They left the increasingly crowded lobby behind them.
THE CELL PHONE buzzed near her head and Dar jerked out of a deep sleep, reaching for it blindly in the darkened room. "Buh."
She captured the instrument and opened it, her head pounding as her body tried to wake itself. "Yeah?"
"Dar!"
Alastair"s voice was so normal, it almost hurt. "Morning, Alastair."
"Are you okay?"
Dar opened an eye and rolled it around, taking in her surroundings. "Yeah, I"m fine. It was just a d.a.m.n storm."
"Storm? What the h.e.l.l are you talking about? I got a call last night saying you got held up or something," Alastair said, his voice audibly upset. "What the h.e.l.l is going on out there, Dar?"
Where do I start? Dar cleared her throat. "Hang on and let my brain boot," she told him. "I was sleeping."
A momentary silence preceded his exclamation of surprise. "At ten a.m.? Good heavens. Let me get my diary."*343 "I am supposed to be on vacation," Dar said in a peeved tone.
"In case that slipped your mind." She rubbed her eyes and tried to shake some sense into herself. "First off, I didn"t get held up."
"Well, that"s sounds like a good thing."
"My hotel room got broken into."
"That"s terrible!"
"But they didn"t take anything, so the inn just moved us to a bigger room."
"Well, that"s not so bad," Alastair said. "Jesus, Dar, you had me worried. I"ve got a lot of company resources sitting out there in the islands at the moment." He cleared his throat. "I didn"t mean that the way it sounded... Well, h.e.l.l"s bells, I don"t know what it sounded like."
Should I tell him about the rest? "We ran into a couple of snags out here, matter of fact." Dar admitted. "There was some trouble out on the water."
"Uh oh," her boss said. "Maybe that"s what he was talking about. Your man Mark sounded half nuts."
"Mark? What the h.e.l.l is he calling you for? Does he think he"s my mother all of a sudden?" Dar snapped.
"No, she called me last time," Alastair answered benignly.
"Apparently Mark picked up something on a police record, and wasn"t happy about it."
"So he called you??"
"Well," Alastair cleared his throat, "he"s a direct report to Kerry. Who is a direct report to you. And you"re a direct report to me. Who else would he have gone to?"
Bah. Mother hens. Dar scowled as she gazed up at the ceiling.
"Well, we ran into a couple of my father"s old buddies and had to help them out of a jam. That, and the storm is currently making my life miserable," she said. "Everything okay there?"
"Here?" Alastair"s voice dripped with surprised innocence.
"Oh, sure. Right as rain, Dar. No problems here."
Uh huh. Can"t wait to see my inbox. Dar stared at her phone, then sighed. "Great. Guess I"ll talk to you next week when I get back in the office then, huh?"
"Sure, sure. You two having a good time otherwise?" Alastair asked. "Getting some rest and relaxation?"
"Well," Dar"s ears picked up the sound of footsteps approaching, "right now I"m flat on my back, and you woke me at ten. What does that tell you?"
"Good to hear, Dar. Good to hear. You take it easy, and try to keep out of trouble for the rest of your trip, hmm?"
"I"ll try," Dar said. "Talk to you later." She folded the phone and set it aside as the door opened, admitting Kerry and the unmistakable bulk of her father. She felt mildly embarra.s.sed at 344*
being caught in bed. "Ah...hi."
"Morning, sleepyhead," Kerry teased as she closed the door, then set down the basket. "I figured you might be up by now."
"Only by the grace of Alastair," Dar admitted. "Mark told him we were having problems."
Kerry stopped and stared at her. "What?"
"Yeah. Hundred bazillion dollar corporation being run by two nanny worrywarts." Dar laid her arm across her eyes, wincing at the dull headache. "Hi, Dad."
"Hey there, Dardar." Andrew crouched down by the bed and patted her arm. "You doin" all right?"
"Mmpfh," Dar grunted. "Any chance of getting some fresh air in here?"
Kerry walked to the windows and opened the blinds. A portion of the wooden covering had been apparently been removed by the groundskeepers earlier that morning, and light flooded in. She unlatched the windows and pulled them open, rewarded when a gust of air puffed back her hair. "How"s that?"
"Better." Dar still had her eyes closed. "What"s going on outside?"
"No power, grumpy tourists, muggy weather, and the police want to have lunch with us."
Dar"s eyes popped open and she hitched herself up onto her elbows. "Us?"
"Us," Kerry confirmed.
"Bck." Dar laid down and pulled the covers up over her head.
"Yeah," Kerry agreed ruefully. "That about covers it."
Chapter.
Twenty-eight.
THE BOAT ROCKED gently under Kerry as she jumped on board the Dixie. Dar was still on the dock, examining the mild damage the hull had taken, and Kerry dropped into one of the chairs on the stern to wait for her. The sun was out and the air was clearing of its moisture, the light breeze idly lifting strands of her hair. She leaned back and looked around the marina, wincing at the small boats tossed up onto the seawall and the debris floating in the water.
The marina itself had taken little damage; its concrete docks had weathered the storm quite nicely, and provided protection to most of the boats sheltered inside it. Many of the boat owners were there checking out their crafts, and around the sh.o.r.e, crews were removing downed limbs and other debris.
Kerry felt oddly itchy. She"d realized on the walk down to the boat that she wanted, more than anything, to be gone from the island and away from the chaos their vacation had become.
"Um, h.e.l.lo?"
Kerry looked up, to find Bob"s unwelcome form standing on the dock. "Oh. h.e.l.lo, there."
Bob stuck his hands in his pockets. "I...um..." He cleared his throat. "Can we talk?"
"Do we have to?" Kerry refused to budge from her deck chair, forcing him to crane his neck to address her. "I think you said pretty much everything you needed to last night."
He edged around closer to her. "Listen, I was just way out of my league, you know?"
"We weren"t?" Kerry rolled her head around to look at him.
"Getting involved with you almost got us and our friends killed."
Bob shrugged uncomfortably. "I didn"t think it was that serious. I didn"t think he"d go...nuts like that." He leaned on a pylon. "I"m sorry."
Kerry got up and went to the side rail, facing him. "What really sucked was you wanting that paper back...before we got Bud."
Bob looked down at the dock. "You don"t understand," he 346*
muttered. "It"s like a hatchet he holds over all of them...especially Tanya. I was only thinking about her."
"A hatchet?"
"The money." Bob looked up. "But like I said," he gestured at the Dixie, "you don"t get it. "
Kerry leaned on the railing, studying him with an enigmatic expression. "I understand that better than you"d ever imagine," she replied. "But people are more important than money, no matter how much of it you have...or don"t have."
Bob shook his head. "Easy for you to say," he said. "Tanya"s coming down here. Now that we know for sure the old man wasn"t nuts, we"ll find a way to get what we want. Without anyone else"s help." He turned and walked away quickly, almost colliding with one of the other boat owners. The man shoved him off, and cursed, shaking his head as Bob just kept on going.
Kerry sighed. "What a jerk."
Just then, Dar appeared on the dock and circled the stern, hopped on board and stepped down onto the deck. "Yep. That he is," she agreed, joining Kerry on the side. "Hope we don"t need him as a witness."
"Witness?" Kerry turned to her. "You think we will?"
Dar shrugged.
Kerry exhaled. "Any damage?" she asked, glancing over the side of the boat. "Didn"t look like much."
"Not too bad," Dar confirmed. "Just a few sc.r.a.pes."
"Good. Do we have a plan?" Kerry held out a hand.
Dar stepped closer and took it, walking around behind Kerry"s the chair and letting her other hand rest on Kerry"s shoulder. "A plan." Dar yawned, her jaw cracking softly. "I"m still too wiped to have a plan." She eased into the chair next to Kerry"s and slung one long leg over its arm. "I guess we"ll go talk to the cops first." She rested her head on one hand. "What do you want to do after that?"
Leave. Kerry bit back the answer, knowing her sense of responsibility would berate her for it. "Well, if that all turns out okay..."
"You think it won"t?" Dar interrupted softly. "He asked us to lunch, not down to the station." She studied her knuckles.
"Wonder how much we should tell him." Her eyes lifted and gazed across the water. "We could be in trouble, Ker."
"I know," Kerry agreed. "So I"d rather not take anything for granted. Now, if that turns out okay, we could go see Bud and make sure he and Charlie are okay."
"Mm, yeah," Dar grunted.
"We could take Dad out for dinner before his flight."
That got a much more interested response. "Okay, that sounds good," Dar agreed. "Where did he run off to, anyway?"*347 Kerry shook her head. "He didn"t say. Just that he"d be back."
She glanced at the deck pensively. "I think I p.i.s.sed him off earlier.
The chair creaked as Dar leaned toward her. "You?" Her voice expressed disbelief. "How?"
"I asked him about him and Bud and Charlie," Kerry admitted.
"I don"t think he likes people knowing about all that. I guess it"s embarra.s.sing for him." She paused thoughtfully. "Or something."
She turned her head and gazed at Dar. "I"m sorry I mentioned anything."
Dar reached over and gave Kerry a scratch on the back of the neck. "Sweetheart, it"s not what you think," she said. "Yeah, the whole d.a.m.n thing embarra.s.ses the h.e.l.l out of him, that"s true."
"Having them think he was gay, you mean?" Kerry asked. "In that world, it"s kinda understandable."
Dar chuckled. "No. He didn"t really care about that. But let me start at the beginning." She cleared her throat. "It was really all my fault."
"Your fault?" Kerry asked in much the same tone Dar had used moments earlier. "How?"
"I"d just come out to him and Mom," Dar related. "It was tough for my folks, being part of the military world, and seeing as I was such a pain in the a.s.s child anyway..."
Kerry smiled but kept quiet.
"So, my dad went out and read a whole boatload of stuff about h.o.m.os.e.xuality at the library," Dar went on. "He even checked out a few books, and apparently took one of them with him on a maneuver with a couple of squads off the base."
"Uh oh."
"Yeah." Dar nodded. "So then he got a.s.signed to sea duty for four months. The captain of the boat he was on was a real tight a.s.sed conservative, and one day he went off about gays in front of the guys." She paused to reflect, then sighed. "My dad, being my dad, took him into a torpedo room and nearly removed a couple of teeth from his mouth."