"Okay." The guide reappeared, with two of his buddies carrying a clipboard and a pile of bags. "I've got your shirts and your guaranteed frameable certificates here...anyone interested in getting the video? We've got it inside, and it's just twenty bucks. The money goes toward the marine sciences institute here, so we can keep doing these kinds of services."

"We'll take one," Kerry spoke up ahead of the others, who agreed and nodded.

"Great." The man smiled at her. "Hey listen, did any of you see anything weird happen in the tank? Like around the windows to the restaurant?"

Kerry felt Dar inhale, and she instinctively took a step closer to her, caught flatfooted by this new danger of revelation. Had any of the others seen them? And if they had, would they tell? She let her eyes slowly drift around the group, and then fastened them back on the guide.

Everyone had a puzzled look. Even Dar had manufactured a nice one, cocking her dark head to one side and lowering her eyebrows.

"Okay, well, I didn't see anything either, but somebody inside the restaurant swears they had someone scare the poo out of a couple of people at one of the window tables, so...I had to ask. Probably was a fish." The guide dismissed the entire affair, and went about passing out their goodie bags.

"Whew," Kerry muttered under her breath.

"Mm." Dar returned the guide's smile and took her booty. "Thanks...that was great."

"Hey, thanks yourself! You were great," the guide responded. "You were a real trooper with the kids. They loved ya! Got any yourself?"

"Just a dog," Dar responded. "Glad I was a hit."

Kerry took her bag. "It was really fantastic," she complimented the guide. "I had a great time."

"You're a good diver," the man responded. "You've got great buoyancy control. You dive a lot huh?"

"I do, yes," Kerry agreed. "Mostly in the Caribbean and South Atlantic." She smiled at him. "This was really cool."

"Thanks! Tell all your friends." The man smiled back, and moved on. "Your tapes'll be out in a minute, and after that, my buddy John here will take you back out to the lobby. Hope you all had a great time!"

"Yes!" the group responded in a chorus.

Dar rested her forearm on Kerry's shoulder, and they both relaxed as the guide left and the rest of the group milled around waiting for their videos. "This was nice," she remarked. "Totally Disneyfied, but nice."

"Uh huh," Kerry agreed. "And at least they don't pipe "It's a Small World" at you through underwater speakers." She guided Dar toward the doors, where a new staffer had appeared with a stack of plastic videotape cases. "C'mon, let's go."

Dar took the tape from the woman and they escaped into the Living Seas, blending into the sparse crowd and heading for the exit. As they passed through the doors, Shari and Michelle entered from the other direction, pausing to look around intently before moving on.





Chapter Four



DAR DIDN'T EVEN bother with the front door this time. She pulled the Lexus around to the back and parked in the loading dock, hopping out and slamming the door as Kerry did the same. They strolled over to the entrance in companionable silence and ducked inside.

It was much less chaotic and much more organized, Dar noticed at once. She paced slowly down the aisles of now completed booths, giving the odd security guards now on duty an amiable look as she passed them.

The ILS booth was in the center of the room, and she circled it entirely once before she entered the neatly made up space. "Nice," she commented to Kerry, who was checking out the locked case full of routers and switches. "Everything look good?"

Kerry walked to one of the sets and brought it up, coding in her password and running a few quick commands. "Looks very good," she said. "Decent throughput."

Dar leaned against the center column with her hands in her shorts pockets, admiring the contrast of Kerry's sun-gilded skin against the white cotton of her shirt. The sleeves were rolled up, and the shirt was tucked into her worn denim shorts and Dar found the whole picture quite appealing. "Know what?" she drawled.

"What?" Kerry looked up inquisitively.

"You're gorgeous."

Kerry's sunburn deepened several shades, and she glanced around the room before she produced a grin. "Um...thanks," she murmured. "What brought that on?"

Dar shrugged. "Merely an observation. Are we getting a two meg download?"

Kerry blinked. "What?" Her brows creased for a long moment before she realized what Dar was talking about. "Oh...um." She looked back at the screen in confusion, and then punched a few more keys. "One point eight."

"Good enough," her partner decided. "We're streaming locally anyway. At least I hope we are. Check to see if the marketing nitwits downloaded the mpegs." She wandered over to the far side of the booth, examining the colorful brochures curiously as Kerry bent over the console again.

A door slammed. Dar lifted her head at the sound, turning and peering across the center toward the front of the room. She spotted the two figures and barely stifled the impulse to grab Kerry and disappear, reasoning that they'd have to face off against their two adversaries sooner or later.

But there was no point in rushing the confrontation, so she merely went back to examining the marketing literature.

"Dar?" Kerry's low voice reached her.

"I know," Dar answered calmly. "Just do your thing."

Kerry sat down in the nearest seat and continued her parsing, examining the file structures of the presentations they'd sent out from the office earlier that day. Her ears were perked, though, as she listened to the footsteps wandering through the hall, which would, she knew, eventually end up right where they were.

She grinned a little, and cracked her knuckles.

MICHELLE STOPPED AS she reached the edge of the booth and waited for the two women inside it to look up.

When they didn't, she cleared her throat. "Well, well."

Kerry glanced up from her screen. "Oh, hi." She greeted their guest cordially. "C'mon in."

Michelle availed herself of the invitation and stepped inside the booth, circling the desk Kerry was at and taking a seat on the edge of the console. "Hello, Dar." She peered at the booth's second occupant and paused.

"Hi." Dar rested her chin on her fist and looked up briefly, then went back to studying the settings she had been investigating. "How's it going?"

Somehow, it wasn't the reception Michelle seemed to have been expecting. "Damned good, actually. Bet you're surprised to see me here."

"Not really." Kerry finished checking her screen, and moved to another one. "You guys get everything taken care of? We heard there were some problems last night. I thought your booth looked pretty well together."

"Our booth?"

"Mmhm..." Kerry indicated the Telegenics display a few rows down. "I like the LCD scrolling--it's nice." She tapped a few keys, and clicked twice with her mouse, reviewing the results. "There, that's better. Did you adjust that, Dar?"

"Uh huh," Dar responded. "Put prioritization in and filtered out some of Mark's crap."

"So you liked our stuff, huh?" Michelle decided to go with the flow of the conversation. "Glad to hear that. We worked hard on it, just like we've been working hard on getting new accounts around here. You must have noticed that too."

Kerry sat back and gazed thoughtfully at Michelle, then she turned her eyes to Dar, who had looked up and was now twiddling her thumbs at her workstation. Dar shrugged. "Are you? Well, congrats, then," she replied.

"So, you didn't notice we took eight of your accounts from here?" Shari stepped around the pylon and confronted them, leaning on the counter right above where Dar was sitting. "Hello, Dar."

"Hi," Dar responded, without budging an inch. "Business is business, I figure. You win some, you lose some." She tipped her head back, meeting Shari's eyes evenly, feeling her guts clench.

After a long moment, Shari looked away first, ostensibly turning her attention to Kerry. "That the way you see it too, Ms. Stuart?"

"Is there any other way?" Kerry queried. "We've got lots of competitors."

Michelle and Shari exchanged quick glances. "Well, that's great," Michelle said. "Frankly, we were hoping you'd feel that way. I mean, yes, we're competitors, but we've all got a lot in common, don't we? It'd be nice to do some friendly networking for a change." She smiled at them. "Matter of fact, we were hoping you both would be here today. We checked in a few times, but didn't see you around."

"Nah." Dar leaned back and extended her long legs, crossing them casually at the ankles. "We came in and did our part last night. We've been relaxing all day."

"At the parks?" Michelle smiled again.

"Like you were, huh?" Kerry indicated the Goofy shirts they were wearing. "It was a beautiful day, wasn't it?"

Shari glanced down at herself, and her face twisted into a half grimace. "Yeah, well, we love shopping," she muttered. "Never can have too many of these."

Dar slid her hand up, covering the grin that threatened to appear on her face.

"Listen." Michelle wrested control of the conversation back. "We really dropped by to make sure things were ready before we headed back to our hotel. You two free for breakfast tomorrow? Maybe we can chat then."

I'd rather eat Donald Duck jello eggs on toast with a pack of mimes. Kerry hesitated, trying to recall what their schedule was for the following day. The convention started at ten, so... She looked at Dar, reading the resigned set of her eyebrows and the faint twitch on either side of her mouth.

Kerry wrinkled her nose slightly, and saw the wry twinkle appear in Dar's eyes. "I think we're free for breakfast, aren't we? Unless you promised Marketing we'd meet with them." She gracefully gave Dar an out anyway, and waited for her decision.

"I can't take Eleanor before coffee," Dar replied. "Yeah, we're free." She glanced up at Shari. "Where are you staying?"

"The Sheraton across from here," Shari answered warily. "But their restaurant is pitiful."

"Ours isn't," Kerry said. "Why don't you meet us there? It's the Grand Floridian." She flipped off the monitor she'd been working at and stood up. "They've got great banana stuffed French toast." She let her hands come to rest on her hips and cocked her head at them. "Eight all right? We get up early."

Dar folded her arms over her chest, content to let Kerry hack and slash her way through with her charmingly piratical good manners. "Yeah, that's early enough to miss the characters. I don't want to scare Pluto again," she remarked with an easy grin.

Michelle appeared as though she'd sucked on a sour orange. "Sure," she finally agreed. "We'll meet you there." She got up and stepped out of the booth, giving Shari a backhanded slap on the arm. "C'mon. Let's get out of here."

Kerry perched next to Dar's seat and watched them leave, casually leaning her wrist on her partner's shoulder. "I think we scored," she remarked as they walked through the entrance and out of sight. "You were right, Dar. That was exactly how to handle them. Good call."

"Oh yeah." Dar closed down her connection and stood, stretching her body out. "Round one to Roberts and Stuart, Ding ding," she added. "But now we've got round two at eight a.m. tomorrow."

"Yeah." Kerry sighed. "What a way to ruin perfectly good French toast." She slipped her arm around Dar's waist as they walked together toward the rear door. "You know, Dar, I really don't like Shari."

"Oh, really?" Dar opened the back door and held it as they exited.

"Really." Kerry took a breath of the warm, humid night air. "In fact, I'd like to take a set of cat five crimpers and clamp the end of her nose with them."

Dar looked at her. One eyebrow lifted. "What would that do?"

"Make her scream like a cat in a blender," Kerry replied, with a firm nod. "Start my day off just right."

Dar's nostrils flared. "Remind me not to piss you off, okay?" She draped an arm over Kerry's shoulders.

Kerry chuckled and shook her head.

"THANKS." KERRY SCRIBBLED her name on the room service check and handed it back to the waiter, then closed the door after him as he slipped out into the hallway. On the table near the window he'd left a tray, which had a large white china pot, two cups, and a plate full of chocolate dipped strawberries.