“You bet.” Dar grinned, very pleased with her successful plan.
“Coming right up.” She took the glass. “Think you can take some aspirin for your head now?”
Kerry thought about it. “Yeah.” She curled up on her side and watched Dar work. “What’s in the bottle?”
“Chocolate syrup.”
Kerry had to smile. “That’s a chocolate milk soda you just made.”
Dar brought it back to her. “It’s an egg cream,” she corrected.
Kerry took the glass. “But there aren’t any eggs in it.”
“Or cream,” Dar agreed amiably, handing her a couple of pills.
“It’s kind of like Welsh rabbit.”
“Ah.” Kerry swallowed the aspirin and then settled back against the headboard. Rain rattled against the window, and she was more than glad to be nestled in the dim room, with Dar to keep her company. “So you think he’ll be back, huh?”
“Yep.” Dar chuckled softly. “Then maybe we’ll get closer to the truth of this.”
Kerry listened to the thunder, her fingers idly stroking the arm Dar had curled around her. Maybe we will, she agreed silently. But not right this minute.
Lightning flashed, outlining the closed shutters.
Chapter
Thirteen
IT JUST KEPT raining. Kerry was actually kind of glad, feeling they both needed a little down time after the excitement of the previous few days. She was curled up on the bed, with her neatly bound writing diary in front of her. A half finished poem was scrawled across one page and a steaming mug rested on the nearby bedside table.
Dar was sprawled across the couch, one long leg draped along its back, the other propping up a book. She had a glass of milk nearby, and next to it, the bag of Oreo cookies sat neatly peeled open. On the table, her laptop was busily working, streams of data flicking across the screen at an alarming rate.
Kerry nibbled the end of her pen as she watched Dar read, her eyes tracing down the page, then pausing while long fingers turned it. She was dressed in a pair of soft cotton shorts and a T-shirt, and somehow managed to make even that seem attractively sexy.
How does she do that? Kerry wondered. She cocked her head and regarded her lover with bemused curiosity. What really struck her about Dar, she realized, was just how nicely proportioned she was.
Though she was tall, and her arms and legs were long, her body was also, and everything seemed to fit together just right. The white cotton showed off her tan, and as she scrolled down another page, the subtle shift of muscle under her skin was visible to Kerry’s appreciative eyes.
Kerry sighed and put her chin down on her arm, still feeling a little knocked out from the partying the night before. Her stomach wasn’t in the mood for more than tea, and her head hadn’t quite stopped throbbing. The discomfort was making it hard for her to concentrate on her writing, and besides, it was really a lot more pleasant just to lie around and look at Dar.
She has such a nice profile. Kerry blinked dreamily. It was all angles and clean, sharp planes, with a nice nose and well shaped lips. And the eyes, of course. Kerry smiled.
“Ker?”
Uh oh. “Hmm?”
148 Melissa Good
“What’s that goofy grin for?”
“Was I goofily grinning?” Kerry rolled onto her back and tugged the covers over her pajama-clad body. “I can’t finish this poem.” She changed the subject. “I got stuck in the middle.”
“What’s it about?” Dar slipped a bookmark into her book and put it down, turning on her side and focusing her attention on Kerry.
Ah, those eyes. Kerry suddenly found herself lost in them, until the rising brow over one made her realize she was staring like a loon. “Sorry, what was the question?”
“You still feeling the rum?” Dar asked curiously.
Kerry put her head down on her arm. “Maybe,” she admitted.
“I just feel a little silly, I guess.”
Dar got up and walked over to the bed. She sat down next to Kerry and rubbed her midriff through the covers. “Want to try some toast or cereal?”
Kerry curled herself around Dar instead, and rested her head on Dar’s thigh. “I think I just want you.” She planted a gentle kiss on the tan skin and closed her eyes.
Dar had never considered herself a sentimental person, but since she’d met Kerry she’d felt like she was living inside a circle of perpetually adorable Golden Retriever puppies all the time. It worried her sometimes. Dar felt parts of the image she’d always had of herself falling away and disappearing, and it was a little unsettling to know it was happening and be helpless to stop it.
Ah well. Dar draped her arm over Kerry’s shoulders and resigned herself to it. “Tell you what,” she said. “Let me go get my laptop, and we can take a look at what we’ve got so far.”
Kerry reluctantly released her and sat up. “Okay.”
Dar got to her feet and retrieved the device, then returned. She sat down on the bed and leaned back, resting the laptop on her thighs. Kerry squirmed over and settled next to her. They both looked at the screen as Dar smoothly keyed in a request.
“Okay.” Dar reviewed her programmatic results. “What I was looking for—”
“Was a link between the piracy and DeSalliers,” Kerry murmured, reaching out and touching the screen. “Nice code, honey. I like that recursive parse.”
“You always say such romantic things to me,” Dar remarked. “I love that.”
“Nerd.”
“Thanks.” Dar smirked at the screen a little. “Let’s see what it found.” She brought up two screens and locked them into concurrency, scrolling down evenly and looking from one to the other. “That bartender said there had been six; there’ve been more than two dozen. Damn.”
Terrors of the High Seas 149
Kerry was shocked. Two dozen hijackings in the area, and no one had said anything. That information bordered on substantiating a definite collusion. “Are those from the police files?” she asked, pointing to the piracy records.
“You’re joking, right?” Dar looked at her. “No. Those are the insurance filings.” She nudged a key. “Ah. Looks like the insurance underwriters are starting to get suspicious. This one’s pending investigation.”
“Hm. So the hijackers will get their money, but the guy they hit might not?”
Dar shook her head. “No, they’ll have to pay out, unless they think the owner’s in cahoots with the pirates just to make a claim.
Most of the guys who can afford to buy boats like that wouldn’t bother.” She ran a cross-check. “I was hoping I’d see a correlation between DeSallier’s salvage operations and the missing boats, but it looks like this is the first time his bunch has shown up in this area.”
“Mm.” Kerry frowned. “Yeah.” She rested her chin on Dar’s shoulder. “Can you plot the piracies graphically?”
Dar studied the data, then she brought up a code screen and started typing rapidly, stopping only to tab to a different window and clip some data before she resumed programming. After a few minutes, she ran the program and a new window appeared with a somewhat rough outline of the islands, the space around them dotted with ominous little plus signs. “Ain’t pretty, but there ya go.”
“Hmmm.” Kerry studied the graphic, then sighed. “No real pattern, huh?”
“Nope.”
“We’re hitting big nulls here, Dar.”
“Yeah,” Dar had to admit. “So much for being a nerd.”