Melissa Good - Red Sky at Morning

“Not for me.” Josh shook his head. “I meant it. I’m going home.”

Kerry fished in her pocket and pulled out one of her business cards, which she handed to him. “If you really decide to quit, give me a call.”

He glanced at the card, then looked more closely at the title, his eyebrows jerking up in a way that was comical. His eyes widened and he looked back at her. Kerry winked at him, gave him a pat on the side, then turned and continued after the fidgeting attendant.

“Nice-looking guy,” the attendant commented.

“Yeah,” Kerry agreed, distracted by the speakers echoing loudly around them.

Red Sky At Morning 33

“Did you want to bring him along? We could squeeze him in with you if you—”

“Huh?” Kerry’s head snapped back, realizing what the woman was saying. “Oh, um, no. No, thanks.” She ran a hand through her hair.

“He’s not my type.”

“Oh.” The woman glanced behind them. “Maybe I’ll go back and get him later then.” She gave Kerry a wicked grin. “If you don’t mind.”

Kerry nodded amusedly. “Be my guest.”

They ducked down a small, unmarked hallway, and the woman unlocked a plain door with her keycard, pulling it open and allowing a gust of cool, brandy-scented air to hit Kerry in the face. “Go on in and relax.”

Kerry stepped inside the Platinum Fliers Club door and was glad to hear it close behind her. She trudged to the courtesy desk and set her briefcase down, pulling out her wallet and handing her club card to the woman behind the desk. It was quiet inside the club, though many travelers were already taking sanctuary there, and she could hear the faint clink of glasses from the bar and a soft murmur of voices around the bank of modem-jack equipped cubes.

“Thank you, Ms. Stuart.” The woman gazed kindly at her. “Were you on the flight to Chicago?”

Kerry nodded.

“Would you like a drink?”

Kerry nodded again.

“C’mon.” The woman rose and took her briefcase, motioning her to follow. “You going to need a hotel room?”

“No.” Kerry found herself smiling. “Someone’s picking me up.”

The urge, at that moment, to see Dar’s face was so overwhelming, it almost made her cry. “But thanks for the offer.”

“No problem.’ The agent smiled at her. “You’re lucky you know someone in town. Hotels around the airport are not much fun to stay in.”

Kerry rubbed her hands, which had finally stopped shaking. “I certainly am lucky,” she agreed. “You think the storm will last ’til tomorrow?”

The woman led her to a nice, comfortable looking chair. “No, don’t worry. It’ll be nice weather tomorrow. You’ll get your flight out, no problem.”

Kerry sat down and sighed, having a flashback to her younger days wishing for snow to close school. “Okay. Thanks.”

DAR RESISTED THE growing urge to just tell the driver to shut up.

He wasn’t a bad sort, but he’d started talking to her the minute she’d gotten into the Lincoln, and all her attempts at not providing any conversational feedback had gone completely unheeded.

34 Melissa Good

“You been here before?”

“Yes.” Dar leaned her head against the glass window and watched the dark buildings go by.

“You like New York?”

“No.”

“Aw, really? Hey, it’s not so bad. People say stuff about the crime and stuff like that, but it’s really a great place.” The driver got into a groove. “We got lots of stuff to see; you been to the Statue of Liberty?”

“Yes.”

“See? That’s a great place, and Ellis Island, too. You been out there since they redone it?”

“No.”

“You should go. It’s great stuff. You been to the Empire State Building?”

“Yes.”

“That’s some place, huh?”

“It’s got rats.”

“Huh?” The driver turned to look at her, despite the fact that they were driving over a very large bridge.

“Rats.” Dar muttered. “They eat the damn cables.” She willed the car to move faster.

“Oh, well, y’know, we got them all over,” the driver apologized.

“They live here too, y’know?” He turned around and weaved his way through the traffic. After a moment of blessed, pensive silence, he spoke up again. “You an exterminator?”

Dar looked at the back of his head, willing it to explode. “No.”

“Oh. I figured maybe you were, since you knew about them rats,”

the driver commented. “My cousin Vinnie’s an exterminator. They make good money, y’know?”

The traffic was thinning out now, and they made better time. Dar saw a sign for the Newark airport, and she felt her pulse pick up. Before she’d left, she’d swallowed a few aspirin to try and kill the headache Kerry’s scare had given her, but the back of her head still throbbed.

The car pulled up to the terminal entrance a minute later, and she gladly got out, pulling up the zipper on her leather jacket. She leaned on the window and handed the driver the fare, giving him a dour stare in the bargain. “Thanks.”

“No problem! NO problem.” The man grinned at her. “Hey, you goin’ back to the city?” He asked. “You ain’t got no luggage, so I figure you gotta be picking somebody up, right? You want me to wait for you?”

Dar glanced around, gauging the lateness of the hour against the annoying nature of her friend the driver. “Yeah, all right,” she decided.

“Wait here.” She turned and headed for the terminal, breaking into a jog as she dodged the stream of people heading in the opposite direction.

The terminal felt overheated. Dar unzipped her jacket the minute Red Sky At Morning 35

she cleared the doors and plowed through the crowd inside, heading for the security gate in front of the terminal she knew Kerry had to be in.

Impatiently, she dropped her cell phone and pager into the small bucket, then walked through the metal detector as the guard waved her casually by.

She grabbed the electronics and moved on, pausing in the center of the terminal and looking around in mild dismay. It was a zoo. There were people piled everywhere, and angry, tired faces seemed to fill every available space. Dar pulled out her cell phone and flipped it open, then closed it again as a thought occurred to her.

She turned on her heel and headed toward a bank of elevators.

KERRY CURLED HERSELF up into a ball in the comfortable leather chair. She had one hand clasped around a glass of cognac, and she sipped slowly from it as the tension in her body very gradually unwound. All around her were trapped travelers, most on cell phones, none of them happy people.

They were all trying desperately to get somewhere else, and it felt odd to know that she wanted nothing more than to stay right where she was. She took another swallow of the good cognac, feeling the light buzz starting as she sat quietly and let the chaos in the room fade a little.

How long would it take Dar to get to the airport? Kerry tried to think about how far the city was, and how bad the weather seemed. She resigned herself to the wait, curling up a little bit more as the door opened and more disgruntled travelers entered.

Would Dar be able to find her? Kerry set her glass down and opened her cell, then cursed softly as the battery indicator bleeped reproachfully at her and the device shut down. “Damn it.” She tapped the cell against her chin, then put it back in its case. “Guess I’ll wait another fifteen, then go see if I can find her.”

The lights flickered briefly, then steadied, causing a momentary hush in the room before the conversation picked back up again, not without wary looks toward the ceiling.

“Great.” Kerry muttered. “Just make it harder, why don’t you?”