Rase's meditations were interrupted by a rude klaxon from down the hall. Someone had set off the metal detector again. Rase set them off from time to time himself, forgetting that they were there for his own safety. When he was reminded, he was less irritated by the noise and more pleased that he was carrying on the family tradition of being someone who merited such things as assassination attempts.
It had begun with his father, of course, and Rase hardly blamed anyone for that. Himself, he did his best to do better than his father, while keeping the shareholders happy, but the cruelties of the economy left no one happy some days, and he was an easy target. He should have minded, but he sometimes had trouble mustering up a great deal of concern over whether he lived or died.
"Excuse me." Rase got to his feet before anyone else had worked out the source of the sound. "Since I'm the cause of all this inconvenience, it only seems fair that I take care of it."
That got him a general chuckle from around the table, and the wash of relief that passed over the senior staff was almost visible. Rase gave them all a charming grin and let himself out. He could see all the way down to the elevators from here; he always liked a clear line of sight to the exits, no matter where he was.
At the end of the hall, four security guards had a lanky young man up against the wall. The boxes he'd been bringing up had already passed through the X-ray machine and one stood open; one of the guards must've been doing a manual check. Rase liked that he'd been able to impress upon them the importance of such random inspections.
"What seems to be the problem, gentlemen?" Rase sauntered down the hall, hands in his pockets, ruining the line of his expensive suit in favor of looking as casual as only he could afford to do.
"Sorry for the noise, sir," the senior guard said. Rase thought the fellow's name was Bob; in fact, he distinctly remembered having called him Bob on more than one occasion and no one had seen fit to correct him if he was wrong. That was good enough for Rase. "Kid's got something in his pockets."
The 'kid' was wearing pants with enough pockets that Rase wasn't surprised that he'd forgotten something in one of them. Sure enough, one of the guards dug around in a pocket down by the kid's left ankle--Rase wondered why you'd need a pocket down there, but he supposed you did if there was something in it--and came up with a pair of handcuffs, of all things.
"Damn." The kid turned around when they let him go, looking irritated. Rase expected that being pinned up against the wall and searched should engender a certain amount of discomfort, even fear, but there was nothing like that in the stockboy's face. "I knew I forgot something."
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