“You did this! You did this!” the woman shouted, trying to pull the child from Cullen’s arms. He knew enough Dari to understand what she was saying, but not enough to explain that if he released the child, she would die.
“You did this. You did this!”
He breathed for the girl, moving them both toward the exit of the field hospital.
The woman somehow caught up to him, though, her hate-filled gaze cutting into him. She ripped the child away. “You.”
Cullen pressed his forehead against the glass, feeling the chill seep into his skin as the destroyed field hospital evaporated. His heart pounded against his chest, mirroring the rat-tat, rat-tat of the hale. Fuck. Thunder didn’t usually set him off, but he hadn’t been expecting the storm. The sky had been clear blue the last time he checked. Maybe it had had something to do with the way Skylar Reynolds had looked at him just before leaving—like she knew he was the devil incarnate. Just as that mother in Afghanistan had.
Grabbing Reynolds’s portfolio, Cullen threw the whole thing into the recycling bin and dropped himself in front of his computer screen. Skylar Reynolds threw him out of balance, and he still couldn’t seem to find his center of gravity. As if she were kryptonite. In Afghanistan and Iraq, Cullen had trained himself against feeling anything. It was harder in civilian life. Too many interruptions. But it was still harder today. The thunder. The hail. The woman’s eyes.
Taking a series of deep breaths, Cullen forced himself to clear his mind, beckoning the cloak of numbness back into place around him. Adding bricks to the wall that protected the rest of the world from the half-cocked grenade that Cullen Hunt would always be, no matter how many pediatric burn units he funded.
Knowing the woman wouldn’t be stepping foot in his company again helped. There were advantages to being the boss, and Rachel at reception—not usually his favorite person, but a pit bull when he needed her to be—wouldn’t let Reynolds even look through a window if Cullen asked.
Cullen’s phone rang, interrupting his momentary peace. Rachel wanted to know whether she could tell Cullen’s next interviewee to take a long walk off a short pier, given the fresh track marks along his veins.
That was…three down and five still to go for the day. There had to be someone who wouldn’t make Cullen ready to shoot himself.
Three hours later, Cullen’s stomach was growling its empty displeasure when Eli knocked on the open door. Not because he actually needed an invitation, but Eli was good about making sure never to startle Cullen unnecessarily.
“I’m off to Kyan’s for dinner and…” Eli trailed off, his eyes narrowing on the floor, where Reynolds’s headshot had apparently slipped out of the folder and under a side table. “What the bloody hell? Is that—”
“Very much so. Just in a different costume.” Getting up, Cullen pulled the photo from Eli’s hands and went to stuff it back into the discarded folder. “Reynolds had the audacity to waltz in here as if she actually wanted the dispatch job.”
“Oh, that’s too good.” Eli snatched the folder from Cullen’s hands. The asshole. “Let’s see, she does know that neither dispatch nor office management is customer facing, doesn’t she? Unless the headshot is meant to suggest—”
“Fuck off,” Cullen snapped, surprising himself as much as Eli. Eli avoided relationships, but he enjoyed women fully and made certain they enjoyed themselves too. It had been a joke, and not even a crude one. Yet Cullen’s fist had tightened at his side on reflex.
Eli surveyed Cullen with too careful a gaze and held up empty palms. “Not saying anything you don’t know, but if I had a dollar every time someone tried to twist my reputation, I could live off the interest alone. Fuck, I’m sure my mother hires half those reporters.”
“What does that—” Cullen started.
“I’m saying I don’t take that shit she pulled on Main Street personally. And I don’t need you to get indignant on my behalf either. If you want to hire her—”
“I don’t want to hire her.” Cullen threw up his hands. Was everyone deaf today?
“Then let me see the résumé. Maybe I’ll hire her.”
“Asshole.”
“Very true,” Eli agreed companionably as he pulled out the résumé Cullen hadn’t bothered reading and began to peruse the contents. “So who are you getting?”
Cullen pursed his lips. No one. A day of interviews, and he had not a single person he’d trust to color with crayons, much less run a rescue squad communications channel.
“You need to replace Suzy, Cullen.” Eli’s tone dropped into business mode. The man ran an international corporation and ran it bloody well, as he would say.
“I will replace Suzy, but not with Skylar Reynolds.”
“Agreed. You need someone who won’t be shy to ask direct questions. Someone who can keep track of facts, even when they get as convoluted as an NYPD corruption investigation. Perhaps someone with a degree in communications.”
Cullen glared at his former lieutenant. “Seriously?”
Eli handed him the résumé and a couple of news stories he pulled from Skylar’s folder. He was right. The man had a gift for zeroing in on the key information. In fact, now that Cullen looked at the résumé, Reynolds’s only downfall was being overqualified.
“I’m not letting a spy from a trashy tabloid rummage through the Rescue’s computer system, no matter what her résumé says.”
Eli sighed. “You have me there. At the end of the day, you need to trust your people. And…” His brows pulled together as he flipped through more papers in the portfolio Skylar had left. “Wait. What’s the date on the sample articles I just showed you?”
Cullen glanced down. “About a year ago. Why?”
“Look.”
Pulling out the last sheet from the folder, Eli laid it onto Cullen’s desk. Instead of full text, this one just listed the headlines and publication dates. Steady number from about two years ago until a couple of months back. Then, nothing. Why the gap? If Reynolds had been working a job she’d been qualified for, why had she left it? With its higher population and crime rate, the Big Apple must have a lot more opportunities for compelling stories than a place like Denton Valley. Why leave there for here? For Denton Uncovered, of all things?
Cullen didn’t know, and for the first time, that bothered him. Not your circus, not your monkeys, he told himself firmly and laid the folio back on his desk. “How’s the arm?”
“Fine. It would’ve been just as fine if you hadn’t stitched it up.”
Cullen grunted at him. Then paused, frowning at his friend. Eli had the best business instincts of anyone Cullen knew. “Tell me something. If Skylar Reynolds showed up at Mason Pharmaceuticals, would you offer her a position?”
He knew he’d fucked up the second the words left his mouth.
Eli waggled his eyebrows, grinning like the cat who ate the canary.
“Don’t tell me which positions you could think of for her, shithead. Would you hire her or not?”
Eli’s face straightened. “I would.”
For some godforsaken reason, the idea of Eli getting Sky made a jolt of red-hot jealousy flare through Cullen.