“Is determined to be, unless I can bribe him into one of my R and D divisions permanently with great gobs of money.” His lips twitched. “Which I’ll certainly attempt. At the moment, he plans to ditch any thought of college and leap straight into the Academy when he hits eighteen next year.”
“So what. You’re hoping to use this assignment to turn him off that idea, into college so you can scoop his genius brain up for your own uses?”
He smiled slowly, and with great charm. “That’s a lovely thought. But actually, I thought this would be a valuable experience for him. And we need him. I’m not blowing smoke when I say that. What you need electronically is going to take considerable work and research and experimentation, all of which you required in a compressed time frame. Correct?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Look. I’m your expert consultant for a rather pathetic monetary wage, and under that agreement I have the option of selecting a technical assistant. He’s mine.”
She blew out a breath, paced to the window. Paced back. “Not just yours. It makes him mine, too. I don’t know how to deal with a teenaged type person.”
“Ah, well, I’d say you’d deal with him as you deal with everyone else. You order him around, and if he argues or doesn’t jump quickly enough you freeze his blood with one of those vicious looks you’re so good at and verbally abuse him. It always works so well for you.”
“You think so?”
“There, see.” He cupped her chin. “There it is now. I can actually feel my blood running cold.”
“You can keep him, but he’s on probation. And you’ve waived your pathetic monetary wage.”
“Have I?” He frowned. “I can’t seem to recall doing so.”
“And his fee comes out of your pocket.”
He’d already intended to pay Jamie, but knew how to play the game. “That’s exceedingly unfair. I’m going to talk to my departmental representative about this high-handed treatment.”
“You don’t have a departmental rep.” She walked back to the door. “You got me.”
“To both my joy and sorrow,” he replied behind her back as she strode into her office.
Jamie was crouched between Feeney and McNab, showing off some handheld device. “It’ll read every system on the market and some that aren’t on it yet,” he was saying. “Then it clones . . .”
His head came up, and then his body. The handheld was jammed into his back pocket. “So, hey. We got a deal or what?”
Roarke merely crossed to him, held out a hand.
Shoulders slumping, Jamie pulled the jammer out of his pocket. “I only borrowed one so I could see about fine-tuning a couple of functions.”
“Don’t hose me, Jamie. And if you continue to borrow equipment, you’ll be losing your work program privileges very quickly.” The jammer disappeared into one of Roarke’s pockets.
“It was my prototype.”
And the royalties from it, Roarke mused, would make the boy a very rich young man. But he said nothing, merely lifted an eyebrow and waited for Jamie to squirm.
“Okay, okay. Don’t fry your circuits.” Sulking, he looked at Roarke, looked at Eve. He was never quite sure which of them was in charge.
Either way, he knew both of them could stomp him flat before he saw them lift a foot.
It’d been easy with his parents before the divorce. His father had been in charge. After, especially after Alice died, Jamie himself had mostly been in charge.
But around here, you just never knew.
“What’s the word?” he demanded.
“You’re attached as Roarke’s tech in a probationary capacity,” Eve told him. “You step out of line, over the line, try wiggling under the line, I squash you like a bug. Now, do you see everyone in this room??
??
“Yeah, nothing wrong with the orbs. So?”