Dar gave her reflection a once-over, running her fingers through her neatly cut and feathered hair to settle it, then adding the barest touch of makeup. Her skin was already sun-darkened, a legacy of a lifetime in the subtropics, and she hated the mess of putting on and taking off the stuff, so it was a bit of gloss, a hint of eye shadow, and that was that. No one ever notices anyway, she wryly admitted.

Not these days, anyway. Dar could look back with not quite fondness over a time when she’d played that game in the office and gotten stung by it, but now she took pains to keep everyone at a distance, more fitting in any case to her executive status.

Look, but don’t think about touching. Dar met her own gaze and acknowledged the sardonic expression with a wry twist of her lips.

Her most striking features were her pale blue eyes although most people expected hazel or brown to match her coloring. Some people suspected she used colored contacts, others openly speculated about her having Irish or Danish somewhere in a Hispanic ancestry.

Dar wished they’d find something more interesting to speculate on, but everything was fair game in office gossip. She sighed and picked up her briefcase, slung it over her shoulder, then headed for her car.

She waited until they’d loaded the Lexus LX470 onto the ferry before she dialed the office, leaning back in the leather seat and waiting for her secretary to answer.


8 Melissa Good

“Dar Roberts’ office, how may I help you?” Maria’s precise, Castilian-accented voice issued from the cellular speakerphone mounted in the dash.

“Morning, Maria,” Dar responded, watching the waves of Government Cut splash over the low deck of the ferry.

“Ay! Good morning, good morning,” the middle-aged woman replied.

“Dios mío, Dar, half of the earth is here looking for you already. Did something happen this weekend?”

“Associated Synergenics happened,” the tall woman explained. “The boys in Houston have their rocks in an uproar.”

“Tch… ay, no wonder.” Maria rustled some papers. “I have three folders with tons of things in them, and a stack of phone messages for you.”

“Great.” Dar sighed. “Schedule me out this afternoon to Synergenics, and call a staff meeting of the prelim account team for ten AM, all right?” That would toss her schedule out the fourteenth floor window her office was on.

“This is a hot one; Alastair is sitting on it.”

“Ayeyiyi!” Maria made some quick notes. “You had a doctor’s appointment this afternoon.” Her voice held a gently chiding tone.

“Cancel it,” Dar replied, getting the expected silence in return. “Can’t help it, Maria. A checkup can wait a few days, this can’t.” The headaches that had prompted the appointment had tapered off during the weekend anyway, and with any luck, it would stay that way for a while. “Don’t worry, I took it easy this weekend. I feel great.”

“I’ll call that secretarita of your doctor’s and get another appointment,”

Maria replied stubbornly.

Dar relented. “All right, gotta go. I need to call Mark.”

“Oy.” Even through the phone, Dar could sense her assistant’s rolled eyeballs. “You tell him, okay for me, Dar—no more little pink rabbits on my screen, all right?”

The tall executive stifled a chuckle. “All right. Talk to you in a bit.” She disconnected and dialed another number, watching idly as the ferry nestled into its dock. The phone rang twice, then a gruff voice answered. “Yeah?”

“Good morning, Mark.”

“Who in… Oh, uh, yeah. Right…Monday morning. Who else would be calling me at seven thirty? Hi, Dar.”

“I need Synergenics, Mark.” Dar released her parking brake and eased the Lexus up the metal gangplank, as the dockers washed the car down with fresh water to remove the salt spray from the ocean. “Now.”

“Aw…for chrissake, Dar, it was closed last friggin’ night!”

“I have a meeting there this afternoon, and I need the info, Mark. Get in there and get it, no whining,” she crisply told the manager of Information Services. “They have a bullshit system; it shouldn’t take you more than fifteen minutes to get in, if your reputation is up to it.”

Mark Polenti had been, in his younger years, both a hacker and a cracker.

That is, he raided computer systems and cracked security codes in devices such as long distance boxes. Now, he served as part of Dar’s advance team, which went in and got information on an acquisition, information that the new account usually didn’t want Dar to have. Things like personnel reports, workman’s compensation claims, insurance statistics…things she needed to Tropical Storm 9

base her slice-and-dice decisions on.

Only good, low-maintenance people would be candidates for transitioning, and that kind of information was usually kept back. For good reason. But Dar’s job was to incorporate the new account into the infrastructure as economically as possible, thereby making the account as profitable as possible. It was a simple formula, and relied on her ability to shift work from the new company to existing agencies within the corporation, thereby rendering the newcomers superfluous. They never saw it that way, though. They viewed her swooping in as a shark circling defenseless fish, and tried to hide in any nook and cranny they could to escape her teeth.

They never did.

She had the ability to strip resources to the bone and trim down an operation with a lightning speed that had gained her a justifiable reputation for savage, precise decisions. It was what had landed her the VP position, and what kept her as Alastair’s favorite girl, the one he handed the tough ones to.

She’d never let him down, and had no intention of starting with this one, especially since Synergenics was local. Their offices were right off Kendall Drive, and she could get to them without having to send the team on ahead by air. “Get going, Mark. I need the prelims by the time I hit the office.”

“Where are you?” The MIS chief queried, a rapid-fire clicking transmitting through along with his voice.

“McArthur, about to pass Star Island.”

A definite smug tone floated through the airwaves. “Tch tch tch…you’re slowing down, Dar. I’m in. I got the database. Which printer you want it at?”

Dar chuckled. “Mark the Shark…you are something else. AdminP2 will be fine.”

“Okay, sending. Man, this security is bullshit. No wonder these losers got inhaled.” The mutter was interspersed with clicking. “Oh well, no wonder…Novell. Oh, man, and unsecured gateways. Jesus, Dar, they don’t even have a frigging firewall!”

“Pathetic,” Dar agreed. “Who’s responsible for this mess?”

More ticking and then Mark said, “A…well, I’m assuming here, ’cause you never know, but a lady by the name of Kerry Stuart,” He continued,

“Hmm…hmm, hmm. …Hmm. …Ah. …Yep, bingo assumption. Ooo…hmm.

Hey, Dar, she’s cute.”

Dar rolled her eyes and sighed. “Can it, Mark.”

“Mmm-mmm, nice. Blonde hair, pretty green eyes. Jesus, she’s just a friggin’ kid. Twenty-six, not married, nothing on her medical side. Oh wait, heh…she had a pregnancy test just after Christmas last year. Negative.”

“Mark…”

“All right, all right. IT degree from Michigan State. She’s from somewhere up there in the boonies. Last job was for Edutech as their regional co-ord up in that neck of the woods. Oh hey, her father’s Senator Stuart.”

“Hmm…yeah?” Dar inquired, as she turned onto Brickell Avenue and headed south towards the high rise that housed the company. “He’s been courting the Troy office for some contribs. I remember hearing Lou complaining about it.” She directed the Lexus into the parking lot and up to the security gate, nodding to the guard as he opened it for her. “All right, can 10 Melissa Good you give me a folder on her, too?”

A chuckle sounded from the phone. “Do seagulls crap on your windshield? I’ll be nice and add a color picture to it.”

“Not necessary, Mark,” the executive warned. “That’s more your line.”

“Who said I was doing it for you?” The MIS chief chortled. “Bye.”

Dar chuckled softly as she turned into a spot and shut the car off, grabbing her briefcase, then taking a quick look in the rearview mirror before she got out and locked the car. “Another day, another gutting,” she commented to a passing cat, who gave her a look and dashed off.

“THEY’RE GONNA FIRE all of us,” Charles stated, for the sixth time in five minutes. “My cousin worked for Allied when they took over, so forget it.

We’re toast.” He was sitting on the small desk in his cubicle, his headset dangling around his neck and a Styrofoam cup in his hand.

“You don’t know that,” Elaine protested, glancing at her phone pad, which showed several lights blinking. “Who knows, maybe it’ll be better.

Maybe we can get pencils now,” she jiggled a small barrel on her desk, full of writing implements, “instead of having to go steal them from banks.”

The large room was more than usually noisy, most of the staff being occupied in talking about the merger, which was being referred to as a hostile takeover. Associated Synergenics was a company of about two hundred employees, dedicated to providing software and hardware solutions to the hospitality industry.

They had a core of programmers and engineers who designed systems for restaurants and hotels to manage their points of sale, their accounting, and other areas where computers were used for record keeping and analysis. Of course, they also had a group of support staff to answer questions, and a small department of hardware technicians, who installed the equipment and went out to provide service on it.