“Getting back into it, at least. I need an office.”
“Yanni might be agreeable.”
“You’re rattling around in our old one.”
“We have staff,” Justin said. His guard was instantly up… God, he hated to be so paranoid. And he didn’t want to show it in his expression. But talking to Jordan lately was like walking through broken glass barefoot.
“Nice location. Convenient. And there’s room enough.”
Guard went way up.
“Not with staff. Sorry, Jordan, that won’t work.”
“Paul and I haven’t gotten all our Planys notes pried out of Security,” Jordan said glumly. “Our wardrobe’s barely made it through. You can see our splendor this evening. Pretty shabby stuff.”
“You’re fine.”
“Don’t suppose you can use your influence with the little darling to speed our stuff along.”
“I’ll ask, if you like.” He was glad the little darlingwas as far as the sarcasm about young Ari went in this venue. The walls had ears and even if they didn’t, he didn’t like Jordan dragging him into a proxy quarrel with Admin while half the Wing Directors and Agency heads in Reseune sat at the other tables. “Be genteel. Trust me. This time, trust me, and take my word for it. She’s not her genemother.”
“No?” Jordan feigned surprise. “After all they’ve done to be sure she is?”
The waiter arrived. Mercifully. The dinner wasn’t going well and they hadn’t even ordered yet.
Justin gave his order. Grant ordered smoked salmon, a likely match for cost, Paul ordered boeuf a la maison and Jordan ordered a modest, all‑local caesar salad with blackened chicken.
“Saving room for dessert,” Jordan said when Justin frowned at his economy. “I noticed a cheesecake.”
“Sounds good,” Justin said–not tempted to believe Jordan was through with gestures this evening, no. Not once he’d started. And the waiter departed.
“So I’m going to impose on you,” Jordan said. “We need desk space. I’m sure they watch me. I’m sure they watch you. We can consolidate their job. Make them happy.”
“I’m telling you we have staff. Five staffers and us in that office. And security won’t let you in there.”
“So who’s important? Your clericals or your father?”
“I’m saying we need the staff. They have work to do.”
“Fine. Ask the little dear for space for them. I’m sure she’d find it. After all, she’s not stingy like her predecessor.”
“Jordan, give it up. You haven’t got your clearance. You’ll get it. But it’s still no, on the office.”
“I’m saying I’m going eetee locked into that living room. I can’t work in there. Put your spare clericals into our living room if you have to. You’re not even there five days a week. Who’s using the desks?”
It wasn’t an outrageous request–except it was his convenient Integrations computer access, which his staff used, which heused, dammit, for Ari’s lessons, and his father didn’thave clearance, or a license. His safe was there. His manuals were there. His projects were there–he didn’t keep those in their cubbyhole of a Wing One office.
“You’re not happy,” Jordan said. “ Sorry.”
“Look, if you want your office back…” Yanni wasn’t likely to approve Jordan’s moving into general office space in the first place, there was that. But he could easier get another office in the Education wing, for them and their staff.
“I would like that. Yes. I mean when I get the license back, for God’s sake. We can share. What happened to us working together?”
And his and Grant’s work with the G‑27, while not under security seal, had some bits in it he felt fairly proprietary about, and, no, dammit, he didn’t want another round of security investigations going through his notebooks, or Grant’s because Jordan was in there. More to the point, he didn’t want his fathergoing through his notes and appropriating anything he was working on.
No way in hell.
“I just don’t see why it’s an issue,” Jordan said with a wistful little frown. “Apply to move your staff out. I’m sure they’ll find a space somewhere.”
“It’s a little matter of convenience.”
“You know there arevirtual connections–same as being there. Unless, of course, there’s some reason you’d rather not.”
“You know the reasons I’m a little reluctant. Last Sunday night was a case in point.”
“Many fewer drinks in the office.”
“Listen, Jordan. My life is going perfectly fine. So could yours be, if you’d just put the brakes on a bit and get along with Yanni. You’re home, for God’s sake. He knows you didn’t–whatever.”
“Yanni’s a prick.”
“Dad. Don’t.”
“Have you caved in that far?”
He lowered his voice way down and leaned across the table. “And do you have to agitate Admin just to get a reaction? I don’t particularly want a reaction, thank you.”
“So the little dear issomething like her predecessor.”
Not sotto voce. Just normal conversation level, and not cooperating worth a damn. Justin found his pulse rate had gotten up, old familiar sensation. And he didn’t like it. “Well, there you have it, don’t you? We’re arguing again and I don’t think it would work, sharing an office. Look, I’ve had enough of investigations. I don’t want to be in the middle of another one. And get off the notion it’s Ari. It’s Yanni, and you know you don’t want to be in his bad book, but you persist in picking fights.”
“Ah. So it’s fear for your reputation. But you should be golden. You were quite the hero, overthrowing the Nyes, saving her highness…”
“Neither.” Jordan was stalking some point, he saw that, and he didn’t know why or what. For a top‑flight psychset designer, it was downright embarrassing, not to know what was behind his own identical’s actions, and thathinted at a Working, either verbal or otherwise. Jordan knew him from way back, ownedmost of the buttons, knew his body from inside out, and that was a fact. Sitting here, across the table from Jordan, mirror into mirror with that damned infuriating smile on Jordan’s face that his own body knew gut‑deep was no smile at all, because it never reached the eyes– damn, he knew it. And there was nobody more dangerous to him, if Jordan decided to pull old strings.
Set psych‑switches in his own baby boy? Damned right Jordan would have done that, from the cradle up. Ari One had flipped them the other way. Jordan had had twenty years to figure how to get at him past Ari’s Working, or worse–and then those questions Sunday night. Had he been alone with Ari? Had Ari done anything further? It very much assumed the character not of an outraged father, but of a psych operator wanting a case history.
And much worse–
Jordan knew how to get at Grant. Grant hadbeen under Jordan’s supervision, too, in their collective childhood, and if Jordan could get his hands on Grant’s updated manual, which was in the computer system in that office, once Jordan got his license back…
That thought sent cold chills through him. The very thought, that Grant could be put into that situation–that sent his hand questing after the lately‑arrived drink.
Share an office with Jordan? No. Absolutely not. License or no license. And subtlety only wound his own gut in knots, it gave Jordan chance after chance to get to him.
“It’s just not going to work,” he said. “I’ll go to Yanni, if you can’t do it without flaring off. I’ll talk to him and see if I can get your stuff out of customs and your license hurried along.”
“I don’t want any damn charity.”
“But you damn sure want my office. And I don’t want you in there.”
“ Youroffice?”
“Let’s try honesty,” he said abruptly. “You want to start the war with Admin up again. I don’t. I don’t want to subject Grant to it, either. So make your own choices, but–”