Thicker Than Water

Chapter

Two

“ANGIE?” CYNTHIA STUART looked up as she heard footsteps in the hall. “We’re ready to sit down for dinner. Is Richard back?”

“Not yet.” Angela entered the solarium, took a seat, and straightened her skirt as she tucked her feet under the chair. “He said his meeting might run late. I just put Andrew to bed.” She fiddled with her hair—a dark brown, very unlike her older sister Kerry’s. She was also taller than her sibling, with a thin build that made her seem almost gaunt.

“Well, all right. It can wait a few minutes,” Cynthia replied.

“Your father’s still in conference, at any rate. But I think they are wrapping up shortly. He rang the bell about five minutes ago.”

Angie nodded and they were silent for a few moments.

“Have you spoken to your sister recently?” Cynthia asked.

Angie shook her head. “No. I tried calling there a few times, but I didn’t get an answer. I guess they’re busy.” She looked at her mother. “You know.”

“Mm.” Cynthia nodded once. “They do seem active.” She sighed. “I do wish—”

“Mother, don’t start,” Angie said. “Kerry’s happy, isn’t that enough? Just leave her alone.”

The study door opened and Roger Stuart emerged. Spotting them on his way to the dining room, he changed direction and entered the solarium. “What’s going on here? Are we not sitting down to dinner tonight? I expected to have soup on the table already.”

“We were waiting for you, Roger,” Cynthia responded mildly. “And Richard isn’t back yet. But we can go sit down now.

I’m sure he’ll join us shortly.” She got up and motioned for Angie to join her. “Was your meeting successful?”

“Tsh.” Roger shook his head. “Jackasses, all of them.” He stood back to let Cynthia and Angie precede him into the dining room. As they walked across the corridor the youngest Stuart sib-14 Melissa Good ling, brother Michael, joined them. “Ah. Come to mooch dinner again? They out of Happy Meals down the street?”

Michael colored, but didn’t answer. They all filed into the dining room and took seats. The dining room staff came in silently and placed platters of an orange, creamy looking soup on the table.

“What’s this?” Roger asked, poking the soup with a spoon.

“Is it that damn tomato I told you never to give me again?”

“No, sir,” the head server replied respectfully. “It’s cream of carrot.”

“Mmph.” Roger tasted it, then made a face. “Barely edible.

Does anyone in this house like carrots?”

“Kerry does,” Michael remarked, and sipped a spoonful of the soup. “I bet she’d like this.” He jerked slightly as Angie kicked him under the table.

Angie sighed. “She probably would, if it were being served anywhere but here.”

Her mother frowned. “Angela.”

Roger looked up and gave his children a dour stare. “I’m sure she would. But it’ll be a cold day in Hell before you ever find out, hmm? So keep your mouths shut until you have something intelligent to say.” He gave each of them a pointed look. “Should be a quiet meal.”

There was a long moment of tense silence, then Cynthia sighed again. “Well, so, how was your day, Michael? Did you meet any new clients?”

“Um…no.”

Roger laughed again, this time with a disgusted edge to the sound. Then he looked up abruptly. “Damned ironic that the one person in this family who could handle an intelligent discussion won’t ever be here for it.”

Silence settled in against the soft clanking of spoons.

DAR ENTERED HER office, tossed the report folder down on her desk, and watched it slide across the polished surface as she walked around behind it. She neatly caught the packet as it slid off the desk, and threw it into her outbox with a little noise of disgust.

Mondays. I hate them. Dar took a seat, nudged her trackball, and watched the screen come up. It was full of dark messages, some with red exclamation points. She rubbed her eyes and started to read them, cursing under her breath. “No.” She clicked delete. “No.” She clicked delete again. “Kiss my ass.” She selected three and deleted them. “Son of a bitch, what is wrong with these Thicker Than Water 15

people today?” Her phone rang and she hit the button. “Yes?”

“Dar, I have Mr. Alastair on numero uno,” Maria replied.

Jesus. “Okay, thanks.” Dar punched the line open. “Hi.”

“Morning, Dar.” Alastair sounded relatively relaxed. “Anything new going on there?”

Dar stared at the phone. “Were you expecting there to be?”

“Nah,” Alastair answered. “Just felt like touching base with you. How’s the shoulder?”

“Fine, Uncle Al. How’s your bursitis?” Dar replied, half amused and half aggravated. “You hear from Gerry?”

“Nope, not a word,” Alastair answered. “But I figure that as far as that goes, no news is one less thing I have to have chewing my shorts up, if you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” Dar said. “To answer your original question, it’s quiet here for a change. Just a lot of annoying crap in my mailbox I’m trying to catch up on.”

“Good to hear,” Alastair said. “Kerry doing okay? I got the feeling she was a little shook up with all that activity, eh? She settle down?”

Dar frowned at the phone. “Alastair?”

“Eh?”

“What the hell’s going on?”

Alastair sighed. “I’m trying to work on my subtlety, Dar.

You’re not helping.”

Blue eyes blinked a few times. “And it’s supposed to work on me?”

“Not really, no,” he said. “Fact is, I got wind that a relative of hers could be behind all this mish-mosh of questioning our contracts with the military.” His tone was serious. “So, I was wondering if she’d been in conflict with him again, maybe stirred him up.”

Dar snorted. “If that’s all it takes to stir him up, he’s not worth the six dollars per square yard of linen my tax dollars pay to clothe him.”

“Mm.”

“No,” she went on. “Kerry hasn’t spoken to her folks for a while. Nothing’s going on. He’s probably just being an asshole because he is one…and because of me.”

“Ah.”

Dar drummed her fingers on the desk. “This just start?”

“Nah,” Alastair answered. “Apparently he instigated it right after we first signed the deal. It’s just now bubbling to the top.”

Not because of what I gave him, then. “Well, I can’t help it. I can’t change what’s pissing him off. You think it’s real trouble?”

Alastair sighed again. “I think it might be. I know you can’t 16 Melissa Good fix it, Dar; I was just curious. I’ll take care of it on my end. Don’t fret over it.”

Dar suspected they both knew that bit of advice wasn’t going anywhere. “You think he’s coming after us? God damn it, Alastair, I saved the bastard’s life. What more does he want from me?”

“I know.” Alastair’s voice modified to a gentler tone. “Dar, it’s not you, it’s him. Let me handle it. I just wanted to know if there was anything going on with him and Kerry before I start hitting below the belt. Understand—I don’t give a damn if he’s her father. If he scotches this contract, we’re in big trouble, lady. I can’t make those dollars up at this late date in the fiscal year.”

No kidding. Dar chewed on the inside of her lip. The contract had been a huge plus for them when they’d announced it. “Do you know what it would mean if we had to go back on that now?”

“Lady, do I ever,” Alastair remarked dryly. “Talk at you later, huh? Have a good day, Dar.”

“Yeah.” Dar hung up the phone and grimaced. “Now you say that.”

HER PHONE WAS ringing as she entered and she contem-plated letting it go to voice mail, then sighed and answered it.

“Operations, Kerry Stuart.”

“Hey, Kerry, this is Ilene, from the church?” The voice hesitantly added, “I do the youth group counseling with you?”

“Oh, sure.” Kerry’s mental train jerked onto a new set of tracks. “Sorry. What’s up?”

“Have you heard from Lena, the kid in the group? You know the one I mean?” Ilene asked. “She was supposed to meet me for lunch yesterday, and she never showed.”

Kerry started shutting down her computer. “Well, maybe something came up; you know how it is. She didn’t call or anything?”

“No. And yeah, I know stuff happens, but two of her friends were here just now looking for her. They said she hasn’t been around for a couple of days, and they’re a little worried. I thought maybe she might have contacted you.”

“Me?” Kerry’s brow creased. “No. I don’t think I gave my number out to the group and I’m not listed in the phone book. If she does contact me somehow, though, I’ll definitely get in touch with you. Do they think something happened to her or—”

“No one’s sure. It’s just weird for her not to be around for that long. She didn’t say she was going anywhere.” Ilene sighed.

“Well, it was a long shot, but Casey said Lena really likes you, so I Thicker Than Water 17

thought maybe you’d given her your number or something.

Thanks anyway, Kerry.”

“No problem,” Kerry replied. “I’ll keep an eye out for her, okay?”

“Much appreciated. Talk to you later.”

The unexpected call left Kerry a bit unsettled. She finished closing down her system, then checked her caller ID and copied Ilene’s number into her Palm Pilot. She’d met the other counselor a few times at church functions and rather liked her, but they hadn’t spent much time talking to each other since then.

Pity, really, since Ilene shared her general background and upbringing. She'd been born in Detroit into a family of old car money whose reaction to her coming out had been, if not as spec-tacular as that of Kerry’s parents, at least as vicious. They’d taken just about everything she owned and had thrown her out of the house, forcing her to move somewhere, anywhere, and support herself.

Just like Kerry, Ilene had made the transition, but for Ilene it had been much harder since the only job she’d had prior to moving was as a movie usher. She’d mixed in with a tough crowd there in Miami and gotten into a little trouble, but had ended up taking vocational courses and scraping together a career as a mechanic.

It puts things into perspective, sometimes, when you look at other people and realize how lucky you are. Kerry leaned back and wished her Advil faster sailing as it headed towards her pounding headache. It was making her slightly sick to her stomach, and she hoped that the nausea faded before she had to make a dash for the restroom.

Meetings didn’t usually bring one of those suckers on, but she’d been a little tense when she’d woken up late, and rushing to get to work never helped. Dar had shrugged off the timing problem, but Kerry was very aware of the eyes and ears monitoring her, and the last thing she wanted was people commenting that she took advantage of her relationship with Dar to wander in whenever she felt like it.

Dar told her not to give a crap if they gossiped, but that didn’t really help her insides any. Of course, she also didn’t have the cojones to handle the comments like Dar did. When her lover was confronted with a caustic comment on her late entry, she merely replied with a smirk and the words, “Don’t you wish you had the reason I do?”

It was flattering, in a way, but Kerry knew she turned brick red every time she heard it. “Ah well.” She flexed her shoulders, her fingers working a knot at the base of her skull. Maybe the rest 18 Melissa Good of the day would be peaceful, and she could get her mailbox cleaned out after she’d ignored it all weekend.

A soft knock sounded on her inner door, and she swiveled to see it open and reveal Dar’s dark head poking through. “Hey.”

Dar entered, walked over to her, and leaned on the back of her chair. “Can I kill Eleanor?”

Ah. “What now, honey?” Kerry folded her hands over her stomach and gave Dar a loving benign look. “Did she promise a prospective client you’d take them to dinner again? You know it’s just because of your reputation.”

“She promised a prospective client I’d give him free bandwidth if he signed a multiyear contract,” Dar replied with a dour look.

“Oh. What a bitch.” Kerry sat up and reached for her keyboard. “Let me go tell her what she can do with her promise of free—”

Dar covered Kerry’s hands with her own. “I told her. But I know she’s going to come to you with a sob story to get you to try to change my mind.”

“Hah!”

Dar gave her a kiss on the top of the head. “She’ll learn, one of these days.” She stepped away as Kerry sat back and swiveled around to face her. “Meeting go all right?”

“Eh.” Kerry exhaled. “It gave me a headache. I’m waiting on the Advil.”

Dar sat down on the desk, and brushed Kerry’s hair back and then stroked her cheek.

It brought a smile to Kerry’s face and banished some of the tension. “Quiet by you? Maybe we can get out of here a couple minutes early. If they’re going to talk anyway, I might as well just take advantage of it.”

“Sure.” Dar saw Kerry’s line light up. “I’ll let you get back to work.”

Kerry circled Dar’s leg with one arm as she answered the phone. “Operations, Stuart.”

“Ms. Stuart, this is Ramon in the ops center,” a tense voice responded. “I think something’s going on.”

Kerry felt Dar lean forward to listen. “Something? Like what?”

“There’s a huge file transfer going on from the banking T1’s, nothing like I’ve ever seen before. Can you take a look? I was trying to get hold of Ms. Roberts, but she’s not in her office.”

“We’re on our way.” Dar hit the button and popped up off the desk, with Kerry right behind her. “Well, one thing—at least—”

“We don’t have to answer our mail?”

Thicker Than Water 19

“You got it.”

The door slammed after them, leaving the room in somber silence.

“DID YOU HAVE to do that?” Angie asked, as she walked her brother out to his car. “I mean, good grief, Mike.”

“Yes, I did,” Michael replied stubbornly. “God damn it, Angie, she’s our sister. I don’t care if our parents wish she wasn’t, she is.”

Angie walked a few steps, glancing up at the clear, star filled sky. “I know.”

“You don’t know. You don’t give a piss, Angie. You went right along with them when they wanted to give her the cold shoulder at the trial, and you could give a rat’s—”

“That’s not true!” Angie grabbed his arm and swung him around. “I love Kerry. Don’t you take that high and mighty attitude with me. You went right along with it, too.”

“I didn’t. I went over there where she was sitting.” Mike jerked his arm free. “You didn’t.”

“For crying out loud, Mike! I was nine months pregnant,”

Angie shouted. “What in the hell did you expect me to do, make a scene?”

“Yeah,” Michael replied. “You could have stood up for her.”

“Oh, you’re just impossible.” Angie turned and started back for the house. “All you want to do is start trouble about her to keep him from taking pot shots at you.” She slammed the front door, leaving Michael out in the chill of the fall night.

“Yeah.” Michael exhaled. “Maybe.” He gave his head a half shake and went to his car. Several men walked towards the house and he stepped aside to let them pass. They spared him a glance, then continued on without acknowledging him.

“Does he know what he has? Is he sure?” one asked in a doubtful tone.

“He’s sure,” a second answered. “What I want to know is, where’d he get the dirt from? I thought the guy he had inside turned on him?”

“Dunno. Guess we’ll find out shortly.”

They passed out of earshot, leaving Michael standing there.

He shook his head and sighed. “What now, I wonder? Did he get those pictures of old what’s-his-name and the hooker? Anything to make a scandal and take the heat off, I guess.” He paused as he turned towards the car. “Maybe we are related.”

20 Melissa Good KERRY LEANED OVER Dar’s shoulder, watching her key in rapid commands on a console. Dar’s legs were locked around the base of the chair, and she rocked slightly—the energy coming off her was almost palpable.

“What is it?” Kerry asked in a soft voice.

“Dunno…dunno, yet,” Dar muttered, trying to wrestle an analyzer into place on the line. “Jesus, it’s big.” She gave up on her work, then keyed another screen. “I’m going to mirror and dump it.”

“Ma’am?” The console operator sounded nervous. “We’re not supposed to do that.”

“You’re not supposed to do that.” Dar finished her task.

“Until I can see what this is, I’m not taking any chances.” She went back to work on the sniffer. “Damn port’s pushing so much data, I wonder if I can…Damn.”

“Can you just put a…Ah.” Kerry closed her mouth and watched as Dar managed to get a handle on the traffic by throwing it to their packet analyzer. “Okay, let’s see what we…Oh, hell.”

“Yeah.”

“Encrypted,” Kerry said. “Well, that’s a good thing, right? I mean, you want your data to be encrypted.”

“Mm.” Dar traced something with a long fingertip. “I don’t like that header.”

Kerry leaned forward again and studied the packet Dar pointed at. “Why?”

“Unusual port,” Dar murmured. “Do me a favor. Get Charles Ettig on the phone and feel him out. See if he’s got a big transfer going on. Just say we saw a usage spike on the pipe.”

Kerry sat down and lifted the phone on the console. She pulled out her PDA and checked the number to dial, then punched it in and waited for a connection. “Charles Ettig, please. Kerry Stuart, from ILS.”

Bad Musak happened for a few minutes, then it cut off.

“Hello? This is Charles Ettig speaking.”

Kerry kept her voice casual. “Charles, this is Kerry Stuart.”

“Oh, hello, Kerry,” Charles responded. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, thanks. Listen, one of our measuring systems caught a spike on the usage of your primary line. Are you guys moving some files?”

There was a moment of silence. “Moving files?” Ettig asked.

“No, not that I know of. I mean, it’s Monday, y’know, and we do have all the reconciliation transfers coming from the banks in here, is that what you mean?”

Dar shook her head and pointed to herself.

Thicker Than Water 21

“No, this is something coming out of your building,” Kerry said. “Like if you were putting out a software upgrade, that kind of thing. We thought maybe you were distributing patches to your database.”

“Oh.” Ettig pondered a moment. “Well, I guess we could be.

Let me call around and find out.” He hesitated. “We aren’t being charged for it, are we?”

Kerry chuckled. “No, it just seemed a little out of the ordi-nary, so we thought we’d ask.”

“Okay.” Ettig now sounded more confident. “Thanks for keeping an eye on things. You know we really do appreciate that, huh? I’ll call you back.”

Kerry hung up and gave Dar a quizzical look.

“Beautiful,” Dar said. “I’m going to see if I can track down where it’s going.” She typed in a command and observed the result.

“Be careful, Dar, you’re walking a very fine line here.” Kerry laid her hands on Dar’s shoulders and flexed her fingers against the powerful bone and muscle under them.

“Got it.” Dar went to another screen and typed in a query.

“Let’s see who you are, hm?”

“It could very well be legitimate.”

“Could be.”

Dar waited, drumming her fingertips on the keyboard. “Cali-fornia. Okay.” A few more moments passed as the trace continued. “Well, it’s heading for a DSL node in San Francisco. They got anything in San Francisco?”

“Three branches,” Kerry said. “But they’re on Frame Relay lines, Dar. Not DSL.”

“Uh huh.”

“Where are they tapping in? Is it on our network?” Kerry inhaled. “Did we have a breach?”

“Shit.” Dar started typing again. “Switch in Detroit.” She picked up the phone and dialed. “Mark? It’s Dar. Pull up all the changes and adds in Detroit over the last three weeks. Get them to Ops.” Without waiting for the answer, she hung up and started tracing ports. “It’s in the cloud.”

“The Frame cloud? In the Tier 1?”

“Yes.”

“They were breached.”

Dar’s fingers hesitated over the keys. “I’m going to cut it off.”

The phone rang and Kerry picked it up. “Operations, Stuart.”

“Kerry? This is Charles Ettig. Listen, I just talked to my people and they say there’s nothing going on.”

Dar’s hands were a blur.

22 Melissa Good

“Okay, Charles,” Kerry replied. “Tell you what. We’re going to drop the traffic, and we’ll analyze it—see if we can figure out what it was and let you know. How’s that?”

“Sounds just great, Kerry. Thanks again for taking such good care of us, okay?” His tone was grateful. “I know we can trust you guys.”

“Thanks, Charles. Call you back.” Kerry hung up and exhaled. “Dar, if there was a breach, is it our fault?”

“Depends where it is. Let’s trace it, then we can figure out what the hell we’re going to do. Damn. The last thing we need is a security crack right now.” Dar stared at the screen. “Even if it’s the Tier 1’s breach, it’s still our managed circuit. Damn it, damn it, damn it.” She thumped a fist against her forehead.

Kerry put her hands back on Dar’s shoulders and gave them a squeeze. The tension was evident, and without really thinking, she gently massaged the muscles. “Let’s find out what the deal is, first. At the very least, Dar, we saw it happening.” She turned and looked at the console operator, who was studiously looking elsewhere. “Ramon, you did a great job finding this.”

He glanced furtively at them. “Thanks, ma’am.”

Kerry’s brow knit, then she realized he was uncomfortable with her interaction with Dar. For a second, she almost stopped and backed off. Then Dar’s skin shifted under her touch, and she stepped closer instead, adding her body’s warmth to the massage and thinking, To hell with it.

To hell with it. This woman in front of her was what mattered, not a bug eyed nerdy boy standing by watching. “Dar?”

Dar leaned back until she rested her head against Kerry’s stomach. “Yes?” She tipped her eyes up and looked at Kerry.

“This could be a ranking fubar, Ker.”

Kerry managed a smile. “You’ll handle it. We’ll figure it all out. Mark’s provisioning process is a solid one. I’m sure we can find an angle.”

Dar’s shoulders relaxed, and she nodded. “I’m sure we can.”

She typed a note into the console. “I’ll have him put that data dump somewhere so I can check it out tomorrow. Maybe I’ll get some clues from that.”

Despite their stated optimism, Kerry knew they were both crossing everything they could.

HANDS CLASPED BEHIND his back, the tall, dark haired man paced back and forth across Senator Stuart’s home office.

“Roger, I appreciate what you’re saying, but how can you be sure it’s real data? You said someone just gave it to you? I don’t under-Thicker Than Water 23

stand.”

“You don’t have to understand.” Roger glared dourly at him.

“Just look at it. Look at the names and the numbers, and you tell me, Bradley, you tell me if it’s real or not.” He threw a stack of papers on the desk towards Bradley.

Bradley picked them up and studied them, impatiently at first, then slowly turning the pages. He paused, then sat down in a chair across from Stuart and stared at the writing. “Dear God.”

Roger leaned back in his chair. “So you tell me, Bradley,” he repeated with deep sarcasm, “do we have a problem?”

Bradley looked up. “We have a problem. Roger, we need to pay off whoever got this to you and fast.” To his surprise, Roger laughed. “I’m not joking.”

Stuart got up and started pacing. “Oh, but you are; you just don’t know you are. The source I got this from not only can’t be bought off, I wouldn’t even try it.” He turned and pointed. “What I want to know is, how is it that someone,” he stared pointedly at Bradley, “was so god damned stupid as to put incriminating information in something so accessible? Tell me that, Bradley?”

“Sir—”

“Tell me why details about deals neither of us officially knows anything about are sitting in a military database in the sticks!”

“Sir.” Bradley held up a hand. “Let me get Stevens and Perlamen in here; maybe they can make sense of it.” He went to the door and called out, “Gentlemen, we need you.”

The two men entered, faced with the angry senator on the other side of the room. “Sir?”

“They can’t explain it. You can’t explain it.” Roger’s voice rose. “No one can explain it, because I’m surrounded by idiots!

The irony of it all is that the goddamned bitch who gave me this crap makes you all look like mental midgets.”

“Sir, take it easy, please,” Bradley begged. “I’m sure there’s an explanation. Someone must have—”

“Idiots!” Stuart bellowed. “‘It’s a simple deal, Senator.’ Isn’t that what you told me? Just some surplus military garbage being traded, nothing important. You stupid son of a bitch, did you see what’s in that data? Idiot! Idiots! All of you!”

“Sir!” Perlamen said. “We can incriminate—”

“We’re all incriminated, you jackass!” Stuart yelled at the top of his lungs. “This is not in the hands of any friends of ours. For God’s sake…For God’s sake…” He clutched his head. “Ah!”

“Sir?” The men rushed forward. “Sir!”