Stormwatch Chapter 03

©

2025 Duleigh Lawrence-Townshend. All rights reserved. The author asserts the right to be identified as the author of this story for all portions. All characters are original. Any resemblance to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental. This story or any part thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the expressed written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a review or commentary.

This is an all new addition to the Stormwatch series. If you haven't read

Stormwatch Chapter 1

or

Stormwatch Chapter 2

, please do. Both chapters are updates to existing chapters with 50% new material in each, and a corrected timeline. Chapter 3 is all new and hopefully rekindles the joy of the series.

For comments, questions, or merchandise, please contact the author.

STORMWATCH Chapter 3

Springville in the Spring

"Where ya been Josh?" asked Terri McCarthy as she walked in through the back entrance of the Andalon Data Center and past Josh Gravely's office.

Josh Gravely was buried behind his four monitors as he reviewed the health of the server farm in the data center. "I took some time off," he said as he continued to type. He had been gone four business days and was expecting to see his precious servers in a smoldering heap. He was surprised to find that all were running fine and the new servers that he configured for the expansion of services to Bison Radiology, a chain of radiology clinics, were up and running.

"Hell, you've taken most of a week off," insisted Terri. Her constant sidekick, Jen Combs, nodded in agreement.

"I was in this building for one hundred hours straight," said Josh without looking up from his spreadsheet.

"I heard a rumor that Miss von Köster was here too," whispered Terri and she wagged her eyebrows. "Did she set you up with one of her friends?"

"No," which was true. "I saw Miss von Köster in her SUV ready to leave after Mister Friedman closed the building," which was also true. He didn't mention that he escorted Veronica back into the building an hour later.

"So what did you do the whole time you were in here?"

"Me? I spent the time wondering whose apartment you passed out in."

"Wouldn't you like to know," grinned Terri.

Josh merely pointed to two stacks of boxes in the corner. In one stack, each box had a bright yellow tag, and in the other stack, the boxes all had a bright green tag on them. "There's your equipment for Bison Radiology. The yellow tags go to North Tonawanda, the green tags are for the Bailey Avenue downtown office."

"How will we know which is which?" whined Terri. "How do we know where they go?" She was trying to get under Josh's skin and was doing an excellent job of it.

"By double checking the serial numbers before putting them in your car," said Josh, now understanding why Terri's boss Eli always complained of headaches. "Take Cole and Rasheed with you, and call when you're racked up and ready to power up." He handed Jen a couple of notebooks containing the entire set up plan. Anthony called them MOPs, Method of Procedure, but Josh called them checklists. "I want these checked off as you go and checked off in the on-line document so I know where you are at in the procedure."

"Why? Cause you don't trust us?" insisted Terri.

"It's for the betting pool," said Josh without looking up from his four monitors. "The programmers are betting that Jen beats you by an hour with zero errors, the sales team has her up by two hours." Actually, it was so he could do his part of the task back at the office without being on the phone constantly with the field technicians. "Cole! Rasheed! Toss a coin, loser goes with Terri, winner helps Jen."

"You're cold boss," mumbled Terri as she went to harass Cole and Rasheed. Jen just grinned and winked at Josh as she walked past his desk. Like Terri, Jen was incredibly cute. She was five foot four, about two inches shorter than Terri, and had shoulder length blondish hair and a darling little figure. She was also married with two children and she was far more knowledgeable than Terri. Jen had been in the business for over a decade and could do one of these big installs blindfolded.

"Jen, take Cole with you, please?" said Josh. "He hasn't been out on site much and needs to unlearn everything Terri taught him."

"No problem," said Jen and she went up to Cole, a fellow who looked like he was drafted by the Buffalo Bills to play linebacker. "Let's go, you're with me," said Jen as she inventoried the stack of boxes with green tags. "Ever been to the downtown office?" she asked.

Meanwhile, Terri was inspecting Rasheed like she won him in one of those 'married at first sight' TV shows. "You'll do, let's get this all in my car."

Josh chuckled and went back to working. In the lower left corner of his lower left monitor was a pop-up message from Anthony Friedman. It simply said, "See me." Josh hit control/alt/delete and locked his computer, then grabbed a clipboard and watched as Rasheed and Cole helped load Terri and Jen's cars, then went into Eli's office. "They're heading out Eli," said Josh.

"Outstanding, any problems?"

"Nah. Not yet. Let's see how far they get before they call for help," said Josh as he handed a copy of the MOP to Eli. Eli was in charge of the field technicians, and Josh was in charge of the server room and server room technicians, but these installs always worked best when one person was in charge and since Josh had the experience of running large diverse groups of people, Mark, Eli and Josh's mutual boss, asked Josh to run the entire install while Eli assisted when needed.

Then Josh went over to Mark's office. Mark, as usual, was glaring at his monitor and typing rapidly. "We have Bison Radiation rolling," said Josh.

"Uh huh," replied Mark without looking up from his work.

"Both the NT and Bailey avenue offices going in today."

"Uh huh."

"The West Seneca office is on hold because an elephant sat on the building."

"Uh huh."

Josh shook his head and stifled a chuckle. Mark probably heard the elephant remark. It just didn't register yet. "I'm headed over to Ant's office, the big guy wants to talk to me."

"Take this over with you please," said Mark and he handed Josh a stack of paper without looking away from his monitor.

"Will do, sir."

"Don't call me sir."

"Yes sir," said Josh as he headed out from the data center and maintenance side of the building, through the programmers' bullpen and into the unfamiliar land of sales. The programmers were mostly dressed like unruly teenagers, but the salesmen were dressed sharp. Suit coat, tie, perfectly styled hair. Each was on a cell phone talking to somebody. He nodded to Ira Goldstein, the only other USAF veteran in the building. Ira was an officer in the Air Force, but Josh wasn't sure what he did for Uncle Sam when he was on duty. Talking to Ira was like talking to a whirlwind. He was all over the place and only stayed on topic when he was discussing sales.

Finally, Josh made it to Executive Row. Brandon Mitchell, VP of Sales and Marketing, had his office door open, but he wasn't in there. Stan Dombrowski, VP of Financial and Emmit Katzman VP of Legal, had their doors closed, as did Veronica. The status board on her door glowed "Busy" in red, so Josh stayed away. Ant's door was open a little and Josh could see Brandon Mitchell in the office with Anthony. Brandon Mitchell looked slimy to Josh, but Ant said he was a great salesman, so Josh preferred to stay away from him.

Josh sat in the reception area, going through the documentation he had on an upcoming upgrade to the VMware his servers were using, when Ant leaned out of his office and called, "Mister Gravely, could you join us?"

"Yes sir." He gathered his clipboard and the documents that Mark gave him and headed to Ant's office. He walked in and found just Anthony and Brandon Mitchell. The door to Veronica's office was closed. "How can I help?" said Josh. He always said that when he walked into Ant's office and Ant loved to hear his people say that.

"Brandon wants to start pushing the new image and billing system you're rolling out to Bison Radiology. When do you think it will be ready for roll out to the public?"

Josh looked at his clipboard, tallied the work ahead, and finally said, "Twenty days."

Brandon chuckled and said, "Wrong answer sergeant, we want to start showing this off next week."

Josh looked at his clipboard again and said, "I apologize, I failed to count the burn-in period and connectivity testing. Twenty three days."

"You don't seem to understand, sergeant, it needs to be ready in five business days, I have a press conference scheduled."

"My name is Efraim, not sergeant." Now Josh was glaring at the smarmy bastard, silently daring him to say sergeant again.

"I'm sorry, I was paying homage to your rank. I only..."

"My RANK is Data Center Manager. In that capacity I provide the product you sell. As Sergeant I killed people." He took a step closer to Brandon and said softly, "Lots of people."

Brandon started to sweat; nobody ever spoke to him like that. He wasn't sure if that was a threat or insubordination, but Josh handed Brandon a copy of the punch list, a list of all major tasks involved with the setup, and continued. "We have over two weeks of work to do on these systems. It's not plug and play. Once it's physically in place, which will happen tomorrow afternoon at the soonest, there's a 48 hour burn-in followed by system security verification, network verification, virtual network configuration, sanity testing and when that's all done it needs to be inspected end to end for HIPA compliance. I cannot give Mister Friedman a system that fails HIPA compliance. I'm trying to provide you with the most reliable, most dependable system ever sold. If you don't want me to do that, I'll gladly step aside and let you finish the job, I have plenty of other work to do."

Brandon looked angry, but he tried to control his anger in front of Josh. He turned to Anthony and said, "Can we talk?"

Anthony looked at Brandon smugly and said, "Go ahead. Talk." Josh turned to leave, but Anthony gestured for him to stay. "You asked me to invite Mister Gravely in here so he could update you on the process, and he did, and you didn't like it. Get over it. Let the maintenance people perform miracles in the allotted time so you can perform miracles in the sales department. He's absolutely right, nothing gets sold until it's ready to sell."

"I told them one week, we're going to look like morons if I go back and tell them it's not ready," said Brandon with a nasal whine.

"I will not rush a job to meet a timetable that's not my own and risk a compliance failure or worse, allow network intrusion," said Josh. "This isn't just data; these are people's medical records. Tell them you had to reschedule because your system engineers are sticklers for perfection, they can't use the truth against you."

"Josh, could you wait in Miss von Köster's office please?" said Anthony. Ant was overjoyed that Josh said exactly what needed to be said without prompting.

"Yes sir," said Josh and he used the connecting door and stepped into Veronica's office. She was seated behind her desk when Josh entered and her smile lit up the room. "Busy?" he asked.

"Not at the moment," she said, and he hurried to her desk, leaned over and kissed her. She pushed back for a moment, but as their lips caressed each other and their tongues swirled together, her resistance faded and her arms curled around and held him tight.

As they kissed again and again, Josh heard a woman say, "I'm glad to see you two are getting along."

With a final sweet kiss, Josh stood and smiled. The voice belonged to Marjorie Friedman. "Missus Friedman, it's good to see you too."

"We were just going over the plans for the summer camp out. Veronica was just telling me how big your... property is." She wagged an eyebrow to let Josh know they were talking about more than his acreage.

"Things are bigger in Springville," said Josh with a grin and a wink. "I'm looking forward to having the kids. We have a couple of weeks work on the cabin and it should be ready. I have some windows lined up at Mister Seconds, I have the shingles to finish the roof and the shutters shouldn't be too hard. We just need wood for the floor and cots for the kids to sleep on."

"Give me a list of what you need to finish the cabin and we'll get it for you," said Marjorie as she got up to leave the office.

When she was gone, Veronica turned to Josh and said, "Honey, we need to talk."

Josh's blood turned to ice and a moment of panic set in. Usually the words that followed 'Honey, we need to talk,' were 'Go the fuck away and never come back.' Josh gulped and said, "sure," bracing himself for bad news.

She rose and pushed him onto a chair, then settled down in his lap. Her round, athletic ass was warm against him and she put her arms around his neck. She gave him a kiss, then said, "In about twenty minutes, I have to go. Anthony wants me at a conference in Manhattan. We'll be back Sunday afternoon."

"You and Anthony?" Josh asked. Her traveling with Anthony didn't bother him too much.

"And Brandon," sighed Veronica.

His heart sank. Brandon was a walking ball of testosterone, and not the good kind. The good kind is the man who uses that testosterone blast to protect the women around him, the guy who will take a bullet for his sister, then beat the crap out of the gunman, the guy who has short, but memorable discussions with the other kind of guy, insuring the safety of the women in his life. The other kind is a walking dick looking for a pussy to fuck and will break any rule, hurt any woman, to get what he wants. Josh lived that lifestyle for about six weeks after Yesenia cheated on him and still feels nauseous over what he did. "Can I have a word with Brandon?" Josh asked. Brandon was the other kind.

"I think you already had a word with him," said Veronica with a kiss. "Please, do not break your co-workers." Veronica gave Josh a kiss, then added, "he's a flaming asshole, but he has a tremendous sales reputation."

"He needs to know that if he does anything to make you uncomfortable, anything that would cause you not to perform the way you always perform, I will have a chat with him," said Josh.

"Anthony and Marjorie are going to be there. Besides, while I'm gone I have something very special that I want you to do.

"What is that?"

She handed him a key. It looked like a normal key, but this was gold. She probably had it made over at the Springville Farmers Union Hardware store. Josh had noticed different colors of house key blanks on their display rack where they cut keys. "Here," she said softly as she put the key in his hand. "While I'm in New York you can spend your time by moving your stuff into the house."

"Are you sure?" he asked.

She touched her forehead to his and said, "I know we have only been serious for a week, but for a year I've thought of no other man but you."

Josh sighed. "Nica, I've got enough baggage to fill a box car. Are you sure you want that kind of burden?"

Veronica placed her succulent lips next to his ear and whispered, "I have quite a burden to share too, but I will always be faithful to you."

"I suppose we should have a conversation about this?" asked Josh.

"It's going to end the same, we love each other, we just have to hammer out the details. I just want you to know that I want you for more than the firewood."

"I'm going to have that chimney of yours swept before you get back," said Josh as he kissed her.

"Mmmm... a fire in the bedroom fireplace?" whispered Veronica between kisses. "That's going to earn you extra goodies." She licked his ear, sending shivers through his body.

"This will be the first time we've been separated in ten days," said Josh sadly.

"No, there was this morning..."

"Darling, I don't think driving to work in separate cars counts."

Veronica frowned. He was right, of course. They had a video chat on their cell phones all the way in to work. It was probably dangerous to be having a video chat with your lover while driving on a snow covered Western New York highway. "What are you doing?" she asked as he tugged her diamond off of her finger.

"You and I both know what this represents, but to the world it looks like an engagement ring." He took a ring box out of his pocket and opened it and said, "Let me replace it for now with a ring that says you're in a committed relationship with a cheap bastard."

"What? No! It's beautiful," it was an exquisite promise in white gold, Veronica's favorite metal for jewelry. The diamond was tiny and set almost flush with the band, making it look like a jeweled wedding band.

"Veronica von Köster, I promise to be faithful to you with every breath I take, for so long as I live."

Veronica wanted to say, 'What if I release you from your vow?' but the look on his face showed her he meant what he said. "I will be yours as long as I live and will always wear your ring."

They kissed and Josh said, "You're stuck with me and I'm yours come hell or high water."

"And I'm yours too."

A rush of emotion passed through them, something important happened and a feeling of excitement, of newness yet unrealized, washed over them. There was a tap on the door, and Marjorie poked her nose in the door. "Ready? It's about time."

"Be right there," called Veronica, and she closed Josh's hand around the key to her house. "This is my vow to you. Live with me, love me as you promise, and you can place that diamond back on my finger when you are ready. This is my sign that I am ready. Ok?"

"Yes, Nica. I can't wait to prove myself worthy."

"You already have, sweet Ephie. Now you have to prove it to yourself. Marj is following me home, where I'll pack and make some room in the closet for you. Then she'll take me to the airport."

Josh pulled her close and gave her a deep, passionate kiss. Their tongues danced together and his fingers gently touched that spot on her neck that always sends thrills straight to her pussy. They stopped and panted, their eyes drinking in each other's gaze. "Do not worry about me," said Josh. "Concentrate on the job and save me for dessert, ok?"

"Ok my love," and they kissed one more time, then Veronica got up. "Bye Ephie. Can you pick me up at the airport at 5:00 PM on Sunday?"

"I'll be there. Be safe and come home soon Nica."

"Love you."

"I love you," and with that, she was gone. Josh sat at her desk and waited for a few minutes, then he took her small pad of post-it notes and on the fifth note down he wrote in a tiny script,

There once was a heart, brave and true,

That found its forever in you.

Through laughter and tears,

For all of our years,

I'll love you with skies gray or blue.

Then he put Veronica's house key on his key ring, straightened out the chairs, and closed Veronica's office, making sure the door was locked, then headed back to his office. He mastered the NCOs scowl years ago. You can hide a lot of pain behind that expression and terrify the young troops at the same time.

<><><><><>֍<><><><><>

The temperature dropped tremendously and was below zero by the time that Josh got his clothes loaded up in the back of his truck. He stopped at Fran's Sub Shop and got a ham & provolone sub (with lettuce, onion, extra tomato, banana pepper, oil & vinegar & more oil) a bag of salt and vinegar chips, and a liter of Pepsi. Nobody else knows how to make a sub like Fran and her husband Yano. He loaded his precious meal in the truck and drove home... Home! the thought made him smile. He realized the last time he had a place he could call home was just before he stepped into his apartment in base housing to find his pregnant wife blowing a stranger in his living room. She wasn't pregnant when he deployed over nine months previously.