Casey couldn’t help but smile at Ryan’s assessment. As for Yoda, Ryan’s extraordinary artificial intelligence system, he’d become an honorary FI team member. Sometimes, it was hard to remember that he wasn’t human. Then again, he’d been built by Ryan, who was very human. Bottom line? Ryan was a genius and Yoda was omniscient.
“Has everyone reviewed this candidate’s application?” Casey asked.
“Yup.” Marc was his usual straightforward self. “She sounds like a juvenile delinquent who never did hard time.”
“She sounds like a kid who needs a chance,” Claire chimed in. “She was bounced from foster home to foster home and spent a lot of time on the streets.”
“I have to agree,” Patrick said. “I know she’s got a juvie record, and that would normally turn me right off. But in this case—her parents died in a plane crash when she was eight. There were no relatives to take her in. So she spent ten years in the system. That’s tough.”
“And we’re not exactly squeaky clean ourselves,” Marc commented drily. He glanced at Patrick. “Other than you, Special Agent Lynch.”
“Not so
much anymore,” Patrick retorted. “You’ve corrupted me.”
The whole group chuckled.
“Yeah, we’re the maverick investigators,” Ryan said, coining a phrase from an article written about them. “So, if this girl has a brain, I’m willing to cut her some slack.”
“Some slack?” Casey repeated, shooting Ryan a look. “I’m hoping you’ll do more than that.”
“I wouldn’t count on it. I still think a virtual assistant would be the best choice.” Ryan held up both palms to ward off oncoming arguments. “But I’ve accepted that I’ve been overruled. So let’s get this show on the road.”
Right on cue, the doorbell sounded.
“Applicant number twenty-seven has arrived,” Yoda announced.
“Punctual.” Casey glanced at her watch. “Okay, Yoda, go ahead and let her in.” She interlaced her fingers on the table in front of her. “Oh, and, Yoda? Leave out the applicant number when you announce her. Just stick to her name. Applicant twenty-six nearly took off when you made that reference. Let’s not scare off applicant twenty-seven. It’s starting to sound like we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel and each one of them is it. Either that, or we’re looking for perfection and can’t find it.”
“That would be accurate,” Yoda pointed out.
“True, but we don’t want to intimidate the girl before she even gets upstairs.”
“Very well, Casey. Name only.”
Yoda’s words were punctuated by the beeping sound of the alarm system as he disarmed it.
* * *
A loud thunk resounded in the FI hallway as the large steel bolt retracted, unlocking the front door.
“Please enter the building and proceed to the second floor,” Yoda instructed the young woman at the door. “Make a right turn into the main conference room. Your interview will be conducted there.”
“Thanks.” Without so much as a flinch, Emma Stirling walked through the foyer as the door bolt reengaged behind her. She climbed up the winding staircase, and paused on the landing to run her fingers through her hair and adjust her tote bag on her shoulder. Then she entered the conference room.
She fought back a smile as she saw the all-too-familiar startled reaction from the team at large. It was the same as everyone who’d read her history. They were expecting a scraggly looking brat from the streets. Instead, they were getting the equivalent of a prep school cheerleader—all blonde, blue-eyed and composed, with a fashionable short skirt and a formfitting top.
She’d worked hard to perfect that image.
“I clean up nice,” she said, putting aside the looks of surprise and assessing the challenge she was about to face.
Emma had done her homework.
The pretty, authoritative redhead at the head of the table was Casey Woods, the president of Forensic Instincts and a brilliant analyst of human behavior. On either side of her were two hot guys—one dark and brooding, the other sexy and charismatic—Marc Devereaux and Ryan McKay, respectively. Marc was Casey’s right hand, a former navy SEAL and former FBI agent in the Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico, Virginia. Quite simply, there was nothing Marc couldn’t do or couldn’t make happen. Ryan was nothing short of a techno-wizard and a strategy genius.
The willowy blonde who looked like a fairy princess was Claire Hedgleigh. Emma didn’t quite get what it meant, but Claire was a claircognizant and had an amazing psychic gift that took her into scary but productive places to help solve cases. The older conservative-looking guy was Patrick Lynch, a retired FBI agent with over three decades of law enforcement experience, and who grounded the team when they pushed the boundaries a little too far. Oh, yeah, and the cool bloodhound sitting up tall, ears erect, was Hero—an FBI-trained human-scent evidence dog whose olfactory sense was second to none.
Pretty thorough, Emma thought with an internal grin.