“And I told him he was lucky you didn’t personally come and get him and kick his ass,” the CEO told her cheerfully. “You did the right thing, Dar, good work.”
Dar absorbed the compliment with a quiet smile. “Thanks.” It didn’t happen often. In fact, she could remember hearing those words exactly six times in as many years from this man. Alastair was a pain in the ass, but he’d stuck by her all these years, and she felt more than a little quiet affection for him. “I had to do it,” she added. “Damn com center doesn’t have an AC
backup, and it’s my budget that wouldn’t let that squeak through this year.”
“Ah.” Alastair grunted. “Well, you’ve got those diesels on steroids down there, Dar. Reasonable to think that’s all you’d need.”
“Don’t make excuses for me,” Dar said. “I fire people for smaller goofs than that.”
“Sorry, Dar. Not going to fire you today. I’ve got enough problems on my plate already,” her boss replied. “Go buy yourself a chiller. Put it on my discretionary account, and tell Bea I said so. Okay?”
“Mmm.” Dar leaned back in her chair and regarded the phone with a Tropical Storm 27
faint smile. “All right.”
“Now, I got a little problem.” Alastair’s voice dropped a little. “I need you to go to the DC office, shake them up a little. Peter Weyhousen is botching the contract talks with the Pentagon. Can you take them up for him?”
Damn. “I thought you wanted me to concentrate on Associated?” she objected. “Can’t do that from DC.”
“Sure you can. You’ve got the most testosterone-laden laptop in the entire corporation, Dar,” Alastair chided her. “National’s a great place to get work done while you’re waiting…I should know.” He shifted the phone, causing it to crackle. “He’s going to lose that account, Dar, and we need it. A few days away will give Associated a chance to settle down, anyway.”
True. “I’ve got someone working on a budget plan for them. Might be good to give them a few days to work things out,” she conceded. “When are the talks?”
“Can you fly out tonight? They’re scheduled for tomorrow early. I’ll mail over the pertinent account facts and where I think Weyhousen is screwing up.
He doesn’t know you’re coming, by the way.”
Great. “All right.” A bag was already packed and kept in the Lexus for just this purpose. Peter Weyhousen was no friend of hers. It would be a wild meeting, that was for sure. “You owe me one for this, Alastair.”
The CEO chuckled. “Honey, see me at bonus time, all right?” He sighed.
“Gotta go. I’m speaking at the engineers’ conference in five minutes.”
“Good luck,” Dar told him.
“You too,” came the reply, before a click indicated the CEO had hung up.
Dar put her arms on the desk and blew out a breath. She pressed the intercom button. “Maria, I need a flight to DC late afternoon today, coming back open.”
“Dios mío,” the secretary replied. “He doesn’t let you live.” A rustle of paper. “I will take care of things, Dar.”
“Thanks.” Dar released the intercom and sat back, nibbling a fingernail.
Then she pulled her keyboard over and typed in a request to the database lying open on her desktop. A moment later it came back with a reply, and she picked up the phone again, dialing a number.
“Kerry Stuart.”
The voice on the other end of the phone sounded harassed and upset.
“Well. Good morning, Ms. Stuart. It was nice exchanging mail with you,” Dar replied evenly.
“Oh.” After a momentary pause, Kerry cleared her throat. “Hello. I, um…thank you for answering; the information was very helpful.” Her tone was guarded and borderline hostile.
Dar’s brow furrowed. “No problem. What I called for was to tell you I’m going out of town for a few days. If you have any more questions, you can go ahead and mail them, but it might be a few hours before I pick them up and address anything.”
There was a long silence and then an explosion. “Why don’t you address the bastard you sent over here?” The frustration evident in the woman’s voice spilled over into anger. “You know, I don’t know who you people think you are, treating human beings as some kind of dirt you can rub under your heels.”
28 Melissa Good
“Whoa.” Dar’s tone was stronger than she’d intended. “Hold on.” A ragged breath whispered through the receiver, and Dar could almost feel the emotion. “What’s going on?”
There was another silence. “What’s going on? What do you think is going on? Your goons are going through here ripping the place apart and disrupting everything. If you wanted to just trash the company, why didn’t you just do it?”
“Ms. Stuart…”
“Opening people’s personal possessions, locking my network people out of their offices…”
“Ms. Stuart…”
“Telling me I can’t have access to my own payroll records?”
“Kerry.” Dar spoke forcefully, almost a bark.
There was a breathless pause before Kerry snapped, “Only my friends call me that. And you are definitely not one of them.”
It was, Dar realized, ridiculous. She was the vice president of operations for a worldwide major corporation, and here was this two-bit manager of a half-rate single-city service provider telling her off.
What was really surprising, though, she admitted, was how much it hurt.
“Let me talk to Brady Evens.”
The phone was thrown down on the desk, and she had to wait, counting to a hundred under her breath before she heard two sets of footsteps coming back, and the receiver was picked up. “Here,” she heard Kerry’s voice snap, then the phone rustled.
“Brady?”
“Yeah.”
“Velvet glove.”
“Aw shit! You’re kidding my ass.”
The growly voice of her security team leader tickled her eardrums.
“Nope. I mean it,” she stated flatly. “Stuart gets VIP.”
“Dar, you don’t know what…there’s holes in here as big as my butt, and Mark’s already put a link in, for god’s sake.”
“I. Don’t. Care.” Dar barked. Her voice dropped to a deep snarl. “Just do it!”
“All…all right, okay,” Brady answered in a chastened voice. “Okay.
Sorry. I didn’t know. My papers said a regular sweep.”
“Change the papers,” Dar replied, her voice still furious.
“Yes, ma’am,” the team leader quietly replied. “Hold on.” Through the speaker of the phone, Dar heard as he clicked something. “Team lead to crew.” A splurt of static answered, along with a soft, muffled clamor of voices.
“Stop what you’re doing. We need to go to gold mode, over.”
A soft cacophony of protest could be heard in the background. “Orders from the top,” Brady overrode them. “Just do it.” Then he exhaled and spoke into the phone again. “Done.”
“Thank you,” Dar growled.
The phone rustled softly. “Ms. Stuart, I apologize.” Brady’s voice had modulated from rough to cultured. “We’ll try to stay out of your way.” His footsteps receded and the phone jostled, a soft breathing becoming audible.
Tropical Storm 29
Dar waited, slowly letting out a breath of air. She still felt the warm rush against her skin from the anger, and she closed her eyes, letting it seep out of her. Her mouth felt dry, and her fingers were twitching faintly on the desk’s surface.
Her temper was legendary, and Brady knew it, knew he could push only so far before she’d snap, and he’d be in more trouble than he was capable of dealing with. A story still circulated about a board meeting where a senior VP