Tropical Storm - DK1 (4 page)

There was a stranger in her doorway. A tall, golden-skinned woman with midnight dark hair looked back at her, the lean body arranged against her doorway in a posture of confident arrogance. Kerry blinked, looked again, and was captured by the bluest, clearest eyes she’d ever seen. They drilled right through her with a blast of cool intensity, and a strange, almost haunting glimpse of something familiar. “Um…sorry. I thought you were someone else,” she managed weakly, getting to her feet.

The woman pushed off the doorframe and entered, putting a thick leather briefcase down on her visitor’s chair and extending a hand. “Dar Roberts.”

The voice was low, pleasant, and seemed to rumble in her ears. As she moved to take the woman’s hand, a soft scent of musky perfume mixed with leather reached her. “Kerry Stuart.” She took the taller woman’s hand and gripped it, feeling the strength in it as the woman returned the squeeze. “Are you, um…” She hesitated. “I mean, you’re from the new headquarters, right?

I’m sorry. I must seem kind of daft to you. I wasn’t expecting anyone until after lunch.”

Dar studied her quietly for a moment. “Yes, I am. I suppose my lunch doesn’t quite match yours,” she answered coolly. “Sorry.”

“Oh, right,” Kerry answered awkwardly. “Well, that’s okay, because I-I finished lunch already myself…but my staff is still out. What…I mean, can I get you some coffee, or something?”

“No thanks, I’m on a tight schedule,” the tall woman answered briskly.

“Let’s just get started; it won’t take long.” She motioned to the desk. “Sit down.” Dar watched the younger woman step back around her desk and seat herself, laying her forearms on the surface and looking back at her with a mixture of trepidation and curiosity.

She’d briefly studied the picture Mark had so kindly provided, but the static personnel print gave no hint of the gentle presence the woman projected, or the clear steadiness of her eyes, whose color uncannily matched the ocean Dar saw out her window every sunny morning. There was also something familiar about her that Dar couldn’t quite put her finger on. No time for that, though. She sat down in the visitor’s chair. “You know why I’m here, right?”

Kerry’s fingers twisted a piece of binding tie. “I know you people are taking over. They really didn’t tell us much about what was going to happen, no.”

Dar cursed silently, making a mental note to send a mail ripping a new butt hole for whomever was on the account team for this cluster. “They were supp—” She put a hand out. “I’m not going to play games or beat around the bush. Bottom line is, what we purchased was your business.”

The blonde woman took a breath. “Okay…but what does that mean. We report to different people, or you want things done differently? I have reports…”

A hand silenced her. “It means we’re interested in the services you’re providing, not in how you provide them, or who does it,” she replied firmly.

“There’s nothing you do here we can’t do better, and cheaper, which is the whole point.”

Kerry stared at her. “What are you saying?” she asked softly. “You’re
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saying you don’t need us, is that it?”

Cool, blue eyes met hers. “Yes.”

“You can’t just come in here and fire everyone! We’ve been doing this for years; you can’t replace us just like that,” the director protested.

“Yes, I can,” Dar replied. “It’s what we do.” She gestured towards the door. “I have a programming group in Huntingdon, a support group just west of the airport that can take your calls, and a hardware installers division—all who already work for me.” She stood, and walked around the back of her chair, leaning against it. “Your people are inefficient: they take two sick days apiece every three weeks; half of them are late every day; your programmers haven’t met a deadline in two years; and you’ve had eighteen workman’s comp claims in the last four months.”

Kerry just looked at the surface of her desk and concentrated on breathing. Her chest hurt from the sudden, unexpected attack, and she realized she had no answer for the charges. She knew they were true, but it was a good staff. They were good people, just a little lazy sometimes, like everyone was. Her eyes traveled up to the hawk-like profile watching her, and she felt a quiet despair. Not everyone, not anymore. “I guess John was right,”

she finally said in quiet defeat.

Dar eyed her, slightly disconcerted. The usual reaction to her speech was anger, indignant protests, not…this. “Right about what?”

Those sea-toned eyes lifted. “You are here just to rape us.”

The executive flinched visibly. “That’s not an appropriate way to refer to it.” Kerry shrugged. “What are you going to do, fire me?” She took a breath.

“Is there something else I can do for you, Ms. Roberts? You seem to have all the information you need,” she studied the clip in her hands, “and…I’ve got a lot of paperwork I need to get started on, I guess.” She tried, but couldn’t keep the hint of hoarseness from entering her voice. Though she could feel Dar hovering, she refused to look up, unwilling to give the older woman the satisfaction of seeing the depth of her pain.

Dar felt a sudden twinge of shame. She could see the anguished tension in the slim shoulders across from her, and she bowed her head for a moment, feeling a sense of confusion very alien to her. She’d done this a dozen times already this year alone. “Look…”

“They’re not really that awful,” Kerry said softly. “Our customers like us.

We do a good job. I don’t…see why we need to be thrown away like garbage.”

She still kept her gaze on her hands. “What kind of people are you?”

“Look.” Dar found herself uncharacteristically at a loss for words. “It’s a business. There’s nothing personal, understand?” The blonde head moved in a nod, then the manager looked up, her face closed, and wary, green eyes darkened with a quiet anger. “You have a week. I need a list of your senior people, so we can arrange sessions with them to start going over exactly what you do, and when and how you do it.”

Kerry swallowed. “You’re saying you want us to train the people who are going to take our jobs away.”

Dar looked quietly at her. “Yes.”

The anger dissolved into something else, and Kerry clenched her jaw.

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Melissa Good

“All right,” she got out, her fingers clenching on the pencil that had been sitting on her desk. “I’ll see what I can arrange.”
Arrange to get every damn one
of them out of here before they can tell anyone anything, that is.

“You want to tell me to go to hell.” Dar remarked. “Don’t you?”

Kerry licked her lower lip. “No, ma’am, I don’t. I wasn’t raised that way.”

Dar sat down in the chair again and leaned forward, tilting her head to gaze into Kerry’s lowered face. “Sure you do,” she disagreed. “I did…when we were assimilated.” Green eyes slowly rose to meet hers.

“These are people, whose livelihoods you’re about to take away from them. It’s not funny.”

“And any one of them would gladly wave you goodbye, if the guy down the street offered a buck more an hour,” Dar replied. “This is a business, Ms.

Stuart. It’s not a charity.”

Kerry’s chin lifted. “Your people won’t be able to do half the job mine do,” she stated flatly. “So when you lose all these accounts, I’ll be there laughing, Ms…Roberts. Because you know what? Your people probably aren’t any better workers than mine are unless you employ robots just like you.”

Well, now.
Dar leaned back, studying her. She hadn’t had this kind of challenge in a long, long time. Most of her accounts were fresh-faced MIS

majors who scurried around and tried to get on her good side, just long enough to realize she didn’t have one. One of her side tasks, besides stripping companies, was finding new talent for the corporation.
Sometimes
, she reflected,
I find potential in the weirdest places.
“That’s not a way to win friends and influence people, Ms. Stuart.”

Kerry gazed steadily at her. “Good thing for me I don’t need to do either in this case, I guess,” she said. “I noticed you didn’t deny my statement. Does that mean you agree with me?”

Well, well, well.
Dar let the silence lengthen, watching the faint flare of Kerry’s nostrils as she too waited. “All right,” she said, “tell you what.” Her eyes caught the shift in Kerry’s expression, a wariness reshaping the slim planes of her face. “I can do this for half the budget you’re currently doing it with. Come up with a plan to do it for that, in a week, and I’ll look at it.”

Kerry’s jaw dropped. “Fifty percent? That’s impossible!”

Dar shrugged. “Your choice. See, we can leverage out the costs because we use less overhead per account. If we’ve got someone who needs support, for instance, we just add them to the current load over at the MTC, and we don’t have to pay for rent, a phone switch, the consoles, desks, all that crap again.” She smiled. “You can’t do that.”
Will she take the bait?
Dar watched the muscles bunch in her jaw, not sure which way she wanted Kerry to jump.

“No, but that means…” Kerry stopped and exhaled. People would have to go. It was the biggest cost factor, she knew. Looking at the closed, chill face across from her, she knew this damn iceberg woman knew it too. But maybe she could save some of them. It was worth a try. “All right. You’ll be hearing from me,” she said, her voice quietly icy.

Well, she hates me
. Dar sighed.
One among many
. “Fine. You can send it over in e-mail; you should be added to our post office by now.” She lifted her cell phone and dialed a single code, holding it to her ear until she heard a gruff voice on the other end. “Mark, you all done?”

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A short laugh came through the phone. “Lock, stock, barrels, monkeys, hair dryers, and their accountant’s latest lunch list,” he advised her. “Mail’s up, servers locked down. Anything else I can do for you today?”

“Thanks.” Dar folded the phone up. “You’re up on mail. Tell your people not to make any administrative changes to your servers, and you can expect a team here tomorrow to start going over procedures.”

Kerry folded her hands over her desk. “How did you know all that about our personnel statistics?”

Pale blue eyes lanced into her. “We broke into your server database this morning and extracted it.” Dar smiled. “Your security sucks. You might want to start your review there.” She felt a sense of quiet triumph, which faded as Kerry returned her look with one of stony dislike. “Nothing personal.”

“No.” The blonde stated quietly. “I can see that.” She stood. “Would you like to look around?”

The last thing Dar needed was the nickel tour. She reminded herself she had six or seven conference calls to take care of back at the office, so she was very surprised when she heard her voice answering “Sure.”

Kerry just nodded and stepped around the desk, running a hand through her pale hair and pushing it back off her face. She was wearing a pair of fairly snug jeans and a short-sleeved white lace shirt that displayed an outdoor tan, which tightened against her body as she took a deep breath. “All right, follow me.”

She circled the desk and brushed by Dar as she headed for the door to the office. The dark-haired woman caught a hint of clean soap and the faintest hint of apricot as she belatedly stood and headed after Kerry.
Well, well, well,
indeed.

IT HAD, DAR later mused, been a very hostile afternoon. She’d gotten the feeling that word had spread quickly, since they’d only made it to the programmers’ nests before she was starting to get those dagger-in-the-eye looks from the inmates. She half expected her car to be keyed by the time they finished up, but apparently no one had figured out which one it was. Not surprising, since an LX470 sport utility truck was hardly what they expected a VP Ops to be driving.

The head programmer had possibilities, she conceded, if you could dig her out of her shell long enough to talk code with her, which Dar had. The support and IS managers were useless, and listening to the calls as she passed through, seemingly oblivious, had allowed her to catch at least two individuals telling customers complete lies, and two others using the opportunity to make social arrangements. Stuart had heard that last one, Dar realized, as she’d seen the look of dismay in the woman’s startlingly open face.
Kerry Stuart.
Dar leaned back against the leather and allowed herself the luxury of a few minutes of quiet thought.
The kid isn’t stupid, and she’s
gutsy…but damn, is she an innocent. She really wasn’t ready for this, but all in all,
handled the shock pretty well, considering.

What Dar couldn’t get out of her mind was that nagging sense of 18
Melissa Good
familiarity.
Do we shop in the same place or something? Not likely.
Kerry lived in Kendall, just past the Turnpike in one of the mazes of suburban rental clusters frequented by white-collar workers in the area.
Maybe she comes down to the
beach a lot?
Not that Dar spent a whole lot of time on South Beach, but she did get down there from time to time, and would stroll along the boardwalk.

She gave up, knowing it would come to her eventually. Her watch meeped softly, and she glanced down, surprised to see how late it was. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, then tapped her console-mounted cell phone. A moment later it was answered by Maria’s singsong voice.

“Hello, Maria.”

“Dar, where are you?” her secretary answered in a lowered voice.

“In my car, on the way back from Associated. Why?” the executive replied, a touch puzzled. “You knew where I was.”

“Stay away. Stay far, far away. ¡
Dios mío
! A man, he backed a truck into the facilities room downstairs, and took out all the controls for the air conditioning,” Maria replied with a groan. “It must be like an oven in here, Dar. My head is roasting.”

The executive winced. “Oh boy.” She considered. “Did they down the servers, at least?” she asked, then she slapped herself on the head. “What am I thinking? Maria, get out of there before you pass out.”

“
Ay,
I have my little fan, but it is like I am cooking…turning crispy,” the secretary told her. “Thank you very much. I will pack up my things and be on my way.”