Dar cleared her throat. "I thought you'd think it was cute."

"Hehehehehehehehe." Kerry let out a long, low chortle. "Oh, you're so right, I do." She danced with her new little friend. "Wait till your dad sees it."

Dar turned her head and gave her a look over the tops of her sunglasses.

"I'm going to put this on my desk," Kerry decided.

"At work?" Dar's eyes nearly popped.

Kerry reached over and turned her head back forward, as the light turned green and they were free to proceed across to the causeway home. "Don't be goofy. Of course not at work. At home."

Dar settled back in her seat, relieved. "Yeah, well...I had some time to kill at the register. They were short handed."

"Though it might be a great ice breaker at new client meetings," Kerry mused.

Dar turned to stare at her again, only to find mischievous green eyes waiting in knowing silence. "You're lucky I love you," she mock growled.

Kerry's smile softened and gentled. "Don't I know how lucky I am," she replied. "And I will find us a different church, Dar. I like belonging to something like that. It gives me a sense of community here. But not at the expense of you being uncomfortable with it."

Dar fell silent as she directed the car onto the ferry base. "Does it have to be a church?" she asked as they pulled up to the cones. "Maybe we could join a computer club or something?"

Kerry rested her chin on her fist. "We spend enough time with nerds," she disagreed. "Hey...how about a biker club?"

Dar covered her eyes with one hand.

"Vroom, vroom."

NOW IT WAS Kerry's turn to be a couch potato, and she readily took advantage of it, tucking the light, worn childhood quilt she'd brought back from Michigan around her as she watched the late news. She had a cup of hot blackberry tea on the table nearby, and sufficient quantities of painkillers to render her acceptably comfortable, at least for the moment.

They had paused at the Island Market on the way home and gotten some fish filets, which Dar had insisted on cooking. Much to Kerry's surprise, and also to her partner's she suspected, the relatively simple broiling experiment had turned out very tasty. After that, and some of Dar's newly purchased ice cream, the stresses from the party had finally dissipated.

"Nothing." Dar looked up from her perch sprawled across the love seat. "I don't get it. There's nothing here." She lifted a hand and let it drop, shaking her head at the screen of her laptop. "No mention, no little notes in the paper, nothing in the trades...a major contract falls through, and all you see is news about rugby."

Kerry chuckled softly. "I don't know, sweetie. I think I like those priorities for a change." She took a sip of her tea. "Oh well. We'll find out eventually what the deal is. Once we get to those ships, someone'll talk. They always do, Dar."

"Mmph." Dar was rattling away at her keyboard.

Kerry returned her attention to the big screen television, where an overly earnest reporter was relating the day's news in serious, emphatic tones. The shot cut away to a nighttime scene, with flashing police lights, and after studying it for a minute, she frowned. "Hey, Dar? Look."

"Mm?" Pale blue eyes flicked to her, then to the television. "What am I looking at?"

"Isn't that the Walgreen's? The one we were at today?"

Dar leaned on the love seat arm and peered at the screen. "I don't...hell, they all look alike to me, Kerry. Maybe it is. Why?"

"Shh." Kerry turned the sound up to listen.

"Police are unsure of how the woman got left in the trunk, or who might have done this to her. She was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital where she's in critical condition." The reporter on the scene drew back, showing a small, four door car parked on the side of the building. It's trunk was hanging open and obviously had been forced. "The car was rented, police say, by an unidentified man they are now looking for."

"Huh," Dar murmured. "Someone locked in a trunk? Lucky they didn't croak in this heat." She shook her head and went back to her laptop screen. "Wonder when it happened?"

"I don't know." Kerry leaned forward. "They can't have found it that long ago. It's a live report. Oh, Dar I'd hate to think that poor woman was in that trunk when we were there!"

Dar looked up again, studying the car. "We weren't on that side of the building," she said. "Car looks a little familiar though, but it's a common rental type. Dime a dozen, Ker."

"Yeah." Something was niggling at Kerry's memory, and she rested her chin on her fist as the news went on to another story. After a few minutes of trying to root it out, however, she gave up and tuned back in to the reporter. "Ah...gonna have rain tomorrow," she chortled softly. "Sure you don't want to spend the day inside with me watching it?"

"Mm." Dar gave her a narrow-eyed look. "Temptress."

Kerry gave her best impression of sultriness, aware that her Pooh T-shirt was probably skewing the impact just a trifle. "Actually, I've got a ton of stuff to do tomorrow. I want to get a hair-cut for starters, and my car's due for service."

"Thought you were going to relax?" Dar reminded her.

"I will," Kerry said. "But I want to get something accomplished too, so I don't feel so guilty thinking of you slaving away in the office stuck in your monkey suit."

"Ahh, and I have to meet with all the international sales directors. They're in tomorrow." Dar reminded her. "So you can really pity me. Maria has a four hour block scheduled in the afternoon."

"Ew."

"Uh huh."

Kerry rolled over on to her back and watched Dar's profile as she worked on her machine. "I could pass on having a day off," she suggested. "You want some backup?"

"Nah." Dar glanced up at her, and grinned. "But thanks for the offer."

"Okay." Kerry wiggled her feet under the cotton covering. "But I'll make sure you've got something great to come home to."

The blue eyes twinkled. "Something other than you? What else do you think I need?"

Kerry sighed happily.

"Besides, you're going to have to run the ball game with Quest," Dar continued dryly. "Don't thank me yet." She went back to her typing, listening to the soft chuckle as Kerry rolled back onto her side and the news switched over to sports.

"Okay." She reviewed her work for the last time, studying the presentation she'd put together for the meeting. "I think that'll work." She set the laptop down on the coffee table and stretched, reaching out to scratch Chino's head.

It was a completely ordinary Sunday night at home. They usually watched whatever was on either the Learning Channel or Discovery, or a movie, then the news before getting together whatever they needed for work the next week and going to bed.

Comfortingly predictable. Dar regarded the shots of football players practicing in the hot sun with a touch of bemusement. "Y'know, they took us to see those guys do that once."

"That?" Kerry pointed. "You mean, summer practice?"

"Yeah," Dar said. "They used to take school kids on different field trips. See the zoo, that sort of thing." A rakish grin appeared. "Summer day, ninety degrees, no water anywhere. We all ran off and raided a McArthur Dairy milk truck that'd stopped to make a delivery. Nearly got tossed in jail."

Kerry started laughing.

"Haven't liked watching those guys play since."



Chapter Nine



DAR DROPPED HER leather portfolio on her desk before she circled it and sat down, giving her trackball a spin as she settled into her leather chair.

Her mail came up, the screen dark with new messages. She clicked on one, and reviewed it, then sighed and shook her head. "Boy, am I ever an idiot."

After a moment, she hit one of her speed dial buttons and waited for an answer. "Mark?"

"Hey boss." Mark sounded a touch harried.

"You going to kill me?" Dar eyed the phone. "I got the security report."

"Well," Mark sighed. "Our front end web routers are getting pounded. I may have to throw a reserve circuit at it. Freaking hackers."

Dar flipped over to the monitoring screen and reviewed it. She could see the entry points, and the flickers of orange and yellow in their normally green and blue world. "Brute force?"

"Yeah. Pretty lame," Mark said. "Just a lot of volume."

Dar studied the traffic. "Are they trying to hack the site or just DDOS it?" she asked. "We have a sniffer on that outside port?"

Mark rattled a bunch of keys. "Haven't scoped it yet," he admitted. "Gimme a sec."

The attack didn't really affect her internal network. Dar frowned as she studied the stats. They had recorded a rising number of probes at her external interfaces, but those were subtler, and almost hesitant. This seemed like something else.

"They take us offline that's gonna suck, Boss," Mark commented.

Exactly. "I think that's probably what they're trying to do," Dar said. "Bastards." She leaned on her elbows, peering at the screen. "Let's get a scope on it, see if there's a common source or if it's a botnet."

"Will do."

"Call me back." Dar released the phone and sighed. She glanced back at her mail and clicked a second one with a red exclamation point. "Eleanor. Now what?"

She scanned the mail, and then dialed the phone again. Two rings later, Eleanor answered. "What the hell is this mail?" Dar asked. "Who wants to talk to me?"

The Marketing VP sighed. "Apparently CNN's tech reporter picked up the AP feed on the convention. He got wind of this competition between Telegenics and us and wants a story out of it. He's already talked to the Tech TV people that were there."