“Dar?” Mark asked, hesitantly.

“Hang on.” Dar typed in a command, then studied the result.

“They’re using a stepped algorithm.”

“Huh?”

“What?” Chief Daniel walked around behind Dar, but conspicuously not too close.

“Right there.” Dar pointed. “It’s a programming trick you can use to shift data from one field to another in database design.” She folded her hands together. “Question is, why?”

Everyone held their tongues. “You still want that dump?” Mark finally asked.

Dar rested her lips against her clasped hands and allowed her eyes to close. The nagging headache she’d picked up after the attack on the network was making her a little sick to her stomach, and she just spent a moment breathing to settle it. “No,” she said at last. “Put it on my drive at home, Mark. I’ll look at it this weekend.”

“Do you want me to get after BellSouth?” Kerry murmured. “I’ve got some contacts that will probably open up for me.”

“Yeah.”

Kerry’s voice strengthened. “Okay.”

“Eh.” Dar kept reviewing the damning bit of data. She carefully saved the data and leaned back as the chief scurried out of range.

“Mark, take that entire database and run it through the C1F program.”

“For real?” Mark sounded a touch puzzled. “I didn’t think—”

“Just do it,” Dar ordered crisply. “If Duks is in there, tell him I need the CPU cycles.”

“All right,” the MIS chief agreed. “I’ll do it. You coming back here?”

Should she go? Dar considered the question. There was something very wrong, that much her experience was telling her. But what if it was just something like what she knew went on during her adolescent years? When the petty officers and lower-ranking crew found ways in and out of the system to hide a few barrels of this here, and a box of that there, just to make life a little easier.

For her, it’d been peanut butter. She’d traded blocks of her nascent programming talents for Number 10 cans of the stuff in the informal black market that had also produced her Navy shirts and boots.

She’d never seen anything wrong in that, really. Even her father had taken advantage of it, getting little luxuries for her mother and 170 Melissa Good using the trading system to save up a few bucks for a toy for her birthday.

No way was she going to blow the whistle on that.

Was she?

Dar sighed. “Kerry, let me know if you get any answers from BellSouth. I’m going to put this to bed for a while and go review the recruit program.”

“Will do,” Kerry replied. “Talk to you later.”

Dar folded her cell phone up and slid it into its clip at her belt.

Then she sat back and turned her head, regarding Chief Daniel in silence.

The naval officer’s lip was curled into an almost unconscious snarl of distaste. “I knew there was something wrong with you,” Daniel said.

“No wonder you didn’t make it into the Navy.”

Asshole. Dar felt her temper stir. She hitched a knee up and circled it with both arms. “The Navy?” she laughed. “You’ve gotta be kidding.

I’m married to a gorgeous woman, I live in a five-million-dollar condo, I make a seven-figure salary, and I don’t have to wear ugly clothing that doesn’t fit right. Why the hell would I want to be in the Navy?”

Chief Daniel stepped back. “You’re sick.”

Dar got up and closed the laptop, after setting its security. “Save your ignorance for someone who gives a crap about what you think.”

She turned her back on the chief and walked out of the office.

HER PHONE RANG. Kerry hit the button. “Operations, Kerry Stuart.”

“Howdy there, Kerry!” Bob Terisanch’s booming voice entered the room, making her desk ornament rattle. “Sorry it took so long, but hot damn, lady, that circuit was buried so deep under a pile of rat poop, it took me the whole day and a jackhammer to pull it on out.”

Colorful, Dar had often called Bob. “Great, Bob. Thanks for the effort. What do you have?” Kerry pulled her pad over and poised her pencil over the white ruled paper.

There was a rustle of shuffled paper. “Well, ma’am, the private company that installed that sucker’s called Fibertalk Associates, and they’re based right down by you in Miami, matter of fact.”

“Great. Do you have a billing address for them?”

“Sure do. 1723 NW 72nd Avenue,” Bob provided cheerfully.

“They’ve done a bunch of little high-priced jobs round town, mostly fiber optics, a little sat.”

“Thanks, Bob. I owe you one,” Kerry told him. “Lunch, next week?”

“Heh. I’ll never say no to lunch with such a pretty lady. You’re on, Kerry. See ya!” Bob hung up, leaving Kerry to nibble thoughtfully at her pencil. The office was one of those little miniwarehouses out behind the airport. Odd. Curiously, she brought up her database search and Red Sky At Morning 171

entered the company name in it. Then she sent the little bot on its way and set her pencil down. “Well, that’s that. Let’s get outta here, okay?”

WHAT IN THE hell are they recruiting these days? Dar rested her arms on the railing and studied the group of new sailors. Kids out of grade school? The twenty new swabs were clustered around the admitting petty officer, looking hapless and mostly bewildered. Watching their painfully earnest faces made Dar suddenly feel older than her years. She put her chin down on her crossed wrists and sighed, wondering if she’d ever really been that young and feckless.

“Can you people not stand up straight? What the hell are your spines made of, Jellah?” the petty officer barked loudly. “Pick up them damn bags and get in line!”

The new sailors looked at each other. “Which you want us to do first, Sarge?” the tall, crew-cut boy closest to Dar drawled. “Gotta get out the line to get them bags.”

Dar’s lips quirked faintly, as the petty officer’s neck veins started to bulge. The kid sounded a lot like her father, and she imagined briefly what she’d have been like in just this sort of lineup, smartass that she’d been.

“Are you finding this funny, ma’am?” The petty officer’s attention had been drawn suddenly to his unwanted observer. “I’m not sure what the joke is.”

Your toupee? Dar had to clamp her jaw shut to keep the words from emerging. The smart-assed kid she’d been snickered at her. Been? “If I were you, I’d just take care of the problems you have right there, not look for more with me,” she warned the man. “Those problems you’ve got a chance to do something about.”

The petty officer glared at her, then decided the tall, dark-haired woman he’d been told to be cursorily polite to wasn’t going to go away.

“All right, you lot of useless baggage. Go to that pile of bags, pick up the bag that has your goddamned name on it, then walk back to where you started and get in line. Is that clear enough, or d’you want me to stamp it in Braille letters on your goddamned useless foreheads?”

Dar resumed her position leaning against the railing as the swabs picked up their gear and shuffled into place. Six of the new sailors were women, and she found herself studying them, making mental guesses as to their backgrounds and reasons for joining.

The two nearest her, she considered, were probably from poor families in tough neighborhoods. They were almost twins: medium height, Latin complexion, dark curly hair, and a permanent suspicious look in their eyes.

The redhead in the front of the line with the pugnacious chin and smattering of freckles looked like an only girl raised with a pile of brothers, some of whom were probably already in service.


172 Melissa Good One of the remaining three was, Dar suspected, a cheerleader. She had the wholesome good looks and feathered blonde hair of one, along with a perky snub noise and a perfect smile.

Dar wondered what wrong turn she’d taken, and when she’d realize she’d taken it. Next to her was a short, heavyset girl with a bulldog attitude, who reminded Dar strongly of Chief Daniel.

Great. Dar exhaled and turned her head slightly, startled to find the eyes of the last female swab fastened firmly on her. For an instant, clear, pale gray eyes met Dar’s with startling clarity, and then they dropped as the petty officer started to yell more orders.

Dar blinked. The girl was facing forward now, her blonde head cocked to one side as she listened. She was fairly short, shorter than Kerry by an inch or so, and she had a wiry, but very slender build. She held herself with a sense of secure confidence, despite the intimidating petty officer, and Dar felt an unusual curiosity prick her.

But not for that long, as the petty officer shoved them out the door and toward the processing center. Dar pushed off the railing and ambled after them, pushing the hinged doors open and moving to one side of the room as the new sailors picked up their new uniforms.

A computer terminal was on a table to her right, and Dar went directly to it, bringing up a login screen and entering a collection of letters and numbers in a rattle of keystrokes.

“Hey.” The petty officer was at her shoulder. “Are you supposed to be in there?”

“I have a password,” Dar replied. She scanned the information she was looking for and keyed in a further request. “Your swabs are unraveling.” She waited for the man to leave, then examined the record.


Chapter

Eleven

THE BOAT’S BOW bobbed up and down gently in the surf, a soothing motion that made the woman painting on its fiberglass surface smile. Ceci Roberts dipped her brush into a swirl of acrylic color, studied the canvas for a moment, and then continued her work. The underwater seascape had a wash of blue in a dozen shades and the floor of the sea with its coating of coral, and now she was going back in and putting in the vibrant colors of fish and leafy ocean foliage.