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Jay had jumped to his feet at the security table, believing she was Mrs. Amanda Harcourt.

Yes, signs of the Runker-Bailey Syndrome included skin aging. But Piper had a mirror. Was her mind playing tricks on her? Was her reflection showing her what she wanted to see rather than reality?

She reached up and pressed the flats of her hands to her cheeks, as if she could smooth away any wrinkles etching into her face.

Piper was horrified that Jay mistook her for a sixty-year-old woman. Though it was true that Mrs. Harcourt would take exquisite care of her skin, and she probably looked youthful for her age—maybe even as young as forty-five or fifty.

Even that thought didn’t give Piper much comfort.

Sixty, for heaven’s sake. Piper just rounded past the thirty-year mark a couple of years ago.

Piper remembered meeting Mrs. Harcourt as a little girl. Piper had walked across the room to tell her mom she was sleepy and mistakenly called Mrs. Harcourt “Mommy.”

Mrs. Harcourt had a pretty whack reaction to the mistake.

Harsh.

Angry.

“I am not your mother. I am Mrs. Lionel Harcourt.”

So strange.

Piper had been so little at the time that she’d had to tip her head all the way back to look up at the woman. Mrs. Harcourt wore a long black dress, and her mother wore a long black dress. They were the spitting image of each other. It was an honest mistake.

With that in mind, it made sense that, as an adult, Piper, too, would resemble Amanda Harcourt.

But sixty?

She looked like she was sixty?

Maybe it was the lighting.

Or Jay’s eyesight.

Or the disease was advancing in her system at a faster rate than she was expecting.

Piper’s lips buzzed as a sense of existential threat moved through her nervous system.

Those thoughts unsettled Piper as the PA made the rounds, checking everyone’s water and coffee.

It upset her as the woman placed a fresh platter of nibbles at either end of the table and turned to Piper to ask if she wanted anything.

“No, thank you.” Piper poked a finger in the air. “Oh, yes, some water please.” Piper’s mouth had turned dry and sticky.

The room settled, and all eyes were on Piper.

“How do you do? I’ve come here today to bring you up to date on the charitable development of a drug that slows the pace of Runker-Bailey Syndrome.”

“Slows? Is that all?” That was Lionel’s nephew, Brandon Harcourt.

Piper licked her lips, then reached for the glass of water. The rim felt foreign to her lips, and she hoped she wouldn’t dribble. “The drug restores normalized activity to the damaged SENR1030P gene pathways by stimulating responses that includes telomere repair, for example. Our research shows that in small animal studies, the medicine restores a functional age reversal of approximately twenty years by restoring tissue performance to the expected norm.”

“So someone who is sixty takes this drug and, like a magic wand, time is turned back twenty years,” the man to Brandon’s right said. “Exceptional. Bravo! We are thrilled by your advancement.”

“No,” Piper said slowly, trying to understand his thoughts and to find the simplest way to convey the information. Piper had found, in the couple of times since her dad’s death that she’d delivered the annual brief to the executives, that their grasp of science was limited. “No. In a person with Runker-Bailey Syndrome, it restores the normal activity, so let’s take my dad as an example.”

She could feel the boredom in the boardroom, and the alliteration tickled her enough that she could offer up a genuine smile.