to the best they have, and have them stock it with the works.”

“Si.” Maria smiled. “I will do that, Dar.” She glanced at the door, where voices were growing louder. “Now, I think you maybe will change, yes?”

“Yeah.” Dar grimaced and swung the door closed after her.

“Before they start snapping pictures.”

KERRY TOOK A deep breath as she walked down the airline ramp from the plane. It had been two uneventful flights, and now that she was finally there, she wished they’d been longer. The white of the ramp gave way to dull brown brick and the familiar sights of the airport near her home.

A quick glance around told her she wasn’t being met, not that she’d expected to be since she hadn’t informed Angie of her flight plans, but part of her felt a tiny bit disappointed, all the same. On second thought, maybe that was for the best, Kerry decided, as she shouldered her bag and headed off towards the rental car counter.

Best for me to do this on my terms, right? Isn’t that what I told Dar?

She thought about that as she walked. Keeping a little distance from everyone seemed like a good plan, especially since tensions would be high, the press would probably be present, and the last thing anyone needed was a family spat right in the middle of a crisis.

In fact, on the way up, not going at all had crossed her mind several times. It was only Angie’s quiet finality that had pushed her forward, knowing in her heart that staying away and letting her father die without at least saying goodbye to him was something she just wasn’t capable of.

Or am I?

Kerry sighed unhappily and stepped up to the counter. “I’d like a car, please.” She’d picked the chain ILS usually used from habit.

“For how many days, ma’am?” the young man behind the counter asked politely.

Good question. “A week.” Kerry supplied her credit card and Florida driver’s license.

“Thanks.” The man took them and keyed in something, then paused, evidently surprised at something. “Oh, Ms. Stuart. We already have a reservation here for you.” He handed back her card. “ILS is taking care of it.”

One of Kerry’s eyebrows lifted. “They are, huh?” She found herself unable to be upset with Dar. “Okay.” She took the prof-40 Melissa Good fered keys and went outside, wincing as the cold wind bit her face. “Ugh. Forgot about that.”

She tugged her jacket closed and zipped it, then searched out her assigned car and opened the trunk to toss in her bag. Hospital first, she decided. Let’s find out the bad news. She got in the car, then drove carefully out of the parking lot and onto the icy streets.

It wasn’t that big a town and the drive to the hospital was fairly short. At midday, the place didn’t seem that busy, and she parked in the half empty visitor’s lot. She spotted a news truck parked near the back entrance, though, and several cars haphaz-ardly pulled up near it, and her suspicions were confirmed when she entered the main doors and saw the cluster of men and women, complete with cameras, standing nearby.

Will they recognize me? she wondered. The national news people had pegged her in DC, but it had taken a while, and these locals hadn’t seen her in a few years, if at all, given the turnover rate.

Certainly, if they were old timers, they wouldn’t expect the girl they’d known in lace blouses and knee length skirts, with carefully styled hair and a model slim build, to have morphed into the muscular figure in jeans and a leather jacket she knew she presented today.

Her attitude had changed as well. Kerry had studied Dar’s use of her considerable charisma and personal energy when she interacted with others, and she’d tried to inject a little of that dynamic into her own personality. Part of it was self confidence, which success at her job had given her, and part of it was an awareness of herself and her effect on other people. “Excuse me.”

She moved past the reporters with a polite nod.

They didn’t even give her a second glance. Kerry repressed a smile as she went to the reception desk. She waited for the woman behind the desk to look up, then leaned forward a little. “Could you tell me where in CCU Roger Stuart is?”

The woman gave her an immediate, guarded look, and glanced behind her at the reporters. “Are you family, ma’am?”

Kerry removed her driver’s license and showed it to the woman. “Yes.”

A quick look at the license, then at Kerry’s face, and the receptionist replied, “Hold on a moment,” as she got up and motioned for a guard. “George will take you up. George, CCU 4, okay?”

“Yes’m.” The tall, red haired guard nodded. “Come this way, please.”

Kerry followed the man through a restricted access door and down a long hallway to where a small elevator was located. Very Thicker Than Water 41

few people were in the hall, just two orderlies pushing beds and one man with an X-ray machine. She followed the guard into the elevator and waited while he inserted a key and pressed a floor.

“You part of the senator’s family?” the guard asked.

Kerry nodded. “Yes. He’s my father.”

“Hm.” The elevator reached its destination and he held the door for her. “Second alcove on your right, ma’am.”

Kerry stepped out and walked quietly across the tile floor.

Her heart pounded and shivers went up and down her spine. She could hear, faintly, the sounds of machinery around her—beeps and the gurgling of oxygen and it reminded her unpleasantly of Dar’s stay in the hospital down south.

Outside the room she paused, hearing voices. One was her mother’s. It didn’t sound good.

Oh boy. Kerry steeled herself, then took a deep breath and forced her legs to move forward into the room where a circle of strange, familiar faces ringed a bed full of lines and machines, and the almost hidden form she realized was her father.

Eyes shifted and looked at her, some in surprise, some in distress, as the doctor who’d been speaking broke off his speech and turned. “Are you part of the family here?”

It was a very awkward moment. Kerry had no idea what the real answer to that question was.

“That’s my daughter,” Cynthia Stuart murmured. “Please, go on, Doctor. Kerrison, come here.”

There wasn’t much else she could do. Kerry walked across the silent room to her mother’s side, shocked when her hand was grabbed and held in desperation. She felt Angie move closer to her as they turned and faced the somber looking man in the white coat.

“Ms. Stuart,” the doctor said gently, “we were just going over what we mean when we talk about a coma.”

DAR ALMOST HAD to laugh when she looked up to see Mark peeking cautiously around the door to her office. “Yes?” she growled.

“You…um…ready to review that firmware?” Mark asked.

“I’ve got my whole bunch of guys reviewing how something got upgraded and we missed it.”

She picked up her cup of steaming coffee and sipped it.

“Sure.” Now soberly dressed in her iron gray suit and silk shirt, she leaned back and watched as he entered with a clipboard. “So, how’d we do?”

Mark took a seat across from her. “I have no clue.” He 42 Melissa Good grinned briefly. “Here’s the network paths to the dump; I figured you’d know what to do with them.” He handed the clipboard to Dar. “There you go.”

“Thanks.” Dar accepted it and reviewed the page, then glanced up to catch Mark intently studying her. One of her eyebrows lifted. “Something wrong?”

He hesitated, then gave her a slight shrug. “Didn’t expect to see you here so early.”

“Earlier I start, earlier Alastair has his answer,” Dar replied.

“Why don’t you take off?”

“I got some sleep in the center,” Mark said. “What about you?”

Dar sighed. “Kerry had to fly up to see her family. Wasn’t much time to sleep.”

Mark nodded. “I saw on the newscast he was sick. Stroke, they said, right?”

“Yeah.”

“That sucks,” Mark said. “I know stuff is all screwed up between her and her family, but it still sucks.” He glanced around.

“Listen, Dar, if you want to head up there, I can try and…”

It was almost funny. Dar rubbed her temples with the tips of her fingers and wondered how she had managed to get her entire staff to morph overnight into solicitous nannies. “Mark, get your ass out of here and go figure out how the hell we slipped up by not testing that new release before it got put into production.

Something got missed.” She pinned him with a look. “Now!”

He jumped. “Okay.” One hand lifted. “Okay, I get the message, boss. No problem.” He slid out of the chair and ducked around the door, leaving Dar in peace.

Silence settled for a moment before she pulled her keyboard in front of her and called up the files, glad of the large, flat screen with its crisp display. However, tired as she was, she couldn’t avoid acknowledging the fuzziness of the characters unless she squinted at them, and she admitted to herself that her long deferred trip to the optometrist’s had to be well and truly scheduled.

Damn. Her lips quirked in annoyance. The hell if I want to wear glasses. A scowl appeared as she started up her analysis program.

Or contact lenses.

Hey. She studied the screen for a moment, then tapped it with one long finger. If I only need the blasted things when I look at the monitor… A sly grin crossed her face. Why not just have whatever adjustment I need built into a screen shield?

“Yeah.” Dar felt a little more cheerful. She settled back and reviewed the files. As the screen filled with data, she searched for Thicker Than Water 43

patterns, trying to ignore the growing unease inside her guts.

THE WAITING ROOM for the critical care unit was small and discreet, tucked away behind the medical area and reserved for the families of the patients who were sequestered there. Kerry cradled her cup in her hands, using the coffee’s mottled surface as a concentration point while she thought.

My father is dying.

Kerry felt the styrofoam surface under her fingers dent slightly as she flexed her hands. The interruption of blood supply due to the stroke had hit in the worst place imaginable—the parts of his brain that kept him alive and breathing without assistance from the noisy machines that dominated the space he was in. The machines that were the only thing keeping him alive.

Around her, the family was seated in grim silence. Her mother, breathing in short, sobbing gasps, sat between Kerry and Angie. Michael was on the other side of her, nervously twisting a tri-fold napkin into a thin, tight line. Richard paced back and forth on the far side of the room, where one of her aunts also sat with an uncle. Nobody wanted to talk.

Kerry knew she was the focus of uneasy attention. She’d heard the ugly whispers as they’d left the CCU unit and walked down the hall: how she didn’t belong there, how her father had hated her. How it was her fault—causing the strain he’d been under that finally got to him.

Kerry couldn’t even lie to herself and say it wasn’t true, because she knew at some level it was. She’d come to terms with that in her heart, during that week they’d spent in Key West after the hearings. Come to terms with the fact that she’d done what she’d done for the reasons she’d done it, and reluctantly accepted that if she’d had to make the decision all over again, she probably wouldn’t have done it.

But she had, and good or bad, she had to live with that decision for the rest of her life. She’d always held out a faint hope that someday, somehow, after enough time had passed, she’d have a chance to go home and maybe she could sit down with her father and just…talk.

Kerry drew in a breath, feeling the finality of the moment.

There will be no chance of talking now. The doctor had been gentle and kind, but he’d held out no false hope to them. He’d just given them some time to sit down and absorb the truth, and told them of their limited options. The machines could not give him a life again, but they could keep him alive; did they want them to?

Kerry was surprised to feel tears gathering behind her eyes.


44 Melissa Good Surprised that losing him hurt as much as it did—after all that had happened and everything that had come between them, he was still her father.

“Mama.” Angie’s voice was shaky. “Can I get you a drink?”