Crash and Burn
"I have a bad feeling about this. I want Team Steel on the case."
"Excellent choice."
Aside from when he had first met 'Max', Jeff had never studied his adoptive son's alter-ego so closely as when he uttered those two words. With the cocky, half-smile on his face, Max was only a few bangs different from his father, Jim McGrath.
When Josh grew into a toddler, Jim often joked (a joke which came from Molly) that Josh looked nothing like him, and that he wasn't sure that Josh was his son.
Neither Jim nor Molly was serious with this, simply stating fact: Josh had his mother's eyes and maternal grandfather's hair, seeming to have inherited nothing from his father's side of the family.
And yet, looking at Josh as he was now, as Max, Jeff could have almost swore that he could have been in the same office seventeen years ago, discussing a mission with the help of Marco.
It was Jim's last mission before their ill-fated trip to France, where their tiny boat, bought and christened barely a week after their son was born, capsized in a violent storm, Molly disappearing into the waves of the sea.
When that had happened, Josh had been left in Jeff's care for a good portion of a month while Jim wandered the globe doing who-knows-what. When he came back he thanked Jeff for looking after his son, took him back and never said a word about his month-long break.
Jim occasionally had little breaks, breaks which Jeff allowed but never asked about, always willing to look after Josh at a moment's notice. It was never for more than a week at a time, never at the same time of the month, yet Jeff had his own suspicions on where he went.
Now, Jeff was staring into Max's eyes as Mairot gave him the more in-depth details of the mission, the eyes that could have belonged to his father, save for the ring of hazel Jim had around his pupils.
Declaring the mission a piece of cake once out of ear-shot of Mairot -- although not Jeff -- Jeff mused that genetics had more than a part to play in Josh's personality. Although not his father's son in appearance, he was the exact copy of his father in personality, right down to the interest in sports.
Although he didn't quite know whether to be thankful or agitated that Josh had more of an interest in extreme sports than his father did. He suspected he would say 'agitated', but that would have implied he would have been happy if Jim was an extreme sports fanatic, and that was definitely not the case.
Max was halfway out the door with the intent of heading down to the hanger where Chuck was waiting to fly them all over to Tenerife.
The evening after the successful mission against the ship collector Chuck had unexpectedly asked Jeff if he wanted to talk over a few beers. Jeff had unexpectedly answered yes, and the two men found themselves, a couple of hours later, comparing and contrasting Jim and Max.
Chuck had spent pretty much the whole evening recounting what Max did or said, and compared them to what Jim would have done in the same situation. As the night went on Jeff became more and more certain that it was the beer talking, not Chuck, especially when he veered off into an old mission involving himself, Jim and a terrorist walking into a whore's house and them having to follow pretending to be customers.
"But don't worry," Chuck added with a wink and yet another drinks order, "Jim hadn't met Molly by that point."
Jeff had, naturally, spat out some of his drink at that point and suggested, not so gently, that Chuck stop drinking and head home before he start embarrassing himself even more, like getting up on stage and singing karaoke.
"But this bar doesn't have a karaoke area!"
"You'd still get up and sing."
After sending him home, Jeff did have to admit that most of what Chuck said was true…and to never, ever go through Jim's old mission logs unless Chuck gave him one to specifically look for.
As Behemoth zoomed out of N-Tek's hanger and towards Team Steel's latest mission, Jeff sent up a silent prayer that Josh wouldn't crash and burn at such a young age like his father did.