"Thanks," Dar replied graciously, giving the other three a brief nod as the moderator made introductions. "So what's the deal with this? We talking about IP v6, or something really earth shattering like the latest security holes in SNMP?"

"Eh...hah." The moderator finished putting some stools in place for his guests. "Well, securing our networks was the topic...ah yes."

"Mm." Dar claimed the last stool on one side and settled onto it, letting her eyes run idly over the crowd as the rest of the speakers got into place. She spotted Shari's distinctive features near the back but let her eyes pass right over her, settling instead on the blond woman now perched on a nearby booth.

Kerry gave her a thumbs up. Dar rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, but directed a wink her partner's way nonetheless.

"Okay, folks." The moderator clapped his hands. "Let's get this debate going."

"Debate?" Dar chuckled. "Eleanor screwed up again. She picked the wrong one of us."

John leaned closer. "Sorry, did you say something, Dar?"

"No," Dar replied.

"The question we're posing here..." The moderator glared surreptitiously at them. "Are our networks safe?" he asked. "With all the stuff we've been hearing in the news lately...Internet sites hacked, credit cards stolen, drive by hacking...are you all worried? Are your networks safe?"

Dar watched the speakers glance at each other, waiting to see who was going first. "That's an idiotic question." She threw out the sentence to stir up a little fun.

"Wh...what?" the moderator stammered.

"That's an idiotic question," Dar repeated, a little slower for him.

"Do you really think anyone here is going to stand up in front of potential customers and their peers and say 'why no...my network's a positive sieve! Thanks for bringing it up!"

The other men on the platform chuckled a little and John nodded, gesturing in Dar's direction. "Yeah, what she said."

Discomfited, the moderator cleared his throat. "Okay, okay, I see your point. But what if..." He paused. "Okay, what if I brought a hacker up here, onto the platform, and he said he could break into any of your networks. What would you say to him?"

The other four looked at each other, and then in unison, they looked at Dar.

"Want a job?" Dar remarked, with a grin.

The entire crowd started laughing.

"Ms. Roberts, it's a serious question." The moderator desperately tried to yank control back.

Dar got up and stuck her hands in the pockets of her skirt. "Of course it is," she replied. "We all pump a significant portion of our collective budgets into hardening our networks." A half tilt of her head. "But to answer your question, no."

"No?"

"No, nothing's ever perfect." Dar shook her head. "You can put machinery and manpower into it until you're blue in the face, but somewhere there's gonna be a hole. There's too many places where it's possible and sometimes out of your control."

John nodded again. "Dar's right," he said, and then paused. "Well, of course, because Dar's always right, and we all know it."

The crowd laughed again. Dar responded with a relatively gracious smile. Her eyes caught a motion at the back of the crowd; the distraction turning out to be Shari having a somewhat animated discussion with Michelle.

They were arguing. Dar's eyebrows hiked, as she caught a gesture in her direction. But Michelle got a firm hold on Shari's arm and started pulling her away.

Hm. Dar's eyes slid to her left, seeing Kerry's head turned in that direction.

"But you know, we really have made some strides in that area...let me go over some of them," John went on.

"Wait a minute," a stocky man in a light gray suit interjected. "Lemme ask...hey, lady."

Dar gazed at him.

"You really hire hackers?" the man asked. "I mean, that's a big story...that ILS hires hackers." He turned and got agreement from those next to him. "As a customer, I don't know how I feel about that."

"You ever been compromised?" Dar asked.

"No...I mean, not that I know of," the man replied.

"Like you'd tell them?" Shari's voice cut through the crowd.

Out of the corner of her eye, Dar saw Kerry slip down from her perch and start through the crowd like a determined miniature cyclone. The romance of the motion appealed to her, and the chuckle it caused brushed the sound of Shari's voice from her ears. "Of course we'd tell them," Dar answered the question in an unruffled tone. "We've never had to."

"You didn't answer my question," the man in gray accused.

"What's your question?" Dar turned the tables on him. "Are you asking if I ever knowingly hired someone who had deliberately broken into someone else's computer systems?"

"Yes."

"Sure," Dar answered.

The other men on the podium were shifting away from her, putting some distance between them as if to disassociate themselves from the very idea.

"But only if they were successful at it," she continued. "I only hire the best. That's why our network..." her eyes went over the room, "has never been compromised."

"Never?" John blurted.

"Never," Dar said, with quiet certainty.

"I thought you said no network was perfect?" the moderator broke in.

"I did," Dar said. "But ours is as perfect as I can make it and it's never been compromised." She folded her arms over her chest. "That's why I've never had to tell a customer they've been hacked. Contractually, and legally, I would definitely have to."

"Okay, so..." The moderator glanced at the restive crowd. "Well, that's quite a claim."

"G'wan. Give it a try." Dar threw the challenge out. "Anyone out there got the guts to take us on?"

She looked over to where Shari had been, but the area was now only a hole in the crowd. Kerry had, ominously, also disappeared. "We get blasted all the time for being expensive stuffed shirts. Well, you get what you pay for and security doesn't come cheap."

"Bet your security manager's not loving you at the moment, " John muttered.

Dar gave him an amused look. "He'd lick his chops at the challenge."

"Okay, folks." The moderator finally decided to wrest control back again. "So this turned out to be a pretty interesting subject after all."

"Very," the man in gray muttered.

"But I don't get it," one woman in the front addressed Dar. "I thought hackers were criminals."

"Depends," Dar said. "They can be, but the truth is we're facing serious attacks from people breaking the law, how responsible would it be of me not to have people who could counter them?"

The crowd was restless. The moderator edged over in front of them. "Okay. So, let's talk about some of the reports we've had lately about Trojans, huh?"

Dar sat down on her stool again and folded her arms. And that, she mused, would teach Eleanor to volunteer her, wouldn't it? She felt eyes on her, and she turned her head, not entirely surprised to find Peter Quest nearby, watching her, a grin on his face.

Now he didn't seem worried about hackers at all. While Dar, on the other hand, was worried about having to bail out a certain green eyed woman she dearly loved.

Time to end the debate.

THERE WERE TIMES, and this was one of them, that Kerry cursed the genetic dice throw that doomed her to a life nearly a foot shorter than her partner. She could see her quarry ahead of her, but as she squeezed through the last line of suited bodies and got into the clear, Shari and Michelle were nowhere to be found.

"Son of a bitch." Kerry stalked toward the booths, half listening to Dar's damning commentary behind her. The security discussion had started off badly and went down from there, and her boss's blithe confirmation that they hired hackers sure wasn't going to make her life any easier, but those were minor details.

Shari going out of her way to attack Dar wasn't. Kerry prowled the aisles, looking for the two women. As she passed her own booth, though, she paused. "Okay, wait a minute." She collected herself. "And what are you going to do when you hunt them down, Kerrison?" she asked "Start a cat fight? Bar room brawl in the trade show? That'll make headlines."

"Ma'am?" One of her techs scurried over, seeing her standing there. "Did you say something?"

Kerry sighed. "Nothing intelligent, no." But her eyes kept sweeping the hall anyway, half hoping she'd spot what she was looking for.

"Hey." Mark appeared. "Dar outed me!" He seemed amazed. "Did you hear that?"

Kerry leaned on the edge of the booth. "I heard it. So did everyone else. I know what I'm going to spend the next two weeks explaining." She sensed the crowd coming back into the display area in back of her. Without turning she knew Dar was heading her way.

It was a really weird feeling. To test it, Kerry casually turned her head just as Dar cleared the booths one aisle over and came into view. She watched a muted look of relief cross her partner's face on seeing her, and she felt a little sheepish as Dar hopped up onto the platform with her. "Hi."

"Hi." Dar glanced around. "You okay?"

Kerry cleared her throat gently. "If you mean, did I flatten anyone recently, no," she muttered under her breath. "Boy, did I feel like it. I think you'd better get me out of here before my hormones land us in court."

"Nah." Dar grinned. "I'm gonna put you in a tank top with the words "My bodyguard" right across your chest." She blew a lock of dark hair out of her eyes. "Okay, I think I botched that pretty big time. Sorry."

"Eh." Kerry indicated Mark, who was studying a console across the booth. "Most of our clients have worked with Mark for years. It's not going to be that big a deal. I'll take care of it." She laid her hand on Dar's shoulder. "By the time I'm done, you'll have started the newest trend in IT hiring."

Eleanor hurried into the booth from the other side, hauling up as she spotted Dar. "Okay, you win!" She held up both hands. "Next time, I'll stick to passing out ILS pens for advertising!"

"Dar!" Jose arrived from the opposite direction, sweating. "Jesu! Could you have warned us you were going to do that? Dios Mio!"

Dar sniffed. "Got us attention," she remarked. "Aren't you the one who's always says any publicity is good?"

They certainly were becoming the center of attention quickly. The booth was surrounded by curious onlookers, as well as customers now clamoring for attention. The man in gray pushed his way forward, heading right for Dar.

"Is this where I take off and let you all clean up my mess?" Dar inquired, with a faint smirk.

Eleanor sighed.

"Just kidding." Dar faced the crowd and held her own hands up. "Okay, folks. Settle down."

"Dar..."

"I've got it," Dar told her quietly. "Keep an eye out for our friends. If you see 'em..."

"Go into my WWF impersonation?" Kerry joked.

Dar turned and regarded her with a puzzled expression. "You going for a panda?"

"Panda?"

"Never mind." Dar turned back to the crowd. "All right. Let's put this in perspective, shall we?" She raised her voice. "How many people here believe police officers always obey traffic laws?"

"What?" the man in gray spluttered. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Raise your hands." Dar ignored him. "C'mon."

"How can you seriously expect us to trust someone who breaks the law? The man stubbornly kept in her face. "Huh?"

Dar gazed at him. "I'm from Miami," she reminded him with a slight grin. "We elect felons there."

"Dar." Eleanor was getting nervous.

Mark wandered over. "Hey, Mr. T!" he greeted the man in gray. "How's that website, still stable?"

The man frowned. "Um...yes, fine, fine, Mark. Listen, we can discuss that later. Right now I want some answers about this hacker thing."

Mark leaned over the edge of the booth and lowered his voice. "Hey, Mr. T?"

Annoyed, the man glared at him. "I said..."

"I'm the hacker." Mark indicated his own chest. "Only I'm like the number two, if you know what I mean." His thumb inched toward Dar's towering form. "You're pretty safe. Don't sweat it."

The man in gray goggled at him.

"Okay, so let's talk about security." Another man pushed forward. "I don't give a damn who you hire. You say you can't be broken into? My site's been taken offline three times in two months. Tell me how I can stop it."

"Hire us." Dar perched on the corner of the counter, letting her hands rest on her thigh as she settled down in a more comfortable element. Her comment drew a few laughs, and she smiled in response. "Seriously. It's a lot of intensive effort, and a damn substantial budget. You can't ever stop...there's no time where you can take a breath and say we're okay."