“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 got to the point. “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 allowed. “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, that guy sounded really pissed off.” Peter said. “It was like a tomb in there this morning. There was 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, and we’ll get back to the office.
“Just in case?”
“Just in case.”
**
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 an Dar an actual admin since they’d promoted theirs.
“Hey Kerry.” Mark came in the door with a fistful of papers. “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.”
Mark nodded. “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 really hard to believe that they’d be doing something malicious.” Kerry said. “I mean, 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 decided. “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. “You and the boss going up to the Hill Wednesday? Maria said.”
“We’ve got to demo the database for the feds.” Kerry agreed. “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 not 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.”
“Kerry?” Mayte poked her head in. “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 good 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 tip toeing 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, and her eyes closed, 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, just letting her mind to blank as she waited. The Herald request had been innocuous – the small business editor had been at the conference and seen her speak, then apparently had done 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, and she would really rather have dove into a vat of peanut butter than go through it.
However. Dar could hear 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 you 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.” Gerry confirmed. “Now, 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. Stuffs not working, we can’t get reports, they cant 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 spotting Dar’s expression quickly put it down on the desk. “What’s up?” She mouthed.
“Gerry.” Dar mouthed back. “Network problems.”
“Oh boy.” Kerry 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 temporized. “All the people I knew there 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 really 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. “Wont 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.”