Eye of the Storm

Chapter

Thirty-five

HER MESSAGE LIGHT was blinking when she entered her room and Kerry stared at it for a minute before she walked over and picked up the receiver. She dialed the front desk and listened for an answer. “Yes, I have a…oh. Yes.” She listened to the message. A Mr. Selver, from the Washington Post: Call me, it’s very important. “Ah, thanks,” Kerry murmured politely.

But there were more. Six notes, from six different representatives of the media, all wanting to talk to her or to set up a time to talk to her.

“Wow. Um. I don’t really want to answer any of these.”

The operator replied in a friendly manner, obviously used to people who didn’t want to talk to the press. “Would you like us to screen your calls, Ms. Stuart?”

“Yes. I have a cell phone and anyone who really wants me, who I want to talk to knows the number,” Kerry replied. “Oh. But if either Dar or Andrew Roberts calls, that’s fine.”

The sound of scribbling came clearly through the phone. “Will do, ma’am. Have a good night.”

“Thanks. Oh, can you transfer me to room service?” Kerry asked, receiving an affirmative, then waiting as the call was transferred.

“Hello?”

She ordered a coffee milkshake and some chips, then set the phone down and walked over to the comfortable looking couch in the corner and flopped down on it. “Jesus.” She closed her eyes and rubbed them with one hand. That had been...disgusting. Both the attitudes of the unruly crowd and the attack on them made Kerry feel sick to her stomach.

Oh well. She looked up as a light knock came at the door. “Hey.”

Ceci walked in, carrying a box of chocolates. “Want one?”

Kerry’s brow creased. “Sure. Where did those come from?”

“Godiva, by way of my husband,” came the wry response. “He has this very surprising indulgent streak in him that peeks out sometimes.”

Kerry munched on the treat thoughtfully. “Mmm. Dar does too.” She nodded. “I find stuff on my desk sometimes. A cookie, a rose…I never know what’s going to be there.”

Ceci sat down on the chair next to her and propped her feet up on 326 Melissa Good the coffee table. “Do you reciprocate?”

The blonde woman nodded. “Sure.” She grinned. “I’ll go out and get her a new shirt or something for her computer, like a cute mousepad, that kind of thing.” She paused. “Sometimes I’ll leave a little poem or something around, if I’m really in a goopy mood.”

Ceci chuckled. “I used to tuck little goodies into his kit bags,” she admitted. “His favorite was a little sack of Hershey’s kisses.”

Kerry smiled, then jumped as her cell phone buzzed. “God, I hate that.” She tugged it out then opened it. “Hello?”

“Hey, Kerry. It’s Mark.”

“Hi.” Kerry felt her mental track derail. “What’s up?”

“Well, nothing good. They just blew a major node up in Virginia and half the Eastern Seaboard’s ATM and interbank transfers are down.”

“Ouch.” Kerry winced. “That’s big trouble.” She reached over and unzipped her laptop case, then pulled the computer out and put it on the desk. “I’ll dial in and monitor it. Do we have an ETA yet?”

A snort. “ETA? They don’t even know what the problem is, much less how to fix it. CLIPC’s escalating, but I think the carrier’s just chasing their tail around in a circle.”

“Great.” Kerry got up and slid into the desk chair, booted up her laptop and plugged the modem cable into the convenient wall jack. “And tomorrow’s not only Friday, it’s the end of the month.”

“Government payday,” Mark agreed. “That’s why I’m a-callin’. I was noodling around in the system when I saw the links go down. I’d guess they’re about to start notifying you guys.”

Kerry sighed. “Thanks, Mark.”

“How’s it going?”

“Yuck.”

“Well, at least there was good news on the contract front today. I bet Dar almost died when she heard about it.”

Kerry was busy logging in. “Heard about what?”

A knock came at the door and Ceci stood, waving Kerry back as she walked over and peeked through the eyehole. “Room service.” She unlocked the door and opened it, allowing the uniformed server to enter.

She was about to close the door when a large, burly man put a hand on the surface of the door and pushed it back. “Excuse me?”

“Hi. I’m looking for Kerry Stuart?”

Ceci put her body squarely in the doorway. “Why?”

“Just wanted to talk to her.” The man smiled in a friendly manner.

“My name’s Al, Al Bainbridge. I work for the local paper.”

Ceci gave him a direct look. “It’s late and I don’t think she’s in the mood to talk right now.”

“Suppose you let me ask her?”

“Suppose you move your hand before I slam the door on it?”

“It’s to her advantage if she talks to me, lady.” Now the man’s voice took on a harder edge. “Either I get some facts from her or we’ll get them some other way, and won’t it be nicer if she gets to have her say first?”

Eye of the Storm 327

“What is it, Mrs. Roberts?” Kerry came up behind her and glanced over her shoulder. “Ah. My pushy reporter friend.” She put a hand on Ceci’s shoulder. “I really don’t have anything to say to you.”

The man held a hand up. “Now, c’mon, Ms. Stuart. It’s just a few questions. You’re gonna have to answer them sooner or later. You made yourself too interesting a subject up there and there’s lots of people digging around for info on you.”

Kerry scratched her jaw. “Okay.” She glanced shrewdly at him. “I’ll give you a choice. Would you rather talk to me or get paid?”

“What?”

“I’m working on fixing a problem that affects all of the interbank transfers and ATM machines from New York to Virginia. I’ll ask you again. Do you want to talk, or do you want me to get on with my job?”

The reporter stared at her for a long moment. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope.” Kerry held up her corporate ID. “You choose, but make it fast, because my milkshake’s melting.”

He exhaled. “Tell you what. I’ll beat feet tonight, but willya please agree to have breakfast with me? I’m not out to hurt you, Ms. Stuart.

Honest I’m not.”

Kerry thought about it. Talking to the press wasn’t something she really wanted to do, but after those messages, she started to realize the scope of the interest in her. Maybe Al was right. Maybe it was better for her to at least have a chance at controlling what was released. “All right,”

she agreed quietly. “But I don’t think it’s much of a story for you.”

He hid a swift smile of triumph. “Guess we’ll find out tomorrow.

Good night, Ms. Stuart.” He gave Ceci a brief look, then turned and made his way back down the hallway.

“You sure you want to do that?” Ceci inquired, glancing behind her.

“Where’d the waiter go?”

“I sent him out through your room.” Kerry sighed, as she closed the door and checked her watch. “This is a mess. I wish—”

Another knock at the door. “Son of a bitch.” Kerry was losing her patience. She turned, grabbed the door handle, and yanked it back, taking a breath to blast whoever it was. It came back out in an utterly relieved trickle. “Thank you.” Kerry reached out and grabbed a handful of cotton and reeled in a tall, dark haired woman who came willingly and enveloped her in a powerful hug. “Ungh. I am so glad you’re here.”

Dar moved a little forward, very pleased at the greeting, as she let her father come in behind her. “Mother,” she greeted Cecilia with wry cordiality, as Kerry burrowed into her chest, warming the skin under her shirt with a long exhale.

“Close the door,” Ceci advised, as she fit herself into Andrew’s arms and gave him a quick kiss. “We’ve had enough excitement for tonight.”

Dar kicked the door shut. “What happened?”

“What didn’t?” Kerry muttered, refusing to release her hold. It was nice and warm and dark where she was, it smelled great, and Dar had found just the exact right spot on her back to rub. Maybe if she stayed 328 Melissa Good here long enough, everything else would just sort of go away and she’d wake up back home to nothing more out of the ordinary than a Hallow-een party to go to.

Ceci’s lips quirked and she tugged her husband towards the interconnecting door. “I’ll fill you in,” she promised. “Besides, there’s chocolates in there. C’mon, sailor boy.”

Dar watched them leave, then turned her attention to the blonde woman cradled in her arms. “Hey.”

Reluctantly, Kerry opened her eyes and looked up. “Hi.” She sighed, then yelped as her cell phone went off, at the same time as Dar’s did. “Oh yeah. Everyfrigginggoddamned monetary transfer system in the Northeast is down.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Dar groaned, answering hers. “Yes?” A pause. “Thank you.” She closed the phone, then tossed it on the chair.

Kerry’s followed. She laced her fingers behind the smaller woman’s head and just looked at her, thinking about all the things she had to say, seeing her thoughtfulness reflected in Kerry’s eyes.

Then she deliberately put that all out of her mind as she brushed her lips against Kerry’s, then deepened the contact, getting lost in the surge of passion that lifted the nape hairs off her neck and made her knees shake just a little. They explored each other leisurely then finally parted, and Dar nibbled Kerry’s nose as they gazed into each other’s eyes. “What were we talking about?” she murmured.

“I have no clue.” Kerry leaned forward and just breathed in Dar’s distinctive scent. “I don’t want to have a clue right now. I want to take all my clues, put them in a FedEx letter pack, and mail them to Queensland, Australia.”

Dar wrapped her arms around Kerry and hugged her, lifting her up a bit and hearing a soft crackle as her spine realigned itself.

“Uhh.” Kerry sighed blissfully. “You rock.” A chuckle more felt then heard vibrated against her and Kerry smiled. They stayed like that for quite a while, then Kerry rested her chin on Dar’s breastbone, peering up.

“It wouldn’t take much for me to kick the plug out of that laptop and turned off the cell phone.”

“I know.” Dar rubbed her back. “But we’d hate ourselves in the morning.”

Kerry stuck her tongue out and found it captured in neat white teeth.

“Heth!”

Dar grinned and released her. “Teach you to sass me, young lady.”

She imitated her father’s low growl. “C’mon. Let’s get this worked out and trade tales.” She circled Kerry with an arm and led her to the desk, stopping to select a chip and scoop up some salsa. “You and Mom get along all right?”

“Um, I think we’ve bonded, yes,” Kerry admitted. “After you’ve been on a long plane flight, sat through senate investigation, and been chased by Neo-Nazis with someone…”

Dar stopped in mid motion and peered at her through a set of dark Eye of the Storm 329

bangs that almost obscured her eyes. “What?”

Kerry came around the desk and perched on one end, folding her hands in her lap. “We went for a walk after dinner and ran into some real creeps.”

“I thought I told you to stay out of trouble?” Dar straightened and put her hands on her hips.

“Walking in the FDR memorial isn’t getting into trouble, Dar,” the blonde woman shot back. “Besides, we’re both grown ups, last time I checked.” She paused. “I seem to recall one of us is your mother, as a matter of fact.”

Dar sat down and rested her hands on the flat surface, staring at Kerry’s laptop screen without really seeing it. “Funny,” she commented quietly, adjusting the computer with a small, precise motion. “She and my father were always ‘us.’” She took a breath. “Something I was never a part of.” She blinked at the screen and moved the mouse pointer, as a silence fell.

Kerry opened her mouth, then shut it. Then she held both hands up.

“Whoa.” She realized she’d just tripped and fallen into a huge bowl full of hard feelings and didn’t much like the sensation. “Can we just rewind sixty seconds and redo that last minute?”

Dar looked up at her with a painfully vulnerable expression. “Okay,”

she agreed. “Sorry. I was just worried about you.”

Kerry slid off the desk and knelt, resting a hand on Dar’s knee to steady herself. “And I did promise to stay out of trouble, you’re right. I just didn’t think twice about taking a walk in a strange city at night and I should have.”

Dar merely nodded, tiny tensions moving through her face.

“Dar, does it bother you that I like your mother?” Kerry asked gently, holding a finger up at the startled reaction. “No, no. Level with me, okay? No BS between us. Does it bother you?”

Her lover lowered her head into her hands and stared at the tabletop.

Her eyes closed.

Kerry waited uneasily.

“I thought I had a handle on this,” Dar finally murmured. “And then it comes around the corner and kicks me in the ass.”

“Dar,” Kerry moved a little closer, “just because there are things I like about your mother, doesn’t mean I think what she did to you was right or that she doesn’t owe you some understanding and explanations and apologies.”

“I don’t think she owes me anything,” Dar interrupted.

“Bullshit, Dar. Of course she does.” Kerry put a hand on her arm, using touch to reinforce her words. “You are her child and she abandoned you at a horrible time in your life. A parent can’t just throw...” her words slowed, “throw a child away.” She took a breath. “Look at me talking, the expert here.”

That got through to Dar and she turned her head, her eyes warming and gentling. “Families are hell sometimes, aren’t they?” She covered 330 Melissa Good Kerry’s hand with her own.

The green eyes searched hers. “You are my family,” she whispered, blinking back the tears.

Just because you’re dysfunctional, don’t let that ruin something she needs, Dar, a warning voice spoke softly in her mind. “My parents are your family too, Kerry.” She lifted the hand on her arm and kissed the fingers.

“And I’m very, very happy about that.”

Kerry rested her forehead against Dar’s shoulder. “Thank you for understanding me needing that right now.” She breathed a sigh of relief.

“Oh, I wasn’t ready for this.”

Me either. “Tell you what.” Dar nudged her. “Let’s take this thing over to the couch and put our heads together over it.”

Dar carried the laptop and Kerry brought over the snacks, and they settled on the couch in a tangle of arms and legs and cables, with chips and coffee milkshakes and enough combined brain cells to jump start a supertanker.

Kerry lay back against Dar’s chest, pecking at the keyboard as the arms curled around her shifted and a long finger moved the mouse button. “Okay.” She crunched on a chip. “Who are we going to yell at first?”

Dar rested her chin on Kerry’s shoulder, letting her tension dissolve as she felt the shift of Kerry’s breathing under her arms. “Mmm.” She clipped the cell phone to the adapter that routed it through the laptop’s speakers and dialed. A harried voice answered. “This is Dar Roberts.”

Hesitation. “Oh, good evening, ma’am. What can I do for you? It’s been a long time.”

Dar smiled. “I’m in Washington,” she burred, in a low, dangerous voice.

“Ah.”

“And I’m out of cash.”

“Oh.”

Dar mentally filled in the expletive after that and felt Kerry giggle silently under her hands.

“Uh, ma’am. They’re working on that.”

“Define they.”

“Uh…”

“Define working.”

“Um. Wouldn’t you like to talk to my supervisor?”

“Does he want to talk to me.”

“Um, probably not, no, ma’am.”

Dar laughed silently. “Nice to know I haven’t lost my touch,” she whispered into Kerry’s ear. “All right. Have they found the problem, yet?”

“Um, no.”

“Okay. What company is it?”

“That’s the problem, ma’am. It’s a big, shared facility, and they can’t figure out whose master switch it is. Everyone’s blaming everyone else.”

Kerry was busy typing and she reviewed the network. “Can we…oh, Eye of the Storm 331

damn. That’s one of your new sites, never mind.” She tapped on. “Damn, we don’t have a reroute around that.”

“Okay.” Dar flipped open her palm pilot and found a number. “I’ll start at the top. One ATT CEO coming right up. Call you back, Netops.”

“Ooo.” Kerry scooped up some salsa. “He’s gonna be pissed.”

“Nah,” Dar disagreed, dialing a number. “He lives in Maryland and they get paid twice monthly just like we do.”

Kerry stopped in mid crunch. “Oh boy.” She picked up the television remote, clicked it on, muted the sound, and switched to a news station.

“Uh oh.”

“Hello, Alan? Dar Roberts.” Dar glanced at the screen. The news anchor was gazing seriously at the camera, as a violent scene rolled behind him. Fuzzily focused bodies were clustered around a building wall, kicking and throwing things at it. The caption “ATM Terror”

splashed across the screen. “We’ve got a problem, Alan. Either you solve it, or I’m gonna start calling people until we’ve got the most expensive conference call in the history of internetworking going.”

Kerry watched the screen, her eyes wide.

CECILIA TOWELED HER short, silvered blonde hair dry and stepped back into the room, aware of a stupid smile on her face caused by the sight of the man standing in only a pair of silk boxers at the window, evaluating the surrounding terrain.

Despite his violent protests to the contrary, she’d discovered her husband had developed a fondness for the soft underwear, and she’d had an enormously good time visiting Macy’s and buying him several different kinds.

No wild colors, though. Some things never changed. She walked over and slid an arm around him, leaning against his bulk and reviewing the scene outside. It was a misty day, gray and overcast, and a soft rain fell. “Nice.”

“Li’l rain never hurt nobody,” Andrew answered absently. “Guess I better go get me some coffee. See that stand down there?” He pointed.

“Honey, I ordered some,” Ceci objected. “You’re not going to go romping outside in your skivvies, are you?” She looked up and saw the expected scowl. “Let me go wake the girls up.” She patted him on the butt and walked to the connecting door, then eased it open, and knocked lightly on the inside surface. She heard voices inside, so she pushed the door open and poked her head around it. “Good mo—” She stopped, startled by the appearance of the two women crouched over a laptop computer on the desk, with a large coffee pot nearby. Dar was on the phone with someone, speaking sharply, and Kerry was pecking at the keyboard, her head propped on one hand and a harried, exhausted look on her face.

“Did you two get to sleep at all?”

Green eyes glanced over. “No.”

“What on earth are you doing?” Ceci kept her voice down, in defer-332 Melissa Good ence to Dar’s hoarse tantrum.

“Saving the Western world.” Kerry tapped in a few other things then shook her head. “Dar, we can’t route this that way. It’s not going to work.”

Dar covered the receiver and glared at the laptop. “Fine. Then we’ll pull it.” She snapped in exasperation, going back to the phone. “All right, that’s it, I’ve had it.” Her voice rose to a savage growl. “I’m gonna have someone walk into CLIPC and take a wire cutter to the whole damn patch panel.” A desperate voice murmured through the receiver. “Look. We’re outta time,” Dar broke in. “It’s not my fault you guys decided to try an Y2K upgrade on a running system with no back up.” She picked up her cell phone with the other hand, ignoring both Kerry and Ceci, who had edged into the room and seated herself on the bed, watching her daughter in wary fascination.

“What happened?” Ceci whispered to Kerry, who was cradling her head in both hands.

Kerry turned around in her chair and rested her elbows on her knees.

“Our national carrier decided to put a patch into place last night and it trashed a major switching office.” She sighed. “Affecting most of the Eastern Seaboard, and, for some bizarre reason, Dallas, Texas.”

“Mmm.” Ceci nodded. “What exactly does that mean in English?”

Kerry pointed towards the television, which was on CNN. A reporter was mumbling in the mostly muted newscast, showing pictures of angry people surrounding banks.

Ceci peered at them, then shook her head. “I don’t get it.”

“Well, most people nowadays when they go to get money, don’t get it from a bank.” Kerry sighed. “They get it from an ATM machine, and they have their paychecks automatically deposited, right?”

“Okay, yes, I see.”

“Well, what happens when money can’t move into the bank, and people can’t get it out of the ATM machines?”

Ceci stared at the screen, then at Kerry. “Is that what happened?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “From Boston to Miami, no one’s getting paid electronically or getting cash from a machine.”

“Good grief,” the older woman blurted. “And that’s what you two are sitting here trying to fix?”

“Yep.” Kerry looked exhausted. “And I’ve got that breakfast to go to, then more grilling. It’s not going to be a good day.”

“All right. Mark, get to the punch down room,” Dar said into the phone. “Tell everyone to get the hell out of your way, or I’m going to be flying down there to personally kick their asses.”

Kerry winced.

“You there? Good. Take the following circuits and hot patch them.”

Dar read off a list of numbers and letters. “Put them in the high speed ports H1, H2, H3 and H4 on one big pipe, and H3 and H4 on the other.”

She took the keyboard and rapidly switched to a configuration program.

“All right, hang on.” Dar typed furiously, slamming the enter key in frus-Eye of the Storm 333

tration as she got to the end of each line. “This better work or…”

“Easy.” Kerry rubbed her knee under the desk. “Look there, wait, Dar, that’s the wrong—”

“I see it.” Dar closed her eyes briefly, then reopened them and corrected her error. She reset the port she’d just finished, then flipped over to Kerry’s monitoring program. “C’mon…c’mon, you little b—son of a bitch.”

“Dar, that’s the wrong speed.” Kerry took the keyboard from her and started typing, brushing the taller woman’s hands away. “Yell at Mark some more while I do this.”

Ceci watched as Dar’s face twitched in annoyance, but was unable to react as angrily as she obviously wanted to. “Mark, are you done yet?”

She growled into the phone. “Now?” A pause. “Now?” Another pause.

“Kerry, go.”

“Okay.” Kerry finished and wrote the configuration changes, then reset the device. She counted silently under her breath up to twenty, then reconnected to it. “Done…done…wahoo.” She exhaled in utter relief.

“Passing packets on those ports, Dar.”

“I see it.” Dar had been watching the monitoring tool in the background and now she flipped it to the foreground and watched the shifting charts, which pumped in comforting shades of green and blue.

“Jesus.” She leaned against the phone. “Good work, Mark. Thanks for flying up so early.” The MIS chief had spent the evening scouring their local resources and trying to help Dar find a way to resolve the problem without breaching their extensive contracts with the companies involved in the crisis.

No luck. So Dar had asked him to go personally to the switching center, where he’d been consulting with the switch programmers since six a.m.

No luck. The Y2K patch had made such a mess of the firmware, even Mark’s and Dar’s combined programming talents had been unable to make head or tail of it, leaving the executive with a sparse list of options.

Stay down or breach their contract, and remove the services from their vendor. “I’d better call Hamilton Baird and let him know to expect some screaming.” She sighed, referring to ILS’s legal chief. “And he loves me so much as it is.”

“Dar, you had no choice.” Kerry yawned, putting her head down on one arm. “Doesn’t he live in Boston?”

“Mmm.” Dar tipped her head back and closed her eyes. “Yeah, he only sounds like he lives in Louisiana.”

Ceci kept quiet, assuming the green things and Dar’s obvious relief, were a good thing. She glanced up at the television, where talking heads were analyzing the problem, one that looked vaguely familiar. “Isn’t that your boss?”

Dar looked up. Sure enough, a very serious looking Alastair was front and center, freshly scrubbed and very concerned. “They dug him out of bed early.” She increased the volume. “Not the kind of publicity he 334 Melissa Good wanted today, I bet.”

“Mr. McLean, can you give us some idea of what is going on?”

Alastair cleared his throat. “Simply speaking? There was an attempt made to make a piece of equipment year 2000 compatible and that attempt resulted in the equipment failing.”

“Your equipment, sir? Are you saying this is something ILS did?”

The reporter leaned forward.

“No.” Alastair shook his head gravely. “This was done at the national carrier level, although we were made aware of the fact that it was in process.” He shifted. “They’ve been working throughout the night to correct the problem, but it’s very complex.”

“Mr. McLean, I don’t think I need to tell you what kind of impact this is having. Is this what we can expect? Is this an early example of what the year 2000 is going to be like?” the reporter asked. “We have several representatives on the line with us who would like to discuss this with you.

People who have some very serious concerns.”

“Well, certainly, we can discuss the issues.” Alastair looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I can’t say I can answer for an entire industry, however, and an isolated incident like this shouldn’t be taken as—”

“But you are the largest provider of interbanking services, are you not?”

“Yes, that’s true, but—”

“Then, Mr. McLean, effectively you can speak for the industry, because you’re being paid to make sure Americans aren’t impacted by the changes, aren’t you?”

“I can speak for ILS, yes.” Alastair sighed. “And review what we are doing towards that end, while we work on getting further status on the problem at hand.”

Dar smiled, flipped her phone open, and dialed her boss’s cell number by memory.

Alastair looked down, then interrupted the reporter in mid-word.

“Excuse me a minute, David. This might be the information I requested for you.”

Then she heard the phone answer. “Good morning,” Dar drawled softly into the phone. “Nice tie.”

“Dar, I’m on the air and this guy’s about to nail me,” her boss whispered.

“I know. We’re up. I moved them over to the new network.”

Silence. She watched the smile spread across the face on the screen, which was half turned to hear her conversation. Alastair closed the phone without a further word, then straightened, and tightened his tie a bit, the twinkle back in his eyes. Dar turned the sound up, wondering what he was going to say.

“As I was asking, Mr. McLean, what exactly does ILS intend to do about this crisis?” the reporter asked. “Hundreds of thousands of paychecks are on the line and citizens up and down the East Coast are unable to access their own money.”

Eye of the Storm 335

“Well, David,” Alastair responded. “Fortunately, we are lucky to have one of the most talented minds in the business as our CIO, and that phone call was just informing me ILS has rerouted around the problem and brought everything up on our own, brand new, internal network.” If he’d had suspenders, Dar was sure, he’d have stuck his thumbs in them and smirked. As it was, he gave a good impression of doing that anyway.

The reporter was definitely taken aback. He shuffled a few papers.

“That’s great news,” he temporized, then read something off a nearby prompter. “Yes, as a matter of fact, we just got word from Interbank that they’ve started restoring service.” He looked down at a slip of paper handed to him. “And that would be your CIO, Dar Roberts, is that right?”

“Hey. He’s talking about you?” Andrew was leaning against the wall, watching in fascination.

“He’s talking about me.” Dar slumped in her chair and exchanged a high five with Kerry. “We tried a dozen things with the company that ran that switch, but nothing worked. We had to end up rewiring everything and putting it on our network. We must have breached ten contracts in the process.”

Cheering was heard from the screen as people were shown clustering eagerly around the cash machines.

“Sad commentary on society,” Ceci murmured. “Almost Pavlovian, really.”

“You know,” Kerry got up and collapsed on the couch, “I don’t get to see the results of my labors quite so graphically most of the time.”

“No,” Dar agreed, standing up and stretching her body out, wincing at a painful knot on her back. “Want me to get more coffee?”

Kerry stuck her tongue out. “Any more of that and it’s going to come out my ears.” She peered at the screen as she heard the senate hearings mentioned. “Oh…hot dog. Yes!” She wriggled on her back and kicked her feet out.

“Postponed?” Ceci smiled at the blonde woman’s unrestrained joy.

“Only until this afternoon,” Dar grumbled.

“I don’t care. I get to take a nap.” Kerry stifled a yawn. “I’m so tired, I’d take an hour if I could get it.” The phone rang, and she moaned.

“No…no…go away.”

Dar reached over and picked it up. “Hello?”

“Looking for Kerry Stuart,” the voice came back, brisk and businesslike.

“She’s sleeping,” Dar replied.

“Well, we’ve got a breakfast date.”

“Not today.”

“Okay, look here Ms.—”

“Roberts. Dar Roberts. I’m Kerry’s boss and I’m telling you she’s not available to meet this morning,” Dar told him crisply, then hung up.

“Who the hell was that?”

“A member of the press,” her mother told her. “Kerry fascinated them, for some reason.”

336 Melissa Good Dar walked to the window and peered out. “She makes good press.”

She leaned against the glass. “She’s bright, good looking, and articulate—

of course she fascinated them.”

“Hey.” Kerry felt the blood heat her face. “Can we not talk about me like I’m not here?”

Dar chuckled, then looked down as her cell phone rang. “Hello?”

“I love you.”

Dar chuckled again. “Well, thank you Alastair, but it was a group effort.”

“No, really, Dar. That was the most exquisite timing and it was much appreciated.” Alastair sounded profoundly relieved. “I don’t care how many contracts you busted, it was worth it to see the smug look slide right off that pig bastard’s face.” He cleared his throat. “Ah. I’ve had a request to get you on for an interview.”

“Now?”

“Well, timing is everything, Dar,” her boss coaxed. “The positive press is a good thing, especially right now.” He left the thought hanging.

Dar sighed. “Between the press wanting to talk to me and the press wanting to talk to Kerry, we’re liable to get more publicity this week than we can handle.”

There was a moment’s quiet. “Ah…hmm,” the CEO murmured. “I forgot she was testifying this week. Her father’s no friend of ours.”

And if they tie it all together, it’ll be tabloid heaven. “Yeah.” Dar exhaled.

“This could get tricky.”

A drumming of fingers. “All right. Let me get Andrea in on it. I’ll have her give you a call to coordinate, Dar. I don’t think we can avoid the interview, and it’s a good moment for it, but we have to be aware of what might fall out if the press starts sniffing around.” His voice became brisk.

“And if it does, it does. Our public policy is written clearly enough.

Andrea can spin it positive, us being so progressive and all that.”

Dar snorted.

“Yes, well, you can’t turn a pig into silk lingerie overnight, my friend.”

“You better warn the board,” Dar responded quietly. “The very issue we talked about yesterday might be moot.”

Alastair sighed. “Think positive, willya, Dar? At least we can see this coming.”

“Yeah,” Dar acknowledged. “Well, have Andi call me, all right?” She hung up and let the phone drop to her thigh, then she turned to face the three pairs of curious eyes on her. “Ker, I think we need to talk.”

Green eyes peered at her over the couch back in apprehension.

“We’re about to become poster children, aren’t we?”

Thunder rolled for an answer.