He came up on a Thursday afternoon with the casual efficiency of someone who had planned carefully to appear unplanned, which was one of Riven Varek's most practiced skills.
The stated purpose was a budget document requiring Colt's signature. He handled the Colt business in eight minutes with the professional ease of a man for whom other people's time was always a resource to be managed rather than wasted, and then he stopped at Ava's desk on his way back to the elevator with the particular quality of pause that meant this had been the destination all along.
"I have a proposition for you," he said.
"You usually have something," she said pleasantly. She had developed a register for Riven Varek that was warm enough to be polite and specific enough to be a boundary, and she used it consist
