Red Sky At Morning - DK4 (52 page)

Hmm.
Kerry reached the eighth floor and turned the corner, feeling her heart rate starting to climb. So here she thought she was cruising along, doing so well. “Looks like I’m going to just have to try harder, that’s all,” she panted, forcing herself to leap up the next set of stairs two at a time. She rounded the corner and swung a little wide, a little out of control toward the door that led to the ninth-floor entrance. She put out a hand to steady herself, then suddenly blinked as the solid surface started to move toward her.

Kerry tried to stop, but her momentum was too great and she ended up crashing into the opening door, knocking herself senseless as she reeled backward dangerously close to the steps behind her. “Oh!”

She fought for balance, reaching out for the handrail, but the sweat on her hands betrayed her and she started to fall.

And then, just as suddenly, she wasn’t falling. She was caught and held in a powerful grip, and her senses scrambled to reconcile the abrupt presence of Dar’s distinctive aura surrounding her. “Ow.”

“Hey.” Dar’s voice confirmed her dizzy revelation. “Kerry?

Kerrison!”

Oh boy. Did I do something wrong?
Kerry felt her knees buckle, and the next thing she knew, she was on the ground, its cold hardness pressing against her legs, with her upper body cradled in a nice, warm, very Dar-smelling nest. She blinked a few times. “Didn’t know seeing stars wasn’t just an old saying.” She stuttered the words out. “Ow.”

“Easy.” Dar’s voice sounded worried. “Take it easy. Why are you breathing so hard? Honey? Look at me, okay?”

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Kerry obeyed, tipping her head back and opening both eyes, very glad she did so when she was rewarded with Dar’s concerned face inches from her. “Wow.” She finally felt her heart rate start to calm.

“Are you ever a sight for sore eyes.” She lifted a hand and gingerly felt her forehead. “Or a sore head.”

Dar stroked her face gently. “What in the hell were you doing?” she asked. “You’re all wet.”

“You have that effect on me,” Kerry joked faintly, getting a halfhearted smile from her lover. “I’m all right. It’s just sweat. I was running the stairs.”

Dar tugged her shirtsleeve over and wiped the droplets of sweat out of Kerry’s eyes. It was warm in the stairwell, and the smaller woman was still breathing hard. “Can I ask why?”

Kerry took a long, shaky breath, then released it. “Seemed like a good idea at the time?” She gave Dar a wan smile. “I was just working the kinks out—getting a little exercise.” She settled her back against the wall and untangled her feet from Dar’s.

“And?” Dar shifted to a more comfortable position. “You decided to make it a decathlon event instead?”

“No.” Kerry dredged her self-disgust back up. “I was getting tired after seven measly flights, and it pissed me off,” she admitted. “I’ve been telling myself what good shape I’m in. Hah.” She forced a laugh and rolled her head to one side, gazing at Dar. “I’m a wuss.”

“Sweetheart,” Dar laid her good arm over Kerry’s shoulders, “our floors at work are eight feet high,” she said. “The ones here are twelve.

You just ran up the equivalent of about fourteen flights of steps at full speed.”

Kerry gazed at the steps, then tipped her head back and looked up.

“Oh.” She felt like an idiot. “Really?”

“Mm-hmm.” Dar gazed fondly at her. “So you’re entitled to be out of breath. I would have been.” She leaned forward and stuck two fingers into the collar of Kerry’s shirt, pulling it outward and peeking inside. “Besides, I really like the shape you’re in.”

Kerry looked down, then up at her. “Really?”

“Really.” Dar released the fabric, transferring her touch to Kerry’s face. She traced the rounded cheekbones and snub nose delicately, examining the crystal clear green depths of her lover’s eyes. “You are the most beautiful person I’ve ever known.”

It was amazing. Kerry felt a little fuzzy happy ball settle inside her stomach, its tickling presence causing a smile to spread across her face, achieving an immediate echo on Dar’s. How could a sterile-scented stairwell be this romantic? “Thank you for telling me that.” Kerry leaned forward slightly and brushed Dar’s lips with her own, then made a more solid contact. “Especially since I feel like a slimy, skanky old pair of gym socks right now, so I know you’re just saying that to make me feel good.” She gave Dar a wry smile.

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Dar studied her in silence, a tiny furrow appearing in her brow. “I most certainly wasn’t.”

“Dar, c’mon.” Kerry nudged her. “Don’t sit there and pretend I’m attractive sitting here all sweaty and covered in hallway dirt.” She held up a hand, which was almost black, then blew her disheveled hair out of her eyes. “I’m a mess.”

“I think you missed my point,” Dar replied. “Ker, you’ll always be beautiful to me, no matter what you look like.”

Kerry gazed back at her seriously. “Do you really mean that?” she asked. “No matter what? Even if I shaved my head, put on fifty pounds, and got a tattoo across my neck that said ‘Budweiser’?” She kept her tone light, but she felt the anxiety as she watched Dar’s face, twenty-five years of her mother’s voice hammering into her conscience.

“Hmm.” Dar cocked her head, giving the vision its due and sober consideration. “Nope. I think I’d have to draw the line at the Bud tattoo,” she said gravely. “Maybe ‘Corona’ I could live with.”

Kerry smiled and dropped her gaze, more relieved than she was willing to admit.

“But as for the rest, yes, I do mean that.” Dar tipped Kerry’s chin up and forced eye contact. “We’re not going to look like this forever, Ker. I don’t know how you feel about it, but I want you to know I don’t give a damn.”

It was ridiculous, Kerry decided, that they were having this absurdly critical discussion sitting in a hospital stairwell. But Dar’s speech deserved an answer. “All my life I’ve had it hammered into me that appearance is what matters,” she said. “And I’d always hoped that...” a slight shrug, “...being in love would mean more than just being physically attracted to someone.” She met Dar’s eyes. “For me it is.

There’s something about you that has captured me completely, and I hope it never lets go.”

Dar nodded slightly.

“So, I don’t give a damn, either,” Kerry went on. “I know I joke about it a lot. Maybe it was just that I bumped into a cute little gymnastic boy, and he stroked my ego for me.”

Dar eyed her. “When was this?”

“On the way down the stairs,” Kerry admitted. “He admired my muscle tone.”

“Ah.” Dar settled back against the wall. “Well, I just had a good-looking young woman tell me to take all my clothes off.” She eyed Kerry’s profile, which went suspiciously, suddenly still, save for the flaring of her nostrils.

“And?” Kerry asked.

“And I spent the next ten minutes being told what a lovely specimen I was.”

Kerry’s eyebrow lifted.

“Did you know I have dense bones and perfect symmetry?” Dar
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asked, arching a brow of her own.

Kerry half turned. “Who is this person?”

A puckish grin appeared. “The orthopedic surgeon.”

“Tch.” Kerry started laughing. “A lovely specimen, huh?”

Dar chuckled. “Nice muscle tone, huh?”

They both simply laughed for a minute. “Oh my God, Dar, I’m sweaty, and I’m tired, and I want to go home. Are they letting you out yet?” Kerry finally said.

“They’d better be,” her partner replied. “C’mon. Let’s go share a sponge and call Dr. Steve.” Dar stood carefully, and held onto Kerry’s arm as she joined her. “Thought I saw a tube of that bath soap in your bag.”

“The mango one?” Kerry put an arm around Dar’s waist as they climbed up the steps toward the tenth floor.

“Mm.”

“You thought right, my little subtropical perfect specimen.”

Dar snorted, then reached down and pinched Kerry’s butt. “Oh yeah, that’s nice tone all right.”

“Ouch! You wench!” Kerry felt her spirits rise into the bubbly range. “Wait ’til we get to that sponge. You’ll be sorry.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“SEND HER IN.” Commander Ainsbright twitched his jacket sleeves straight and folded his hands on his desk. Aside from the bandage taped over a gash on his left temple and a bruise the size of a mango on his jaw, he appeared the very picture of composed military dignity. He watched as the door opened and Chief Daniel walked in.

“Chief.”

The chief walked to the edge of the desk and saluted, then stood at ease.“Report,” the commander requested.

“It seems the training exercise caused a great deal of damage in three areas, sir,” the chief replied. “Primarily in the computer center, the telecom room, and the programming center.”

The commander nodded. “And?”

“I expect the systems will be down until we can replace about twenty percent of the hardware,” Chief Daniel said. “Apparently the backup systems were damaged as well, and we lost a good portion of our data storage.”

The base commander leaned back and propped a knee up against his desk. “All right,” he said. “Write up the damages, and I’ll charge the SEAL program for them. They had their instructions. They failed to follow them.”

“Yes, sir.” Chief Daniel kept her gaze firmly fixed on the desk.

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“Anything else you want to report, Chief?”

“No, sir,” came the quiet reply.

“Anyone asks you for anything, we don’t have it.”

“No, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

The chief turned and left the room, closing the door quietly behind her. Jeff Ainsbright sighed and shook his head. The phone rang, and he picked it up. “Yes?”

“Cleanup’s almost done,” a terse voice informed him. “We got lucky. Damn lucky.”

“Tell me,” the base commander snorted. “You get rid of everything? We’ll have a security team down on us at 0700 tomorrow morning.”

“Everything,” the voice answered. “Scrubbed to the bare steel. I brought a dog in just to be sure.”

Ainsbright nodded. “Good.” His eyes narrowed. “I’ve got those guards on court-martial for letting that damn bastard Roberts in here during off-hours. You know how close that was? They were in the goddamned computer center. I just hope we got everything.”

“We did.” The voice held infinite assurance. “She thought she was so smart. That data stream she has won’t tell her anything. We made sure of that.” A chuckle. “Don’t worry, Jeff. All they’ll find is some ruined equipment. I already reconstructed the database. It’s clean.”

“All right.” Ainsbright nodded. “It was too damn close, I tell you.

We should have shut down the minute that bitch came on the base.”

“You were supposed to take care of that,” the answer came back sharply. “You and that kid of yours, remember? He was supposed to distract her. Hell, I thought he’d end up screwing her—”

“That’s enough,” Ainsbright snapped. “Forget about it. We found another solution.” He checked his watch. “I’ve got to go. Chuck’s ship’s leaving, and I want to make sure he’s on it.”

“Right. Out of sight—”

“Out of my hair,” the commander snorted. “Bye.” He hung up the phone and took a deep breath. It had been close. Far too close, and the problems weren’t over yet. He wasn’t stupid enough to think he was rid of Dar Roberts, for one thing. She’d dug enough into the base to report back to Washington, and now it was up to his team to do damage control.

Negligence? Sure. Someone would be court-martialed for it.

Shoddy record-keeping, sloppy processes. Every base had them, and all it would generate was a damn study and recommendations as long as Roberts hadn’t found anything worse.

And she hadn’t. He was sure of it. All he had to do was get Chuckie out of here, then wait for the rep from DC. Thank God the damn JAG

had called to warn him. With a sigh, he put his hands against his desk and pushed himself to his feet, wincing at the ache in his bones.

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Too dark, he’d been told, to see who’d hit him. “Sorry, sir. It was just too dark,” the SEAL captain had maintained stiffly.
Yeah? Too dark
my ass,
Jeff Ainsbright scowled as he circled his desk and headed for the door.

Only to find it blocked.

He stopped in complete shock and stared at the dark blue-clad figure standing silently inside the door. There hadn’t been a sound.
How
in the hell?
He took a cautious breath. “Andy.”

Ice-blue eyes watched him steadily. “’Lo, Jeff,” Andrew drawled very softly.

Ainsbright took a step back. “Didn’t hear you come in.”

Frighteningly, that caused a smile to appear on the scarred face.

“Folks never do,” the ex-SEAL allowed. “That’s how come I stuck around this long.” Andrew moved forward toward the commander with a curiously smooth amble. It combined an economy of motion with an impression of prowling energy that caused the commander to take another step back, then turn and retreat behind his desk.

“What can I do for you, Andy?” Ainsbright forced a tense smile.

“I’ve got a meeting I’m due at.”

“On Sunday? You ain’t visiting the preacher now, are you?”

Andrew asked.

The commander hesitated. “No, no, just a lunch date with my wife.” He was very conscious of the cold menace radiating from his old friend who, though retired and with all that gray in his crew cut, still posed a very potent threat he knew he had no hope of countering.

Andrew had always been like that. A big man, made bigger by weight training and SEAL’s fitness regimen, with lightning reflexes and lethal combat skills. Cool in action, levelheaded, steady, reliable—but with a blind spot a mile wide all centered around his family and that damn stubborn pigheaded bitch of a daughter of his.

Dar was dangerous because she was so goddamned smart. Andrew was dangerous just because he was dangerous, and anything that touched or threatened his kid sent him past reason.

“We need to chat,” Andrew told him. “So sit yer ass down.”

Ainsbright sat down slowly and folded his hands. “Andrew, this ain’t a threat, but I can call the guards and have you taken out of here.