The rest of the food was eaten in silence. When they were finished, Hunter tidied up while Cady moved to the sofa.
Hunter helped her put her ankle up before pulling an armchair around so he was facing her.
“So, you planning on firing me?” she asked, growing nervous in the silence.
He raised an eyebrow. “Why would I fire you?”
“You were pretty mad at me yesterday for not following your order.”
Hunter ran his hand over his face. “I was scared and I let my fear turn into anger. Particularly after I heard the whole story.”
“I made a decision based on the situation. I didn’t know that idiot was holding a gun to Josh’s head.” Not that that would have changed anything. “Do you worry over all your employees like this?”
“No. But everyone else has a background in the military or law enforcement. You’re inexperienced. You have good instincts and skills, but I should never have put you on that job.”
She could hear the self-recrimination in his voice and barely refrained from hitting him over the head.
“You’re such an idiot. It’s not like you knew that job was going to end up like that. Doran should have been halfway to Mexico. And this is my job. The job you hired me for. You wouldn’t treat any of the others like this, so I can only guess that my having a vagina is what’s getting me special treatment.”
“No, you being inexperienced is what is getting you treated like this.”
“Really? So what if I told you that I have some experience, would that make a difference?”
Hunter narrowed his gaze. “And what sort of experience would this be?” he drawled.
She thought about lying, but Gray would just tell him the truth eventually and then she’d really be in the shit.
“Did you hear the name I gave the cops last night?”
He nodded. “I was going to ask you why you lied to them about your last name.”
“I didn’t lie to them. My name really is Cady Franklin not Cady Scott.”
Hunter was silent for a long moment. “Explain,” he snapped, his voice tense.
“I didn’t lie to them, I lied to you. I’ve been using a false last name for the last ten months.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t want anyone to find me.”
He sat forward suddenly. “Did someone hurt you? Are you hiding from someone? An ex?”
Cady shook her head. “No, nothing like that. I, well, this is kind of painful to explain. I don’t like talking about the past.”
He fell back in the chair. “But you’re going to.” Pure demand.
Nodding, she took a deep breath. “My parents died when I was seven. They were young when they had me, my mother had just turned seventeen and my dad was only a few months older. They lived with my grandmother until she died then we moved into the city. I don’t remember any of this, of course, but my great-aunt told me it all later. Anyway, they must have got in with a bad group of people or something because they both died of an overdose. I found them.”
“Jesus,” he said quietly, but she kept her gaze on her lap. She hated being pitied. “My neighbor had a daughter a year older than me and we went to the same school. She’d pick me up after school and walk me home. She heard my screams and came running in. They were gone.”
“What happened to you after that?”
“I stayed with my neighbor for a while, but she couldn’t afford to keep me, so I went into foster care.”
“What about your great-aunt?”
“She wasn’t in the country. She was a missionary. I think she was in Africa at the time, looking after sick children. She came home and I went to live with her for a while, but she said I was too much work for her. I tried to be good, I really did. I think she just wanted to go back overseas and I was a burden holding her back. I went back into foster care. Most of the places I lived were good. But I was one kid of many, you know?”