Tropical Storm

Chapter Thirteen

“MORNING, MARIA.” DAR settled back in her seat as the ferry made its way toward the causeway.

“Dios mío, Dar. You cannot believe the smells in here this morning. It is like a thousand cats pee-peed on the rug,” the secretary informed her. “I have an orange stuck into my nose.”

“Did maintenance arrange for a carpet cleaning service?” Dar inquired, wincing at the thought of the stench. “Never mind, just put me through to Jack Eierdall.” She waited a moment, then a gruff voice answered. “Jack? Dar Roberts.” She listened. “We need a steam cleaner in there today, Jack, not two days from now … That’s not acceptable.” Another wait and protesting tones.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about your cousin. I’ll get a commercial crew in and bill you back for it at cost plus if you don’t get ’em in there today.”

Dar inspected a nail, then flexed her hand where the skin was just a little tight from the sunburn she’d gotten on Saturday. “Look, cut the crap. Bottom line, I see the truck by the time I get there, or I call in Stanley Steamer Corporate. G’bye, Jack.” She hung up the line, then dialed again. “Maria?”

“Si.” The secretary sneezed. “Oye, excuse me, Dar.” She shuffled some papers. “You have a meeting at eight thirty, remember—the executive committee, and you have three client briefings after that.”

Dar sighed. “I know. Listen, block out my morning tomorrow, until at least lunchtime, and Kerry’s too.” She paused. “She’s, um…she has to drive me to an appointment I have to go to.”

After a period of shocked silence, Maria said slowly, “All right, I will do that. Is it…a business meeting? I…”

“No,” the executive said quietly, “I’m having some tests done. It’s all right, nothing major. I just don’t know what kind of medication they’re going to give me and didn’t want to risk driving myself.”

“Dios mío. All right, I’ll put that down. I’ll have to cancel your account meeting with Travel and Transport, Dar.”

“Aw, shucks,” Dar drawled. “Reschedule it for sometime extremely inconvenient to them, will you?”

“Tch, Dar.” Maria laughed shortly. “You are so bad.” She hesitated. “I have my rosary here. What kind of tests for you, so I’ll know how to pray?”

Dar blinked at the phone, too stunned to answer for a moment, then she exhaled. “It’s nothing, I … They’re not sure, really, Maria, just maybe a leaky valve or something. It’s really not anything to worry about, but thanks for offering.”

148 Melissa Good

“Mi madre.” The older woman sighed. “Ay, good morning.” She held the phone away from her mouth. “Excuse me, what?” Dar heard a muffled exchange, then Maria came back. “Dar, they lost some big thing in New York.”

“Oh, hellinahandbasket.” Dar covered her eyes. “New York down on a Monday morning. What did I do to deserve this?” She angled the Lexus up the ramp and turned left onto the causeway. “Look, I’m about five or ten minutes out. Have whoever is on duty in the MDF call Netops and find out exactly what’s down, and warn Northeast region, especially service recovery, that we’ve got a problem.”

“Okay, okay. Ah, good morning. Thank you, thank you, chiquita.”

Maria’s voice warmed, and Dar could hear another voice in the background, which brought a smile to her face.

“Dar, Kerry is here, she says she’ll take care of it.”

“Good morning, Kerry.” Dar chuckled. “Thanks, how was the rest of your weekend?”

“Eh.” Kerry’s voice was noncommittal. “Let’s not talk about that. Does the term sewer backup mean anything to you?”

“Ouch.” Dar winced, as she turned left onto Brickell.

“Yeah, it’s almost as bad as it is in here,” Kerry told her. “Well, I’m going to go call Netops. I’ll try to have a status for you by the time you get here.”

Maria’s voice came back on the line and the muffled sound of a door closing could be heard in the background. “She is such a nice girl, Dar,” the secretary told her approvingly. “That was so sweet of her to take you home on Friday.”

“Yes, it was.” Dar swung into the parking lot, noting a wildly careening truck just behind her. The truck pulled right up to the service entrance, and four men got out, pulling out carpet-cleaning equipment. She grinned mercilessly. “Be right up.” She hung up the line and got out of the car, grabbing her briefcase before heading for the doors.

KERRY CARRIED A handful of papers with her as she slipped down the back hallway and tapped on the door to Dar’s office, hearing the older woman’s voice raised in a growling yell. “Oh boy.” She pushed the door open and slipped inside.

Pacing back and forth behind her desk, Dar looked for all the world like a well-dressed panther. She was yelling at some hapless person in the network operations center, her staccato barks tossing aside his attempts to explain.

“Don’t give me that crap, I don’t want to know about how Sprint had a fiber cut under Newark Airport. I want that circuit rerouted.”

Kerry stopped before she reached the desk and held the top sheet out, then handed it over as Dar held her hand up. “It’s a big problem, Dar. They had an airport transport vehicle go off the ramp and crash down through the communications center. It took out their entire fiber center, including all the internal com at the airport.”

“Jesus.” Dar’s eyes widened. “Are they shut down?”

“Yeah, they’re rerouting traffic through La Guardia, but it’s a mess.”

Fingers drumming on her desk, eyes shifting rapidly, Dar sat down and Tropical Storm 149

requested information from their database, and drummed her fingers again.

“All right, all right. Listen up, Netops…”

“We’re here,” the tired-sounding voice came back. “We’ve been on this since two AM.”

“You’ve got thirty-seven T1 lines that come down into Newark for T-and-T’s rescom that you handle for the Hub site agreement.” Dar traced a spiderwork of connections on her screen, motioning Kerry over. The blonde woman put a hand on the back of her chair and peered at the screen.

“Yeah, but that’s carrying terminal res traffic.” The phone crackled.

“If you shift the endpoint routers at backbone six and seven to one and two, you can send airport com down those, and get the airport back up. Shunt the res functions to dial backup,” Dar said rapidly. “That’ll bring the net back up there, and pass traffic through for the banking centers in New York, who are down right now and breathing fire on my ass.” There was dead silence from the phone. “Did you hear me?” Dar barked, glancing back as Kerry patted her shoulder comfortingly. “Hello?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, okay. We heard you. Hang on, this is going to… Damn it, John, get that Tiger frad configured so we can shift res to backup. Someone call the MTC and tell them we’re doing this so they don’t freak out when the lines go down.”

“I’m waiting,” Dar called out impatiently.

“We’re working on it,” the voice responded hurriedly.

“Work faster,” Dar warned. “It’s 8:52. If those banks aren’t up for transactions by 9:00 AM, the shit is going to hit the fan in so many directions you won’t know where to duck.”

“Okay! Okay!”

Dar pulled up a Netview screen and displayed the down sites. She repeated the command, then again, nervously refreshing the screen.

“I was going to suggest I get you some coffee,” Kerry murmured, “but maybe not.”

The dark head turned, and blue eyes regarded her as Dar’s lips twitchingly held back a grin. Then she turned her attention back to the screen.

“Three minutes left. Where are my circuits!”

“Hang on, hang on. Switch that. No. No!”

“Two minutes!” Dar yelled. “I need that circuit!”

“Okay, we need the secondary tables loaded in that backbone. Serial 1…

Okay, okay. Try it now!”

Dar refreshed the screen and smiled. “Thank you,” she purred. “Nice doing business with you guys.” She hit the release button. “Not!” She barked at the phone, then punched a button and shook her head.

“Elaine Aberman, Service recovery,” a nervous, anxious voice answered.

“Good morning, Elaine,” Dar said, soothingly.

“No! It’s not!” the woman wailed. “It’s horrible! It’s tragic! We’re dying!”

“You’re up,” the executive stated calmly.

“You can’t believe what kind of a mess it is in here. We’ve got service reps on standby ready to get up to New York, and… Excuse me?”

“You’re up. We rerouted traffic a bit. Might be a touch slow, but it’s all there,” Dar informed her.

150 Melissa Good

“Oh!” The woman squealed. “Guys, guys, we’re up! We’re up! Glory be to god, we’re up!”

Kerry put her hand over her mouth and choked back a laugh.

“G’bye, Elaine.” Dar hung up and let herself relax back into her chair with a sigh. “Nice way to start a Monday.” She rolled her head and looked up at the still-snickering blonde. “Sewer backup, huh?”

Kerry let a hand drop to Dar’s shoulder and squeezed it. “Oh my god, yes. It was awful. I finally just had to leave, take a ride down to the little park near my place and wait for them to finish pumping the sewers out.”

“Mmm. Sounds great.” Dar pushed herself to her feet. “I’m supposed to be at an exec meeting. Keep an eye on this for me, will you? Call my cell if it gets ugly again.” She patted Kerry on the back as she pushed her chair in. “See you later.”

Kerry watched her leave, then she collected her papers and made her way back to her own office.

DAR COULD HEAR the loud arguments before she even pushed open the door, and she quite deliberately let it slam behind her as she moved across to the large executive conference table. Everyone jumped, then turned and started yelling at her. She blocked out the sound, pulling her chair forward and seating herself in it, then meticulously arranging her papers in front of her and folding long hands together across them. The din continued, and she swept the room, pinning each yelling manager with her pale blue eyes until he or she shut up, then moving on to the next one. Finally, only José Montarosa was left, the head of Sales, whose face was beet red, veins sticking out on a neck a size too big for his white long-sleeved shirt.

“Goddamn it, Dar, I have three contracts in jeopardy in New Jersey.

We’re supposed to be demoing this morning. If you can’t get this shit working, I’m going to take it out of your goddamn paycheck!”

Dar glanced down at her hands, then back up at him, and cocked an eyebrow. “Try it,” she purred, with a smile. An uneasy silence fell, and she continued, “Besides, if your admin was worth two percent of the salary you pay her for those… assets…you hired her for, she’d have paged you ten minutes ago and told you we were up.” Dar poured herself a glass of water and sipped it. “Now sit down and shut up, and let’s get on with this. I have things I have to take care of.”

Montarosa glared at her, his lips twitching, then he lifted the conference room phone and dialed a number. “Maria, what’s the status?” A pause. “Why the hell didn’t you let me know?” Another pause. “Don’t give me that crap, my pager’s…” He paused and glanced at his belt. “Puta.” He flung the phone down and just assumed his seat with a glower.

Duks leaned back, biting a pencil to keep from laughing. “Dar, I heard it was a fiber cut. What happened?”

The tall woman also leaned back, crossing her legs at the ankles under the table. “Truck cut the cable. We rerouted through the regular airport T1s and shunted that traffic to a backup.”

“Oh.” Duks nodded as though he had any clue as to what she was talking Tropical Storm 151

about. “Can I have an egg roll with that?”

A nervous laugh went around the table, breaking the tension. “All right, all right, I’m the chair this week. Let’s see what’s on the agenda.” Mariana chuckled from her place next to Duks as she pulled out the previous meeting’s minutes. “Now that we have the morning crisis out of the way, thanks to Dar, we can go over more insignificant things.” She cleared her throat. “Global Volunteer day—it’s next Saturday, up in North Miami at the proposed Alternative School there. We need people to go down and clean the place up, do some painting, that kind of thing.”

“How many volunteers do we have from the field?” Evan Maitsen asked.

His department was in charge of most of the data entry, and traditionally provided a lot of volunteers for charity work.

“Um, as of today, two hundred and six,” Mariana reported. “Quite a group from Associated is coming over. Guess they want to impress the corporate types.” A laugh went around the table.

“Whose turn is it from us this year?” José asked, propping his chin up on a big fist. “I did it last year, remember?”

Dar considered a moment. “Mine, I think.” She was recalling having heard Kerry talk about her recruitment efforts earlier for the clean-up. They all looked at her in mild disbelief. She shrugged. “I haven’t done it, so it must be my turn.”

Mariana stared hard at her for a long moment, then shook her head and scribbled Dar’s name down on her sheet. “All right.” She cleared her throat, and went on to the next subject. “Remember this Friday is Boss’s Day.” She glanced around the table. “I know most you know the drill, but once again, please be careful—some people do take this opportunity to offer inappropriate gifts.”

A chuckle lifted into the air. “Yeah, I remember when someone sent Dar a set of freeze-dried bull’s cojones.” José snickered, giving Dar a sweet smile.

“What did you do with them, eh?”

Dar, who had been doodling, looked up. “Co-mailed them to Alastair,”

she replied in a deadpan voice.

Duks almost fell off his chair laughing, and the others joined in, save José and a few of his cronies. “

“Well, not all of us have to worry about our employees sending pipe bombs,” he insinuated. “Some of ours actually like us.”

Mariana glanced at him. “Fortunately for us, Dar pays people to do a job, not be her buddy,” she responded mildly. “Or we’d all be in big trouble.” She shuffled a page. “Speaking of which, let’s get onto performance reviews, shall we?”

Dar went back to her sketching, listening with half an ear to the Personnel executive’s carefully drawn-out plans. She’d spent the previous day catching up on e-mail and relaxing, sprawled out across the couch in the blessedly restored air conditioning, surprised at how unwound she’d gotten after just one day on the water. She glanced up as Duks leaned close.

“You’re in a good mood today,” he murmured in a low voice.

“Am I?” Dar inquired. “I guess I am. I had a fairly laid-back weekend.”

Duks eyed her pad, which had small pictures of fish all over it. “Did you 152 Melissa Good go fishing?”

She chuckled. “Not really. Did a little diving, though, after the storm cleared.”

He clucked at her. “Dar, you should know better than to go diving solo. I don’t want to be processing your life insurance claim, thanks.”

Blue eyes lifted mildly to his. “I wasn’t alone.”

He blinked at her in surprise, then laughed softly and shook a finger at her. “I should have guessed. No wonder you look so relaxed.”

Dar’s brow lifted. “It’s not…” She hesitated. “Not what you’re thinking.”

He just smiled at her and tapped her arm with his pencil. “Say no more.”

Silly Duks. He thinks everything has to do with people sleeping together, doesn’t he? Dar smiled to herself. It would never occur to him that two virtual strangers could get stuck together by circumstance and end up becoming friends.

That was a very satisfying thought, and Dar reflected on it a moment as a faint smile touched her face. It had been a very long time since she’d added one of those to her life. Beyond Duks, of course, and Mariana, with whom she would sometimes do occasional things—dinner, lunches, and whatnot. She’d known them for years, and they’d been out to the island a few times, but…

She sighed. An ill wind blew nobody good.

“Dar?”

By the tone, it was not the first time her name was being called, and she glanced up with a start. “Sorry, what?” All eyes were on her, curious and doubtful. “Sorry, I was going over something in my head.” She folded her arms across her chest. “What?”

“Right, well…” Mariana glanced back down at her agenda. “Now that we’ve closed the third quarter and are starting into fourth, we’ve got a couple of weeks to decide what to do with Christmas.”

“I think we should give it up and become Hindus,” Duks stated with a sniff. “Much easier. We can give everyone white rice for presents.” He waggled his pencil. “Seventeen cents a pound, remember.”

José threw a wadded-up piece of paper at him. “Godless heathen.” He snorted. Duks was well-known for his atheist leanings. “Remind me not to ever vote to put you in charge of holiday arrangements.”

“Do we have a budget this year or are we going to have to go out and sell embroidered toilet paper for funds again?” Dar drawled, sketching a lobster.

“It’s fourth quarter, what do you think?” Duks laughed. “Ah, I suppose I can squeeze some cash out of somewhere. What is it—a tree, some stuffed pigs or something, and yucca? Is that it?”

Mariana sighed. “Never mind, I’ll take care of planning it. Maybe we’ll get something other than picadillo and ropa vieja this time.” She shot a glance at José, who shrugged and lifted his hands. “Don’t worry, I’ll get at least one stuffed pig for you.”

They finished the meeting and Duks walked Dar to the door. “You open for lunch, DR?”

Dar took a breath. “Probably not, Dukky, I’ve got meetings. I don’t know when they’ll be done.” She gave him a smile. “Raincheck.” She folded her pad under her arm and headed for the stairwell, a faster way down to the tenth Tropical Storm 153

floor, where the operations center was.

“SO I FOUND three people who’ll go through certification.” Kerry took a bite of her chicken salad sandwich and chewed it. “They all live near me, so we called this place in Kendall and got a deal for four Saturdays with classroom sessions, two pool sessions, four open water dives, and one night dive.” She took a sip of ice tea. “Does that sound good?”

Dar nodded, busy with her own plate. Lunch had been much later than usual, and she was squeezing it in between meetings. “Yeah. They include equipment rental?”

“Yes, though, I was thinking of getting a piece or two of my own,” Kerry replied hesitantly. “The regulator, at least.”

“Good idea.” The executive nodded in agreement. “Mine’s a Dacor. You can get them with or without dive computers, like mine has, and with or without an octopus.”

Green eyes blinked at her in confusion. “I’m sorry? They give you octopus with your scuba gear? Uck. That’s disgusting.” She took another bite of the croissant, vainly trying to catch the flakes as they fell.

Dar laughed. “No, no. The extra mouthpiece you saw on my gear, it’s called an octopus.” She scooped up a forkful of potato salad and chewed it.

“It’s for buddy breathing.”

“Oh.” Kerry blushed a little. “Buddy breathing, right.” She pulled out a magazine. “I got one of these yesterday. I read it while I was waiting for the sewers to clear.”

“Pro Diver, that’s a pretty good one.” Dar smiled at her enthusiasm, remembering her own certification. It seemed like it had been forever, she mused, then she glanced at her watch. “Did you get held up on something?”

Green eyes lifted to hers a touch sheepishly. “Um… Well, no. I was working on those projects, and then I took care of some e-mail, and, um, I don’t know, I guess I forgot about lunch until you showed up and poked your head in the door.”

Dar studied her curiously. “Uh huh.” She spotted the gentle blush creeping up her assistant’s neck and bit down on her fork. “Well, good timing, then.” Kerry had, she realized, waited for her to go to lunch, and she wondered if the younger woman wasn’t feeling a little intimidated by her surroundings. After all, the only person she really knew here was Dar, and she probably was uncomfortable just barging in on the usual lunch cliques. She made a mental note to get Maria to introduce her to some of her buddies, who were usually the kinder, gentler variety. “Nice to have someone to talk to during lunch. I usually just grab something by myself.”

Kerry nibbled her sandwich. “I did that too, a lot, at Associated. I…it’s weird, I liked the people there, but when I would go out with them, I always had a funny feeling that they were putting on an act for me.”

“Mmm.” Dar nodded in understanding. “I get that a lot, too.” But not with Kerry, she realized with a sense of relief. The woman was just as straightforward as you could get.

“Oh, and I checked on that discounts page you told me about. That’s a 154 Melissa Good really good plan for that gym. I signed up,” Kerry said, getting the words out somewhat more quickly than was her habit. “I figured, even if…I mean, I’d be crazy not to, right? They’ve got some really good classes there.”

“I did too, this morning,” Dar stated nonchalantly. “We have a deal set up on Wednesday, remember?”

Now Kerry smiled. “I remember.” She relaxed a little. “What time do you have your appointment tomorrow?”

Dar had been trying to avoid thinking about it. “Eight,” she answered quietly.

“Do…do you want me to pick you up at the terminal? No sense in driving all the way here, just to… I mean, it’s on the beach, right? Just off Alton Road?”

“That sounds fine,” Dar replied. “Yeah, it’s just off Alton, near Mount Sinai. Are you sure you want to come? I, um, I don’t know how long it’s going to take.”

Kerry gave her a gently sympathetic look. “I’ll bring a trashy novel, but I bet it doesn’t take long at all, and everything checks out okay.”

Dar exhaled softly. “You keep thinking those good thoughts, Kerry.” She lifted her head and gazed into the sea green eyes. “I could use every one of them.” Their gazes held for a moment, then Dar pushed herself to her feet.

“More meetings, we’ve got some clients coming in I have to sit in for…I probably won’t be back to the office until real late.”

“All right, I’ll keep working on that stuff you gave me. If anything blows up, I’ll page you,” Kerry promised. With a pat on her shoulder as a parting gesture, Dar moved off, and Kerry returned her attention to finishing up her own lunch. It was amazing, she mused, just how warm that felt even through the fabric of her jacket. She glanced up as a shadow fell over her and smiled.

“Hello.”

A short, blonde woman was standing there, smiling. “Hi. Mind if I sit down?”

Kerry shook her head. “No, I’m about done. Would…did you want this table?” She could see several similar ones empty around her, but assumed perhaps the woman liked this particular one.

“No, that’s okay. I just wanted to introduce myself.” She held a beringed hand out. “I’m Eleanor Anastasia, from the Sales and Marketing Group. I hear you’re Dar’s new girl.” The woman seated herself primly and smoothed her hand over the tablecloth as she studied Kerry’s face. “I didn’t think Dar went in for such youngsters, but I’ve heard good things about you.”

“It’s very nice of you to tell me that, thank you,” Kerry replied guardedly, prudently ignoring Eleanor’s snarkier comments. “It’s only been a few days.

I’m still getting used to a lot of things.”

Eleanor smiled toothily. “We always like to see fresh talent here, especially in such an area as important as Operations. I hope we can develop a pleasant working relationship.” She paused. “Sometimes we have such…oh, I suppose you can call them communications problems. I’m sure you’ll go a long way towards ironing them out.”

“Well, I’ll certainly try my best. I try to get along with everyone, if I can,”

Kerry answered with a thin smile. “We have so many things going on at once, Tropical Storm 155

it’s hard to not rush through the social niceties.”

“Honey, your biggest communication problem is right down the hall. We all love dear Dar, but she can be a bit difficult at times.” Eleanor positively oozed fake affection for her fellow executive. “Don’t you agree?”

Kerry cocked her head slightly. “Actually, no. I’ve found her to be extremely easy to work with,” she replied politely. “So I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

“Really?” Eleanor gave her a pitying stare. “Well, give it a few more days, sweetie.” She patted Kerry’s arm condescendingly. “We’ll be talking.” She patted Dar’s new assistant again, then stood up and straightened her tight, bright red skirt suit. “It’s nice to have someone with manners over there for a change.” She gave Kerry a smile, then walked off across the room to where a table was set to one side, four other business-suited figures seated at it.

Kerry shuddered and resisted the urge to wipe her sleeve with her napkin where the woman had touched her. “Ugh.” She picked up her tray and carried it to the washing room, setting it down and dusting her hands off. “I gotta do something about her reputation.” Deep in thought, she started walking back to the elevator.