“Mm, yeah, I gathered.” Kerry cupped her chin in one hand. “He seems nice, though.”
Dar leaned back and exhaled, scratching her neck with one hand.
“He is. And his wife’s a sweetheart. They were pretty good friends of my folks. Dad and Jeff used to fish together at night.”
“Uh-huh...and Chuckie?” Kerry teased, having noted the faint blush that colored Dar’s face at the mention of the name. “Sounds like he liked you.”
Dar’s face scrunched up into a half-amused, half-embarrassed Red Sky At Morning 77
scowl. “Yeeeahh...he um...”
“Another crush?” Kerry laughed.
“Not exactly,” her lover admitted. “My first boyfriend. He was my high school prom date.”
Kerry’s blonde brows shot up in silent amazement.
“I was young and still pretty clueless.” Dar folded her arms and sighed. “But we had a good time together,” she added. “I know my folks’ll be glad to see them.”
Kerry sipped her ice tea thoughtfully. “He’s pretty Republican, isn’t he?”
Dar nodded, her lips twitching.
“Want me to find something else to do that night?” Kerry offered with quiet grace.
Dar gazed sightlessly at the center of the table for a long moment, her brow wrinkled slightly in thought. Then she drew in a breath and met Kerry’s eyes. “No. I really don’t.”
“Fair enough.” Kerry accepted the answer. “C’mon, as long as I’m here, I want to get some souvenirs,” she changed the subject. “Maybe a cap, since I’ve got enough Navy sweatshirts to outfit the entire Florida Marlin baseball team.”
“You got it.” Dar stood, and they put their trays away, then left the cafeteria, aware of the curious eyes that followed them.
“GOOD MORNING, MS. KERRY.” Mayte looked up as Kerry entered her office, giving her boss a bright smile. “Did it go okay Friday?”
“Sort of,” Kerry replied, pausing before Mayte’s desk. “It started off pretty rocky, but it turns out the officer in charge of the base is an old friend of Dar’s, so things smoothed out after lunch.” Remarkably so, in fact. Dar had gotten all the data she needed or asked for, and they’d departed early, heading back up the long, lonely road home while the sun was still a decent angle in the sky.
That meant they’d had time for a nice long workout in the gym, a walk on the beach, and dinner at the club before Dar sat down to digest the information they’d gleaned. Kerry stretched her shoulders out a little, still tight from the climbing wall, and wished briefly she could repeat the day. “What’s going on here this morning?”
“You have marketing sessions at nine and ten and the operations meeting at one,” Mayte answered promptly. “Mrs. Anderson, from the new company where we are buying cable, is to be here at three.”
Kerry exhaled. “Okay.” She spared a moment of envy for Dar, who had ambled out early dressed in jeans and hiking boots, then tucked her laptop case under her arm and headed for her desk. “Can you print me the meeting minutes for this afternoon and remind me what we’re fighting with marketing about this week?”
78 Melissa Good
“Of course.” Mayte’s voice floated after her. “Would you like some cafecita? I was just about to get some.”
“Yes,” Kerry called back. “I’d kill for a large café con leche. Thanks.”
It was quiet then, for a bit, and she settled down in her large leather chair, its cool surface warming against her legs as she nudged her computer on and investigated the inbox on her desk. “What have we here?” she mused, pulling over a folder and flipping it open. “Ah.”
Requisitions for new computers for the accounting department. After a moment’s study, she nodded and picked up her pen, checking the totals carefully and signing off on the papers.
Duks didn’t ask for new hardware often. She’d talked to him last month about the depreciation on the systems they’d last bought for his department, and he showed a studied reluctance to changing what he viewed as perfectly acceptable workplace tools. Kerry had disagreed, considering 386 DX systems that still ran Windows 3.11 to be something along the lines of what she’d use as a door stop.
But Duks had said no.
So, Kerry had reviewed the accounting software they were using and called the vendor, discovering a new, upgraded version with lots of nifty new features and reports they just couldn’t live without. She’d told Duks, and he’d agreed. “Great,” she’d said. “Now you can put in your order for new systems, because this software won’t run on the ones you have.”
“Heh.” Kerry put the folder into her outbox. “Accountants...fastest way to their hearts is through their report writers.” She turned and opened her mail program, watching as the screen filled quickly with black lines of new messages, a good percentage with red exclamation points next to them. She sighed and propped her chin up on her fist, waiting for the download to end.
LIEUTENANT PERKINS TUCKED a folder under one arm and knocked lightly on the door. She paused to listen for a reply, then opened the door and slipped inside. She crossed the wooden floor quickly and put the folder down on her boss’s desk, her eyes meeting his as he sat behind it. “I found her.”
Albert raised an eyebrow. “And?”
“Not good.” The lieutenant shook her head. “Take a look, sir.” She waited for Albert to open the folder. “Her actual name is Paladar Roberts. Her father was in for twenty years; he just retired a few months ago. She was born here, spent fifteen years on and off on the base. Left after she graduated from UM.” She paused. “BS in Computer Science, tops in her class. Been with ILS ever since.”
“Mmph.” Albert studied the contents of the folders, flipping through transcripts and documentation. “Wonder why she never...oh.
Did you see these ASVAB scores?”
Red Sky At Morning 79
“Yeah. Did you see what program she was qualifying for?”
His eyes flicked over the papers. “Aha. Wanted to follow in Daddy’s footsteps, but he was a SEAL. I get it. She’s probably got a grudge the size of a flat top.” He chuckled dryly. “She seems the type.”
“She passed the physical,” Perkins commented.
“Mm.” Her commander prowled through the papers, then selected a black-and-white photo, examining it curiously. An adolescent Dar Roberts stared dourly back at him, dark hair half obscuring the pale eyes, her lean body encased in a tight sleeveless black shirt and well-used fatigue pants. “Scary.” He flipped the picture over to her.
Perkins picked it up and studied it. “Very.” She tossed it back.
“What are we going to do about her?”
The commander sorted through the papers. “Can we keep her out of the inside systems?”
A shake of her head. “Probably not. Based on the questions I was getting, I’m going to guess she actually knows her way around a programming language. I could try to throw a pile of code at her, but I don’t know how long that would hold her up.”
“Give it a try.” Commander Albert sighed. “I’ll see what else I can do. Get everything you can and stick it behind the number six firewall.
We need to find something to distract her.” He closed the folder and pushed it back across the desk. “The timing just sucks.”
“You told Scrooge you had it under control,” Perkins reminded him in a worried tone.
“That was before I found out she grew up with Dudley Do-Right’s kid,” he snapped back. “I didn’t figure it’d be a problem getting her thrown out of here. Now we have to find another way.” He sighed.
“What about the other one?”