Hurricane Watch - DK2 (54 page)

A vaguely familiar voice. ”Maria, what’s going on?”

”Ah…we have a Ms. Graver here, she is looking to be speaking with Dar, but I am telling her she is in a meeting.” Maria answered. ”Is problems, I think.”

Kerry drummed her fingers on her desk.
Michelle Graver, huh?
A grim smile crossed Kerry’s face. ”Let me see if I can help her, Maria.

Bring her down here,” she suggested. ”Who knows how long Dar’s going to be.”

Maria sounded very grateful. ”Gracias, Kerrisita. We’ll be right down.” She hung up, leaving Kerry to run a quick eye over her desk, 292

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and straighten the stack of papers in her outbox with a push. Then she turned her monitor slightly and checked her reflection, trying on one of Dar’s arched eye browed looks for size.

”Uck. I can’t do that.” She chuckled a little. ”I look too weird.” A gentle tug on her sleeves got her shirt straight, then she took a breath and settled herself, as a soft knock came on the door. ”C’mon in.”

Maria opened the door and entered, holding it for Michelle Graver to enter behind her. The short Disney executive brushed past her, and stalked across the carpet, tossing a folder down on Kerry’s desk. ”I doubt you can help.”

Kerry held her eyes for a moment, then she pulled the folder towards her and flipped it open. ”Please, have a seat,” she murmured, as she studied the contents. ”Maria, here are the reports so far, and the project Dar was working on.” She reached out and lifted the stack of papers and offered them. ”I think she wanted these requisitions cleared before lunchtime.”

”Si.” Maria took the stack. ”We are making special order today for lunch, the Chinese food, you want?”

Kerry paused. ”Sure. Yeah, that would be great.” She pulled a paper out, and keyed up one of her sessions. ”Hang on a minute. I need to request these real-time.” She rattled her keys, then turned. ”Um...I’ll take a beef with snow peas, and you can order Dar a Szechwan shrimp.”

She took a guilty bit of satisfaction in saying that while Michelle was sitting there, and she didn’t miss the narrowing of those little beady eyes.”Is good.” Maria scribbled a note, then left, abandoning a tense silence behind her.

Kerry returned her attention to the screen. ”This utilization report shows you’re losing packets.”

Michelle clapped her hands twice. ”Very good,” she remarked sarcastically. ”I’m impressed. Did she train you on all the little blinking lights, or just the most important ones?”

Kerry felt an insidious urge to make an inappropriate gesture, and stifled it. ”No, actually, I learned that in college,” she answered the question at face value. ”Have you made any changes to your internal network?” she asked, politely.

”No,” Michelle answered. ”It’s not on our end, and my people have been complaining about it for two weeks, and nothing’s been done. I want it cleared up, or you can tell your...boss...the next contact will be from our legal department to terminate the contract.”

Briefly, Kerry wondered why Michelle had found it necessary to fly all the way from Orlando to tell her that, then figured it was probably just an excuse. ”Hold on.” She started a routine running, watching the results and ignoring the impatient woman across the desk.

Well, Kerry, if you’re going to even think about doing Dar’s job,
better start here.
She watched a gauge, then dialed a number. ”Mark?”

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”Yessup?” The ever-present sound of rattling keys came through clearly. ”And what can I do for you, Ms. K?”

”Um…” She gave him a circuit number. ”Can you sniff that for me, please? They’re losing one out of every three or four packets.”

”Sure.” Mark busied himself for a moment. ”Okay, it’ll take about ten minutes to run the analyzer over it. I’ll get back to you.”

”Thanks.”
Ten minutes. Ho boy.
She glanced up, meeting Michelle’s eyes. ”Would you like some coffee?”

”I’d like my problem solved,” the executive answered shortly.

”I’m working on that,” Kerry told her. ”And if you don’t mind, could I have the name of the person your group talked to in support? I’d like to follow up to find out why this wasn’t handled.”

”You should have a record of that,” Michelle replied. ”It’s not my job to keep track of your people.”

Kerry checked a screen. ”That’s true, but we don’t have a record of anyone calling in from your operations center, and I’d really like to check on what happened.” She waited, but Michelle didn’t answer her.

”Look, Ms. Graver, you obviously came here for some answers, and I’d like to give them to you, but I need some help.”

”And I don’t want excuses, just fix the problem,” the other woman answered. ”I’m not here to help you fix your internal screw ups.”

Stupid, stuck up, obnoxious bitch.
”Okay.” Kerry reviewed the data, then typed in a request and waited for it to come back.
You’re just
jealous because Dar won’t give you the time of day, aren’tcha? Not even
way back when, before we were even that close. Nyah nyah.
She punched a number into the phone, and waited. ”Hello, this is Kerry Stuart in Operations. Can I speak with a supervisor, please?”

A moment of rustling, then a voice. ”Yes, ma’am?”

”I need to know who there’s been troubleshooting with the Disney Orlando account,” she requested quietly.

Keys rattled. ”Um…there’s no record of them calling in, ma’am.”

”I know,” Kerry replied. ”But they say they have, so I need to know who’s handling the problem they reported.”

The man sounded confused. ”Okay. I’ll get the leads to ask each tech, can I call you back?”

”Sure.” Kerry hung up the phone, then she folded her hands on her desk and regarded Michelle in pensive silence. ”You sure you wouldn’t like some coffee?”

Graver didn’t answer at once. She stood, and wandered around the office instead peering out Kerry’s window at the placid Atlantic, then she turned and leaned her back against it, studying the back of Kerry’s head.It took everything she had not to turn around, but she did it, examining the next thing in her inbox instead.

”You’re not just a bit of good looking fluff, are you?” Michelle finally asked, in a speculative voice.

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Now she turned, and crossed her legs, leaning on the arm of her chair. ”I’m not sure I understand the question,” she replied. ”I’m here to do a job, Ms. Graver, not for any other reason.”

Michelle laughed. ”Oh, come on now. You’re not going to deny it at this late stage, are you? Your whole little building here is talking about you and your boss, honey. Wake up.”

Kerry stood up and walked over, making the most of her two inch height advantage, a complete luxury for her. ”I’m not denying anything,” she replied softly. ”But my relationship with Dar has no bearing on whether or not I can do my job.” She paused. ”And while we’re at it, don’t you think you’d better take a look at your own motives, Ms. Graver?”

“What?”

She’d caught the woman off guard, she could see. Good. ”You know, when I met you that first time, I really admired you, because I saw how you looked past the surface bullshit in those meetings, and I appreciated how you made your decisions based on what was good for your company, not on a personal agenda.”

The gray eyes watched her warily. ”Thank you. I do try to do that,”

she replied, a little uncertainly. ”I just don’t like to be jerked around.” A pause. ”So to speak.”

Kerry mentally flipped a coin, and took the plunge. ”You weren’t being jerked around,” she replied quietly. ”We were just starting to become friends, in Orlando. She was my boss, nothing more than that.”

Michelle's brows lifted. ”You’re joking. Honey, have you seen those pictures?”

Kerry folded her arms. ”Yeah, I have, and I look at them and it seems so obvious, but it wasn’t obvious to me.” She pursed her lips.

”And I think Dar was going along business as usual, except she got to a certain point and she just couldn’t go any further, because of me.

Because she didn’t want me to think badly of her.” She looked up

”Don’t hate her for that.”

Now, Michelle looked a little amused. ”You poor kid.” She shook her head slowly. ”You had no idea what you were getting into, did you?”

Kerry glanced at the carpet. ”Not really, no,”” she replied, frankly.

”But I don’t regret a minute of it.” She lifted her eyes and gave Michelle a direct look. ”And to answer your original question, no. I’m not just a piece of fluff. I’m a professional who does this for a living. I didn’t get this job by sleeping with Dar.”

”I see,” Michelle drawled. ”Well, well.”

The phone beeped, and Kerry crossed back over to it, hitting the answer button and trying not to let her shaking hands show. ”Yes?”

”Port’s crapping out,” Mark replied succinctly.

”Thanks.” Kerry hung up and dialed the networking office. ”John, here is a router name. ”She rattled it off. ”Serial port 0 is intermittently
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bad...can you hot swap it, please?”

”Yes, Ms. Stuart. We can do that,” the man answered. ”We’re still researching that trouble call for you, should have an answer back shortly.”

”Thanks...bye.” Kerry hung up, then turned to face Michelle. ”That should solve your problem.” She was glad they’d isolated it, but really, really ticked off that she’d had to do it. It was a basic step anyone should have done in the networking group. Someone was going to hear about it that was for sure. ”Sorry you had to bring it to this level.”

”I’m not.” The older woman chuckled, then shook her head.

”Sometimes it’s good just to clear the air.” She sauntered over and picked up her folder, then she slapped Kerry lightly on the shoulder with it. ”And don’t bother trying to track down that trouble call, there wasn’t one.”

Kerry blinked at her. ”What?”

”We thought it was us,” Michelle told her cheerfully. ”Thanks, kid.” She strolled out, leaving Kerry standing there with her jaw slack.

”Son of a bitch.” She exhaled, sitting down hard in her seat. ”You little Wienerschnitzel.”

PACE, PACE, PACE.

Dar paused near the far wall, and regarded the credenza with an evil look. Even the pretty flowers didn’t help her mood.

Pace, pace, pace.

Now she was on the near wall, and contemplating the closed door for the hundredth time.

Pace, pace, pace.

Her initial charge had lead her right up to Kerry’s door, and she’d actually had her hand on the knob, ready to fling the door open and barrel in, when her conscience had stopped her cold.

Kerry was supposed to be thinking about doing her former job.

What message would her rushing in there like some goddamned half assed knight in frigging rusted armor send? That she didn’t trust Kerry, that’s what. That she figured she couldn’t handle one measly little Michelle Graver, without big, bad Dar coming in and taking over.

Pace, pace, pace.

So she’d come back here, to her office, and decided to wait and see what happened. Unfortunately, she’d forgotten just how much she hated waiting for anything. ”Guess I’m just an instant gratification kinda gal,” she muttered to her reflection in the window. She’d tried to concentrate on her email, but had found herself reading the same one six times, and that was a personnel advisory from Mariana.

She sighed.
Maybe I should go take a walk.

Pace, pace, pace.

I am walking. It's not helping.
She drummed her fingers on her 296

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thigh, curiosity almost driving her insane as she wondered what was going on down the hall.
Damn it, Kerry. You've got sense enough to yell
for help if you need it, right?

Right. Yeah, sure.

Pace, pace, pace.

What if Michelle was making a play for her?
Dar stopped in her tracks, and pressed her fingertips against the glass of the window, her breathing suddenly tight.
What if Kerry...
She shut the thought down savagely.
Don't be stupid, Dar. Don’t start that crap. Don't even insult
her by thinking it. She loves you.
Dar let her head rest briefly against the sun warmed glass.
Just go over there and sit down before you drive
yourself crazy.

But she didn’t move. Instead, she just watched the waves for a few minutes, letting the calm blue of the sea soothe her.

Until her hearing picked up a soft, rhythmic footfall in the back corridor. About damn time, she cursed, bounding across the room and getting into her chair moments before the gentle knock came. She took a deep breath, and leaned her chin on her fist, picking up a report at random and studying it. ”C’mon in.”

The door opened, and Kerry entered. ”Hey.”

Dar forced herself to wait a few seconds before she looked up, drinking in the sight of her lover with quiet relief. ”Hey, yourself.”

Kerry appeared calm, and unflustered, definitely a good sign.

Kerry crossed to her desk, and took her favorite perch on the corner, laying a hand flat on the wooden surface and leaning on it. ”I ordered you lunch. Maria’s doing a Chinese run.”

”Mm, wondered where she went,” Dar mused, putting her report down and giving Kerry a smile. ”Thanks.”

Kerry smiled back. ”Anytime. Listen, Michelle Graver was here.”

Dar nodded. ”I know, Maria told me,” she replied casually. ”But she said you were handling her so I figured it was under control.”

”Oh.” Kerry felt a quick jolt of surprised pride. ”Well, yeah, it was,” she confirmed. ”I mean, she had a problem, but I figured it out, and we got it fixed, so everything’s great.” She gave a satisfied sigh. ”I was worrying about dealing with her a little, but things turned out okay, and it all, um...it’s fine now.”

Dar smiled back. ”Good job.” She patted Kerry’s knee. ”I knew you could handle her.”

Kerry nodded a little, folding her arms across her chest. ”Yeah, it was...it felt good,” she confessed. ”And I think we sort of came to an understanding. Maybe she won’t be so nasty now.”

A dark brow lifted. ”Really?”

”Yeah. I talked things out with her, straightened out a few misconceptions she had,” Kerry replied.