by Melissa Good
"Yes?" Dar turned her head, her pale eyes safely hidden behind her shades.
"Truce." Shari held up a hand. "I'm over it. If this is going to happen, let's just have it happen and get it over with." She worked at keeping any sarcasm or sting out of her voice.
Dar started the Lexus remaining silent for the length of time it took her to release the parking brake and put the car into gear. The offer of a truce didn't fool her any, she knew all Shari wanted was to avoid any more of her wit until she was far enough away to pitch a grenade at her.
But, Dar believed in taking whatever advantage was offered to her, and having some peace and quiet would definitely be an advantage. "All right," she said. "Truce."
Shari seemed a little surprised, but she shrugged it off and leaned back as they rolled off the ferry.
It remained to be seen, of course, just how long it would last.
Chapter Nine
"SO, WHAT WAS that all about?" Michelle asked, as Kerry rolled the window back up. "Or do you two talk in code regularly just to piss people off?"
Kerry leaned back in her seat, stifling a yawn. "Oh, sure. We talk in code. Sometimes Dar builds a fire on her desk and sends me smoke signals if she's really bored."
Michelle eyed her suspiciously. Kerry had extended her legs and crossed them at the ankles, and she didn't appear to be considering being any more forthcoming than that. Kerry's eyes were hidden behind silver sunglasses and it was very hard for Michelle to tell exactly what it was she was up to.
Maybe she'd be better off not knowing. She decided to return to their prior conversation instead. "So. You didn't put someone inside our company. That what you're saying?"
"Wasn't us." Kerry agreed. "Now. You tell me about anything you might have left behind in our offices after that meeting."
Michelle started the car, her brow furrowed. "Excuse me?"
So. Had Dar been right all along? "We found something inserted into our network after you all left--a piece of spying technology."
"Really?" Michelle sounded fascinated. "What'd it get for-- whoever it was?"
A smile. "Nothing." Kerry chuckled. "Dar found it."
"Wasn't us."
Kerry nodded. "Dar didn't figure it was...said it was too sophisticated." Zing. "But with everything happening all at the same time, it was a tough call."
They followed Dar's Lexus off the ferry and started toward the pier. "Well, after we found out about your little trick with Dar's father, believe me, lots of things occurred to me to get back at you." Michelle admitted frankly.
"Like getting our pier supervisor to quit?"
"Huh?" Michelle darted a look at her. "I said occurred. I didn't say I did any of them."
Was Michelle telling the truth? Kerry had a feeling she was.
"And after that phone line scam." Michelle added suddenly. "Not to mention that bait and switch ploy at what you jokingly called a restaurant."
Kerry sighed, lifting one hand and propping her head up with it, her elbow resting against the car window sill. "It's pointless for me to bother saying neither of those were planned, isn't it?"
Michelle snorted. "You're seriously expecting me to believe you didn't take up four telephone lines on purpose?"
"No, I did." Kerry said jumping a little as a cab nearly cut them off. "I just didn't know they were the last pairs out of that CO. I put them in every terminal because those bastards wouldn't assign any specific one to a specific ship."
Michelle thought about that for a few minutes. "Hmph."
"Sorry," Kerry said. "Honestly, at this point, if I'd done it to screw you, I'd just say so. What's the point in not?"
"Hmph." Michelle wrinkled her nose. "So you're telling me you and Blackbeard the pirate over there are total innocents? C'mon."
Kerry's lips quirked. "We're not," she admitted. "
"Hah."
"We scared the crap out of you both in the Living Seas."
Michelle almost stopped the car. "What?"
"Dar and I were diving in the tank."
Luckily, a red light was at hand. Michelle turned and stared at her. "Are you serious?"
Kerry nodded. "Yeah," she said. "But other than that, honestly Michelle, we haven't done a damn thing to you. That's what pissed me off so much because all you've been doing since we met in Orlando is come after us with a hatchet."
Michelle jumped as a car behind them honked impatiently. She started forward, visibly rattled. She remained silent for a while, then abruptly cursed. "You have no idea what that caused."
Kerry eyed her warily.
"You have no damn idea."
KERRY TROTTED ACROSS the tarmac to Dar's car, pulling up short as the driver's side door opened and her partner emerged. "Hi." She studied her body language with a touch of anxiety, but relaxed when it was obvious that Dar was okay.
"Hi." Dar shut the door behind her. Shari had already left the car, and was headed across the lot to where Michelle was standing waiting to go inside the administration building. "How'd it go?"
"How'd it go?" Kerry asked at the same time.
Dar muffled a chuckle, and ran her fingers through her hair. "Me first. It sucked."
"Hm."
"We halfway agreed on a truce at the end, but I think she just wanted me to shut up," Dar admitted. "You?"
"Bitchfest." Kerry joined Dar as she started to walk toward the building. "Hard to read, really. I think you were right though."
Dar glanced at her. "I was?"
"Yeah. You said you didn't think they were behind a lot of the stuff at the office, and I think that's true," Kerry admitted.
"They were behind the crap talk."
"Yeah, Michele told me." Kerry wrinkled her nose. "But not the cell thing, or Duk's little defector apparently." She walked a few steps, regarding her scuffed sneakers soberly.
Dar moved a little closer as they walked. "I, um..." Don't know? Not true, since she certainly did know. "Shari was trying to cause problems between you and me."
Kerry did a little shrug and nod movement. "Duh," she uttered. "You figured that."
"She figured if she could break us up, I'd be distracted enough to forget about the bid," Dar added.
"Is she really that stupid?"
Dar had to smile. "Yeah."
"I mean, I always knew she was an idiot." Kerry added. "But apparently she's lost even more brain cells over the years."
That was, Dar realized, a not too obscure compliment. "Weeell..." She put her hand on Kerry's back as they walked up the steps to the admin building. "I can't say I was much of a catch back then."
"Bull poodles."
Dar chuckled.
"Dar, I've seen pictures. If I'd met you in college, you'd have saved me a week of gender orientation hell on South Beach, let me tell you." Kerry paused before the closed door.
"Thanks. I think," she said. "I guess from her viewpoint there was a certain logic to it." She exhaled, frowning a little.
"You mean, if something had caused a problem between us?" Kerry asked gently.
Dar nodded.
Kerry kicked at the concrete with the toe of her sneaker, then looked up. "I can't speak for you, sweetheart, but it would take one hell of a lot more than some bullshit talk for me," she said. "Because even the thought of that makes me want to start crying."
Dar stepped forward and put her arms around Kerry hugging her. "Me too." She whispered into Kerry's ear. "I'd rather die than lose you."
Kerry inhaled softly, dismissing the world around her as she buried her face into Dar's shirt. After a moment though, she pulled her head back and smiled. "Can we continue this discussion later?"
"Sure." Dar released her and stepped back, glancing around with a faintly embarrassed look. "My luck they got that on camera somehow."
Kerry chuckled, giving her a pat on the side. "I hope so."
Dar graciously opened the door, and stood back to let Kerry enter. As she followed her partner through the outer lobby to the room where Quest had set up
his base of operations, she took a moment to consider what she'd have thought of Kerry if they'd met earlier.
Would Kerry have been her type? Did she even know what her type was back then? Dar didn't think she had. Shari had attracted her more because of her domineering personality than her looks, and Kerry wouldn't have had that kind of attitude back then.
Or now, for that matter. Kerry wasn't shy, but she did have an air of gentle reserve in public that often made people assume she was until they really knew her.
She also had a wicked sense of humor that still sometimes caught Dar by surprise.
Kerry was, she realized, completely different than anyone else she'd ever gone out with, as well as being completely different than Dar herself.
Opposites attract maybe? Then what the hell had she been doing with all those other high class Type A's she'd been going with? Wasting time waiting for the chance to walk in that scruffy little IT manager's office, apparently.
"Dar?" Kerry was standing near the door, hands on her hips, looking at her. "Hello... earth to Dar?"
"Sorry. Just thinking." Dar reached for the handle. "C'mon...let's get this started." She was a trifle surprised that Michelle and Shari hadn't waited for them, but on second thought...
Maybe she wasn't.
They entered the room, only to find pandemonium inside. Not that they weren't used to chaos around this project, Kerry mused, but groups of people standing around, apparently randomly, yelling at each other was new even for them.
Quest wasn't there. The other bid teams management was, though, and no one seemed happy. The two other bid teams seemed to be yelling at each other, and Michelle and Shari were trying to make them stop. Dar observed the waving arms for a moment, then put her powerful lungs to good use. "Hey!"
Mike turned and pointed at her. "You son of a bitch!" He yelled at the top of his voice.
Everyone else stopped, and shut up, as the words echoed for a moment.
"Wrong gender, and if you talk about my mother like that again, I'll pull your cock off," Dar replied, in a normal tone. "Assuming I could get a grip on it."
"You screwed us all over!" Mike dropped his volume considerably.
Kerry perched on one of the tables, crossing her arms over her chest. "Oh, this should be good," she said. "Wonder what we did now?"
"Okay, hold on." Michelle gamely stepped in. "Just everyone take it easy. There's stuff..."
"You shut up too!" The man whirled on her. "You're just as bad!"
"Hey!" Shari frowned. "Chill out! We didn't do jack to you."
Kerry got back up and wandered around the office, spotting some ship diagrams on the back wall and going over to study them. Where was Quest, she wondered? This close to the deadline, she'd have expected him to be crawling all over them, not to mention his filming crew.
So, where was he?
"Okay, if everyone's done venting hot air, shut up and listen." Dar's voice overrode the muttering.
Ah. Nothing like her partner's own brand of diplomacy. Kerry idly opened the top of a cookie jar sitting on the desk and looked inside. Not surprisingly, it appeared empty. "Y'know, there's nothing in the world more useless than an empty cookie jar, and that just nails this stupid project to a T."
"You say something?" Michelle asked her, turning at the sound of her voice.
"Me? No." Kerry muffled a grin. She closed the jar.
"I'm not listening to crap from you!" Mike said. "Quest told us what you did!"
Kerry turned. "He did?" She inquired.
"Yes." The man turned and looked at her. "He told us all about you buying off the workers, and sabotaging us."
Oh, Jesus. Kerry was about to answer, when she felt her cell phone start to go off. She unclipped it from her belt and glanced at it, frowning when it just showed a couple of half numbers. That rang a half bell in her head.
"Get real," Dar answered for her. "We didn't do anything to anyone. Let me clue you in on what's really going on here."
The cell phone rattled again, and Kerry lifted it to her ear, hearing a sort of popping noise. She studied it in puzzlement, racking her brains to remember where she'd seen the device behave in a similar fashion before. Was it in the office? No...
"Like we'd believe you?" Mike responded sarcastically.
"Okay, now hold on." Shari threw her bra into the ring. "I realize this might be tough to swallow, but you really should listen to what Dar has to say."
"What?" Both of the other bid teams turned to face Shari. "Have you lost your mind? You told us yesterday she wasn't anything but a lying two-faced bitch!" Mike spluttered. "Now you're pitching her bull?"
"Shari's right." Michelle stepped up to the plate. "We've got some new information. Remember information? It's the stuff you use to make decisions?"
"Holy crap," Kerry whispered. "What in the heck..." She started looking around, peering curiously at the items on the desk until she focused once again on the cookie jar. It was set on top of a bookcase behind the desk chair, with an unobstructed line of sight of the whole room. "Huh."
"Give me a freaking break! I'm not interested in a pack of bullshit!"
She squinted at the front of it, then turned. "Dar?"
Dar looked around, raising an eyebrow at her.
Kerry faced away from the jar, pointed her thumb at herself, then lifted her right hand and made a shutter snapping motion with her index finger and thumb.
Dar's eyes widened slightly.
"What?" Michelle watched them, her glance going back and forth. "This is no time for charades, guys."
"Well, you know, you just never can please everyone now can ya?" Kerry spread her arms wide abruptly, taking a step back as she did so. Her elbow hit the cookie jar and it smacked against the wall, then bounced off and fell from the bookshelf, hitting the linoleum floor and breaking into several large pieces. "Whoops."
Michelle stepped over and looked at the debris. "Pronghorn antelope in a china shop?" She suggested wryly, then her eyes focused on something. "Whoa...hold on. What's that?" She leaned over to get a closer look at the pottery shards.
Kerry curled her finger at the rest of the room. She pointed down at the jar shards, then held her finger to her lips. Dar joined her immediately, almost bouncing across the room as the others more reluctantly followed.
Buried in the shards was a small webcam mechanism, with gears and pulleys intended to allow it to be controlled remotely. The ornate design in the front of the jar bore a small hole which the lens had previously been subtly poking through.
The lens was now facing down, and they watched the pullies move feebly, trying to refocus it. The radio control affecting it made Kerry's cell phone pop again, and she held it up. "Picks up the weirdest things."
"Remote?" Michelle mouthed, her ginger eyebrows lifting.
Kerry nodded.
Mike knelt down and picked up a shard, moving the cam gingerly with one fingertip. Shari stood back, crossing her arms with a thoughtful expression. She looked around the room more carefully, her eyes searching the corners looking for something.
"So, what's the deal?" Mike looked up at Dar. "What are we missing here?"
The attitude had changed so quickly it almost gave Dar whiplash. However given what Kerry had found she had no doubt there were microphones to go with it. "Tell ya what," she said. "Let's take a walk outside, and get some fresh air. "
"Good idea." Shari instantly agreed. "It's getting stuffy in here. Air conditioning's out again, probably." She added, "We can catch a breeze near the water." She headed for the door with a determined expression. "Coming?"
They all filed out after her into the lobby that was conspicuously empty. The closing of the outside door echoed after they left.
Then footsteps rang out and several people rushed across the lobby, entering the office with rapid steps and muffled curses.
THEY FOUND A place to sit down on the seawall overlooking the cargo channel on the far side of port. Nothing was around but a few hopeful seagull
s that flapped off in disgust when they discovered there were no sandwich crusts to be had.
The wind was blowing across the pier with some force, blowing offshore and conveniently taking their words out over the water for them. "Okay." Dar rested her elbows on her knees. "Just do me a favor and listen until I stop talking, then you can tell me how full of crap I am. Deal?"
Mike grunted.
Dar laid it out for them in crisp sentences. Kerry merely sat quietly next to her watching the faces of the two men as well as Michelle and Shari as they listened. No one really wanted to believe her, Kerry could tell. After all, realizing they'd all been played like a banjo wasn't the most pleasant thing going now was it?
Dar finished her briefing. "So that's what we've got. The last piece you saw yourselves--that damn camera. I'm sure they had tape running too. It was a nice scene we were having."
Mike stared off into the distance, then shook his head. "Well, shit," he muttered. "I wish to hell I could say you're just full of crap, Dar, but to be honest, something hasn't been adding up. Graham and I were talking about that yesterday." He indicated the fourth bid member, who so far hadn't made peep one.
Shari nodded. "We noticed, too," she admitted. "There was just too much insanity." Her eyes flicked to Dar's face, then away. "Even considering everything."
Mike held a hand up. "But you brought those filming people in," he objected. "So is this your scam?"
Interesting question. Kerry unconsciously leaned against Dar's shoulder as she waited for the answer. There was just something amazingly comforting about the solidity of her partner's presence, and she just barely kept herself from putting her head down on that same shoulder as they sat there.
Michelle stepped up. "The television people contacted me," she said. "Seemed like a good deal at the time, so I said sure. Free publicity? TV exposure with no outlay? Anyone would have said yes." She pointed at them all. "You all would have. Even you two."
"Probably." Kerry graciously agreed.
