Talk about the perfect Zen hell ….
The phone call interrupted him halfway through a form designed to require an entire battery of expensive lawyers to decipher. Kit grinned despite the fact that the call had come through on the “Panic Button.” He tucked the receiver between shoulder and ear, allowed his gaze to stray to the corner garden, and said, “Yeah, Jimmy?”
Jimmy Okuda, at the front desk, was the only person with direct access to that particular intercom line. A call on the Panic Button usually meant another jump in Kit’s blood pressure; today, the distraction was more than welcome.
”Call from Malcolm Moore, Kit.”
”Malcolm?” What was Jimmy doing, buzzing him on the Panic Button for a call from Malcolm Moore? “Uh …put him through.”
An outside line flashed as Jimmy transferred the call. What on earth could Malcolm Moore want? Kit had offered him a job more than once, only to be refused politely but firmly. Kit pressed the button. “Malcolm? Hello, what can I do for you?”
”Kit, sorry to interrupt whatever you’re doing, but you’re going to have a visitor in about five minutes.”
”Oh?” Malcolm’s tone invited all sorts of speculation. From the background noise, Malcolm was calling from the Down Time. That could mean anything might be on its way. Just as Kit had started reviewing lethal potentialities from his down-time adventures-and wondering where he’d left the soft body armor he’d used in his scouting days-Malcolm said, “An up-timer’s looking for you.”
”Up-timer?”
Malcolm chuckled thinly. “Some day, Kit, I will get you to tell me about that deal in Bangkok. Yeah,. an uptimer. Real impatient, too. We took a vote and decided you deserved a warning before this one collared you.” Malcolm was laughing at some inside joke to which Kit was clearly not privy.