The phone rang. Dar looked at the caller id for a long moment before she answered it, cradling the phone next to her ear. "Hey."
A long, long, long sigh. "It worked." Kerry sounded lightheaded with relief. "Oh, my god, Dar. It worked. It worked. We're up."
Shoving aside her own ridiculous disappointment, Dar determined herself to rise to the occasion. "I knew you'd do it," she said. "Tell me how it went."
"Hang on, let me sit down." Kerry was almost out of breath. There was the sound of a car door shutting, then a brief rumble of an engine starting. "Oh god. Sorry. Had to get the AC on in here. I'm dying in this goddamned heat."
Dar closed her eyes and just drank in the voice. "Must be like hell."
"Oh, honey...where do I start." Kerry sighed. "Shit, I have such a headache."
Dar's fingers twitched in pure reflex, a testament to her natural inclination to answer the comment with a gentle knead of Kerry's neck. "You take anything?"
Another sigh. "I want to eat first. Otherwise it gets me sick."
"You haven't had dinner?" Dar checked the clock.
"I didn't have lunch," Kerry admitted. "Just some of my bars. Anyway...they fought me tooth and nail, Dar. No way did they want me to do this, because everyone's up their butts wanting favors and screaming at them."
"I'm sure they were." Dar said. "Where are you now?"
"Outside the central office. Mark and the guys are cleaning up. We're leaving two techs here to keep filling the gas tanks."
Dar opened her PDA and tapped out a message, hitting send quickly. "Good idea."
"Thanks," Kerry said. "We kept running into obstacles, but everything worked out. I got the generators hooked up together, and we were just going to start the power..."
"Hooked them up together?"
"Yeah. I got a gizmo, a thing that let me connect all of them. A load balancer. You know...I mean, you must know because you told me to get a bunch of generators, but I didn't think about how to make them work together and I guess you assumed we'd know so..."
Dar's eyes widened. "Shit." She exhaled. "I didn't even think of that, Ker. I just figured you might need more than one in case our stuff was on more than one switch."
Kerry was silent for a little bit. "Oh," she finally said. "Wow. Well, no...I got this thing to make them all work together, so we didn't have to take the lines down to refill the gas or anything like that."
"Go on."
"So then I had to figure out how to keep the switch cool." Kerry said. "I put some air conditioning duct from the switch out the door to the truck we rented...it had AC in the back."
Dar rested her chin on her fist, a genuine smile appearing on her face. "Uh huh."
Kerry cleared her throat. "So it was going great. Then the reporters showed up." She let out an aggravated breath. "Dar, they treated us like a bunch of squirmy hooligans. Like I was cheating or something to get what I wanted."
"Sweetheart, you were," Dar told her. "But it's okay. It's what you get paid for."
"That's what I told her," Kerry said. "She went away, but I think she's coming back. Anyway, I got it all going, and plugged the switch in, and we all sort of just held our breath."
"And it worked."
"It worked."
"Kerry?"
"Mm?"
"Outstanding job. You went over and above, and I really appreciate that. Well done. Very well done," Dar said, meaning every word.
Kerry exhaled, and there was a soft sound as though she'd let her head rest against the glass window. "Thanks, boss," she replied simply.
They were both quiet for a little while. Then Dar shifted the phone from one ear to the other. "I'm damn proud of you."
A faint sniffle traveled down the cellular link. "Even though it meant you didn't get to come riding to the rescue?" Kerry asked, making a wan joke.
"Yeah."
Kerry made a small sound of contentment, but then she sighed again. "Know something?"
"What?"
"I was just thinking about something you once said to me. About how you felt when you got promoted, that time? And how you just went back home and it was like..."
"It ended up not meaning much, yeah," Dar said. "What brought that up?"
"Uuugh. Because I just was sitting here thinking that after all this, after this crappy, disgusting, horrible day--all I have to go home to is a dark, hot house and an empty bed."
Dar was caught speechless.
"I want a hug," Kerry uttered. "I want you."
Dar swallowed, hearing a note in Kerry's voice she knew meant her partner was very close to tears. "Ker."
A pause. "Sorry," Kerry whispered huskily. "I'm just on overload right now. The stupid guy from CNN called me in the middle of this and I told him off. My phone wouldn't stop ringing."
"I love you," Dar said the only thing she reasonably expected to make her partner feel better. "I wish I was in that car right next to you right now."
Kerry was quiet for a minute, then she exhaled. "I want to be jazzed about what I just did, but you know, Dar...I don't know. I hope it was worth it."
"It was," Dar said, in a positive tone. "I'm sure everyone back at the office is cheering your name right now."
"Hm." Then there was a rustle, and the sound of the car window opening. "Hang on, sweetie." The sound of wind rushed in. "Hey, Mark...oh...oh, yeah, um...that would be great...yeah. Thanks! How...oh, that smells great. Thank you."
Dar smiled faintly at her distorted reflection in the laptop screen. She waited for the sound of the outside to vanish as Kerry rolled up the window again, and heard the rustling of paper bags on the other side of the line.
"Did you have something to do with this, Paladar?" Kerry's voice sounded more normal.
"Me?" Dar inquired. "I'm sitting here in New York. What makes you think I had anything to do with having your dinner delivered?"
A very soft, knowing chuckle answered her. "The fact that my Wendy's spicy chicken sandwich has no lettuce, and extra cheese on it, the frosty is large, and the baked potato has no bacon bits. Mark maybe could guess number two, but the other ones had your little fingerprints alllll over them."
Dar flexed her hand in front of her eyes, studying her fingerprints. Then she let her arm drop to the bed again. "Least I could do," she conceded. "Since I'm not there to do it myself."
"Wish you were." Kerry's voice was muffled as she chewed. "I can admit that now, since this crappy thing is over."
"Wish I was too," Dar echoed softly.
Kerry swallowed, and cleared her throat a little. "Are you okay?" she asked, in a gentle voice. "You sound really down."
Was she? Dar stared at the screen, with its winking green lights. "Yeah, I'm all right," she answered, after a brief pause. "Worried about you all night, that's all."
"Mm."
"Least I have good news for the international board call in half an hour." Dar made an effort to inject some normality into her tone.
"Call? I didn't know you had one," Kerry said.
"Yeah, I forgot too. Alastair reminded me," Dar admitted. "It's on my schedule...woulda binged me anyway. Give me something to do now that the crisis is over."
Kerry seemed to absorb this in silence for a few heartbeats, chewing on her chicken sandwich in a thoughtfulness almost tangible through the phone. "Want some of my frosty?"
Dar chuckled.
"Want me to get on a plane and come to New York?" Kerry asked. "Not for business. Just to keep you company and get my hug?"
"You really have to ask?" Dar responded wistfully. "You know I'd love it. But you've got that damn bid, Ker. This won't take me more than a day or so to straighten out. Then I'll be back and you'll get your hug."
"Mm," Kerry grunted unhappily. "Hell with them," she said. "Oh, crap. I was right. Here come those damn reporters again."