"Sure." Kerry found herself a partition and entered. She idly listened to the conversations around her as she went about her business. She heard Dar's low, vibrant voice exchange a mutual excuse me, and then a sharp, very New York accented tone complain bitterly about the quality of toilet paper.
Kerry pulled off a few sheets and examined it. "Hey, Dar?"
A soft throat clearing nearby. "Yes?"
"You see this here fancy napkins they put in here?" Kerry put as much of a drawl as she was capable of into her tone and was rewarded with a muffled snicker. "I'm going to take me some of these and put them on the table back home."
"Okay, Forrest," Dar replied through a rumble of laughter. "You do that."
Kerry finished up and went to the sink, washing her hands while still chuckling under her breath. She wiped her fingers dry and turned to wait for Dar, exchanging glances with a tall redheaded woman also standing by waiting.
"That's a gorgeous tattoo," the woman commented, with a faint nod toward Kerry's chest.
Kerry blinked, suffering a moment of bewilderment before she looked down at her shoulder and realized the woman was talking about her. "Oh. Thanks," she murmured, peering back up with a bit of sheepish look. "Haven't had it that long."
"You have it done here?" the woman asked, turning her arm to display the point of her shoulder, which had a cobra on it. "I had this done last month."
The cobra was nice, but Kerry noticed it lacked the vibrancy of her own decoration. "No, I had it done down in Miami," she replied. "There's a guy there who's a really good artist."
"Yeah, no kidding." The woman leaned closer. "That's very cool." Her eyes studied the mark. "Who's Dar?"
"That would be me."
Kerry resisted the urge to look up and over her shoulder. The redhead didn't, however, and she straightened up and took a step backwards when presented with Dar's towering intimidation.
"Well, anyway, congrats on a nice tat." The woman retreated further, grabbing a napkin off the counter before she left the bathroom, taking her somewhat disappointed looking cobra with her.
"Ready?" Kerry gave Dar a smile as she led the way out of the bathroom with her sauntering lover behind her. "You know, that was nice."
"What was, the TP? I'll get you a double case of Charmin at Costco when we get back, okay? You can keep some in your desk drawer."
"That lady liking my tattoo," Kerry said. "But I'll remember that offer. I don't know what the heck the facilities people were thinking last month, but the stuff they changed to reminds me of grocery bags."
They walked outside, accepting the shock of going from icy chill to muggy heat as something natural. "What's your poison?" Dar asked. "I had Italian last night, but I'll do it again if you want."
Kerry licked her lips. "Mm...let's walk down a little bit and see what we find. I don't know if I'm in the mood for that."
The streets were busy around them in a way Miami never was. Their hometown had no central downtown area and was in no sense a walking city. It was far more a huge urban and suburban sprawl, extending up and down the coast for three counties made up of clusters of shopping surrounded by clusters of residential areas.
This was a nice change, really, Kerry thought. It reminded her a little of the trips she'd occasionally made to Chicago with her debating team, when they'd get away for the afternoon and roam the downtown near their hotel, finding anything that didn't smack to hell of home.
Like Garrett's popcorn. Kerry licked her lips in memory, even after all these years. Or the pieces of thick pizza they'd shared on the sidewalk, looking up at the huge, towering buildings. It had been very different than her few trips to Manhattan with her family, that's for sure.
Ah well.
Dar took her hand again as they strolled along, passing brightly lit store fronts and places that became suddenly familiar to them from television. "Hey, look." Kerry pointed. "That's where you always see people standing with signs looking like goofballs on the Today show."
"Uh huh," Dar agreed. "Isn't that where that huge Christmas tree goes?"
"And the ice skating rink, yeah," her companion said. "Can you ice skate?"
Dar pondered the question briefly. "Yes," she finally admitted. "Chinese?" She directed Kerry's attention to a storefront one level up. "I could go for something spicy."
"Sounds pretty darn good to me." Kerry led the way over to the restaurant. They had just gotten seated when first hers, then Dar's pager went off. "Oh, pooh."
Dar removed her device from her purse and keyed it. "Ops center. Never good news."
Kerry sighed and lifted her cell phone, speed dialing and holding the device to her ear as she listened to Dar order for them both. "Hi, it's Kerry Stuart," she said as the line was answered. "What's up?"
"Oh, hi ma'am," the voice answered. "This is Jason. Sorry to bother you, but Mark said I should page out. We had a big forced entry attempt here a little while ago."
Dar's eyebrow cocked up as she caught the tinny sounding words from the phone Kerry was holding a little ways away from her ear.
"Successful?" Kerry asked.
"Ma'am." Jason managed to sound politely scandalized. "If it had been, you'd be talking to Mark right now, not me, that's for sure. No offense."
Dar snorted softly.
"Does Mark have a culprit?" Kerry asked. "Any ideas, or..."
"He's got some stuff he's tracking down. He wanted me to tell you to tell the boss someone was trying to call her bluff."
Dar's eyes narrowed and the planes of her face shifted into a dour expression.
"The boss knows," Kerry said. "If he finds anything, tell him to call us."
"Will do, ma'am."
Kerry folded her phone up and tapped it on the table. "I don't much like the sounds of that."
Dar eased back in her seat, giving the waiter a nod as he delivered two chilled glasses of plum wine. She picked one up and sipped from it before she answered. "It was excessively stupid of me to make that damn claim."
"Oh, well, that's not what I meant..."
"Kerry, it was," Dar interrupted her. "Regardless of whether it was true or not, pissing into an open fire hydrant is just plain idiotic. Mark's going to be cleaning up after that for months." She glared at her wine. "Bah."
Kerry patted her partner on the leg. "It got us good press, sweetie. If Mark can keep them at bay, we can get even better press out of it. I have faith in him, and in your infrastructure."
"Hmph." Dar looked mollified, however. "Maybe if he's got a lead on who they are, I can go back on them and nail 'em," she suggested. "That'd be fun."
"There you go." Kerry smiled at the waiter, who appeared with two bowls of steaming hot and sour soup. "Mm...that smells great."
Dar had removed her PDA from her purse and was scribbling on it. Kerry watched her as she picked up a spoon and sipped her soup. "Mark?"
"Yeah."
"You know what would be cool?"
"What?" Dar glanced at her.
"If we had software that could not only detect stuff like this, but proactively go out and find the jerks trying it and turn the tables on them," Kerry said. "Couldn't you write something like that, Dar?"
Dar tapped her stylus idly on the edge of her PDA. "I don't do coding anymore," she demurred. "I haven't even looked at some of the newer languages..."
"Sure you do," Kerry disagreed. "You write little things all the time. My dancing gopher, that program that keeps track of our expenses, that database thing Maria uses...those are all yours."
A half shrug. "That's just little stuff, like you said." But Dar's voice lacked real conviction.
"Wouldn't it be cool?" Kerry repeated. "That would be such a killer app, if you could have it go out and snag these losers. Find a way through all those backdoor portals and all that masking stuff."