Dar nodded. “Yeah.” She winced a little and exhaled. “I think I pulled a little bit of something in my back doing that crazy stunt last night. Running isn’t the best idea. I think stretching everything out makes more sense.”
Kerry squirmed around and slid a hand behind Dar’s back, probing gently. “Where you got hurt?” She saw Dar nod a tiny bit. “Goofball,”
she scolded. “I’ve been telling you to have Dr. Steve check that out, Dar, you never did go back for another scan.”
Dar scowled. “It hasn’t bothered me in weeks,” she protested.
“Must have been crawling through that tunnel that did it.”
“Tunnel?” Kerry queried. “Oh, Jesus. That explains why you had 132
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bruises on your knees.” She sighed. “Well, come on. Let’s go get dressed, and see if we can work your kinks out.” Neither of them moved, however, and Dar managed to get a snuggly hold on her that turned into a cuddle, which turned into some kissing, which...
“This is not getting us anywhere,” Kerry murmured.
“Sure it is,” Dar replied. “It’s just not getting us dressed and headed to the gym.” She resumed suckling on Kerry’s earlobe, earning a soft grunt of pleasure from her lover. Her hands were already inside the loosened wrap of Kerry’s bathrobe, and she ran a light, tickling touch over the ribs she could feel as Kerry inhaled.
“Hey,” Kerry laughed softly.
Dar kissed her, then relented, and backed off to rub noses. “Tell you what. I’m going to invent an afternoon meeting we both have to attend, and we’re gonna leave early.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Kerry agreed. “So let’s get moving. The sooner this day starts, the sooner it ends.”
“
MAMÁ
.” MAYTE SLIPPED inside the outer office of
Señora
Dar, where her mother was sorting mail. “I just heard something very bad.”
“Sí?”
María looked up. “What is it now? Is Jose flirting with the new
señorita
in Accounting once again?”
“No.” The slim girl looked upset. She walked over and sat down next to her mother’s desk. “It’s about Ms. Kerry.”
María was very surprised. Rumors about her boss, yes, that she was used to; and just after Kerrisita had joined them, she had heard the things they had said about the two of them when they were together.
They had made such a cute couple; it was true. “What have you heard?” she asked her daughter, realizing that Mayte looked very anxious.
Mayte fiddled with her hands. “They are saying that Ms. Kerry, she was with a man here, at night last night, after we all left.”
María’s jaw dropped.
“Come mierda,”
she snorted.
Mayte’s eyes opened wide. “¡
Mamá
!” She was shocked. “Someone was here, and they said they heard them, that she was with her hands all over this man and everything!”
“Who is saying that?” the older woman asked agitatedly. “Who is passing these lies? I want to know this, Mayte, right now!”
“B...b...” Mayte stammered. “
Mamá
, I heard it in the break room.
Everyone is saying it.”
María drummed her perfectly painted nails on her desk. “Why would they say this? Why would anyone want to hurt Kerrisita?” She thought a minute, then dialed a number on her phone. “
Sí
, Ricardo? Can you check for me the log, please? Was there someone to visit Ms. Stuart last night?”
There was the sound of ruffling papers. “Looks like...” Ricardo paused, then ruffled some more. “Oh yeah, here it is. Yeah...she had a guy come up last night. ’Round six-thirty, I guess.”
Mayte and María looked at each other in stunned shock. “May I have his name,
por favor?”
María asked quietly. “I need to send him something.”
“Sure. Roberts,” Ricardo answered genially. “Andrew Roberts.”
María covered her eyes with one hand. “
Gracias
, Ricardo. I will 134
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speak with you later.” She released the phone. “
Jesu
…”
Mayte blinked. “Who is that,
Mamá
? Do you know him?”
“
Sí
.” María looked troubled. “He is Dar’s
papá
. He is a very nice, a very sweet man. He is very much accepting of Kerrisita; she is like another daughter to him.”
“Ay.” The younger woman exhaled. “I have heard her speak of him. There is a picture in the office, I think.”
“
Sí
. That is Dar’s
mamá
and
papá
. It was very hard, I have told you, when Kerrisita had such troubles with her family.” María was thinking hard as she spoke. “Mayte, we must fix this problem,” she told her daughter firmly. “I cannot let this be said about Kerrisita. Dar will be so upset.”
Mayte blinked. “Oh.”
“We must find who is saying this.” María got up. “Come. We will go to someplace where I know that all the talk gets to be heard.” She led the way out of the office and down the hall. As they passed the break room she could hear the chatter, and Kerry’s name, and she grew very angry. “Do they not have better things to be doing?” She stopped and peered inside. “Go to work!” she told the startled occupants.
“Vámonos!”
Mayte just looked at her as the assorted administrative assistants and junior clerks bolted from the room, streaming down the hallway like an assortment of colorful birds.
“I am getting very bold, no?” María
asked. “I am learning from Dar.”“Yes,
Mamá,”
Mayte murmured as they continued off down the hall.
At the end of the long walk,
María lifted a hand and knocked on the thick metal door before them, waiting a few seconds, then knocking again.
“Hang on; hold your chupacabras.” The door swung open. “Oh...”
Josh, one of Mark’s assistants, blinked. “Hi, María. What’s up?”
“Shoo shoo.” María waved him backward. “I am here to speak with Mark. He is here?”
“Uh...uh...sure...um...he’s in his office...but I—”
“Tch tch.”
María
brushed by him and circled the equipment-packed console, where three techs were busy monitoring different screens.
Mark’s office was in the back and she made for it, reaching out to tap on the half-closed door.
“Look,” Mark’s voice floated out, “I don’t give a crap what you think. If you can’t deal with other people having private lives that are not your business, find another place to work, dude.”
María hesitated, listening.
“From what I hear, it ain’t that private,” a softer, less distinct voice answered.
“Don’t start that shit,” Mark warned. “I’m telling you right now,
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135
Brent. Don’t talk about them, don’t repeat bullshit you hear at the urinal, and keep your redneck attitudes out of the office or I’ll bounce you right on out of here.”
“For what?” The response was outraged. “For having an opinion?”
“For insubordination and fucking with the antidiscrimination regs,” Mark stated.
“What about everyone else? They’re—”
“Everyone else ain’t in Dar’s chain of command,” the MIS chief interrupted. “You are.”
There was a moment of silence. “Fine,” Brent finally said. “Can I go now? I got stuff to do.”
“Sure,” Mark replied. “Take off.”
The door swung open a moment later and Brent emerged, his face crimson. He almost crashed headlong into María and Mayte, and he paused to stare at them for a few seconds before he brushed by and left.
María eyed him, then she shook her head and walked into Mark’s office.
“Hey.” Mark looked up, pausing in the act of listening to his voice mail. “Guess you heard.” He chewed his lower lip. “About last night, I mean.”
“Of course,” María agreed. “And we are going to fix it.”
“Fix it?”
“Sí. You have the little program there, that goes to all the PCs?”
María folded her hands. “That makes the funny noise, no?”
“Our messenger service, yeah,” Mark replied, puzzled. “What about it?”
“I want you to send a message, please, from me, to all the people, yes?”
“Okaaay...” Mark sat down slowly. “What kind of message?”
“I will write it.” María took a piece of paper and one of Mark’s cushion grip roller balls and got to work. Mark watched her, twisting his head to one side to read the upside-down letters.
His eyes widened. “Oh boy.”
DAR HAD TAKEN a breath to say good morning to María when she opened the outer door and realized the office was empty. She closed her mouth with a faint click of teeth meeting and entered, shouldering her laptop as she made her way across the quiet space and into her inner office.
The sun was pouring across the floor and she stepped into it, feeling the faint warmth through the fabric of her skirt as she circled her desk and put her briefcase down. She pulled the leather chair out, and settled into it with a tiny sigh.
“Morning, guys.” She greeted her Siamese fighting fish, removing their jar of food from her desk drawer and sprinkling a little bit into the small tank. Her chin resting on one fist, she watched the fish gobble 136
Melissa Good
their breakfasts before she sighed again and turned her attention to her monitor.
“Wonder what disasters we have to deal with this morning?” Dar asked the empty office, spinning her trackball to douse her screensaver and reveal her running programs. Her eyebrows contracted slightly when she saw the blinking Dogbert head in the lower corner, and she clicked on it to bring up the corporate messaging alert the symbol represented.
Slowly, Dar’s head tilted to one side, then the other, then she leaned forward and blinked as she read the message. “What in the hell?”
“To All Corporate HQ Miami Employees—you are please to read your handbooks in the section twelve, page 23. This page is saying that you may not say to everyone bad things about the officers of the company that are not true, or we can make you the termination. There is someone who is doing this, and when this is found out, this person I will myself see the termination if these bad things do not stop.
Gracias
.
María.”
Dar’s intercom buzzed and she slapped at it absently. “Yeah?”
“Did you see that message?” Kerry’s voice floated into the office.
“What the heck is she talking about?”
“I haven’t a quarter clue,” Dar murmured, shaking her head.
“Whatever it is, sure pissed her off though. I’d better find her and figure out what’s going on.” She shook her head. “I’ll call you back.”
“Okay.” Kerry released the intercom button and opened her mail.
“Weird...very weird way to start the day, that’s for sure.” There was a knock on her door, and she realized Mayte must have stepped away from her desk. “C’mon in.”
Clarice entered, giving Kerry a very sweet smile before she closed the door behind her and crossed the floor to settle in one of Kerry’s visitor chairs. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.” Kerry folded her hands on her desk. “What can I do for you?”
MARK LEANED BACK in his chair, unconsciously putting distance between himself and the dangerously glaring ice blue eyes boring into his. “Hey, boss...um...”
Dar rested her hands on Mark’s desk and leaned forward, lowering her voice to a mere raspy growl. “I want to know who it was that started that story.”
Mark took a breath. “Dar, you know how hard it is to track shit like that down.” He tried to keep his tone even and calm, his mind casting for the last time he’d seen Dar this mad.
Ah. That would be never.
“I bet María’s message stopped it.”
Dar could feel her body shaking with rage. She knew that lack of
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137
sleep was making her hold on her temper very tenuous and that she should go back to her office and calm down before she did something extremely stupid. “I want to know who it was,” she repeated softly.
“Don’t you tell me you can’t track it down, Mark. There was X number of people in this building, X number of people on this floor, and X
number of people in the operations suite between the hours of X and X, which you know from the security log.”
Mark took his courage in both hands and leaned toward his boss, reaching out one hand and covering the fist Dar had planted on his desk.
“Okay, boss. I’ll find that out for you, if you sit down and take it easy for a minute.” There was no response in the stern mask looking at him.
He tried again, lowering his voice. “Dar, please, go get a drink of water, huh? You’re scaring the shit out of me, and I just dry-cleaned these pants.”
Nothing for a few seconds, then Dar’s eyelashes fluttered closed briefly and her body relinquished some of its tension. “Sorry,” she murmured. “But God damn it, Mark, of all the people in the company to be targeted by that crap, why her?”
Mark winced at the pain in his boss’s voice.
“Me, I’m used to it,” Dar went on softly. “I’ve given so many people so many reasons to hate me, I don’t even think about it anymore.” She took a breath. “But what has Kerry done to deserve that?”
Picked you?
Mark wisely decided to not voice the obvious response.
“You know how people are, boss. They get jealous and all that crap.
And you’ve got to admit, there’s a hell of a lot for people to be jealous of Kerry for.”
Dar sighed. “Find out who it was,” she replied. “I’ll be in my office.”
Mark watched her leave, the heavy door swinging shut behind her tall form. “Sonofabitch.” He cradled his head in his hands. “Why the fuck do I always get this shit to deal with?”
“’Cause you, like, can?” his assistant Shaun ventured. “You gonna tell her who it was?”
Good question.
Mark leaned back and considered. “I’m gonna let her chill for a little while first,” he decided. “Because otherwise she’s gonna haul back and take the jerk’s head off.”
Shaun pondered that. “She can kick some ass,” he eventually offered. “You think she’d just do it for real?”
Mark thought about those icy, dangerous eyes. He’d known Dar for a long time, and he’d heard the stories about her younger years. “Yeah,”
he said. “She’d drop kick him off the balcony for sure,” he added. “And I’m not into losing my bosses today. So let her chill.”