Melissa Good - Thicker Than Water

Give your arm a break?”

Dar’s face went still for a moment, then she exhaled. “Okay.”

She accepted her keys from the valet and put her bag in the back seat before Kerry took them from her fingers and circled the car.

They settled into the leather seats and Kerry took a moment to adjust the driver’s seat forward.

“I should keep a booster seat in here for you,” Dar remarked dryly.

“Hah hah.” Kerry put the big SUV in gear and edged cautiously into the traffic stream. “How about next time you just put 192 Melissa Good me in your lap?”

“Mm.” Dar chuckled softly, sparing a moment to imagine driving with her arms wrapped around Kerry. “Yeah, okay…Hey, pull over.”

“Hedonist.”

“It was your idea!”

Kerry dodged a speeding Mercedes and settled down to the relatively short drive home. “Hey, Dar?”

Dar had her head tipped back and her eyes closed. “Yeeess?”

Kerry thought a moment of how to phrase her question, then she just shrugged. “Is this really it, at work?”

Dar was quiet, then she shrugged. “Yeah.”

“No reprieves? No time off for good behavior?”

A soft chuckle rose from the passenger’s seat. “Hon, I’ve never behaved good in my entire tenure there. Trust me, if I had to come up with a reason to leave, you were the best reason on Earth.” She reached carefully behind her with her good arm and tugged her briefcase over and onto her lap. “Want to help me write my resignation letter later?”

Kerry sighed. “Dar, it’s not funny.”

“I know, I know. I j...” Dar reached inside her briefcase, and her fingers touched a thick sheaf of paper she didn’t remember putting inside. She looked into the case. “What the heck is that?”

“What?”

Dar removed the papers and stared at them in utter disbelief.

“Dar?”

Dar looked at her. “Did you put this in here?”

Hearing the tension in Dar’s voice, Kerry pulled the car over.

“Me? Of course not. What is it? The only thing I put in your case this morning was your laptop, because you asked me to.”

Dar thumbed the sheaf, the soft rustle of paper sounding loud in the car. “It’s the data I gave your father.”

“What?” Kerry put the car in park, half turned, and reached for the stack. “How…Wait, are you sure? Maybe it’s a copy you put in there, Dar. You had one.”

“I’m sure.” Dar turned the first sheet over. “I printed this one on recycled; it was my check copy. The other one’s on water-mark.”

Kerry stared at the words on the back of the page—someone’s recipe for pot roast. That seemed so odd and so incongruous, she almost wondered if her father might have scribbled it down for the cooks to try at home. The world seemed strange around her.

She braced her elbow on the armrest between them and rested her head on one hand. “I don’t get it.”

“Me, neither.” Dar pulled out her cell and hit a speed dial Thicker Than Water 193

button. She waited until it was answered, then cleared her throat.

“Hi, Alastair? It’s Dar.”

“Ah! Oh…uh, Dar, listen, can I call you right back?” Alastair sounded surprised to hear from her. “I’m, ah—”

“I don’t care if you’re on the john,” Dar said bluntly. “I just wanted you to know I have the papers.”

There was dead silence, then a splutter. “How did you know where…? Did you get that GPS thing working for cell phones?”

Dar merely waited.

“If you did, why the hell didn’t you say so? You know how much money we could make w—” Alastair fell silent. “Holy Jesus, did you say you had the papers?”

“Yes.”

Through the phone connection Dar could hear a ball game playing softly somewhere in the far background, but little else.

“Alastair?”

His sigh was audible. “Dar, I’m not sure it matters now.”

Dar shrugged. “Well, for what it’s worth, I have them. Anyway, talk to you later.”

More silence preceded his quiet, “I’ll call you, Dar.”

Alastair’s voice was now very serious. “Stay close.”

Dar closed her phone and looked at Kerry. “Let’s go home.”

Kerry was staring steadily at her. “It’s too late, isn’t it?”

“Eh.” Dar picked up her hand and kissed the knuckles. “I don’t care. C’mon. Let’s go. I want you, a soft bed, a warm glass of milk, and a bowl of pitted cherries.”

Kerry smiled wistfully at her. “In that order?”

“Any order I can get them in.”

Kerry gave in and put the car back into drive, then checked her rearview mirror and pulled into the traffic lane.

After a mile or so of companionable silence, she cleared her throat. “I keep forgetting to ask you, and you did mention it twice, so it’s not your fault. What was the deal you set up with the Navy in exchange for that information?”

Dar opened her eyes, and she regarded the fawn header on the Lexus. “Ah. That’s right. I guess I never did lay that out for you, did I?”

Kerry glanced at her, then back at the road. “Well, I mean, it doesn’t have to be right now, but I was curious—”

“No, now’s as good a time as any,” Dar remarked. “I should have just told you earlier.” Her expression turned pensive. “I agreed to destroy the information and forget what I’d seen, in return for the Navy outsourcing all of their IS to us.”

Kerry almost hit the car in front of her. She hurriedly applied her brakes, then turned her head and stared at Dar in utter disbe-194 Melissa Good lief. “You what?” A horn honked, and she hastily pulled the Lexus over to the curb again and parked it.

“What?”

Pale blue eyes regarded her warily. “That was my price, if they wanted me to shut up. So they did. Gerry got them to agree to the outsourcing deal.” She watched Kerry’s face carefully, wondering what she was thinking.

Kerry covered her eyes with one hand. “You blackmailed the US government?”

Did I? Dar rubbed her chin. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

Green eyes peeked out from between slim fingers. “Paladar Katherine Roberts, what am I going to do with you?”

Dar smiled wistfully. “I don’t know. It was nicer having you think I just chucked it all because I wouldn’t leave you,” she reflected in a quiet voice. “Just a moment of altruistic heroism I didn’t actually have.”

Kerry studied Dar for a moment, then cupped her cheek with one hand but didn’t say anything. They looked at each other for a moment, then Kerry put the Lexus in gear and resumed driving.

Concentrating on the traffic gave her a chance to think about what Dar had told her and how she felt about it.

Was she mad at Dar for not telling her? Kerry nibbled the inside of her lip. Yeah, a little. It meant a huge workload for her, and dozens of things would have had to be taken into account.

But, on the other hand—given what had been going on at home at the time—had she really wanted to deal with that, too?

No, Kerry admitted. She’d have had no desire whatsoever to add to the stress load she’d been suffering under. So, Dar had probably done her a favor in keeping the arrangement quiet until now. She did wonder, though, about what Dar had said about how she felt.

A quick glance showed her a somber profile. Dar thinks I’m disappointed, Kerry realized. Am I?

It had been flattering, of course—for her to realize Dar had just chucked everything to be at her side. But…but it had also hurt to know she had caused Dar to relinquish something she knew was so important to her partner: honor, her integrity. Regardless of what ILS had gotten out of the deal, it didn’t change the fact that Dar had traded off doing what she knew was the right thing, just to be the rock Kerry had so desperately needed right then.