Eye Of The Storm - DK3 (66 page)

“And there she was, sitting on top of the car hood with the garden hose,” Ceci was saying, “terrorizing the squirrels.”

Dar sighed, then returned her attention to a blinking readout.

“Did you really?” Kerry murmured, bumping her with a hip.

“I don’t remember a thing,” Dar muttered back. “She could say I picked my butt up and flew across the front yard and I’d never know if it was true.”

“Sure you would,” Kerry disagreed. “There’d be a National Enquirer article archived somewhere.”

Dar rolled her eyes. “I’m sure I wasn’t half as homicidally destruc-tive as my mother describes.” She picked up a device. “What’s this?”

“It’s to suck fluid out of the baby’s nose,” Kerry advised her, as the taller woman dropped the instrument as though it was hot. “Dar, relax, would you?”

“I hate hospitals.”

“You’re just visiting, so calm down.”

“Yeah? So what was that about me having kids?” Dar whispered.

“Shh.” Kerry had to muffle a grin. “I just meant that I think you’ve got really good genes, and they deserve to stay in the pool.” She paused.

“If you know what I mean. Besides, your dad would make a great grandpa.”

“Oh.” Dar peeked at her father. “Well, maybe you have a point there.” She smiled quietly to herself.

Kerry blinked. “I do?”

Angie laughed. “Oh my god. If my kid ever did that I think I’d just die on the spot.”

“Wall,” Andrew stuck his hands in his pockets, “ah seem to remember a morning where I had to be standing in the CO’s office, having to explain to him how an M1 tank happened to get cross the repair yard and take out half the mess hall.”

“Oh no.” Dar winced. “Not that story.”

“Is it true?” Kerry whispered. “Never mind. It must be. You’re blushing.”

“Well, given the food in there, I can’t say I blamed her,” Ceci remarked, drawing a laugh even from Dar. “If I remember correctly, we had to have Marriott cater the base for two weeks, and everyone came over and gave Dar candy.”

“Heh, heh.” Andrew nodded. “Fergot about that part.”

“Mmm. I didn’t.” Dar licked her lips.

Angie laughed again, relaxing back against her pillows. Then she gasped suddenly and her hands went to her belly. “Oh my gosh.”

“Water break?” Ceci asked immediately.

“Yes.” Angie hissed, grabbing for the railing as a contraction hit.

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“Whoa. I think I just jump started something.” All the unproductive pushing of the previous hours faded, as her body seized up.

“Oh…my…God…”

Kerry swallowed, her hands tensing on the rails. “Um…is there…what can we do?”

Cecilia glanced up. “First off, get those two out of here before they end up on the floor. Second, stop and tell the nurse.”

“Wh—?” Kerry turned her head and saw the widened, rounded pairs of blue eyes. “Oh boy. Right. Okay.” She grabbed Dar’s and Andy’s arms and tugged them towards the door. “C’mon, guys. Let’s go boil water.”

They emerged into the hallway and headed towards the desk, their footsteps echoing in the quiet space. “I wonder if it’ll be a boy or a girl?”

Kerry mused, as they turned the corner.

And came face to face with her parents.

There was a deadly silence.

“That young lady in there needs some help.” Andy deliberately turned his head towards the nurse.

The woman took one look at the tableau in front of her and immediately trotted towards Angie’s room purposefully.

“You have no place here.” Roger Stuart spoke in a low voice. “So take yourself, and whoever you have with you, and get out.”

Kerry let out a breath, hoping she wouldn’t throw up. “My sister asked me to come. It’s her choice. Not yours.” She forced herself to meet her father’s eyes and felt the disgust there hit her with almost physical force.

“You’re not part of this family. I thought I made that clear.”

Kerry sensed Dar and Andy moving closer. “You’re not a part of my family,” she responded bravely, “but Angie and Michael are. Excuse me.”

She turned her head and walked deliberately around them, towards the waiting room.

“Not if they know what’s good for them,” Roger said after her, not turning around. “Don’t be here when we come out.” He took his wife’s arm and walked down the corridor.

Kerry stopped just inside the waiting room door, her knees shaking so badly she almost fell. Dar seemed to realize it and got an arm around her, as Andrew came round front of her and patted her cheek.

“Kerry?”

She swallowed a few times, then looked up at him. “I’m okay,” she whispered. “I just wasn’t expecting that.” She tucked her trembling hands under her arms. “I can’t even blame him for feeling like he does.”

Kerry dropped her eyes to the highly polished tile floor, the reality of what she’d done hitting solidly home.

Andrew scowled, then looked up at his daughter gazing at him with a helpless, beseeching expression over Kerry’s shoulder.

He knew that please-fix-it-look, all right. “C’mere, kumquat.” He put his arms around the blonde woman. “Don’t you be chewing on yourself, hear? If I’d done what that man did, I’d hope mah kid would have the
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guts and the honor you had in letting everyone know about it.”

Kerry absorbed the words and the emotion behind them, in this little pocket of grace she found herself in. Andy’s fingers scratched the back of her head lightly as she slipped her arms around his large and solid form.

She wasn’t sure he was right, but it helped. “Thanks.” She released him and hoisted herself up on her toes and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

Andy blushed. “That’s enough a’that.” He pointed to the chairs. “Sit yer butt down. I’m gonna go find me some coffee.” He escaped out the door, leaving Dar and Kerry to link hands and cross the room. They sat down and exhaled in perfect unison.

They looked at each other.

“You’ll be okay,” Dar told her reassuringly.

Kerry nodded. “Yeah, I think I will.” She glanced towards the empty doorway and smiled, just a little.

“OOO.” ANGIE WINCED, biting down on her lip. “Now you’re in a hurry?” She held her breath until the spasm was over, then panted.

“Kids.”

“Tell me about it.” Cecilia straightened the covers and helped the younger woman into a more comfortable position. “I was in labor for twenty-two hours.”

“Oh my god.” Angela breathed. “I can’t imagine anything enjoyable I’d like to do for twenty-two hours.”

“Well,” Cecilia mused, then chuckled to herself.

Angie blinked at her, blushing as she caught the reference.

“Um…thanks for distracting me, by the way. I know I hardly know you…but I…” She glanced up as the nurse hurried in, giving her a tense, professional smile.

“I see things are moving. Let me get the doctor.” The nurse moved into an alcove and picked up a phone.

“Don’t worry about it. I was glad to help.” Ceci turned her head at the footsteps, seeing the two older figures fill the doorway.

Interesting. Chinese version.
“Hello,” she greeted Kerry’s parents, noting the angry, flustered glare she got in return.

They ignored her. “I thought I told you no contact.” Roger Stuart addressed the woman in the bed.

Angie curled up in a ball, her face tensing with pain. “I just—”

“Easy.” Ceci patted her arm.

“How could you, Angela?” Kerry’s mother said, visibly upset. “After all she’s done to us.”

“I just wanted someone to talk to,” Angie got out, as her contraction relaxed. “She’s my sister—”

“No, she isn’t,” Roger responded sharply. “And if you need someone to talk to, I’ll hire you a secretary. You can talk all you want.” His eyes went to Ceci. “Do you work here?”

“Unfortunately no.” The anger settle into the pit of Cecilia’s stom-364
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ach. “If I did, I could call security and have you thrown out.” She plastered a searing polite look on her face and held a hand out. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Cecilia Roberts.”

They stared at her.

“Kerry’s mother-in-law?” Her eyebrows lifted in sarcastic emphasis.

CECI ENTERED THE room and ran her slim fingers through her silvered hair. “Well. That was certainly a treat.” She glanced at Kerry.

“Your sister’s settling down to some real pushing.”

“Sorry,” Kerry apologized. “I should have warned you my parents were here.”

“How?” Ceci asked, reasonably. “Send up a flare?” She turned her head, then gave Dar an inquiring look.

“Coffee.”

“Ah.” The older woman took a seat and laced her fingers around one knee. “I hope there’s a second waiting room, or this could be a very long evening.” She gave Kerry a wry look. “My telling your parents I was your mother-in-law was not a popular choice.”

Dar swiftly stifled a laugh.

“I’m really, really sorry,” Kerry told Ceci.

“I’m not.” Dar’s mother smiled. “No offense, Kerry, but I’ve never liked your father’s views and meeting him in person doesn’t do anything to enhance them. It was a pleasure making him attempt to swallow his tongue.”

She was still mad.

Not that she was a perfect parent. Oh no. In a group of a hundred of those, she’d come in last. But for the sake of the goddess, even she’d have the sense not to come in an yell at a woman trying very hard to give blessed birth.

Well, all right then, if the Stuarts were included, she’d come in ninety-eighth out of a hundred.

Moving up in the parental world. Who’d have thought it?

“Poor Angie,” Kerry murmured. “That looked like really hard work.”

“Oh yes,” Ceci muttered. “Ranks right up there with your retail jobs like expelling a watermelon out of your urethra.” She got up and went to the door, in search of her husband.

“Dar?” Kerry whispered.

“Mmm?”

“I think you should hire your mother.”

Blink blink. “Wh…for what?”

“The marketing department.”

Dar thought about that. “They’d all jump out the windows of the fourteenth floor, Kerry.”

“Mmm.” Kerry scratched her nose and nodded. “Yeah, but can’t you picture her and Eleanor in a meeting together?”

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Dar nibbled her lower lip. “Hmm.”

They heard Roger Stuart’s angry voice approaching and Dar dropped her hands to her lap. “That’s it.” She stood up, ready to meet him as he entered. “I’ve had about enough of his—”

“You!” Stuart had reached the doorway and pointed at her. “This is all your fault, you disgusting piece of filth. I want you and the rest of your rabble out of here before I call my security and have you thrown out.”

“Who are you calling filth, you adulterous, swindling asshole?” Dar bristled, moving towards him. “Take your judgmental bullshit and shove it right up your—”

“Dar—”

“Roger—”

A deep rumble suddenly slammed through the room, stopping the shouting and motion for a frozen moment.

Then the shock wave hit and the lights went out and the world started to crumble around them.

IT WAS VERY dark. Dar forced her eyes open anyway, coughing sharply as a lung full of concrete dust invaded her chest. All around her, creaks and groans, crashing, and the sound of screaming could be heard.

She was on the ground, half covered in chunks of plaster and wall, shocked and dazed, and momentarily unable to think past rubbing the dirt out of her eyes in an attempt to use the tiny gleam of emergency lighting edging through a gap in the collapsed room.

Shit.
Her scattered mind tried to focus as she rolled over and pushed herself up, blinking her stinging eyes.
Kerry. It was too quiet.

“K—” She ended up coughing, as she felt around anxiously, the shadows very slowly resolving into gray, dim shapes in an eerie silence that set her heart pounding erratically. “Hey…hey…” She pawed through the debris with shaking hands, pulling down chunks of wall tangled in strips of wallpaper until she spotted a very still, dusty form half buried under some carpet and what was left of a chair.

Her world stopped.

She scrambled over the rubble and stared at the silent figure, a fear clamping a hold on her chest as she faced the possibility that the worst had happened.

“K-Kerry?” She barely heard her own whisper. “H-hey?”

There wasn’t a twitch of response and in the dimness she couldn’t see any movement at all.

Dar closed her eyes for a long moment, too scared to even breathe.

This couldn’t be happening, could it?
Maybe it was all a dream and she’d wake up in her bedroom with Kerry poking her in the ribs.

Maybe?

Please?

You can’t take her from me.
Dar’s eyelids drifted open, blinking them a few times to let the tears wash the dust out. Then she gathered her courage and leaned forward to put a hand on the still shoulder, her heart beating so fast it made her shake.
Not yet. No...

A soft groan responded to her touch and Dar almost collapsed in sheer relief. “Hey…Kerry?” She clawed the debris aside and very gently brushed the crumbled plaster off her lover. “Sweetheart?” Her voice was shaky.

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Kerry drew a rasping breath. “Ow,” she answered weakly. “Dar?”

It was too dark for Kerry to see the tears and she was glad for that.

“Yeah. What’s wrong? What hurts?”

Kerry started to turn over, then gasped, and curled into a more fetal position. “My shoulder…oh God…”

Dar examined her anxiously, noting the odd angle under the cotton shirt Kerry wore. “Um…I think it’s…” She bent closer, straining her eyes.

“Maybe it’s dislocated. I can’t tell.” She put a careful hand on the blonde woman’s hip. “How’s everything else?”

Kerry was silent for a moment. “Okay, I think.” She took in a ragged breath. “What happened?”

“I don’t know.” Dar looked around her for the first time. The waiting room had mostly collapsed, leaving them in a small, irregularly shaped pocket near one side. There was no sign of anyone else and the doorway Kerry’s parents had been standing in was a large mass of silent rubble.

“Something exploded, I think.”