Part 44 (1/2)

Kerry exhaled.

”Dar's taking it pretty hard, huh?” Charlie asked.

”Yeah.” Kerry glanced at him shyly. ”She hates being caught by surprise.” Her eyebrows contracted together. ”So do I, actually.”

”Life does that.” Charlie stuffed the last s.h.i.+rt into the small, battered canvas bag and slung it over his shoulder. ”She done all right. Guy's nutters.” He limped slowly toward the door. ”Whole thing's nutters.”

”Well, I thought so.” Kerry opened the door for him and followed him out. ”But Dar's pretty big into situational responsibility.”

Charlie grunted. ”Just like her daddy.”

Kerry thought about that. ”That's true,” she mused. ”Dad does like to make sure everything's just so.” She looked up to see Charlie glancing back at her. ”I appreciate that about him. I'm glad Dar inherited it.”

”He put up with you calling him that?” The ex-sailor seemed amused.

”What?” Kerry asked. ”Dad?”

Charlie nodded.

”Sure.” Kerry walked slowly next to him. ”I don't have a very good relations.h.i.+p with my own family. Dar's folks treat me more like a daughter than my parents ever did, and they know I love them for that.” She found a surprising lump in her throat and had to take a moment to swallow it. ”Besides, I never got the feeling he minded being a daddy.”

”No.” The older man smiled briefly. ”Andy wore one of Dar's nappy pins on his gear for years, and n.o.body dared say boo to him about it.”

258*

Kerry had to smile at the vision. ”She'll be all right,” she a.s.sured him. ”She just has to finish kicking herself, and then we can figure out what the heck we're going to do about this mess.” Her hand curled around the door handle at the end of the corridor and she pulled it open. ”I'll feel a lot better when we're back on the boat, though.”

”You and me both, Kerry.” Charlie limped toward the front door of the hospital. Dar's distinctive form was visible through the half gla.s.s. ”Me and Bud have some friends out here. Maybe we can get some help from them.”

They emerged into the warmth. Dar was standing with her hands in her pockets, her sungla.s.ses effectively hiding her eyes. A battered cab was waiting nearby.

Kerry followed Dar over to the cab and got in, while Dar held the door open so Charlie could ease gingerly into the front seat.

Dar joined Kerry in the back and they drove off, navigating the winding streets in silence.

DAR WENT BEHIND the galley counter and poured herself a gla.s.s of milk, then went into the bathroom and took a couple of aspirin from the bottle in the medicine chest. She swallowed them as she emerged to rejoin Kerry and Charlie in the living s.p.a.ce of the boat. Kerry patted the seat next to her on the couch, and Dar detoured from the chair she'd been aiming for and settled next to her partner instead. Now that the shock had worn off a bit, and despite the headache she'd developed, her problem-solving instincts were beginning to kick in again. Facts were starting to sort themselves out from the chaos.

”Okay.” Dar took a sip of milk. ”First off, Wharton's got no home base here in the islands, right?”

”Not that we know of, no.” Kerry had the laptop fired up and had been doing some quick data searches. ”Not that he couldn't be anywhere,” she added with a sigh.

”True,” Dar agreed. ”But if he's on the islands somewhere, we should be able to find a record of him doing business.” She looked over Kerry's shoulder. ”See who has the telecom contract for St.

Thomas.”

Kerry's fingers moved and then she pointed. ”There.”

”Do we have a reciprocal with them?”

Dar's voice had started sounding more normal, and Kerry took a moment to be grateful for that as she searched out the information her lover was asking for. ”Better.” She suppressed a smile. ”We're the outsource.”

”Okay.” Dar nodded. ”Give me the laptop.”

She traded her milk for the machine and settled it onto her lap.*259 ”All right. Let's start solving this problem by using our heads instead of our a.s.ses for a change.” She started up her programming language and began constructing a script. ”I'll capture traffic to Wharton's area code and match it against his telco's records database.”

”What'll that tell you?” Charlie asked curiously. ”We don't much care, do we? They ain't sent Bud all the way over there, did they?”

Dar shook her head. ”Probably not. But if we get a hit on Wharton's number, coming from this island, chances are the originating number is DeSalliers'.”

”He probably has a cell,” Kerry stated quietly.

”If he does, it's probably a sat cell like ours.” Dar finished her task, then opened a connection to the managed switches and inserted the program into place. ”Pretty simple,” she muttered. ”I'll just have it dump to a log, and email me with it every hour.”

”Is all that legal?” Charlie inquired.

Dar glanced up at him. ”What, data parsing? Technically it's all part of the internetwork I'm paid to manage, so if you mean do I legitimately have access, yes. Should I be dipping into that data stream for my own purposes? No.”

”Oh.”

Dar continued to type. ”The cops can request this, with a court order. But we can't call the cops and we're not in a position to pet.i.tion the courts, so I'm just doing what I have to do.” She opened another window and considered it, drumming her fingers lightly on the keys. ”Let 'em sue me.”

”a.s.suming we find it, what are we going to do with the information?” Kerry asked. ”Chances are, when he calls back, he'll tell us where to meet him anyway.”

”True,” Dar agreed absently. ”But we've been waiting for someone to make the next move the entire week. I'm over it. I want control back.” She opened her cell phone and typed a number off the back into the new script she was building. ”When he calls me, this'll locate him to his nearest relay point station.” She linked the script to a mapping module.

”Won't do no good to call the cops anyhow,” Charlie remarked.

”He'll just buy 'em, if he hasn't already.”

”Like the pirates have?” Dar asked without missing a beat.

”Just before he left, Bud was fixing to tell us about your friends.”

She felt Kerry stiffen in surprise next to her, heard the faint hiss of indrawn breath.

Charlie turned red, and directed his eyes to the deck of the boat. 'd.a.m.n,” he muttered softly. ”I know you ain't understanding that at all, huh?”

Dar felt very little satisfaction in her guess being on the mark.

260*

She finished her program and compiled it, finding it very soothing to her jangled nerves to be doing something at which she was comfortably competent. She had a brief, incongruous memory of her mother retreating to her easel after a stressful bout, losing herself in the canvas where she alone had control of what happened, and felt an odd sense of comprehension about that, finally.

”Understanding?” Kerry spoke up. ”So, you know those pirates?”

Charlie didn't answer for a bit. He flexed his hands, then rested them on his knees. ”It's not what you think,” he started off. ”Things are tough down here.”

Kerry tore her eyes off the coding Dar was doing and concentrated on their guest. ”And?” she prompted. ”That makes what they're doing okay?”

Charlie shrugged. ”Survival is what counts,” he said. ”Bunch of folks got together and kind of worked out a deal: if you had a little extra, you'd toss it in the kitty; and if you needed a little, you'd take.” He s.h.i.+fted, still gazing at the floor. ”Worked out okay.”