Ember shrugged. “We didn’t call him Ghost Gadget without cause.”
“True.”
Still, she did have doubts.
Pulling away from her, Rian ran to climb up the fighter behind his father. She started to grab him, but Bastien reached down to help him move to stand by his side so that they could work on it together.
The sight of them like that… of Bastien’s patience with their son as he explained to him what he was doing and why… it made her strangely weepy.
“So this will work?” Rian asked.
“It should. Or it’ll piss them off and they’ll kill us.” Bastien pulled out his link and handed it to their son. “Please, hold the light so that I can see a little better.”
“Okay. And for the record, I don’t want to die.”
“For the record, I don’t intend to let you. I’d never hear the end of it from your mom. And she really scares me most days.”
Rian glanced at her, then whispered, “She scares me, too.”
Ember sighed as that tweaked her heart, in a psychotic kind of way. Bastien made it so hard to stay angry at him. But then that was nothing new. The entire time they’d dated, she’d been on the verge of wanting to choke the life out of his body and then he’d surprise her with an act so incredibly kind or thoughtful that she’d instantly forget her rage.
His mother had complained of the same thing. And so had Lil. In fact, she could hear his sister’s voice in her head to this day—“It’s the only reason I didn’t drown him while he was still in nappies.…”
“So what are you doing now?” Rian asked excitedly.
“This is the heater for the ship. If we scramble things about, it’ll heat up the seat and make it appear as if there’s someone in it.”
“You can do that?” Rian gaped.
“Sure can. Then we need to rig the drive so that it can pilot out on remote. And the sensors so that they’ll think they see a phantom body in the seat.”
“That’s awesome. How will you land it?”
“Won’t have to. SOP for The League is they’ll tractor beam the ship in. They won’t chance my ramming their facility out of suicidal tendencies.” Bastien flashed a charming grin down at her. “Of which I have many, according to your mother.”
“Wow… how do you know all this?”
“Studied hard in school.”
Rian screwed his face up at his father. “Not what Mama says.”
This time, Bastien glanced down to her and smirked. “What lies has she been telling on me?”
“She says you’re where I get my slackness from. That you charmed your way through school and negotiated grades with your teachers like you were running for political office. You never studied for anything, other than how to avoid responsiblity.”
Bastien feigned being offended. “Why she tell you that?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know.”
Bastien grimaced down at Ember. “Why you tell my boy those stories?”
“’Cause he’s little Bastien, all the way. Just look at him. He’s not your son so much as your clone.”
Rian was digging around the engine, toying with various belts. Just the way Bastien tinkered whenever he had a new toy. He looked up with a charming smile that was identical to the one his father used whenever he got caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to.
Bastien grinned proudly.
Ember groaned and then had to smile at the two of them and the trouble she was in while facing their combined force.
