Free Wounded Animals (Whistleblower Series Book 1) by Jim Heskett Page B

I’d returned to section 1 near the terminal, I had exhausted my optimism. I hadn’t pressed the button for a full minute, so I gave it one last try. Nothing.
    I sat down, head in my hands. Seemed like it was time to admit defeat, but what was I supposed to do next? Where the hell was my wife?
    “No way,” said a nearby familiar voice. “Is that you, Mr. Candle?”
    I squinted, the fading sun reflecting off a car window to obscure my vision. All I could see was the outline of a man. I held up my hand to block out the glare, then the figure in front of me came into focus. Darren, my bushy-eyebrowed trainee, the one that Kareem Haddadi had probably warned me about. The destroyer of worlds.
    “Of all the luck,” he said, a big grin on his face. “I’d say it’s a small world, but that doesn’t begin to cover it.”
    “Darren?”
    I’d last seen him the day before in Dallas, and now here he was, in Denver, standing before me in khakis and a pea coat, white earbuds dangling from his ears, dragging a rolling bag behind him. Maybe I should have been more surprised, but with all the crazy stuff going on over the last few days, I barely registered an increase in my heartbeat.
    “What are you doing here?” I said.
    He frowned, which made his eyebrows join together to form a massive structure across his forehead. He bent to one knee and took the earbuds out. “You don’t look so good, Mr. Candle. Are you okay?”
    I felt my face pull down again. “No, Darren, I’ve had a rough couple of days. I’m pretty far from okay, to tell you the truth.”
    He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. The empathy in his look had made me forget for a moment how much this kid creeped me out. When he touched me, it all came back.
    “I’m really sorry to hear that,” he said. “I don’t always understand the universe’s plan, either.”
    “What are you doing here?” I asked again.
    “I just got off an airplane.”
    I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic. “Okay, fair enough, but what are you doing in Denver?”
    “Oh, I see. I have a meeting with one of your TSE’s tomorrow morning. They’re considering me for a Technical Account Manager position already. Can you believe that? I just finished Design training yesterday, and they’re already talking about moving me to another team. I just hope I don’t screw up the interview.”
    No surprises there. The kid had corporate climber written all over him. Despite his humility, I’m sure he knew they’d smelled it on him during his initial interview. Still, it was strange that they would send him out here because there were TSE’s in the Dallas office too.
    Difficult to believe that any of this was a fortunate accident. There had been too many of them this week.
    “Maybe this isn’t the best time, seeing as how you’re having such a bad day, but I wanted to tell you how much I appreciated the training you gave us on the software. You’re excellent at what you do, Mr. Candle.”
    His words barely registered, but the ‘mister’ still irked me. “Candle, please. Call me Candle.”
    “Right, I forgot you told me that already. Well, I have to catch up with the shuttle and get my rental car and all that, but, before I forget, there’s just one more thing.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a card. “I was going to come find you at the Denver office and give this to you, but I’ll just do it now. Wyatt wanted me to make sure you had a copy of his business card. You know, in case you change your mind about the offer. He said it would be terrible to let you go, what with all the great things you’ve done for the company.”
    He held the card out to me, and I reluctantly accepted it. The last thing I needed right now was to deal with another one of Wyatt’s move-to-Texas hard sell sessions.
    I nodded as he turned and inserted his headphones back into his ears. As he started to walk away, he gave me a look over his shoulder, then he added a wink before