Dar got caught in mid-chew. She hastily swallowed a mouthful of brownie and accepted the milk, taking a sip of it to wash down the rich treat. “Thanks.” She indicated the tray. “Not bad for instant.”
“Mm, yes.” Ceci sat down in the comfortable chair near the bed.
“Shocked the hell out of me, I have to admit.”
Dar grinned slightly. “I know the feeling. I made dinner the other week and was totally amazed at it being edible.”
One of Ceci’s silver-blonde eyebrows rose. “What was the occasion?”
Dar hesitated, then shrugged. “Nothing special. I just felt like doing it.” She was aware of the always perceptible discomfort between them, and suddenly felt very tired of it. Life was, she’d come to realize, just too damn short sometimes. “Hey, Mom?”
Ceci detected the change in Dar’s tone, and she leaned forward a little. “Yes?”
Dar took a deep breath. “We’ve got a pretty lousy past with each other.”
Uh-oh. Ceci felt her heart move up into her throat. “Brownies weren’t that bad, were they?” she joked faintly.
That made Dar smile, and she realized her mother was a lot more nervous than she was. “No.” She glanced down and collected her thoughts, then looked up. “Can we just forget it all and start fresh from here?”
It came around a blind corner and smacked Ceci right between the eyes, leaving a sting as though she’d been hit with a mackerel. She found herself gazing right into Dar’s intense face, the echo of the question reminding her strongly of the one she’d asked Andrew the night they’d been reunited. “That what you really want?” she asked quietly.
Dar nodded.
Ceci felt absurdly like crying. “I’d really like that, too,” she said. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but you don’t realize all the good things about being a mother until you aren’t one anymore.”
Now it was Dar’s turn to be caught off guard. She blinked and felt a surge of juvenile memory as she stared at her mother’s face. “That’s all right,” she finally said, a touch of hoarseness in her voice. “When you’re a kid, you never appreciate your parents until you don’t have them.”
Ceci felt the sting of tears, and she reached out instinctively, laying a hand along Dar’s cheek. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I abandoned you.”
Dar sucked in a breath that was almost painful, so tight was the pressure against her chest. She was caught by her mother’s gaze, unable to look away. “I’m sorry I didn’t understand the pain you were in.”
306 Melissa Good The tension lessened. Ceci rubbed a thumb against her daughter’s skin. “I’m glad we’re getting a second chance at this.”
The surface under her fingers moved as Dar smiled. “So am I,” she answered softly, glancing away, then returning her eyes to her mother’s. “I think I like you.”
Ceci bit her lip, a surge of improbable, ridiculous relief almost making her burst out laughing. “Yeah, I think I like you, too.”
It was turning out to be an interesting day after all, Dar decided happily.
KERRY SAT BEHIND her desk, one hand propping up her head as she scrolled through screens of data. She paused to make another sticky note, punching out the letters with one finger, then continued her task.
“Ms. Kerry?” Mayte’s voice broke into her concentration. “I have the Navy officer here to see you.”
Ah. Kerry straightened and took a sip of her herbal tea. “Great.
Send him in.” She leaned back in her chair as the door opened and Captain Taylor came in. He was dressed in his Navy uniform, and he tucked his hat under his arm as he crossed the carpeted floor to her desk. “Afternoon, Captain.”
“Ms. Stuart.” The officer inclined his head politely. “May I sit down?”
Kerry gestured toward the chair. “Of course. How’s it going down there?”
Captain Taylor shook his head gravely. “I’m afraid we’re going to come up empty-handed, Ms. Stuart. My team’s been in there for hours, and they haven’t come up with anything other than the mess that was left of the computer center.” He paused. “And we have six people who swear it was just a botched exercise. They even submitted the docs for the setup and showed me the dummy rounds. Apparently some live ones got mixed in.”
“Uh-huh.” Kerry took another sip of tea. “Do you believe them?”
The captain gave her a direct look. “Ms. Stuart, it doesn’t matter a hill of beans what I believe. All that matters is what I can prove. I can’t prove anything beyond some colossal screw-ups, and some of them involve your personnel.”
Kerry’s eyebrows lifted. “My personnel?” she asked sharply. “We didn’t make any mistakes.”
The captain shifted uncomfortably. “The fact is, ma’am, you were there without the permission of the base commander.”
“Cut the BS.” Kerry smiled kindly at him. “We were there because General Easton asked us to go there and cover his butt because you couldn’t get a team on the plane fast enough.”
Captain Taylor made a face, seemingly unconscious of it. “The general asked that you protect the data. You didn’t. In fact, because of Red Sky At Morning 307
your presence, its destruction was pretty much guaranteed.”
Kerry pointed a finger at him. “Captain, if you seriously think you’re going to shift blame to me or to anyone else at ILS for your inability to maintain military and administrative control of your own base, think again.” She stood up behind her desk and fixed him with a resolute stare. “We did the best we could, and you don’t know just what that best is yet.”
“Ms. Stuart, you don’t seem to re—” The naval officer stopped and regarded her warily. “What exactly do you mean by that?”
Kerry opened her mouth to explain, then slowly closed it again.
Some instinct was telling her to keep the lock box under wraps, and she’d learned over the last year that this instinct of hers was usually right. “We have a lot of data. We’re not finished analyzing it yet,” she temporized. “We may not have a smoking gun, but we may have enough to nail the people there most responsible.”
The captain relaxed a notch. “It’s just administrative stuff, though.
The base is clean.”
“For now,” Kerry agreed quietly. “Doesn’t it bother you that stuff was going on?”
Taylor dusted a bit of lint off his shoulder. “Do we know it really was?” he countered. “That informant of yours could have been lying.”
Kerry shrugged. “Why?”
“To get someone in trouble. Maybe they’re the ones involved in some funny business, and they thought bringing in drugs would shift the attention,” the JAG officer replied reasonably. “C’mon, Ms. Stuart—
do you honestly think we’ve got an entire smuggling operation going on at a Navy base? Low-grade black market, yeah, I can buy that. But drugs?”
Well. Kerry thought about it. It was possible, she guessed. They hadn’t seen any of the smuggling, just the evidence the chief had brought over. “What about that telecommunications gear that was ripped out?”
The captain chuckled. “You know, I was thinking about that. You know what I bet happened? I bet someone in some office somewhere had a requisition to yank it out, or some wire got crossed, and an order was cut, and that’s why no one knew about it. Doesn’t that happen in your company sometimes?”
True. “Sometimes,” Kerry agreed, “but not often.”
“Well,” Taylor stood up, “I’m going to file my preliminary report to the general. I think we overreacted a little bit here. Comes from putting civilians into a situation they don’t really understand, I think.”