Eye Of The Storm - DK3 (49 page)

The pose was the same, too. Feet locked around the chair legs, one elbow propped on the desk with her head resting on it, the other hand skimming the mouse over the desktop with quick, precise motions. He could see Dar’s sharp profile, too, very still except for the eyes racing over the screen, small muscles alongside them twitching in response.

A twinge of nostalgia nudged him sharply. “Y’know, Dar. I kinda miss having you in the trenches here with us.” Mark had been a novice system administrator when they’d worked together, when Dar had just been made a local operations manager and took control of the data center.

It had been a shock, to say the least, but since he’d been new, he’d adapted to her style faster than the rest of the staff. “I really do.”

Pale blue irises dilated almost to black turned his way as Dar cocked her head to one side. “Why?” she asked curiously. “I was no picnic to work for.”

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No, that was true. But one thing about working for Dar—you always knew where you stood. If you did something right, you heard about it. If you screwed up and she was pissed off, you sure as hell knew about it.

You never wondered, unlike some of the people he’d worked for prior to ILS. Now, he regarded the serious, intense face across from him and shook his head. “I dunno. It was always just so comforting to have you come in and take over a problem. I knew it would go away then.”

Dar smiled. “Thanks. I think.”

“I’ve worked for supes who didn’t know jack about what I did. You don’t know how much it rocked to know I had someone there who not only knew what I did, but could do it better than I could.” He added,

“Very cool, Boss. Very cool.”

Dar’s face twitched into a reluctant smile. “Now, that. That’s a compliment coming for you.” She reviewed her console. “Ah, good.” The main routers had finally booted up and they sat, ten green, lonely islands floating in a mess of dark lines that represented the network. “Now, let’s see what we got here.” She accessed the master system and started browsing. “Shit.”

Mark winced. “Now what?”

“Who configured these?”

“Uh…why?”

“They didn’t follow the EWO, for one thing, and they configured the ports ass backwards for another. So who did it?”

“Um…me.”

Dar looked at him and drummed her fingers on her console keyboard.

“I just thought this configuration was better.”

More drumming.

Mark grinned. “Just like old times, huh?”

A grudging smile returned. “Oh yeah. Just like.” Dar typed in a command and hit enter. “Startup dialog. Here we go.”

“Dar! You just dumped that whole router,” Mark protested. “It took me hours to get that thing done.”

“It’s not done the way
I
want it,” Dar replied, with a scowl. “So I guess I’ve gotta do it myself.” She busied herself typing, glancing at a network configuration to refresh her memory on the different ports and addresses.

It felt guiltily good, she realized, to be doing the hands on again. So much of her job was subjective. Decision making, planning, arguing, pushing…so very little was simple, cut and dry work that having the opportunity to dive back into something as basic as this struck her as almost therapeutic. She checked her watch, then continued typing, glad she’d sent Kerry out to have fun.

More typing.

She was glad, right? No need for both of them to be stuck here in the cold room, doing basic routine stuff that was sure to bore anyone. Kerry deserved time on her own, with her friends, doing the stuff she liked to
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do.

Dar didn’t mind doing that either, in fact, she enjoyed the odd night out with the girls, though she usually felt a little uncomfortable mostly due to the fact that they were by and large all employees of ILS, except for Colleen.

One would think, since she lived with Kerry, that wouldn’t bother her, but it did. She believed in keeping a professional distance, and that extended to social occasions with people who were levels lower than her in the company hierarchy. That was admittedly hypocritical, and Dar readily acknowledged that, but she also knew Kerry’s friends were a little uncomfortable with her for the same reason.

And of course, she wouldn’t be selfish enough to ask Kerry to give up her night to keep her company.
That’d be selfish, and self-centered, and
mean, and...

Dar sighed.
Damn, I wish she was here
. She finished reconfiguring a port and wrote the configuration to memory, watching the port come up and wink friendly green lights at her.
How juvenile, Dar. Why don’t you ask
her to get a teddy bear and spray it with her perfume, so you can carry it around
and hug it when you get lonely?
her conscience prodded her sarcastically.

“Sorry, Dar. Did you say something?” Mark inquired, as he started running his own task.

“Um.” She looked up. “No. Why, what did you think I said?”

“Something about bears?”

“No, no. I was just thinking about ordering…um…pizza or something. Interested?”

“Sure,” Mark agreed amiably. “I’ll order. Let’s see…” He closed his eyes and concentrated. “Sausage, Pepperoni, beef and pork with extra cheese.” One eye opened and peered hopefully at her. “Am I right?”

Dar chuckled. “Yeah.”

“Wooo, you mean Kerry hasn’t converted you to a veggie pizza yet?”

Mark laughed. “I know she’s not scarfing down that prescription for a heart attack.”

“We get a half and half,” Dar admitted. “I make sure to flick any errant growths over on her side of the pie.” She concentrated on another part of the configuration. “Ah, there.” She cut and pasted, then recycled the screen and reset the equipment. “That’s better.”

“Damn.” Mark peered at the monitor with wry admiration. “Can I be like you when I grow up?” He picked up the phone and dialed. “Want some cheese breadsticks sticks too?”

“Sure.”

“Pepsi?”

“Root beer.”

“They have floats.”

“Bingo.”

“Right.” Mark placed the order and put the phone down, then got up and manually reset a large machine. “We’re going to have to replace this switch, Dar. It’s been giving me fits and they can’t work the kinks out of 270
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that Y2K patch.”

Dar grunted and set up a test pattern. “That’s the international DS3’s figures.”

The door opened, revealing Brent’s stocky figure as he rolled an AV

cart into the room. “Hey, Mark. What’s up? I hear we—” His blue eyes went round, “Oh. Sorry, ma’am. Hello.” He paused. “Is your machine not working? Want me to take a look at it?” Blue eyes went a little rounder as he saw Dar manipulating the big console. “Or set you up a new one?”

“Hi, Brent.” Mark chuckled. “Don’t get freaked out. Dar’s router qualified.” He smiled at the look on Brent’s face. “She’s reconfiguring the new network.”

“Got a problem with that?” Dar growled softly.

“No, no, ma’am, of course not. I just…” Brent looked a little perplexed.

“Just what? C’mon, spit it out.”

“Um…well, sure…I,” the tech peered at the seated executive, “I mean, I didn’t think…um…”

Dar looked right up at him, pinning him with an intense gaze.

“Think what?”

He swallowed. “Well, I didn’t think you…what I mean is—well, see, you’re the boss.”

“And?” A dark eyebrow lifted.

“And bosses do bossy things,” he blurted. “Not um…techie things.”

He paused. “You know?”

Mark wisely kept quiet, burying his head into his monitor and typing away furiously. He knew his boss was just playing with the sometimes overly serious Brent, but hoped she didn’t take it too far. Dar could be a little too intense sometimes, especially for the younger crowd who didn’t know her like Mark did.

Dar finished what she was doing and folded her hands on the console. “Are you insinuating that I’m not a nerd?” Her voice took on a dangerous note.

He blinked at her.

“You think that just because they gave me a title, that I don’t know what end of a cable to plug in like the rest of the people on 14?”

“B—” he squeaked, then stared at Mark in desperate appeal.

Dar got up, needing a stretch anyway, stalked over to Bent and put her hands on her denim covered hips. “Are you accusing me of techno turniphood, Brent?” She towered over him, eyeing the tech like a hungry panther.

He stuck his tongue out trying to speak then bit down on it, making his nostrils flare. A blush colored his face brick red and he looked like he was going to faint. “N-n-no, ma’am. No. I’d never do that.”

She leaned forward and lowered her voice to a purr. “Good.”

“Dar?” Mark peeked out from behind his console, realizing his tech was about to burst into spontaneous human combustion.

“Yes?” the same, low, sexy voice answered, rolling the word play-Eye of the Storm 271

fully.

“Unless you want to clean up the piddle, stop scaring the piss out of Brent, willya?” He glanced at the hapless tech. “Relax. Her bark is way, way worse than her bite.”

Slowly, Dar turned and faced him, lowering her head a little and pinning him with an icy, merciless gaze. One eyebrow edged way up. “You have never been bitten,” she reminded him. “So how would you know?”

“Uh.” Mark rubbed his jaw. “I heard stories?” he ventured. “Really, really good ones?”

Dar paused, then laughed. “Yeah, right.” She returned to her seat and resumed her task. “For the record, Brent. I count as a geek.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied instantly. “Maybe we can talk some EPROMS sometimes.”

Mark chuckled. “Dar can talk EPROMS. Heck, Dar can burn EPROMS. Matter of fact, Dar designed this ops room,” he commented.

“And about fifty percent of the systems we run on, for that matter.”

“Really?” Brent sounded interested. He rolled his cart in and put it away, then edged around the console desk and settled in a chair near Dar.

“Hey, wait a minute. Back in the cross-patch room there’s a bunch of DR’s stenciled on the punch downs. Is that you?” He was obviously viewing her in a whole new light.

“Yup.” Dar set up another test pattern. “This looks decent. I’m going to try and bring the rest of the subnets online.”

“Wow,” Brent murmured. “Hey. That means you wrote the inven-tory program too, huh?” His eyes brightened. “Your initials are in the code.”

Dar nodded.

“You put in that subroutine that catches the boxes serial number and cross-references it against the original invoice to make sure it’s billed to the right department?”

“Yes.”

“Wicked.” Brent sighed. “I love that subroutine.” His gaze took in Dar’s profile with new, intense interest. “It’s my favorite one.”

Dar looked up at him for a moment, then at Mark, who snickered.

“Thanks.” She leaned back and propped a knee up against the wood of the console, watching her program run. The phone buzzed and Mark picked it up, then stood.

“Pizza’s here. That was fast,” he remarked. “Be right back.” The MIS

chief slipped out of the door and let it close behind him, leaving the two of them alone.

There was a bit of silence. Dar remained deep in thought, memories cascading gently over her of the hours spent administering this small cog in the company. She’d been happy doing that, she realized. Probably it had been the last time she’d been able to simply go home at night and forget about her job.

Gone home and escaped to the clubs, spending her time drinking and trading bullshit stories with a group of like minded friends, dabbling 272
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in shallow attractions and losing herself in long weekends of bumming around on the beach.

Going nowhere in particular and finding herself satisfied with that as the pleasures of the moment absorbed her interest and she let a lot of things slide—ambition chief among them.

Then there’d been Shari.

And everything had changed.

Nothing was fun anymore. She’d learned to judge herself by a different set of rules and left behind the comfort zone of the ops center to push herself into the stark challenge of project management. Proving she was everything Shari said she wasn’t. Driving herself to higher and higher levels until she’d broken through the glass ceiling and landed her butt in a plush office with a business card that said Vice President on it and everyone who ever said she was a loser could just chew that and swallow.

And you know what? No one had cared. No one had been left close enough to pat her on the back and say, “Good job, Dar. You did it. We’re proud of you.”

No one. The night she’d gotten her promotion she’d taken a bottle of champagne down to the beach and shared it with the night crabs and the hiss of the waves, feeling nothing but a sense of empty relief. So she’d decided to just allow the achievement to become its own end and convinced herself that it made her happy.

Until one damn fall day when she’d taken over a consolidation gone bad and walked into a small, boxy office to deliver a pile of bad news to some ordinary company manager she never expected to see again.

And lost her heart, her soul, and her carefully constructed self-deception all in less time than it took to think about it.

“Ma’am?”

Dar jumped a little. “Oh, sorry. Yes?”

Brent moved a little closer, the flush visible on his pale skin. “Do you mind if I ask you something?”

She shook herself, dispelling the memories and turned in her chair.

“No. Go ahead, Brent.” She issued him a brief smile. “I wasn’t upset before. I was just tweaking you a little.”

“Yeah, I figured. Um.” His nostrils flared. “You and Ms. Kerry are pretty good friends, right?” He looked around and lowered his voice.

Wild, ringing alarms went off in Dar’s head, so loud she was surprised Brent couldn’t hear them. “Yes,” she answered cautiously. “Why?”

What now?
A thousand situations ran through her head, and Ankow was at the bottom of most of them.
Did he have different information? Had Brent
heard him hunting down facts? What was he up to? What trouble…

“Uh.” The man rubbed his jaw. “Well it’s just…”