They’ve got lamb shanks today.” She stood back up. “I think Mari said she was going down about now, too.”
Mark joined her and carefully locked the door to his office behind them. “Not like you could drag that box anywhere, but ya never know.”
“Mm,” Kerry agreed. “You never do know.” She glanced around the office, and gave the staff there a brief smile. Most smiled back.
Brent just looked away from her.
CECI SELECTED A glass from the cabinet and went to the refrigerator, opening the door and standing on her tip toes to reach the handle of the milk dispenser on the top shelf. She watched the glass fill, muffling a chuckle as it finished. She then took a step back and closed the door. The condo was quiet, and despite Dar’s disclaimer, seemed no untidier than it usually did. Which was not at all, save a collection of laundry awaiting attention in the utility room.
That didn’t really surprise her. Though Dar had maintained a nest of teenage clutter in her younger years, the room had never been dirty, per se, just full of stuff. Things that held Dar’s capricious interest, or things that Andrew had given her, all jealously hoarded in neatly labeled boxes stacked everywhere.
She’d had time, when she and Andrew had dog-sat, to wander over the condo, and had found herself smiling at childhood vestiges she’d found tucked away in inconspicuous corners.
Those things had meant something to her daughter. Ceci studied
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the glass of milk, then shook her head and made her way through the living room and into the bedroom where Dar was resting. She held out the glass. “Figured you’d need this.”
Dar got caught in mid-chew. She hastily swallowed a mouthful of brownie and accepted the milk, taking a sip of it to wash down the rich treat. “Thanks.” She indicated the tray. “Not bad for instant.”
“Mm, yes.” Ceci sat down in the comfortable chair near the bed.
“Shocked the hell out of me, I have to admit.”
Dar grinned slightly. “I know the feeling. I made dinner the other week and was totally amazed at it being edible.”
One of Ceci’s silver-blonde eyebrows rose. “What was the occasion?”
Dar hesitated, then shrugged. “Nothing special. I just felt like doing it.” She was aware of the always perceptible discomfort between them, and suddenly felt very tired of it. Life was, she’d come to realize, just too damn short sometimes. “Hey, Mom?”
Ceci detected the change in Dar’s tone, and she leaned forward a little. “Yes?”
Dar took a deep breath. “We’ve got a pretty lousy past with each other.”
Uh-oh.
Ceci felt her heart move up into her throat. “Brownies weren’t that bad, were they?” she joked faintly.
That made Dar smile, and she realized her mother was a lot more nervous than she was. “No.” She glanced down and collected her thoughts, then looked up. “Can we just forget it all and start fresh from here?”
It came around a blind corner and smacked Ceci right between the eyes, leaving a sting as though she’d been hit with a mackerel. She found herself gazing right into Dar’s intense face, the echo of the question reminding her strongly of the one she’d asked Andrew the night they’d been reunited. “That what you really want?” she asked quietly.
Dar nodded.
Ceci felt absurdly like crying. “I’d really like that, too,” she said. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but you don’t realize all the good things about being a mother until you aren’t one anymore.”
Now it was Dar’s turn to be caught off guard. She blinked and felt a surge of juvenile memory as she stared at her mother’s face. “That’s all right,” she finally said, a touch of hoarseness in her voice. “When you’re a kid, you never appreciate your parents until you don’t have them.”
Ceci felt the sting of tears, and she reached out instinctively, laying a hand along Dar’s cheek. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I abandoned you.”
Dar sucked in a breath that was almost painful, so tight was the pressure against her chest. She was caught by her mother’s gaze, unable to look away. “I’m sorry I didn’t understand the pain you were in.”
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The tension lessened. Ceci rubbed a thumb against her daughter’s skin. “I’m glad we’re getting a second chance at this.”
The surface under her fingers moved as Dar smiled. “So am I,” she answered softly, glancing away, then returning her eyes to her mother’s. “I think I like you.”
Ceci bit her lip, a surge of improbable, ridiculous relief almost making her burst out laughing. “Yeah, I think I like you, too.”
It was turning out to be an interesting day after all, Dar decided happily.
KERRY SAT BEHIND her desk, one hand propping up her head as she scrolled through screens of data. She paused to make another sticky note, punching out the letters with one finger, then continued her task.
“Ms. Kerry?” Mayte’s voice broke into her concentration. “I have the Navy officer here to see you.”
Ah.
Kerry straightened and took a sip of her herbal tea. “Great.
Send him in.” She leaned back in her chair as the door opened and Captain Taylor came in. He was dressed in his Navy uniform, and he tucked his hat under his arm as he crossed the carpeted floor to her desk. “Afternoon, Captain.”
“Ms. Stuart.” The officer inclined his head politely. “May I sit down?”
Kerry gestured toward the chair. “Of course. How’s it going down there?”
Captain Taylor shook his head gravely. “I’m afraid we’re going to come up empty-handed, Ms. Stuart. My team’s been in there for hours, and they haven’t come up with anything other than the mess that was left of the computer center.” He paused. “And we have six people who swear it was just a botched exercise. They even submitted the docs for the setup and showed me the dummy rounds. Apparently some live ones got mixed in.”
“Uh-huh.” Kerry took another sip of tea. “Do you believe them?”
The captain gave her a direct look. “Ms. Stuart, it doesn’t matter a hill of beans what I believe. All that matters is what I can prove. I can’t prove anything beyond some colossal screw-ups, and some of them involve your personnel.”
Kerry’s eyebrows lifted. “My personnel?” she asked sharply. “We didn’t make any mistakes.”
The captain shifted uncomfortably. “The fact is, ma’am, you were there without the permission of the base commander.”
“Cut the BS.” Kerry smiled kindly at him. “We were there because General Easton asked us to go there and cover his butt because you couldn’t get a team on the plane fast enough.”
Captain Taylor made a face, seemingly unconscious of it. “The general asked that you protect the data. You didn’t. In fact, because of
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your presence, its destruction was pretty much guaranteed.”
Kerry pointed a finger at him. “Captain, if you seriously think you’re going to shift blame to me or to anyone else at ILS for your inability to maintain military and administrative control of your own base, think again.” She stood up behind her desk and fixed him with a resolute stare. “We did the best we could, and you don’t know just what that best is yet.”
“Ms. Stuart, you don’t seem to re—” The naval officer stopped and regarded her warily. “What exactly do you mean by that?”
Kerry opened her mouth to explain, then slowly closed it again.
Some instinct was telling her to keep the lock box under wraps, and she’d learned over the last year that this instinct of hers was usually right. “We have a lot of data. We’re not finished analyzing it yet,” she temporized. “We may not have a smoking gun, but we may have enough to nail the people there most responsible.”
The captain relaxed a notch. “It’s just administrative stuff, though.
The base is clean.”
“For now,” Kerry agreed quietly. “Doesn’t it bother you that stuff was going on?”
Taylor dusted a bit of lint off his shoulder. “Do we know it really was?” he countered. “That informant of yours could have been lying.”
Kerry shrugged. “Why?”
“To get someone in trouble. Maybe they’re the ones involved in some funny business, and they thought bringing in drugs would shift the attention,” the JAG officer replied reasonably. “C’mon, Ms. Stuart—
do you honestly think we’ve got an entire smuggling operation going on at a Navy base? Low-grade black market, yeah, I can buy that. But drugs?”
Well.
Kerry thought about it. It was possible, she guessed. They hadn’t seen any of the smuggling, just the evidence the chief had brought over. “What about that telecommunications gear that was ripped out?”
The captain chuckled. “You know, I was thinking about that. You know what I bet happened? I bet someone in some office somewhere had a requisition to yank it out, or some wire got crossed, and an order was cut, and that’s why no one knew about it. Doesn’t that happen in your company sometimes?”
True.
“Sometimes,” Kerry agreed, “but not often.”
“Well,” Taylor stood up, “I’m going to file my preliminary report to the general. I think we overreacted a little bit here. Comes from putting civilians into a situation they don’t really understand, I think.”
Kerry’s eyes took on a perceptibly cold glint. “You do that,” she told the captain with deceptive pleasantness. “By the way, Captain?”
He had turned to leave, but now he paused and glanced back.
“Yes?”
“Where did you go hide Saturday?” Kerry inquired. “I had count of 308
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everyone who was with us, and I lost you after we went into the computer center.” She held up a clipboard. “I need to know for my...report.”
His face became a mask. “You must be mistaken, Ms. Stuart. I was there the whole time.” He turned and walked out, settling his hat squarely on the top of his head as he went through the door.
“Ooh.” Kerry slowly let out a breath, and crossed her arms. “You little pinheaded starch-butt.”
“Ms. Kerry?” Mayte asked uncertainly, as she stuck her head around the corner of the door. “Did you say something?”
“Not to you.” Kerry sat down and sucked down a big mouthful of her tea. “Mayte, do you have a number for General Easton? If you don’t, I bet María does.”
“I will get it,” her assistant promised, disappearing quickly.
Kerry chewed her lip, then put her cup down and punched the speakerphone button, hitting the top speed dial on her console. It rang twice, then was answered. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Dar’s voice sounded alert and faintly amused. “I was just thinking of you.”
Kerry felt her train of thought gently derail and move off onto a siding somewhere. “Were you? How come?”
“Underwear,” Dar replied succinctly.
It wasn’t the response Kerry was expecting. “Excuse me?”
“I’m doing laundry.”
“Oh.” Kerry’s brow creased. “You didn’t have to, Dar. I’d have done it tonight.” She knew her lover hated doing laundry and avoided it whenever possible, sending everything she could get her hands on to the island’s cleaners.
Except things like underwear, of course. Kerry smiled to herself as she took a sip of tea.
“Mom thinks yours are cute.”
The mouthful of tea was expelled across the desk’s surface, narrowly missing her keyboard. “What?” Kerry wiped her forearm across her mouth. “Paladar! Why are you showing your mother my underwear?”
Dar chuckled softly. “You sound so cute when you’re flustered.”
“I’m not flustered! I’m flabbergasted! Two very different emotions!” Kerry said. “And you didn’t answer me!”
“Relax,” her lover replied. “She’s just helping me do laundry. It’s tough with one arm.”
Kerry covered her eyes with one hand. “Oh.” She exhaled, then paused in thought. “So Mom came by, huh?”
“Mm,” Dar answered.
“Everything okay?” Kerry asked guardedly.
“Very much so,” the surprising answer came back. “We had a talk.”
The pleasure was evident in Dar’s tone. “It’s great.”
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“Oh yeah?” Kerry felt a smile cross her face. “Wow. That’s really good to hear, Dar.”
“Yeah.” Dar let out a happy little sigh. “So, what’s up there?”
Plans suddenly got sidetracked, and Kerry concentrated on the job at hand. “Ah. I had a visit from Captain Butter-wouldn’t-melt-between-my-butt-cheeks.”
Dar snorted in laughter.
“He’s already putting together his version of a story to make everything look like nothing,” Kerry said seriously. “If we don’t have something in that box, Dar, we really don’t have much.”
“Mm.” Dar sounded serious now, too. “Open it up, then.”
Kerry took a deep breath and carefully asked the question she’d been avoiding. “I’ll need the algorithm codes. Do you have them?” She crossed her fingers and toes and bit her lower lip as she waited for the answer.
“Sure,” Dar replied easily. “My birthday, offset, your birthday.” A pause. “In hex.”
Kerry’s eyes popped open and she stared across her office with a look of chagrin. “Oh, you’re kidding.”
“No,” her lover replied. “Those are a bitch to memorize, Kerry, and it’s not like I had a pad and pencil handy. I picked something I knew I’d remember.”
Duh.
Kerry almost laughed.
I should have known.
She gazed up at her ceiling. “Okay, listen, I think I’d rather wait until you got back here to do it. We can hold them off that long.”
“You sure?” Dar asked. “Yeah, on second thought, let’s give them a chance to think they’re home free. Then they’ll relax a little.”
“Right,” Kerry said. “Is Mom staying for dinner?”
There was a muffled noise, a low buzz of conversation, then Dar’s voice came back. “If you pick up Captain Crab’s Takeaway Seal.”
“You got it,” Kerry snickered. “One bucket, coming up.” She hung up and leaned back, a dozen thoughts zooming through her head.
One remained. “Oh, crap.” Kerry winced. “I hope it wasn’t the pink ones.”
THE BOAT WAS rocking gently on the tide as Kerry made her way along the dock. It was very quiet, and she didn’t see anyone around, even after she stepped up onto the gangway and crossed onto the boat’s white deck. “Hello?” she called out, looking around for Andrew.
“Dad?”
Silence. Kerry ducked down and stuck her head inside the cabin. It was quiet down there as well; the worktable, covered in painting supplies, sitting mutely near the windows. “Dad?”