Page 29 of Skins Game

Kingston glanced at the ceiling, his eyes bunching with worry. “This place isn’t going to release poisonous foam or call the police to swat us, right?”

“No, it just locks down, but we can’t get out!”

“So, nothing bad is going to happen, right? We’re just stuck here for the night.”

“We’re going to be stuck in hereall night!”

“Yeah, tomorrow’s Thursday,” he said. “You people work on Thursdays, don’t you?”

“Of course we work on Thursdays!”

“You never know. This is California. But those doors should unlock tomorrow morning to let everybody in, so we can leave then.”

“Yeah, but we’restuckin here all night!”

“Is there somewhere you’re supposed to be? Doctor’s appointment or something? Hot date?”

“No. I mean, my plants will survive one night without being watered. But this building is holding us prisoner. It’s not right!”

“Then we’ll stage a sit-in. Protests always work.”

She spun around and glared at him, “Why aren’t you freaked out that we’re locked in here all night?”

Kingston shrugged and fished around inside his coveralls and then his trousers pocket for his phone. “Let me see if I can get this sorted with a phone call.” He tapped his phone screen a few times and then spoke into it. “Joe? What’s the code to turn off the security system in this building that used to be yours?”

Nicole gaped at him. “Seriously, you haveJoe Flanaganin your contacts? What, is he your buddy or something?”

Kingston held up a finger while he listened, and his eyebrows lowered in a frown. “What do you mean, there’s no way to turn it off?”

Yeah, just like she told him. Maybe he’d believe it now that a man told it to him.

“Won’t the security company see us on the surveillance cameras?” He looked up, his head swiveling wildly as he stared at the corners of the lobby. “You had an eighty-million-dollar-annual company,and you didn’t put in security cameras?”

Totally on brand for Joe Flanagan, like his buying million-dollar couches for the lobby but not offering vision care coverage on the employee insurance plan.

“There arenosurveillance cameras in thiswhole damned building?”He paused and grabbed his hair on the top of his head like he was pulling it. “Oh, outside, watching the bushes. That’s goddamn useful.What the hell?”

Good thing Joe was Sidewinder’sformerowner. Otherwise, Kingston Moore would probably be looking for another sales job.

Weird, though, that he was talking to Joe like an equal, instead of like an employee.

Kingston called across the lobby. “Nicole, is the building’s security system tied into Sidewinder’s business operations intranet?”

She shook her head. “Different companies. Different networks. Our work laptops are walled gardens. We can access the business operations and research web from them, but nothing else. We can’t even watch streaming TV on them. Onlythose company laptops can access the company’s system for security. You can’t log in from a personal computer.”

Kingston went back to talking on the phone. “Your security system isn’t tied into your intranet, so your master password isn’t going to help me with the security system or get us out of here. And by the way, that’s a stupid master password. I’ll be changing that tomorrow.”

The conversation grouping of couches and coffee tables was in her way, and she paced around them while she watched him on the phone.

Kingston scowled. “What, did you cheap outagainand get the no-technical-support option? What the hell were youthinking?”

At least someone had finally said that to her former boss. It had needed to be said.

Nicole waited, her hands on her hips. The Tyvek coveralls trapped her body heat inside, and she was beginning to steam like she was being bakeden papillote.

Kingston’s glower deepened as he talked to her former boss, so Nicole unzipped her coveralls all the way down the inside of her left leg and started peeling them off. The last thing she needed was to develop a rancid case of B.O. when the only bathing facility in the building was the lab’s chemical safetyshower that had flooded the laboratory and the entire floor below it that one time Caitlin had accidentally pulled the cord.

As she fought her way out of the papery material that was clinging to her arms and legs like wet tissues, Kingston kept glancing at her out of the corners of his eyes and then hurriedly looking back at his shoes or the opposite wall.