimed tiptoeing out of the room, almost

  bumping into Dar as she appeared in the doorway between their offices. “Whoops”

  “Got a reporter outside.” Kerry had her head propped against her fist as she chewed.

  “Got CNN on the phone wanting an interview,” Dar responded. “Trade?”

  “Nope.”

  “Wench.”

  DAR HAD HER boots up on her desk, her eyes closed and her hands folded over her stomach. It was dark outside and the building was almost empty. “Ker?”

  Kerry poked her head in from her office. “We got another fifteen minutes to wait for CNN. Want some coffee?”

  “Ungh.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes. Be right back.”

  Dar remained where she was, letting her mind go blank as she waited. The Herald request was innocuous. The small business editor was at the conference and saw her speak, then did a Google search and decided they might make an interesting blurb.

  Kerry had handled it.

  But CNN wanted to know about the government project and that was far more dicey an interview. It involved a film crew and one of the high profile talking heads. She would rather dive into a vat of peanut butter than go through it.

  Dar heard Mayte still rattling around in the outer office and there were creaks and footsteps that indicated to her that others were still hanging around as well. The lure of television cameras and quasi-famous people irresistible.

  Peh.

  Her desk phone rang. She reached over and keyed it, still keeping her eyes closed. “Dar Roberts.”

  “Hello, Dar, Gerry Easton here.”

  “Hey, Gerry,” Dar responded. “We’ll be out there tomorrow night. Got a meeting with Bridges on Wednesday. You free for dinner?”

  “Well, sure. Be happy to and I bet the missus will be happy to also. But that’s not why I’m calling. We got some big problems here, Dar, and I need your help.”

  Dar’s eyes slid open and she regarded the ceiling. “What kind of problems, Gerry? We’re not actually doing anything for you yet.”

  “It’s that other thing.” he said. “The connections.”

  “Ah.” Dar slowly shifted her feet of the desk and sat up. “You mean the stuff ILS is doing for you?”

  “That’s right. It’s all screwed up,” he said. “I know you don’t work for them anymore, Dar, but we’re in a pickle and I mean a real dill pickle, if you catch my drift. Been trying to call them all afternoon, no

  one’s answering the phone.”

  “Oh boy,” Dar muttered.

  “Anything you can do to help us out?” Gerry asked. “I got people chewing me up and down over it. Stuff’s not working. We can’t get reports, they can’t send files. Dar they’re driving me crazy. It’s been off and on, but just around lunchtime it went down the tubes, y’know?”

  Kerry entered with some coffee and spotted Dar’s expression. “What’s up?” she mouthed.

  “Gerry.” Dar mouthed back. “Network problems.”

  “Oh boy.” Kerry put the coffee down on the desk and took a seat on the windowsill.

  “Gerry, I don’t know if there’s anything I can do but let me make some calls,” Dar sad. “All the people I knew t
here are gone.”

  “Eh? What?”

  “Long story,” Dar said. “Let me see what I can do. I’ll call you back.”

  “All right. Anything at all you can come up with, huh, Dar? This is serious.”

  Dar sighed. “I know it is, Gerry. I’ll get back to you. Bye for now.” She hung up and swiveled to look at Kerry. “They must have really screwed it,” she said. “Right around the time Peter showed up here it all went to hell.”

  Kerry folded her arms. “Won’t be long until that hits the news,” she said. “Not necessarily the Pentagon, but everything else.”

  “Surprised it hasn’t already.” Dar got up. “Let me call Jacques. He’s the only one I can think of that might be able to...well, hell. I have no idea what he’s going to do but he should know his customers are calling me.”

  Mayte appeared in the entrance to Dar’s office. “The news people are here,” she said. “Where do you want to speak with them? I think the conference room?”

  Dar and Kerry exchanged glances. “That’ll be fine, Mayte. Let them set up in there. We’ve got to discuss something then we’ll be right down.”

  Mayte nodded and disappeared.

  “I’ll go keep them occupied,” Kerry said. “Are you going to offer to go fix it?”

  Dar shook her head.

  “Hope we can swing that.” Kerry patted her on the arm then headed for the door, shaking her own head as she disappeared.

  “Yeah.” Dar sat down on the edge of her desk and pulled her phone out again, keying through the memory. She found the number she was looking for and hit dial, holding it to her ear as she waited. It rang six times then voice mail picked up. “Great.”

  She waited for it to finish and beep. “Jacques, this is Dar. I just got a

  call from a mutual customer of ours saying his services with you were down and he wasn’t able to get a hold of anyone to talk about it. He’s in a big non-square office building in DC. Just letting you know in case you want to do something about it. Later.”