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and we don’t need to muddy the waters yet. Make sense?”
    The man was handling himself with more authority than was customary. No one responded.
    â€œGood, then. If you have any questions, I’ll be in my office.” Borst nodded theatrically and retreated to the first door on the right. Kent swallowed the last of his champagne. That’s it, Borst, go to your office and do what you always do. Nothing. Do absolutely nothing.
    â€œKent.” He lowered his empty glass and found Mary at his elbow, smiling brightly. Most would tag Mary as chunky, but she carried her weight well. Her brown hair was rather stringy, which did not help her image, but a clear complexion saved her from a much worse characterization. In any case, she could write basic code well enough, which was why Borst had hired her. Problem was, AFPS did not consist of much ordinary code.
    â€œMorning, Mary.”
    â€œI just wanted to thank you for bringing us all here. I know how hard you’ve worked for this, and I think you deserve every bit of what you have coming.”
    Kent smiled. Brown-nosing, are we, Mary? He wouldn’t put it past her, despite the innocent round eyes she now flashed up at him. She went with the flow, this one.
    â€œWell, thanks, Mary.” He patted the hand at his elbow. “You’re too kind. Really.”
    Then Todd was there at his other elbow, as if the two had held a conference and decided that he would soon hold the keys to their futures. Time to switch their attention from the bald bossman to the rising star.
    â€œFantastic job, Kent!” Todd lifted his glass, which was empty, and threw it back anyway. By the looks of it, Todd had a few hidden vices.
    Kent’s mind flashed back to the two-year stint during graduate studies when he himself had taken to nipping at the bottle during late nights hovering over the keyboard. It was an absurd dichotomy, really. A top honors student who had found his brilliance through impeccable discipline, now slowly yielding to the lure of the bottle. A near drowning on one of his late-night runs had halted his slippery slide back to Stupid Street. It had been midwinter, and unable to muscle through a programming routine, he’d gone for a jog with half a bottle of tequila sloshing in his gut. He had misjudged a pier on the lake for a jogging path and run right off it into freezing waters. The paramedics told him if he’d not been in such good shape, he would have drowned. It was the last time he’d touched the stuff.
    Kent blinked and smiled at Todd. “Thanks. Well, I’ve got some work to finish, so I’ll see you guys tomorrow, right?”
    â€œBright ’n’ early.”
    â€œBright ’n’ early.” He nodded, and they stepped aside as though on strings. Kent walked past them to the first door on the left, across from the one through which Borst had disappeared.
    This was going to be all right, he thought. Very much all right.
    HELEN HOBBLED along beside her daughter in the park, eyeing the ducks waddling beside the pond, nearly as graceful as she. Walking was a thing mostly of the past for her wounded legs. Oh, she could manage about fifty yards without resting up for a while, but that was definitely it. Gloria had persuaded her to see an orthopedic doctor a year earlier, and the quack had recommended surgery. A knee replacement or some such ridiculous thing. They actually wanted to cut her open!
    She’d managed a few hours of sleep last night, but otherwise it was mostly praying and wondering. Wondering about that little eye-opener God had decided to grace her with.
    â€œIt is lovely here, don’t you think?” Helen asked casually. But she did not feel any loveliness at all just now.
    â€œYes, it is.” Her daughter turned to the skating bowl in time to see Spencer fly above the concrete wall, make a grab for his skateboard in some insane inverted move, and streak back down, out of sight.