Both blonde brows shot up. “I should be insulted.”

“Not here.” Dar slid her hands under Kerry’s arms and pulled her up until they were chin to chin. “Do you have a local lawyer to go up there with you?”

“No. Do I need one? I’m not being investigated, Dar.”

“Tch. Someone as politically savvy as you saying that, Ker? You know how out of hand those things get.”

“Mmm.” She sighed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Dar rubbed noses with her. “Okay. I guess a shower is in order. And let’s see how we can play your friends at Allison.” She tilted her head. “I could just go in there and kick them around a little.”

Kerry thought about that, then smiled. “Nah. I’ve got a better idea.”

KERRY DUSTED THE sleeve on her silk shirt off and twitched her gray linen jacket straight before she entered the conference room, aware of the tall, silent figure that followed her. She motioned to a chair then proceeded across the room and circled it, giving the other occupants a Eye of the Storm 37

brief smile as she did so. “Good morning.”

Eyes had flicked to the casually dressed woman sprawled in the chair near the door, but now they focused back on her. The attitude was wary, but lacked the nervousness of the day before, and even held a hint of complacence.

“All right. Thank you for getting me those reports. I’ve reviewed them and referred the findings to our main office. Our personnel department is processing the security checks, so things are in a holding pattern until those two items are completed.”

Kerry paused. “However, since the interconnectivity takes a while, we’re going to get started with that. We borrowed one of our local field technicians and asked her to come in to give your IS people a hand in the network migration. I’d like to get that started as soon as possible.” She stared pensively down at her briefcase, trying to ignore the mischievous face Dar was making at her. “I’m sure…um…Bunny here will get you up and rolling in short order.”

Paybacks. Kerry peeked up at her lover, who was giving her one of those “I’m gonna get you later” looks. She returned it with a charming smile. “Right, Bun?”

“Aaabsolutely,” Dar drawled, adding a hint of the South to her voice.

Sam swiveled in his chair, then tapped his teeth with a pencil. “Sue, can you get someone up here to show our guest the server farm? I’m sure she wants to get started.” He looked pleased. “In the meantime, I thought maybe you’d like to sit in on a client briefing, Ms. Stuart. Since you’re here, and all. Perhaps you’d like to see our methods firsthand.”

Kerry let him wait for a few seconds, while she considered the request. “All right. I’d like that.”

They all stood, and Sue brushed herself off, then walked over to Dar.

“Come with me, please?” Her voice was pleasant, but held a note of con-descension.

“Sure.” Dar unfolded her length from the bucket shaped chair and stood, towering over the smaller woman. She was dressed in her jeans and short sleeved shirt, the rolled sleeves exposing her toned arms, and had pulled her dark hair back into a tail at the base of her neck. “Lead on.” Her eyes flicked to Kerry’s face, then followed Sue out, pulling the door shut behind her.

“Funny,” Sam drawled. “I thought you people liked to present a much sharper image.”

Kerry bit the inside of her lip to keep the retort from emerging, then cleared her throat. “Well, it’s Bunny’s day off. She’s doing us a favor.”

The accountant shook his head. “I hope she knows what she’s doing.

We can’t afford down time today.”

“Oh,” Kerry scratched her nose, “don’t worry. She does.”


Chapter

Five

DAR FOLLOWED HER officious guide down a long, gray carpeted hallway, passing offices on either side full of paper covered desks. Eyes looked up as they passed, then dropped, and Dar sensed a feeling of reti-cence that made her spine prickle.

“Nice office,” she commented.

Sue glanced at her. “Thank you.” She led the way into a larger room, full of cables and other telecommunication gear. “Roger?”

A tall, lanky man in a painfully white shirt and blue pants ducked his head from under a rack. “Yes? Oh.” He straightened up and ran his fingers through bushy brown hair, blinking out from behind a pair of very thick glasses. “Can I help you?”

“The new company sent a technician over to start getting us hooked up to them.” Sue waved Dar forward. “All yours.” She turned and walked out, leaving them regarding each other.

“Hi,” Dar finally said. “So you’re Roger, huh?”

He seemed to realize he was staring. “Ah…um…yeah. Hi. Roger Milken. Yeah. And um…there’re a couple of others around here. Bill, and Tom and Squeeziks.”

One of Dar’s eyebrows lifted. “All right.”

He scratched his neck under an ill-fitting collar. “Did you want to see something or…um…what’s your name, anyway?”

Dar held out a hand, deciding on her middle name rather than the label Kerry had pinned on her. “Katherine.” She released him. “I’d like to see your setup. W…they’ve got certain things they like to see before they let you connect.”

“Mmph. Okay.” Roger waved at her. “C’mon. I’ll give you the five cent tour. Watch your step. We’re redoing the patch panel.”

Dar strolled along behind him, her eyes taking in the room’s equipment and evaluating it as he rambled on about the hardware. An NT

server farm, a chugging AS400, and a bank of routers on one side of the room, with the rack of Ethernet hubs mounted next to them. “Nice.”

“Uh. Thanks. Yeah, this is the main box.” He indicated the AS400.

“We keep all the database stuff in there. And that’s our webserver and we just got these two new Cisco 7000’s…”

“Mmm.” Dar stopped in front of the routers and leaned on the con-Eye of the Storm 39

sole that programmed them. She idly signed into one and browsed its statistics. “Send a lot of traffic out?”

“Uh, yeah. They do lots of searches. That kinda thing.” Roger now sounded just a touch evasive. “You know.”

“Mmm.” Dar pointed. “What about those?”

“Oh, that’s the SQL servers. I wrote ’em.” Roger walked over and signed into one. “See? It runs concurrent copies. Saves all the stuff to the RAID arrays. They go bonkers about downtime.”

Dar signed out of the router and patted it. “Firewall?”

“You bet.” Roger went to the next machine. “All our access in and out is logged. Make sure no one’s downloading nudie pics.” He laughed lamely. “So. What is it you want so we can get hooked up?”

Dar sat down on a chair. “Got a pad?” She started listing off require-ments as he scrambled for a pen.

KERRY CAUGHT UP with the fair haired, heavyset woman as they took a break, and wandered into the coffee room. The clients had been quiet, almost passive, and she’d been curious about the attitude which seemed more cowed then anything else.

“Hi.”

The woman glanced at her. “Oh, hello. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name in there.”

“Kerry.” They shook hands. “I’m with ILS.”

The faded hazel eyes darted around the almost empty room, then settled back on Kerry’s face. “Oh.”

“We…um…we bought Allison Consulting. You knew that, right?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, I did. Um…excuse me. I’ve just got to use the rest room.” The woman edged around Kerry’s slim form.

“Me too,” Kerry agreed pleasantly. “C’mon. It’s this way.” She guided the way to the bathroom and held the door open politely. “That’s a nice dress.”

The woman looked a little startled. “Um, why, thank you.” She walked to the sink, turned the water on, and washed her hands quietly.

Kerry waited, leaning against the door with both hands behind her.

“So, are you here just to watch?”

“Something like that. To observe. To get reports. Start putting things together, that kind of thing,” Kerry replied. “Find out what they do right.

What they do wrong.” She watched the broad shoulders twitch. “Why they’re successful.”

The woman slowly straightened, wiping her hands on a paper towel.

“Is that why your company bought them? Because they were successful?”

“Mmhm,” Kerry agreed. “There’s always a lot of questions to ask, though. We want to make sure we give their clients the service they contracted for.”

Hazel eyes turned and regarded her with an emotion startlingly like wan hatred. Kerry’s nape hairs prickled and she wondered what nerve 40 Melissa Good she’d struck.

“And he promised it wouldn’t go any further,” the woman hissed, advancing on Kerry. “Now all of you know? That bastard…”

“Hold on.” Kerry lifted a hand. “I’m not sure—”

“Get out of my way, you little…” The woman grabbed Kerry’s arm and shoved hard, throwing her against the door. “If it’s over, it’s over.

He’s going to get what I owe him.”

“Wait!” Kerry caught her balance, confused and startled. “Ms.

Andrews. Please. Hold on a minute. I think there’s some mistake.” She took hold of the hand that reached for her again and held it, tensing muscles strengthened by months of activity. “Please don’t do that again.”

The woman tried to wrench her hand free, but found it held very securely. “Let me go, you bitch.”

“Ms. Andrews, I am not your enemy,” Kerry told her forcefully.

“Now calm down, please.” She kept her voice low. “Just take it easy.”

They stared at each other in silence.

“Okay. Now, listen. We know something’s going on here. We just don’t know what it is yet.”

“We?”

“My boss and I, yes,” Kerry replied. “So, if you tell me what happened, maybe I can help.” She released the woman’s arm and straightened, just as the door opened and Ann breezed in.