Tropical Convergence (55 page)

Maybe next Halloween.

She went on to a picture taken by her mother of the two of them relaxing on the offshore island during one of their picnics. Kerry was curled up on her side, asleep in Dar's lap. They were both covered in sand and blown by the wind and the sea, and were totally zonked, but Dar liked the picture mainly for the smile of pure joy plainly visible on Kerry's face.

It was amazing to her to know she'd put that look there. Or the look in the next picture, a single picture of Kerry that she'd taken on the boat, just at sunset after they'd come up from diving and were resting before going in for dinner. With reddish gold light surrounding her, Kerry gazed not into the lens, but into Dar's eyes past it, a warm and gentle love fairly glowing from her.

Dar exhaled softly.

"Fizzing crap," Hans cursed. "All right. Are you ready to do this test?"

Dar flexed her fingers and maximized the network session, logging into her local routers and keying up the monitor. She set several parameters, and then reviewed the results. "Okay." She rattled more keys. "Let me...that's a test database you're using, right?"

"Of course."

"Okay...let me give you a subinterface...hang on." Dar quickly set up the port. "Change your default gateway to the .2."

Hans muttered something under his breath, but set to work on his computer anyway. "It is done."

Dar set up a graph of the existing port, and her new one, and arranged them side by side. "Okay, start up your database...wait. You got someone on the other side who can hit it?'

Hans paused in mid key, then he looked up at Dar.

Dar didn't even wait for him to speak. She leaned over and picked up the phone, hitting some buttons. "Stewart? We need someone at a remote site to work with us. They'll have to have enough brain cells to change their application database source."

"Ah..." Godson's voice trickled through the speakerphone. "I think I can find someone for that...give me a few minutes, Dar. Okay?"

"Okay," Dar agreed, and hung up. She drummed her fingers on her keyboard, then retrieved the PDA that had slipped off her lap and opened it when it started flashing.

Ah. Note from Kerry. Dar tapped on it.

Hey Dardar.

Honey, no one wants you home more than me--but don't tank the Northeast, please? I'll come up and keep you company if it doesn't work. We can find some little Italian place and get drunk on Chianti and cheesecake.

Dar scowled.

Michelle and Shari want to take me out to dinner. I get to pick where. I'm going to take them to the place we go after kickboxing, and not give them a chance to change out of their suits. Think they'll refuse to talk to me after that?

Hope so.

Love you, K.

The scowl edged into a reluctant grin, which then faded out to a pensive stillness. She spent a moment thinking about Kerry spending the evening with Michelle and Shari, dive or no dive, and unexpectedly felt her blood start to boil.

The phone rang next to her elbow, and she had to tear herself back from a descent into furious jealously to answer it. "Yes?" Her voice came out a growl.

"Ah...Dar?"

Dar cleared her throat. "Yes?" she repeated, in a more reasonable tone.

"I've got someone from Tucson who'll work with you...ah, is that okay?" Godson said, a trifle hesitantly. "I've got her on the line, I can conference her in."

Focus. Dar felt the muscles in her thighs twitch, a leaking of the nervous energy that suddenly filled her. "That's fine. Thanks." She heard a click, then background noise came on the line. "Hello?"

"Um...hello?" A voice came through timidly. "This is Angie. Did you need me to do something?"

Dar had an overwhelming urge to hang up and walk out. Go somewhere private and give Kerry a call and tell her...

Tell her what? That you don't trust her?
Dar took in a slightly ragged breath. "Ah, yeah." she answered Angie. "We need you to open up your booking engine, but we need you to make some changes in the setup first. You know where that is?"

"Yes." The woman's voice became blessedly confident. "I sure do. What do you need me to change?"

Dar looked at Hans. "Settings?" she asked in German. "For the database?"

He gruffly gave them to her. Dar repeated them in English for Angie's benefit. While the girl in Tucson was making the changes, Dar half decided she was going to force the ports to show what she needed them to show, and the hell with it.

Get on a plane home, tonight. If she was coming in, Kerry would surely toss up the dinner and come get her, right?

Of course
. Dar stared at the screen, unable to suppress the churning emotion.

"Okay, I'm done. Want me to open the program now?" Angie asked.

I don't care.
Dar forced her attention to the screen
. I swear I don't care. I don't give a shit about any of this
. "Go ahead." She looked up as Hans got up and came to peer over her shoulder at the monitor. On it, she had the production port, which was saturated and blinking red, and the test port, a benign green.

"Now we will see that I am right," Hans stated calmly. "I am sure of it."

I don't care
. But Dar called up the router config anyway, making sure the buffers were set to take advantage of the changes, and her priority lists were in place. She watched as the new port showed activity, the traffic statistics building as Angie started it up.

All mechanical. She was hardly aware of what her fingertips were doing.

"Hey!" Angie's voice erupted through the phone.

The port stayed a placid green. Dar exhaled, her vindication meaningless at the moment.

"That was really fast!" the girl from Tucson blurted, in an amazed tone. "What the heck did you do?"

"Shit." Hans turned and walked away, taking a stack of printouts and throwing them against the wall with shocking violence. He got to the door and yanked it open, slamming it behind with such force the certificates hanging on the wall jumped and crashed to the floor.

"Hello?" Angie repeated. "Are you there?"

"Sorry." Dar laid her fingers on the keyboard, noticing now that they were shaking. "I'm here," she answered briefly. "We made some changes. Guess you can see the difference."

"Wow! I sure can!" Angie sounded very enthusiastic. "It used to take me twenty seconds to move from page one to page two on this database, and now I just clicked it, and it was right there! Fantastic!"

Dar measured the traffic. It had made a difference, no doubt. However, it was only one session, and she realized under full load, it would need more than that. It was a perfect opportunity for her to try out her new intelligent algorithms.

Damn it. But that meant she had to stay here. Just the thought made her want to scream in outrage.

"Are you going to do that with the real system?" Angie sounded excited. "Like, now?"

Dar's cell phone rang. "Hold on." She pressed the hold button and unclipped her cell, flipping it open and putting it to her ear without looking at the caller id. "Hello?"

"Hey, sweetie."

The angry, buzzing bees in her head settled suddenly. "Hi," Dar replied. "What's up?"

"Did you get my note?"

Dar settled back in her seat, pushing her laptop back and out of her view. "Yeah."

"Mm." Kerry's voice dropped a note. "You sound pissed. What's wrong? Didn't your idea work out?"

She'd only said three words. Could Kerry really tell how she felt based on that? Dar exhaled a little. "Matter of fact, it did," she admitted. "But goddamn it, to make it work in production, I need to throw my beta program in this fucking router after that goddamn programmer fixes the whole fucking thing."

Kerry was silent for a moment. "And...that means you can't come home," she ventured. "Is that what I'm hearing?"

"Fuck."

"Sweetheart."

Dar sighed heavily. "Sorry," she muttered. "I'm just so damn frustrated. I don't want to be here," she admitted. "That bastard Meyer...I think he set us up for this."

"Really?"

"He told me they knew it was a problem from the start. No one wanted to admit it because it would take too long to fix." Dar lowered her voice, even though she was alone in the room. "I think he figured to have Godson squeeze us for a bigger pipe as part of the new contract."

"Wow," Kerry murmured. "Would that fix the problem?"

"Actually, no." Dar exhaled. "I had the programmer here make one fix, and we tested it, and it flew. He's torked. I don't know if he's even going to come back and I..." She stopped talking. "Damn it I just want to kick something."

The frustration was achingly evident. "How about I ask Col to stay at the house and I hop up there?" Kerry asked. "Tell you what, I'll make the reservations. What hotel are you in again? The Hyatt, right?"

Strange, but all of a sudden, the bid and everything else she had to do went rolling into the bit bucket, overshadowed by the overwhelming need to respond to that note in Dar's voice.

"And miss dinner with Michelle and Shari?" Dar asked.

Kerry laughed. "Oh, would I love to not only get them down to the burger shack, but stand their obnoxious pig fart butts up in the bargain. Maybe I'll even call the guys and have them come harass the two of them."

Dar picked at the seam along the inside of her knee. "Rather have you here than out with them, that's for sure," she finally said. "But I can't ask you to."

"Why not?" Kerry cut her off. "Do you know how many times you've dropped everything and gotten on a plane for me?" she said. "Jesus, Dar. Give me a break!"

Dar chewed the inside of her lip. She was saved from answering by the door slamming back open, as Hans reappeared and stomped across the carpet toward the table. "Hang on," she told Kerry quietly. "You finished sulking yet?" she asked Hans in German. "Because frankly, I hate sore losers, and I'd really like you to grow the hell up and just do your damn job."

"Oo...that sounds nasty," Kerry whispered into her ear. "I have no idea what you're saying, but that language sounded like you're cursing."

"I am," Dar replied in English to her. "Well?" she barked at Hans.

Fuming, he sat down across from her and let his arms drop into his lap. His pale eyes smoldered as he met her gaze, his frustration written clearly across his face. "Damn you," he finally said. "I would like to smack you right across the face."

Dar leaned forward slightly, her own inner turmoil rising back to the surface. "Ohh...please try it," she growled out in English. "I am so in the mood to kick someone's ass."

"Okay. One flight to New York, coming right up," Kerry said, briskly. "See you in a few hours, sweetie. Keep the sheets warm for me, will you?"

Dar jerked her attention back. "Kerry, you don't have to..."

"Too late. It's done." Kerry cut her off again. "You're stuck with me. Gotta go pack. Talk to you later, okay?"

"B..."

"Love you." Kerry's smile made it easily through the cellular connection. "Call me when you're finished yelling. I'll be on the way home."

"You must think much of yourself," Hans said. "But I do not hit ladies."

Torn between two conversations, Dar decided to abandon one of them. She half turned and focused on her cell phone. "Kerry..."

"Yeess?" her partner's voice warbled back at her. "Please don't tell me not to come there, Dar. I really want to," she added gently. "I miss you so much."

The words died on her lips. Dar swallowed, and felt a smile tugging at her lips instead. "See you soon," she got out. "Thanks."

"Okay. Love you. My flight's at eight...so have the hot chocolate waiting, huh?"

"I will," Dar promised. "Bye."She closed the phone and held it a minute, then she sat up and turned the chair around to face Hans.

They looked at each other for a long moment. Then Dar exhaled. "Listen," she said. "I don't like being wrong either," she said in German. "Can we please just get it done?"

Hans leaned forward. "If," he pointed one long finger at her, "you buy me an expensive dinner, I will consider it."

Her heart was settling back into its normal rhythm, and her body was relaxing again, under a wave of lethargy that followed the easing emotion. "Sure," Dar agreed. "Buy you a whole damn side of beef if you want. Let's go." She stood up, surprised when her knees shook under her. "We can start with a beer."

"Ah." Hans shut down his laptop. "Now we are again speaking the same language. It will also help me drown my ego. Let us go, indeed."

Dar found herself smiling, through a sense of vague embarrassment. She felt very mixed up, and somewhat off balance, but all in all, she didn't really care.

Kerry was flying to New York.

That's what mattered.

KERRY LEANED BACK in her chair and studied the hiking boots she once again had planted on her desk. She knew she had to get moving home shortly, but she took a moment to bask in the sense of pure happiness she felt knowing how her night was going to end.

She had no idea what was going on with her partner. But she knew stress when she heard it, and caution went out the window. Besides, Dar had, in fact, dropped the world several times on her behalf and paybacks in this case were certainly justified.

Now. Kerry folded her hands over her stomach and reviewed her altered agenda. She had to go home, of course, and pack. Colleen had already responded to her email and agreed to come over and sit with Chino, and she'd double checked her inbox to make sure all the creepies were chased out of it.

Not that it would have mattered if they hadn't been. Kerry eyed her ceiling thoughtfully. Her head turned as her door opened, and Mayte stuck her head inside. "Hey, Mayte. C'mon in."

"Kerry." Mayte almost trotted across the floor over to her desk. "They said at Legal they are working on the documents I brought them. They will try to work quickly, but it is much to review."

"Good," Kerry said. "Since I won't be here tomorrow anyway." A grin appeared. "So Mr. Quest will get his executed copy next week and the hell with it." She felt a sense of relief. "If he doesn't want us to bid, then he doesn't."