if I’m really, really lucky.”

Jack looked nervously around. “Oh. Okay.”

They entered the building, quiet at this hour, and nodded at the guard sitting on the reception desk. He glanced at them, then spotted the badge and looked profoundly relieved. “Damn, are we glad to see you guys. They said they didn’t have anyone in the area. I thought we were really screwed.”

“We flew in,” Dar replied honestly as she headed past the desk and entered the elevator. The doors closed behind them, and she exhaled again.

“Hurdle number two.” It was a silent ride until the doors slid open on the third floor, exposing a long expanse of mind-numbingly mint green concrete.

“Jesus, I hate that color,” Dar muttered as she turned to her right.

Their shoes squeaked on the polished tile, and the sound made the nurse at the desk look up in startled attention. She came around the corner and approached them—a short, slim woman with dark hair and a lightly made up face. “Can I… Oh.” Her eyes widened on seeing Dar’s badge. “Thank the good Lord’s mercy.”

Dar smiled and stopped in front of the room the guard had indicated, nodding at it. “Wanna let me in?”

The nurse hurriedly punched in a code, and the door opened. She pushed it back, holding it respectfully as they entered. “Oh, you have no idea how wonderful it is to see you. I can’t believe they found someone at this time of night. It’s incredible.”

Dar entered the computer room and set her briefcase down, then seated herself in front of the AS400 terminal and examined it. She pulled her laptop out of its case and booted it, while Jack watched with interest.

“Can I get you two anything?” the nurse asked anxiously. “Coffee, a doughnut—we’ve got some turkey and stuffing left.”

Dar glanced over. “Thanks, Ms.,” she squinted a little, “Archer, coffee would be wonderful.” She paused. “I like mine with everything.”

The nurse nodded, then glanced at Jack.

“Just black for me, thanks.” He smiled at her.

“Right you are. I’ll be right back.” She hurried off.

Dar recalled the company’s profile and drilled down to their operations section, retrieving their administrative login and password. She typed it in and was rewarded with full access to their systems.

“How do you guys do this?” Jack whispered. “It’s like you’ve got some massive set of skeleton keys or something.”

“Well.” Dar entered a query to their patient database and waited for the screen to come back. Then she recorded Kerry’s location and the lock code to her room. “It’s like this: We do all the data transfer for most of the credit unions out there. Most places that are members of the credit unions know that, because we take care that they do—with joint advertising, that kind of thing.

We sponsor credit union picnics. If they have a fundraiser, we’re involved. So then we can go in and say, ‘hey, we do this data stuff for the CU, why not let us handle yours?’ ” Dar made several changes to Kerry’s file, then saved it and returned to the main menu. “And they usually sit back and realize it does make sense, because we are professionals, and this is what we do. It’s more cost-efficient for us to add them to our network than for them to maintain 426 Melissa Good their own—especially WANS. Those T1 lines are expensive as hell, and you don’t get redundancy on them.” Dar then dumped out of the menus and went to the operating system level, starting a diagnostic.

“Okay, that makes sense,” Jack acknowledged.

“So after that, we go in and say, ‘hey, we’re doing the data stuff for the CU, and we handle your network, why not outsource the rest of your IS to us.

We’ll give you a support package, and you won’t have to worry about anything.’ ” Dar watched the diagnostic run. “There’s the problem,” she muttered, stopping it, then standing up and going around to the back of the computer and kneeling down. “Stupid interface cable’s chewed, they must have rats.”

“Rats? What?” Jack peered at her. “You figured it out already?”

Blue eyes glanced back at him. “It’s my job, remember?” Dar took a splicing kit from her briefcase and quickly fixed the cable, then went back to the console. “They don’t know we’re here; I might as well fix this, then we can get on with getting Kerry the hell out of here. She’s probably sleeping, might as well give her a few more minutes.” She typed in a set of commands and tested the cable. “Ah, better.”

“So, do they usually let you take over their stuff?” Jack asked, fascinated.

“A lot of times, yeah, because maintaining an IS group, especially in a place like this, whose focus is so narrow, is just a pain in the butt for them. It’s much easier, and about the same amount of money, or maybe just a bit more, if they let us do it. And it’s a big problem off their shoulders because we’re big enough so they know if something does go wrong, we’ll get it fixed.”

“Like now.” Jack smiled.

“Well, we don’t usually send corporate vice presidents to splice cable.”

Dar chuckled ruefully as she started up the data transfer cycle. “They were bringing a tech up from Chicago, I canceled him.” She watched the counters roll. “Another day, another dollar.” She stood up and dusted off her hands, then turned as the nurse came back with the coffee. “Good news.”

The woman handed the coffee over and peered at the screen. “Really?”

“Yep, you’re rolling,” Dar informed her. “It’ll take about twenty minutes for this to go through; we’ll hang around and make sure it gets finished.”

“Bless you!” the nurse squealed in delight. “Oh my god, I have to go let everyone know. Thank you, thank you. You’re a genius.” She dashed out, headed back for her station.

“Okay.” Dar took a sip of her coffee. “You stay here. I’m going to wander casually down the hallway and see if I can get into Kerry’s room.” She picked up the piece of paper with the room and code on it and put it into her pocket.

“Then I have to figure a way to get her the hell out of here.”

“Oh, so that part of the plan’s not ready yet?” he asked nervously.

“Plan?” Dar gave him a nervous look right back and grinned faintly.

“What plan?” She slipped out the door and sauntered down the hallway, gazing around in apparently casual interest. The nurse spotted her and waved, never stopping her speech on the phone as she did so. Dar waved back and continued her progress, stopping every so often to peer at the bulletin boards, which dotted the walls, and read the notices and schedules on them.

Kerry’s room was at the end of the hallway, Dar realized, around a small Tropical Storm 427

crook in the otherwise straight walls. When she came even with the door and glanced back over her shoulder, she could no longer see the inside of the nurse’s station, only the front edge of the desk. “Good,” she muttered, then eased back the little peephole and peered inside. The harsh white light displayed a stark, almost bare room, with a bed near the far wall. A figure was curled up in it, and Dar nodded to herself as she closed the panel, then keyed in the lock code and gently opened the door.

She felt rather than saw the blow coming and let her body react, twisting as something hard and cold struck her on the shoulders. She went with the force of it, diving for the floor and rolling, then coming back up on her feet in a dazed blur, holding her hands out in a defensive posture. She blinked the stars from her eyes, and heard a faint choking sound, then her vision focused finally on Kerry’s stunned face. “Wow,” she managed to joke weakly. “I love you too, but couldn’t we just kiss each other?”

“Oh my god, I’m…” Kerry unfroze and closed the distance between them, touching Dar’s neck in horror. “Dar…I’m…I didn’t know it w…I thought it was… You’re bleeding. Oh Jesus.”

Dar rubbed her head. “Does that mean you’re glad to see me or not?” She gave the blonde woman a wry smile.

Kerry just looked at her for a long moment, then slowly came forward and leaned her body against Dar’s taller one, sliding her arms around her lover’s waist and burying her face in Dar’s chest. “Glad to see you? I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my entire life.” She let out a shaky sigh. “Oh god.”

Dar felt her entire world collapse until it only encompassed the two of them, as she wrapped her arms around Kerry and gently kissed her head.

“What in the hell’s going on here?”

A sigh warmed her chest, even through the fabric. “I can’t believe he did this, it was horrible, Dar. At first, he wanted to blame you, he said it was all your fault. That you…lured me into this.”

Dar exhaled but kept silent.

“And, I couldn’t. I had to tell him that wasn’t true. And he…” Kerry’s arm unwound and lifted, her hand touching her cheek. “He hit me.”

The dark-haired woman pulled back a little, so she could see her partner’s cheek. “Bastard.”

Kerry just looked sad. “There was so much hate in him. I don’t understand, Dar, how can people hate you for something as beautiful as loving someone?” She put her head back down, her voice shaking.

“It’s part of what makes us human, Kerry,” Dar answered in a tired voice.

“We hate anyone different,” she told her softly. “Come on, we’ve got to get you out of here.”

Kerry nodded. “I know. They were going to start ‘probing’ me in the morning. I knew I had to get out of here before then. I was afraid they’d…”

She hesitated. “I didn’t know what kind of drugs they were going to fill me with, or…I mean, you can say anything under some of that stuff, and…” Her eyes lifted and met the pale blue ones gazing down at her. “I didn’t want to take a chance on them forcing me to say something I didn’t mean.”