And this time they shared a dressing room. Dar chuckled softly as she indulged herself in a memory of the two of them buttoning and zipping each other.
And unbuttoning and unzipping.
Dar idly hoped Saks Fifth Avenue didn’t videotape their patrons.
The phone rang, causing her to reluctantly open her eyes and peer at the table. With a groan, she rolled over and reached out to slap the speaker button. “Hello?”
“Good morning, Dar.”
Dar let her eyes close again. “Morning.” She returned her mother’s greeting cordially. “What’s up?”
“Your father’s temper.”
That got one eye open. “Don’t tell me it’s the Priceline.com commercials again,” she said.
Ceci chuckled wryly. “Actually, his new pet peeve is the erectile dysfunction minimovies that have been playing recently.”
Dar’s brow wrinkled. “Ew.”
“Mm,” her mother agreed. “At any rate, he took a ride down to the base yesterday and didn’t come back very happy. Apparently they’re covering their tracks pretty thoroughly.”
“Um,” Dar tried to dredge up some interest. “Figures.”
There was a moment’s silence. “You doing all right?” Ceci finally asked warily.
“Pretty much,” Dar answered. “Been laying in bed most of the morning.”
“Ah. I see.” Ceci seemed to consider this statement seriously for a little while. “Well, I went to the technological depths of iniquity and managed to produce a pan of something that might, if you don’t look too closely, pass as brownies to cheer your father up.”
Dar chuckled in pure reflex.
“Mind if I drop some by?”
Dar lifted her head up and peered at the phone in honest surprise.
For a second, she almost politely declined, then a sudden impulse took over. “S...sure.” She cast a quick look around. “Place is a mess.”
Her mother laughed audibly. “See you in a bit.”
“Okay,” Dar replied, then heard the line drop. She rested her chin on her wrist and stared at the phone, then shook her head. “Look out, Chino. We’re getting a visitor.”
The Labrador lifted her head up and wagged her tail. She was curled up in her bed next to where Dar was lying.
“My mother’s coming over,” she informed the dog. “And she’s Red Sky At Morning 303
bringing brownies.” Dar rolled over cautiously and regarded the ceiling. “Bet if I look outside, it’ll be snowing.”
“Growf.”
“Mm. But if she offers to do the laundry, we’re outta here.” Dar covered her eyes with one hand. “Scary. Very scary.”
KERRY KNELT BESIDE the lockbox and lifted the security tag, reading the number off it and recording it on a large manila file clipped onto the clipboard she was carrying. “Okay.” She stood and wrote the cataloging entry on the file folder. “Do we have point-to-point concurrence that this never left anyone’s view?”
“Yep,” Mark said. “I made sure I kept three guys with me to sign off on it.”
“Good.” Kerry took a step back and dropped into the chair across from Mark’s desk, crossing one denim-covered ankle over her knee.
“Now we just have to find out if there’s anything useful in there.”
“Yeah,” Mark sighed. “Boss won’t be in ’til Wednesday, huh?”
“Nope,” Kerry said. “And I’d feel better if we did all the analysis here, rather than have that brought to the house. It’s going to be touchy as it is.”
The MIS chief nodded. “I’m with you. They get that team into the base?”
Kerry chewed on the end of her pen. “Yeah. I got a call from that JAG officer. They’ve been there all day, and so far, it all looks clean.”
Mark snorted.
Kerry acknowledged his derision with a twitch of her lips. “Not that we don’t already have some data on them. But nothing major.
Mostly bad or shady bookkeeping on stuff like supplies.”
“So, if there’s nothing in this thing,” Mark kicked the lockbox,
“that’s it? They just get off?”
Kerry stood up and exhaled. “If we can’t prove anything, then, yes,” she agreed. “Or, to be more specific, if we can’t provide information to the authorities that will allow them to prove it. We’re just the analysts.”
“Bet Dar doesn’t feel that way,” Mark commented. “Man, I can’t believe she grew up there. My brain can’t process that.” He glanced at Kerry. “Weird.”
“Why?” Kerry asked, pausing in the doorway on her way out.
Mark shrugged, a little uncomfortably. “I don’t know. It was like when she took us out to that little island place, y’know? I just figured she went through the same kind of growing up around here that I did.
Malls, football games, whatever.”
Kerry studied him. “Didn’t figure her for a redneck?”
Mark scowled. “She’s not a friggin’ redneck. She’s just a, a—”
“Cracker,” Kerry supplied gently.
304 Melissa Good
“No way.”
“Mark.” Kerry came back over and sat down, resting her hands on her knees and putting her envelope down. “I love Dar. You know that, right?”
He blushed.
“She’s my best friend, and my partner, and I wouldn’t trade her for anyone or anything in the world,” Kerry went on. “She’s not embarrassed by her origins, so why should you be?”
Another shrug. “It’s just weird.”
Kerry sighed. “I think it makes her achievements all the more spectacular,” she said. “Because she really did start from nothing, and everything she’s gained has been on her own terms, and by her own brilliance.”
Mark looked up. “Yeah.”
After a speculative look, Kerry admitted, “I envy her for that. It must be an amazing feeling to know you’ve totally controlled your own destiny.”
Mark played with the chip puller he used as a paperweight. “She has, hasn’t she? I never really thought about that,” he told Kerry. “Hey, you had lunch yet?”
Kerry let the subject change pass. “Not yet. Want to go down?
They’ve got lamb shanks today.” She stood back up. “I think Mari said she was going down about now, too.”
Mark joined her and carefully locked the door to his office behind them. “Not like you could drag that box anywhere, but ya never know.”
“Mm,” Kerry agreed. “You never do know.” She glanced around the office, and gave the staff there a brief smile. Most smiled back.
Brent just looked away from her.
CECI SELECTED A glass from the cabinet and went to the refrigerator, opening the door and standing on her tip toes to reach the handle of the milk dispenser on the top shelf. She watched the glass fill, muffling a chuckle as it finished. She then took a step back and closed the door. The condo was quiet, and despite Dar’s disclaimer, seemed no untidier than it usually did. Which was not at all, save a collection of laundry awaiting attention in the utility room.
That didn’t really surprise her. Though Dar had maintained a nest of teenage clutter in her younger years, the room had never been dirty, per se, just full of stuff. Things that held Dar’s capricious interest, or things that Andrew had given her, all jealously hoarded in neatly labeled boxes stacked everywhere.
She’d had time, when she and Andrew had dog-sat, to wander over the condo, and had found herself smiling at childhood vestiges she’d found tucked away in inconspicuous corners.
Those things had meant something to her daughter. Ceci studied Red Sky At Morning 305
the glass of milk, then shook her head and made her way through the living room and into the bedroom where Dar was resting. She held out the glass. “Figured you’d need this.”