Page 17 of Skins Game

The private plane’s air hostess person smiled at him. She was pretty, in a probably-didn’t-own-swords way. “Do you want breakfast, Mr. Moore?”

“Sure,” he said and sipped the coffee.

“The captain noted that there might be a little turbulence over the Rockies. Also, you can ride in the cockpit with her if you’d like. Mr. Saltonstall prefers to.”

So Mitchell rode in the front when he took the company plane, huh? Interesting. “I have work to do, but thank her for me.”

When he returned to his seat, Nicole still hadn’t contacted him about the email.

Two hours elapsed, and Kingston was somewhere over Nebraska when he could not wait any longer and emailed her,Wow, how about that email from the new boss, huh?

An hour later, she emailed him back.

The hit of dopamine from the ping dissipated as he read,Yeah, can you believe the nerve of those assholes?

6

Calling the New Guy

NICOLE LAMB

Nicole and the techs gathered in the lab conference room.

She shook her phone, a gesture she hoped everyone would understand as a reference to the mass email they’d all received from Last Chance, Inc. that morning. “The heck! The actualheck!”

Much grumbling from Arvind and the other techs around the table told her that she was not the only one riled up by this email missive from their new corporate overlords.

She shook her phone again. “Did they thinkthiswould placate us?”

Her phone in her hand pinged, and she caught a quick glance at an email from Kingston Moore, probably in reply to her what-the-hell email to him.

He’d written,I didn’t think it was that bad. As a matter of fact, I thought it was quite reassuring. Those Last Chance guys said that they weren’t currently planning any layoffs.

Oh, Nicole hoped Kingston wasn’t one of those corporate stooges who believed anything that anyone in authority told them. Surely, he was more independent thanthat.

Well, no time like the present to suss things out.

She tapped the phone number in Kingston’s sig file at the bottom of his email, and her phone rang once before the call clicked. Kingston’s voice asked, “Nicole?”

“Yeah. I’m in a meeting with the other lab members, and I thought you might want to sit in as a new employee of Sidewinder Golf.”

“Well, that’s very open of you,” he said.

“We are all going to have to work together to have a viable company on the other side of this.”

“I’m glad you put it that way. As a matter of fact?—”

“I’m putting you on speaker so you can participate.” A grinding roar emanated from her phone’s speaker as she tapped the button. “Are you on a plane right now, Kingston? You shouldn’t be talking on a cell phone on an airplane! It interferes with the radar or something, plus it’srude.”

“Oh, no. I’m not on a plane,” he said.

The roar sounded like he was on a plane, like maybe he was sitting on the wing. “There must be a lot of wind or something.”

“Yeah, it’s wind. I have a layover in Chicago, and they don’t call it the Windy City for nothing. It’s wind. Chicago wind.”

“Did you go outside the airport or something?”

“I wanted to get outside and walk around for a few minutes, so I’m in the airport’s outdoor smoking area for fresh air. Even though I don’t smoke.”