She took the keyboard and rapidly switched to a configuration program.

“All right, hang on.” Dar typed furiously, slamming the enter key in frus-Eye of the Storm 333

tration as she got to the end of each line. “This better work or…”

“Easy.” Kerry rubbed her knee under the desk. “Look there, wait, Dar, that’s the wrong—”

“I see it.” Dar closed her eyes briefly, then reopened them and corrected her error. She reset the port she’d just finished, then flipped over to Kerry’s monitoring program. “C’mon…c’mon, you little b—son of a bitch.”

“Dar, that’s the wrong speed.” Kerry took the keyboard from her and started typing, brushing the taller woman’s hands away. “Yell at Mark some more while I do this.”

Ceci watched as Dar’s face twitched in annoyance, but was unable to react as angrily as she obviously wanted to. “Mark, are you done yet?”

She growled into the phone. “Now?” A pause. “Now?” Another pause.

“Kerry, go.”

“Okay.” Kerry finished and wrote the configuration changes, then reset the device. She counted silently under her breath up to twenty, then reconnected to it. “Done…done…wahoo.” She exhaled in utter relief.

“Passing packets on those ports, Dar.”

“I see it.” Dar had been watching the monitoring tool in the background and now she flipped it to the foreground and watched the shifting charts, which pumped in comforting shades of green and blue.

“Jesus.” She leaned against the phone. “Good work, Mark. Thanks for flying up so early.” The MIS chief had spent the evening scouring their local resources and trying to help Dar find a way to resolve the problem without breaching their extensive contracts with the companies involved in the crisis.

No luck. So Dar had asked him to go personally to the switching center, where he’d been consulting with the switch programmers since six a.m.

No luck. The Y2K patch had made such a mess of the firmware, even Mark’s and Dar’s combined programming talents had been unable to make head or tail of it, leaving the executive with a sparse list of options.

Stay down or breach their contract, and remove the services from their vendor. “I’d better call Hamilton Baird and let him know to expect some screaming.” She sighed, referring to ILS’s legal chief. “And he loves me so much as it is.”

“Dar, you had no choice.” Kerry yawned, putting her head down on one arm. “Doesn’t he live in Boston?”

“Mmm.” Dar tipped her head back and closed her eyes. “Yeah, he only sounds like he lives in Louisiana.”

Ceci kept quiet, assuming the green things and Dar’s obvious relief, were a good thing. She glanced up at the television, where talking heads were analyzing the problem, one that looked vaguely familiar. “Isn’t that your boss?”

Dar looked up. Sure enough, a very serious looking Alastair was front and center, freshly scrubbed and very concerned. “They dug him out of bed early.” She increased the volume. “Not the kind of publicity he 334 Melissa Good wanted today, I bet.”

“Mr. McLean, can you give us some idea of what is going on?”

Alastair cleared his throat. “Simply speaking? There was an attempt made to make a piece of equipment year 2000 compatible and that attempt resulted in the equipment failing.”

“Your equipment, sir? Are you saying this is something ILS did?”

The reporter leaned forward.

“No.” Alastair shook his head gravely. “This was done at the national carrier level, although we were made aware of the fact that it was in process.” He shifted. “They’ve been working throughout the night to correct the problem, but it’s very complex.”

“Mr. McLean, I don’t think I need to tell you what kind of impact this is having. Is this what we can expect? Is this an early example of what the year 2000 is going to be like?” the reporter asked. “We have several representatives on the line with us who would like to discuss this with you.

People who have some very serious concerns.”

“Well, certainly, we can discuss the issues.” Alastair looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I can’t say I can answer for an entire industry, however, and an isolated incident like this shouldn’t be taken as—”

“But you are the largest provider of interbanking services, are you not?”

“Yes, that’s true, but—”

“Then, Mr. McLean, effectively you can speak for the industry, because you’re being paid to make sure Americans aren’t impacted by the changes, aren’t you?”

“I can speak for ILS, yes.” Alastair sighed. “And review what we are doing towards that end, while we work on getting further status on the problem at hand.”

Dar smiled, flipped her phone open, and dialed her boss’s cell number by memory.

Alastair looked down, then interrupted the reporter in mid-word.

“Excuse me a minute, David. This might be the information I requested for you.”

Then she heard the phone answer. “Good morning,” Dar drawled softly into the phone. “Nice tie.”

“Dar, I’m on the air and this guy’s about to nail me,” her boss whispered.

“I know. We’re up. I moved them over to the new network.”

Silence. She watched the smile spread across the face on the screen, which was half turned to hear her conversation. Alastair closed the phone without a further word, then straightened, and tightened his tie a bit, the twinkle back in his eyes. Dar turned the sound up, wondering what he was going to say.

“As I was asking, Mr. McLean, what exactly does ILS intend to do about this crisis?” the reporter asked. “Hundreds of thousands of paychecks are on the line and citizens up and down the East Coast are unable to access their own money.”


Eye of the Storm 335

“Well, David,” Alastair responded. “Fortunately, we are lucky to have one of the most talented minds in the business as our CIO, and that phone call was just informing me ILS has rerouted around the problem and brought everything up on our own, brand new, internal network.” If he’d had suspenders, Dar was sure, he’d have stuck his thumbs in them and smirked. As it was, he gave a good impression of doing that anyway.

The reporter was definitely taken aback. He shuffled a few papers.

“That’s great news,” he temporized, then read something off a nearby prompter. “Yes, as a matter of fact, we just got word from Interbank that they’ve started restoring service.” He looked down at a slip of paper handed to him. “And that would be your CIO, Dar Roberts, is that right?”

“Hey. He’s talking about you?” Andrew was leaning against the wall, watching in fascination.

“He’s talking about me.” Dar slumped in her chair and exchanged a high five with Kerry. “We tried a dozen things with the company that ran that switch, but nothing worked. We had to end up rewiring everything and putting it on our network. We must have breached ten contracts in the process.”

Cheering was heard from the screen as people were shown clustering eagerly around the cash machines.

“Sad commentary on society,” Ceci murmured. “Almost Pavlovian, really.”

“You know,” Kerry got up and collapsed on the couch, “I don’t get to see the results of my labors quite so graphically most of the time.”

“No,” Dar agreed, standing up and stretching her body out, wincing at a painful knot on her back. “Want me to get more coffee?”

Kerry stuck her tongue out. “Any more of that and it’s going to come out my ears.” She peered at the screen as she heard the senate hearings mentioned. “Oh…hot dog. Yes!” She wriggled on her back and kicked her feet out.

“Postponed?” Ceci smiled at the blonde woman’s unrestrained joy.

“Only until this afternoon,” Dar grumbled.

“I don’t care. I get to take a nap.” Kerry stifled a yawn. “I’m so tired, I’d take an hour if I could get it.” The phone rang, and she moaned.

“No…no…go away.”

Dar reached over and picked it up. “Hello?”

“Looking for Kerry Stuart,” the voice came back, brisk and businesslike.

“She’s sleeping,” Dar replied.

“Well, we’ve got a breakfast date.”

“Not today.”

“Okay, look here Ms.—”

“Roberts. Dar Roberts. I’m Kerry’s boss and I’m telling you she’s not available to meet this morning,” Dar told him crisply, then hung up.

“Who the hell was that?”

“A member of the press,” her mother told her. “Kerry fascinated them, for some reason.”


336 Melissa Good Dar walked to the window and peered out. “She makes good press.”

She leaned against the glass. “She’s bright, good looking, and articulate—

of course she fascinated them.”

“Hey.” Kerry felt the blood heat her face. “Can we not talk about me like I’m not here?”

Dar chuckled, then looked down as her cell phone rang. “Hello?”

“I love you.”

Dar chuckled again. “Well, thank you Alastair, but it was a group effort.”

“No, really, Dar. That was the most exquisite timing and it was much appreciated.” Alastair sounded profoundly relieved. “I don’t care how many contracts you busted, it was worth it to see the smug look slide right off that pig bastard’s face.” He cleared his throat. “Ah. I’ve had a request to get you on for an interview.”

“Now?”

“Well, timing is everything, Dar,” her boss coaxed. “The positive press is a good thing, especially right now.” He left the thought hanging.

Dar sighed. “Between the press wanting to talk to me and the press wanting to talk to Kerry, we’re liable to get more publicity this week than we can handle.”

There was a moment’s quiet. “Ah…hmm,” the CEO murmured. “I forgot she was testifying this week. Her father’s no friend of ours.”

And if they tie it all together, it’ll be tabloid heaven. “Yeah.” Dar exhaled.

“This could get tricky.”

A drumming of fingers. “All right. Let me get Andrea in on it. I’ll have her give you a call to coordinate, Dar. I don’t think we can avoid the interview, and it’s a good moment for it, but we have to be aware of what might fall out if the press starts sniffing around.” His voice became brisk.

“And if it does, it does. Our public policy is written clearly enough.

Andrea can spin it positive, us being so progressive and all that.”

Dar snorted.

“Yes, well, you can’t turn a pig into silk lingerie overnight, my friend.”

“You better warn the board,” Dar responded quietly. “The very issue we talked about yesterday might be moot.”

Alastair sighed. “Think positive, willya, Dar? At least we can see this coming.”

“Yeah,” Dar acknowledged. “Well, have Andi call me, all right?” She hung up and let the phone drop to her thigh, then she turned to face the three pairs of curious eyes on her. “Ker, I think we need to talk.”

Green eyes peered at her over the couch back in apprehension.

“We’re about to become poster children, aren’t we?”

Thunder rolled for an answer.


Chapter

Thirty-six

DAR GLANCED AT herself in the mirror, adjusting the collar of her silk shirt and brushing a speck of dust from the shoulder of her jacket.

The interview had been set up faster than she’d expected, and she’d just had time to take a quick nap and get a shower before she had to get ready for it.

Kerry was on her way to the Senate chambers already, with Andrew as an escort. Dar hoped her father would behave himself and not do something irreversible.

Like slug Senator Stuart, for instance, something Dar herself dearly wished she could do. She wished the hearings were over, or at least Kerry’s part in them, so they could go home and regroup and get things back into a more normal order.

Maybe we could take a few days off. Dar regarded the tired blue eyes looking back at her. Long weekend? Maybe take a Friday, and a Monday, and drive down to the Keys, stay at one of the little places out near the beach…hey.

Dar blinked. Yeah. Maybe for Kerry’s birthday, which was coming up.

Which reminded her. Presents were in order, if she could shake Kerry off long enough to go shopping on her own.

Or figure out what to get. With a sigh, she looked at her reflection one more time, then turned as she caught her mother’s image in the glass watching her. They looked at each other for a moment in awkward silence. “Thought you went with Dad,” Dar finally said, turning and folding her arms over her chest self-consciously.

Cecilia looked like she wished that were the case. “He thought I should stay here, and um…help out if you needed anything.”