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”After you change” Kerry persisted. ”Right?”
A soft chuckle. ”Right.” Dar followed the hastily lettered signs which indicated the rest rooms, and ducked inside the one marked Wo m en , wincing at the smell of rotted grout. ”Oh god.”
She debated holding her breath, then decided passing out would be a bad idea and simply turned her mind to more pleasant thoughts as she quickly stripped out of her soaked clothing. It was almost a sensual experience pulling on the clean, dry denim over her chilled legs, and she quickly tucked the flannel shirt Kerry had retrieved into them, buttoning the jeans closed and tugging on her sweatshirt as well.
”Damn, that feels good,” she commented to the empty room, gathering up her dripping shirt and pants, and draping them over a stall divider, tucking her drenched underthings into the pants pockets.
Then she sat on the edge of a water basin, tugging on a pair of thick, warm socks and her dry sneakers, letting her hands fall as she finished and reveling in the simple pleasure of being warm and dry after so many hours of damp misery.
She wondered briefly how long it would have taken her to do this on her own, feeling a little guilty about having Kerry nudge her into it.
With a sigh, she stood, wishing she’d thought to bring some analgesic for her knee. She gazed at her damp reflection, flicking her fingers through her hair to order it somewhat. ”Drowned rat,” she told the reflection, which looked wryly back at her. ”No wonder everyone thinks you’re nuts.”
She trudged back out into the open warehouse and paused, trying to figure out where to start. Watching the chaos, she shook her head a little. “Roberts, you are nuts.”
“OKAY.” KERRY PEERED out of the windshield. ”We need to find a place to get sandwiches or something for everyone. They must be hungry.” Of course, she had a personal motive for asking, but it seemed much nobler to think of the group first. ”Any 24 hour groceries around here?”
Ruth looked at her. ”You’re joking, right?”
”Come on. We even had one in Saugatuck.” Kerry eyed her. ”Okay, a Seven Eleven, a Wal-Mart, anything?”
”How about a Big Fat Boy’s Eat ‘Em All?” Ruth asked, with a perfectly serious face. ”They’ve got some good pie.”
Kerry held her breath to keep from giggling nervously. ”Oh, okay, sure.”
”And there’s a Stop and Shop, if you want,” the woman added.
”Both,” Kerry nodded firmly. ”Um, the restaurant first. Do they take credit cards?”
Ruth just laughed.
”Okay then, the stop and shop first, maybe they have an ATM.”
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Kerry sighed.
The other woman put the car in gear and headed out, driving the dark back roads for twenty minutes before pulling into a lonely looking, but fairly well lit convenience store. They got out and entered, and Kerry wasn’t surprised to find they were the only patrons.
She went to the obviously brand new ATM, standing in a place of pride near the Slurpee machine and selected her corporate card, swiping it and keying in her ID number. She considered a moment, then entered an amount, idly imagining an electronic gasp from the machine as it thought about her request. Finally it grudgingly gave up the cash, and she tucked her card away, turning around and prowling the aisles thoughtfully.
What a selection. She sighed, going up to the cashier, who was watching her with sleepy eyes. ”May I have a box, please?” The man gave her a puzzled look, but went into a back room and came out with a cardboard carton, which he handed to her wordlessly. ”Thank you.”
Kerry took it over to the shelf and scooped the meager choices of Twinkies and other goods into it.
She stuck to recognizable items, leaving some dubiously packaged sweet rolls behind, and lugged the box up to the front. ”Ring that up, please,” she told the man, before she went to the freezer case and studied it.
A brief grin crossed her lips, and she tugged the case open, retrieving an item and bringing it back to the cashier. ”Okay.” She paid the man, then claimed her box and followed Ruth outside.
”I can’t believe you’re doing this,” the woman commented, opening the trunk for her and watching as she put the box inside.
“Why?” Kerry straightened. “Those people are going to be working all night. They don’t run on batteries.”
“Most people your level just give orders and don’t care,” Ruth said bluntly, as they got back into the car. “And from what I heard about your boss, I didn’t think she did either.”
Kerry leaned her arm against the door and rested her head against her hand. “She cares,” She said, simply. “Way too much sometimes, I think.”
“DID THEY SEND an Ethernet hub?” Dar leaned on the newly assembled racks, and watched as yet another box was unpacked. The musty smell of the warehouse was almost completely overrun with the scent of newly opened electronics, and the worn and dirty carpet was covered with tired looking techs busy making cables and assembling wiring harnesses.
”Yeah, it’s over there.” The man she was addressing pointed without looking up, busy on his task and oblivious to the asker.
Dar didn’t mind. She went over to the box he’d indicated and stuck 200
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her head inside spotting the item she was looking for and tugging it out, pulling it free of the bubble wrap packing and dusting the top off.
”Great.”
She limped over to a hastily set up table and set the box down, pulling a small pocket knife out of her jeans pocket and slitting the tape on the top of the container. Her eyes scanned the device, then she lifted it from its nest of packing and carried it over to the first rack, sliding it into place above the first of the routers and screwing it down. ”There, if the patches are ready, we can start hooking these damn things up.”
”Right,” The facility manager agreed wearily, plugging the hub into power. ”At least they sent surge suppressors, but I’m glad we found those extension cords in the basement here.”
”Mm,” Dar agreed, flipping the switches on the installed routers.
”Oh shit.” She rubbed her temples. ”I need a damn straight through serial cable and 9-pin to program these damn things.”
John cursed softly. ”Christ, all right. Let me see what we have.
Maybe I can have someone wire a piece of Cat 5 in serial.”
Dar leaned against the rack for a moment, then straightened and moved over to where the Telco technicians were screwing down two huge blocks and wiring. ”How’s it going?” she asked, examining the jacks. ”Nice.”
The nearer tech looked up. ”Just about done. Ya got lucky, lady.
This is the only multi jack in this part of the Carolinas. I got no idea how you got inventory to give it up to us.”
Dar's nostrils flared. ”I’d tell you, but I’d have to kill you,” she joked faintly, recalling a twenty minute, top of her lungs, cursing in two languages conversation with a mid-level infrastructure manager at the phone company. ”Can we start plugging in?”
He finished one last screw into the peeling paint on the punch down board. ”Yeah, you got drop cables?” He looked up as Dar lifted a handful of the requested items. ”Oh, right.” He took the handful and started plugging them in while Dar connected the other end to the equipment. ”What time is it, anyhow?”
Dar checked her watch. ”Four thirty.” She winced. ”All right, is the fiber drop in?”
”Almost,” the man remarked, moving towards the door.
Dar finished her task, then she stepped back and regarded the assembly of equipment. ”What a mess.” There were wires everywhere, connecting the routers and the interconnecting hubs, not to mention the power cables running everywhere. Green and red LEDS were beginning to blink on the routers, and she ran a hand through her hair, trying to shove back the exhaustion as she figured out what needed to happen next. Oh. Right. She pulled her cell phone out and dialed.
”MIS,” the voice answered.
”Mark, okay, we've got the...” Dar started.
”Circuits up, yeah, I see them, but they aren’t terminated yet,”
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Mark replied, amidst a rattle of keys. ”Shit, that was fast, Dar. What did you do, coerce the entire phone company?”
Dar sighed. ”We got lucky. There were already terminator blocks in this damn warehouse. They just had to assign the pairs.” She found a box to sit down on and took a deep breath. ”That was the easy part.
Now I have to configure the routers, and get the fiber line in, and hope to god those damn mainframes are still running off the generator, or we’re doing this for shit.”
”You sound beat,” Mark commented quietly.
”Been a long day,” Dar acknowledged, letting her elbows rest on her knees and allowing her eyes to close momentarily. ”Wish I had some...” She stopped talking, and looked up as the smell of fresh coffee hit her nose, and found warm green eyes gazing back at her. ”Oh, are you a sight for sore eyes,” she murmured.
Mark chuckled in her ear. ”Tell Kerry I said hi,” he remarked wryly Kerry handed her the large cup of coffee and took the phone from her. ”Hi Mark, can we call you back?” She waited for the answer, then hung up. ”Sorry it took so long. You have no idea how hard it is to find open places up here at this time of day.” She looked around. ”Wow.”
Dar sucked on her coffee without comment, feeling some life come back into her as the warm, sweet liquid hit her stomach. ”I was about to send out a search party,” she advised her lover. ”We’ve got the circuits up, but...” Dar let a tendril of doubt in. ”Damn, Kerry, I don’t know if we can do this. There’s just so much to get done.” She cast a glance over her shoulder at the half assembled system. ”Maybe I was crazy to try.”
Kerry gazed at her in concern. Dar’s face and arms were covered with smudges of dust and dirt from the equipment, and there were dark circles under her eyes, visible even in the dim light. ”Dar, if you didn’t believe this was going to work you wouldn’t have done it.” She sat down next to her boss. ”I brought back food for everyone, that should help, and I can program the routers, if you give me a chance to change first.”The bloodshot blue eyes lifted and regarded her. ”That’s right. You are Cisco certified, aren’t you?” Dar let a reluctant smile tug her lips.
”Go change. I have them making up cables for the laptops. If we both work on it, we can get enough done so that the other techs can get in and start downloading the routing tables.”
”You got it.” Kerry slung her bag over her shoulders and headed for the rest room, changing quickly and hanging her wet clothing next to Dar’s. She returned to find her boss hunched over a box, studying the screen on her laptop.
The silvery reflection flickered over her tanned features, which shifted as Kerry put her own laptop down next to her. ”Okay.” Kerry smiled as a tech handed her a cable. ”Thanks.” She plugged it in, then ran the other end to one of the routers. ”Oh. I’ll be right back.”
Dar nodded, absorbed in her screen. ”Let’s hope I remember how to 202
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do this,” she muttered, shoving down her annoyance that they’d been unable to locate the hardware group for the facility, meaning that only she and Kerry really knew how to get in and program the complicated devices. ”It’s been a while.”
The scent of cooked food spread through the room and most of the techs had wandered over to where Kerry had left the boxes, leaving Dar in relative isolation as she puzzled through the software.
The screen started to fuzz out and she stopped after what seemed like the twentieth screen, leaning back and rubbing her eyes, as her back protested against her hunched posture. ”I think that’s it,” she commented to Kerry, who knelt at her side. ”Wh...”
”Open wide,” Kerry instructed, capturing her gaze.
Dar stared, uncomprehending, then hesitantly opened her mouth, startled when a spoonful of cold, chocolate ice cream was deposited into it. She blinked a few times. ”Mm.” She swallowed the rich cream. ”Was that Haagen Daz?”
”Yes,” Kerry informed her, offering up another spoonful. ”And don’t you ask me where I found chocolate Haagen Daz in the middle of backwoods North Carolina, okay?” She watched Dar’s whole attitude perk up, and was convinced if the dark haired woman had possessed a tail, it would have wagged enthusiastically. ”It’s amazing what ice cream does to you, did you know that?”
Dar licked her lips. ”Hey, it beats recreational drugs,” she remarked wryly. ”What did you bring the rest of these guys?”
Kerry glanced over her shoulder. ”The best of Big Fat Boy’s Eat ‘Em All buffet,” she told her boss, taking a spoon of ice cream for herself.
”And a box of Twinkies, Snowballs, Ring Dings, and Mallomars.”
Dar covered her mouth quickly and stifled an almost hysterical laugh. ”Did you get some buffet?” she managed to ask. ”Damn, I thought it was more, uh...”
”You’re joking, right?” Kerry fed her more ice cream. ”I’d like to live to get back to Miami, thanks, and I got the lecture that yes, during the day, it’s much more sophisticated around here, but those places roll up the sidewalks at night, because all the workers go home.”
”Well.” Dar accepted another spoon and chewed it contentedly. ”It was a good idea, though. It might give everyone enough energy to get through the morning.” She paused, and regarded her lover. ”So, no buffet for you?”
Kerry sucked on the spoon. ”Um, no, actually, I...” She made a tiny face. ”I have a weakness for Snowballs,” she admitted, a touch embarrassed. ”That was enough sugar to get me going.”
Dar laughed. ”Ah! I see.” She teased gently. ”Those white ones with the chocolate insides?”
Green eyes batted their golden lashes at her. ”Yeah,” she confessed, a little shamefacedly.
”Wanna share a pack?” Dar inquired, one brow lifting.
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Kerry cleared her throat. ”Oh no, I’m okay. I...” Then she glanced up. ”Well, maybe one.”
Dar grinned, finding the energy to stand up, and stretch. She could feel her own determination returning, and she glanced out over the room, planning her next move.
DAWN BROKE, TURNING the darkness outside to a dull gray as the rain continued. Inside the warehouse it was marked only by a break for coffee, from the multitude of thermos bottles that littered the worktable.