Dar's eyes narrowed a trifle. "Do the country a favor," she said. "Flush your hunches down the toilet if they're all that worthless." She got up. "Unfortunately for everyone, my patriotism doesn't count in this case. There is nothing I can do to fix what's broken. I don't own any of the infrastructure, none of those companies has any reason to do me any favors, and that union tangled century's old mess down at the tip of Manhattan is way beyond my skills to sort out in three days no matter who says yes or no. It can't be done."

Bridges leaned on his knuckles and stared at her. "Can't be done?"

"Can't be done," Dar said. "But for a price, I'll give it my best try."

The advisor sat down.

Kerry felt like she was watching a game of tennis, where the volley was getting faster and faster and the ball was a small thermonuclear device. She had no idea where Dar was going with all this, and it had been a while since she'd seen her partner in this kind of a mood.

It was almost like watching a stranger. Dar was focused, and her eyes were like chips of crystal, with no emotion at all in them.

"What's your price?" Bridges asked, in a sardonic tone. "Maybe I'll try to pay it if you're only going to try and do what I'm asking."

"Get the NSA off my ass," Dar said, ticking one finger off. "Give my people clearance to get into the city." She ticked a second finger off. "Give me some kind of leverage to get through the politics. I'll give it my best shot. You get whatever you get out of it. Maybe it'll work. Maybe it won't."

The advisor rested his forearms on the table again and gazed at her, with a slightly puzzled look. "What's in it for you, then?" he asked. "What do you get out of it?"

Dar managed the faintest of smiles. "Service to my country," she answered, in a quiet tone. "It's the right thing to do, no matter how impossible it is."

"You really don't think it's possible," Bridges mused. "Everyone agrees with that, even the president. He wanted me to find some way to fake it." He looked up to find three sets of eyes staring at him in disbelief, and he shrugged in response. "Ms. Stuart will tell you just how much of the government is smoke and mirrors, I'm sure."

Kerry cleared her throat gently. "That's true," she said. "But we aren't smoke and mirrors. If Dar commits us to this, we'll go at it a hundred percent."

Bridges nodded. "Cheap enough price," he said. "All right, Ms. Roberts, do we have a deal? "

"I guess we do." Dar looked at Hamilton, who burst into laughter.

That seemed to strike Bridges funny too, and he chuckled. "Now I understand what Easton told me." He stood up. "Get out of here, people. I have an unending pile of crap to put on a potter's wheel and make into china."

They were glad enough to escape, slipping out the door and evading the flock of secretaries, emerging into the hallway where the pace hadn't slowed a bit.

Hamilton steered them over to a corner out of the flow and they all took a minute to catch their breaths.

"That," Kerry finally said, "was seriously freaky."

"Got us out of the way of the spooks," Hamilton commented. "And Dar, no jokes here, darling. That was some good shuck and jive in that room. couldn't have negotiated a better deal."

Dar exhaled, and shook her head. "Let's get out of here," she said. "I don't know what the hell I just got us into, but I sure don't want to spend any more time in this place. Let's go somewhere and scratch together a plan."

Kerry spotted Franklin heading down the hall in their direction. She grabbed Dar's arm. "Great idea. C'mon He hadn't had a chance to talk to Bridges yet."

They did, heading around a corner, and down a hall, hoping they ended up somehow at an outside door without getting into any more trouble.


Chapter Twenty-Two

"OKAY." KERRY LED the way through the visitor's entrance to their offices. "Dar, I'm going to have to sign you in." She could feel her partner silently snickering. "Do you know what a pile of paperwork that's going to be?"

"Sorry," Dar said, with not a lot of sincerity. "Hey, if they won't let me in, we can go work out of the nerd bus. Dad's there and I hear the foods pretty good."

"Dar." Kerry eyed the receptionist as they approached. "How about we get you a loaner laptop and just push your image down to it? I'm sure we've got one in this place that can handle it."

"Bet they don't."

"Good morning, Ms. Stuart." The receptionist greeted her with a smile. "A lot of people were asking after you inside. I'm sure they'll be glad to see you."

Kerry set her briefcase down and removed her sunglasses. "Yeah, it's been that kind of morning," she agreed. "I need to sign in a corporate employee that doesn't have a badge with them."

The woman glanced past Kerry at the tall, lanky figure behind her. "That's no problem, ma'am, I just need to see some ID and I can process that for you."

"She doesn't have that either," Kerry said. "And we haven't installed integrated biometrics here yet, have we? Everyone needs a card." She took the visitor form that had been held out to her and passed it back. "Fill this out, hon."

Dar took the form with its clipboard and started obediently scribbling. "What's my purpose for visiting? Anarchy and general disruption of the business?"

The receptionist frowned. "If you mean the government handprint thing, no ma'am. But I can't issue a visitor pass without seeing some identification."

"You're just going to have to take my word for who this is," Kerry told her. "I'll authorize it--no wait." She turned and glanced at her partner. "I'm the requester, I can't also authorize. Shoot. I think you have to authorize it since you're my up chain."

Dar chuckled and kept writing.

The receptionist caught the clue. "Oh," she said. "Sorry, Ms. Roberts. We weren't expecting you."

"No one ever is." Dar produced a reasonably sexy grin. "I'm the Spanish Inquisition of ILS." She handed back the clipboard and the pen. "There you go."

The receptionist took it and studied the paper then pulled out a visitor pass and punched in the programming for it. "One of the people from the NSA was here yesterday looking for you, Ms. Stuart, after you left."

"I know. We found them." Kerry said, leaning against the counter as she watched Dar wander around the lobby examining it. "I think we got that all sorted out. Hopefully they won't be bothering us again."

"Okay, here you go ma'am." The receptionist handed over the visitor badge. "Should I let them know you're here?"

"And spoil my fun?" Dar took the badge from her and winked. "Nah."

"Thanks." Kerry smiled at the woman and led her troublemaking spouse toward the inner door. "We can use that office they assigned to me. It's big enough to party in." She scanned the door open and held it as Dar went past her. "So what's the plan?"

"What's the plan? " Dar sighed, as they walked down the hallway side by side. "I wish I knew what the plan was. I need to sit down and think for a few minutes and try to figure out where the hell to start."

She said. "Want to stop in at ops first? You said they were a little rattled at my locking them down."

"Good idea." Kerry led the way to the security door and swiped through it, leading Dar into the inner operations center. Their entry caught the group by surprise, and voices fell off as people's heads turned as they spotted Kerry.

Kerry watched their eyes, as they shifted to her companion and stayed there, putting two and two together a lot faster than the receptionist did. "Good morning folks," she said. "As you can see, I called in the cavalry. Dar and I have just gotten back from the White House, and I think we've gotten a few things worked out that will take some of the stress off you all."

No one said anything for a very long moment. Then the shift supervisor, a different man than the previous day, came over. "Oh, well. Wow. That wasn't expected. Ms. Roberts, it's an honor." He timidly extended a hand, which Dar clasped in a genial manner. "Don Abernathy. We've been on conference calls a few times."

"We have," Dar agreed. "Someone want to vacate a seat so I can check things out in here?"

Kerry took a step back and amused herself in watching the staff as they scrambled around to make space for Dar on both the government and commercial side of the monitors. They had all been extremely respectful to her the previous day, but their attitude toward her partner was one of utter awe, and completely different in scope.

People usually did react to Dar differently. Kerry expected that. But she spent so much time around her at their Miami office that she often forgot how the rest of the company viewed her, since everyone in Miami was pretty much used to having her around.

Dar slid into an emptied chair and rested her long forearms on the console surface, pausing a moment to review the screen before she logged the user out and logged herself in with a patter of rapid keystrokes that sounded ridiculously loud in the suddenly quiet room.

Dar seemed to realize it. She stopped, and looked slowly around, first one way then the other. "People, sit the hell down. They don't pay me to teach typing."

Kerry chuckled under her breath, as the staff sidled back to their seats, save Don, who had an excuse to remain standing near the front of the console. "Dar, be nice." She chastised her. She walked over and put her hands on her partner's shoulders. "I'm going to go get some work done. Come get me when you're done showing off."

Dar leaned back, her head thumping gently against Kerry's chest. "Get me that laptop if you can. We're also going to need a video conference with Hamilton and his friends about what contacts we have in New York."