Bill took her offered hand, erring on the side of too gentle as he shook it. Immediately he tried to make up for it with a professional almost-kiss on her cheek. Security wasn’t really gone, settling in at the outskirts: not too far, not too close, just right.

Helen dropped back and looked appraisingly at Michael. “Nice flight?” she asked, eyes traveling over his mussed appearance. “Did they make you circle around the incoming storm?”

“I don’t know,” Michael said dryly. “I was drugged the entire way.”

“Helen,” Bill interrupted smoothly. “This is Michael Kord.”

“Michael.” She extended her hand, and Bill tensed as Michael took it. “It’s good to meet you. I feel as if I know you already, seeing as I’ve been following your progress since you entered Opti. Thank you for coming to see me on such short notice.”

Don’t say it, Michael, Bill silently prayed as the dark man smiled charmingly.

“It was my pleasure—”

“No trouble at all,” Bill interrupted, wary of the glint in the man’s eye.

Michael put his hands behind his back. “Why am I here?”

Helen smiled. “Direct and right to it,” she said as she escorted them deeper into the room and to the arrangement of couches and chairs before the windows where the little girl played. “Bill, your assessments are as precise as always. Would either of you gentlemen like some coffee?”

The little girl beamed at him, her fingers covered in glitter. Bill smiled back. “It looks as if we’re having hot chocolate,” he said, and she grinned to show a gap in her teeth.

“This is my niece, Annabelle,” Helen said, a comforting hand on her head. “I have her for the week her parents are out of the country. We’re getting along famously, aren’t we, Anna?”

“Yes, Aunt Helen,” the little girl said, going back to her picture of glittery clouds. No, it was the haze on the rocks from the crashing waves, Bill realized.

“Anna,” Helen said as she dropped down to crouch beside her. “Will you change into your swimsuit, please? It’s almost time for our lesson.”

Her eyes lighting up, the girl stood. “Can I jump from the big diving board today?”

“Of course.” Rising, Helen gestured to the door. “Go on now. I’ll be right along.”

Leaving her glitter and glue behind, the little girl skipped to the door, a young woman in a dress suit waiting for her already.

“Water is fine,” Michael said, and Bill sighed, not liking how this was starting.

“We can talk freely on the balcony.” Taking a bottled water from the wet bar, Helen handed it to Michael. Bill hustled to the sliding doors, opening them with a flourish to find the entire area had been glassed in for the winter, moist and smelling like a garden as ice lay heavy on the surrounding rock and slumbering landscape. Helen smiled at him for the small courtesy, and he followed her and Michael into the expansive, seasonal greenhouse, where a steaming coffee set waited on a low table under a palm tree as tall as the house.

Helen looked even more stunning in the sun edged by black clouds at the horizon, but Bill was sure they were out here because of security, not the orchids she was touching in passing as if they were fond friends. “Michael,” Helen said, holding up two fingers to the woman beside the coffee set. “I asked Bill to bring you here so I might impress you with the thought that with a little more attention to your job, you might be ready for acceleration.”

Michael brought his eyes back from the demure Asian woman now pouring coffee into two cups and arranging them on the low table. “I’m ready now.”

Bill shifted foot to foot, not liking that there were weapons pointed in their direction, even if he couldn’t see them. “We’ve talked about this.”

Brow furrowed, Michael turned to him. “You have talked, and I have listened, but I’ve seen her,” he said, pointing at nothing with his unopened bottled water. “Peri is handling the Evocane. The stabilizer works. Continuing to withhold it from me is counterproductive.”

“Michael,” he coaxed.

“Just a moment, Bill.” Helen held up a restraining hand, and their motion to sit stopped. “I want to hear why he thinks he’s ready.”

Shoulders a little straighter, Michael calmed. But then, that’s why he told Helen he wanted her to meet him. The reality was he wanted Michael to see the security—find the way in, where he could do the most damage.

“I’m as good at what I do as Peri, if not more,” he said, glowering as if Bill would deny it. “Her mind is Swiss cheese, and I’ve never had to be scrubbed because I believe in what Opti is. I’m doing what I like.”

Helen waved the coffee girl away, frowning as the woman’s heels clicked noisily on the tile. “That’s part of the problem,” she said almost wistfully. “You’re doing what you like, following your own ideas, not what Bill has set before you. I abhor bringing up the past, but what happened at Everblue is a good example.”

Bill cringed as he helped Helen with her chair. “I’ve minimized the damage.”

Motions graceful, Helen settled herself at the table under the palm, the fronds looking fantastically out of place as the sun vanished behind the encroaching cloud bank. “I’m not looking for an explanation,” she said. “It’s in the past. I only bring it up to show the repeating pattern. You do what you want, Michael, instead of what is best for Opti.”

“You want a doll?” Michael sat down, his tone bordering on aggressive, and Bill caught a glimpse of movement from the shadows. They weren’t alone. It just looked that way. “Dolls are toys,” Michael continued. “And toys break. That’s what Peri is, and your doll is ready to shatter.”

“You’re more right than you know.” Primly arranging the napkin, she smiled at Michael without emotion. “If you were the one to break her, it would further your standing greatly.”

Bill sat down. It was too warm out here, even with the snow beginning to hit the ceiling.

“I can understand your desire,” Helen continued. “I can even applaud it. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t break a few toys myself. Michael, be patient. Evocane isn’t perfect yet.”

“Peri is handling it,” Michael said. “I can accomplish more in one afternoon than she can in a week because I like who I am and don’t need to be tricked into doing it.”