by Rebecca York
He opened the bag of cheese twists and took a bite before asking, “So what can we do for you?”
“I guess you know that I’ve been prohibited from working with your research subject—Hunter—until my clearance comes through.”
“Um, yes. Sorry about that.” He lowered his voice. “Dr. Swinton is a stickler for procedure.”
The response was better than she had expected. Making a helpless gesture, she said, “I feel like I’m marking time. I’d be very grateful if I could get some background information on the subject, so I’ll be up to speed when we start working together.”
“Um,” Anderson mused around another bite of junk food.
“It would help if I could see the kind of progress he’s already made.”
Taking a thoughtful swallow of soda, he leaned back in his chair and studied her with blue eyes that held all the charm of a cat watching a goldfinch.
She tried to pretend he wasn’t making her nervous.
“Yes, well,” he finally said, “I’d have to ask Dr. Swinton’s approval to give you written reports. However, there are some videos we’ve made of selected training sessions. I don’t see why you couldn’t look at them.”
“Thank you,” she answered with feeling.
He let his legs thump to the floor and stood. “Come on down to the video room.”
She followed him down the hall into a comfortably furnished lounge with a couch and several easy chairs facing a thirty-inch television.
“If you’ll sit down, I’ll make some selections,” he said.
She sat in one of the chairs, watching while he unlocked a metal cabinet crammed with hundreds of videotapes, neatly stacked and labeled. Quite a collection, she thought, watching him pick and choose among the offerings.
Finally, he closed the door and clicked the lock on the cabinet before setting several boxes on the table in front of her. “I have to get back to work, so just leave these here when you finish.”
She heaved a sigh of relief when he left the room. He’d been helpful, but he’d made her edgy, she thought as she put a tape into the slot.
When she hit the play button, a picture of Hunter flashed onto the screen. He looked as fit and tan as when she’d first encountered him on the road. But that didn’t prove anything, she reminded herself. Undoubtedly, the video had been made before she’d met him.
Still it was impossible not to look carefully for clues to his state of health. Physically, that wasn’t hard to determine, since he was wearing a pair of tight-fitting black swimming trunks that gave her a wonderful view of the lithe, well-muscled body she remembered.
As she stared at him, a feeling of pent-up anguish caught her in the solar plexus. Folding her arms across her middle, she whispered his name, then said, “I’m sorry.”
There was no reply from the video image. But, strangely, the expression on his face told her he doubted her apology.
He turned from the camera, gazed into the turquoise water of a swimming pool, then executed a perfect racing dive and began to swim with a powerful crawl stroke to the other end of the pool.
As a swimmer herself, she could admire his speed and form. And she could also appreciate his stamina. But after ten minutes of watching him do laps, she fast-forwarded the tape.
The next activity was more interesting. There was still no sound, but this time, at least, Hunter was involved in a contact sport—wrestling. His opponent was the solidly built Doug Granger, whose massive body must have outweighed Hunter’s by at least fifty pounds. In the first shots, the heavier man seemed to take a kind of childish delight in getting the drop on his less-skilled opponent, using superior knowledge of the sport to slam Hunter onto the mat again and again. Her hands clenched into fists as she saw how much punishment he was taking. Another man might have given up or gotten angry or seized the initiative by biting his opponent’s ear. Instead, Hunter stuck to the rules and kept doggedly getting up after each defeat. And she noted with satisfaction that his form and technique were getting better as the match progressed. He was smart, resourceful and well-coordinated. By the end of the session he was claiming most of the victories, and she was cheering him on with a grin and little exclamations of approval.
She looked closely at the two men’s faces. Hunter’s expression was for the most part neutral, but if she paid careful attention, she could tell that he was secretly gratified. Granger, on the other hand, was less successful at hiding his feelings. He was angry. When he started using obviously illegal moves to give himself an edge, she wanted to leap up and pull him off Hunter.
Thankfully, someone else must have noticed what was going on. Granger turned as if in response to a command spoken by an unseen superior. With his set lips, he marched off the mat, leaving Hunter standing with his hands on his hips, breathing hard.
The scene cut off, and she eagerly looked for another revealing session. Mostly, it was more routine stuff, and she began to think that she’d been had by Anderson. Probably he’d called Emerson to report that he was keeping her busy with the world’s most boring home videos. Then the view on the current tape abruptly switched, and she saw Hunter standing at the bottom of a metal pit. He was dressed in slacks and a knit shirt, much like the outfit he had put on in the locker room.
Again, the video was without sound. But from Hunter’s shocked reaction, she could see that he’d heard a sudden noise from above—and discovered that something bad was about to happen.
He ducked and covered his head with his hands, and she watched in horror as an ocean of water began to rain down on him.
Her fingers curled around the edge of the chair cushion, dug in as the pit filled. At first, there was so much water pouring in that she could barely see anyone. When the flood eased a little, Hunter began to pull himself up a set of rungs fastened to the side of the tank. But he couldn’t climb fast enough to stay ahead of the deluge. The water rose to his chest, then higher, and she found she was gasping for breath as waves lapped at his face, then covered his head.
Logically she knew that this episode had happened in the past. It was already over, she told herself. He had gotten out of the death trap. Yet that didn’t stop her pulse from pounding and perspiration from drenching her body. She rose from her seat as if she could come to his rescue, then fell back, her knees like straw.
Painfully, she dragged in enough breath to keep from getting dizzy,
“Hunter, please,” she begged. “Pull yourself up. Please.”
She saw the top of his dark head. Then he gave a mighty heave and hoisted himself up, hand over hand, staying just ahead of the water. Finally, he flopped out onto a metal deck and lay on his back, wet and panting. Turning his head, he lifted his hand, obviously appealing to someone she couldn’t see, someone who might have come to aid him. When no one appeared, she felt hot tears blur her vision.
Her own breath came in ragged gasps as if she was the one who had struggled out of the death trap.
God, what kind of sadist would treat a fellow human being that way? And coldly record it on videotape. Maybe there was some justification for what had happened in the locker room. The security men had been angry and upset. But this was cold-blooded torture.
Rage overpowered her—a pure abiding rage that brought with it an almost physical pain. She wanted to smash something. Smash the television screen that had shown her the dreadful scene. Yet she was too rational to strike out in that fashion.
So, she sat in the chair, clasping the armrests in a death grip and trying to get her emotions under control. It took several minutes before she could stanch the tears running down her cheeks as she replayed the scene in her mind, saw again his shocked expression before the water hit him. Nobody had told him what was going to happen. They’d taken him by surprise—and given her a vivid insight into why he found it difficult to trust her or anybody else.
She glanced over her shoulder, almost expecting to find Anderson standing in the doorway watching her with his coldly speculative eyes.
Why had he i
ncluded this revealing scene with the tapes? she wondered. Had she misread him? Was he alerting her to the kind of inhuman experiments they were doing in this hellhole with the bucolic name of Stratford Creek? Or was he warning her not to interfere? Maybe the surprise viewing had simply been an accident.
With shaky fingers, she pressed the rewind button and waited impatiently until the machine stopped whirring. Ejecting the videotape, she juggled it in her hand. She wanted to remove it as evidence, knew that wasn’t an option. The tape would be missed—either by Anderson or someone else. So, she ducked into a ladies room and splashed water on her heated face, trying to make herself look normal again before exiting the building.
Chapter Four
Kathryn pictured herself driving straight to the administration building, pushing past Emerson’s tough little receptionist, and bursting into his office. But coming at him breathing fire was hardly the way to get what she wanted.
She’d been part of enough bureaucracies to know that it was almost impossible to get anything done unless you worked within the system. But the training center was off-limits. Swinton had control over Hunter’s records. And she didn’t know whether Anderson was a friend or a foe. If she’d had the option, she would have driven through the front gate of Stratford Creek and back to Baltimore, where she could get some aid and comfort from the Light Street Irregulars.
But that wasn’t an option, she reminded herself.
When she reached her car, her eyes widened as she spotted a piece of paper neatly rolled into a tube and stuffed under the door handle. Probably not an advertisement for a new pizza parlor at the local shopping center, she thought as she pulled it free.
Unwinding it, she found a message that looked as if it had come from a computer printer. It said:
“Medical center. One fifteen. Cardiovascular unit. Hunter will be available to you.”
There was no signature and no way of knowing who wanted her to come to the medical facility. Or why. This might be the chance she’d been waiting for, she thought with suppressed excitement. What if she had an ally at Stratford Creek—someone who didn’t want to announce his support for her at a staff meeting?
The euphoria faded quickly. It was equally possible that McCourt or maybe Winslow was setting her up to get caught disobeying orders. Or someone could simply be playing mind games with her.
But at least she could give herself a legitimate excuse for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She’d been putting off surrendering the standard medical forms that she’d been given. Now was the perfect time to turn them in.
Quickly she glanced at her watch. She was going to be late if she didn’t hurry.
After picking up the forms at the cottage, she drove to the medical center. As she stepped inside the front door of the building, a woman in a nurse’s uniform looked up. “May I help you?”
“I’m fine,” she said, then turned to locate the cardiovascular unit on the directory. It was on the first floor, right wing.
Sailing around the corner, she pushed open the door to the unit and found herself in a waiting area with a desk and three orange plastic chairs. The room was empty, and she felt a surge of disappointment as she decided someone was probably playing games after all.
But she wasn’t going to give up yet. Crossing the room, she pushed open an inner door and stepped into a dimly lit hallway. All she could hear as she tiptoed forward was the sound of her pulse pounding in her ears. One door near the end of the hall was open, and she thought she saw the shadow of a tall man standing inside. As she stared at it, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking about Chip McCourt again, this time with a sardonic grin on his face.
But what if it were Hunter?
Before she could lose her nerve, she crossed the remaining distance and stepped into the little room.
With a sense of relief, she took in the dark hair, broad shoulders, and narrow hips of the man standing a few feet away. Even from the back she recognized Hunter instantly.
Her initial surge of relief gave way almost immediately to gnawing tension in the pit of her stomach. He’d left her in anger. He was supposed to be dangerous. And they were alone again.
Dressed in a gray tee shirt, sweatpants and gym shoes, he was facing the window, gazing toward men on riding mowers cutting the straggly grass. He looked as if he wanted to escape from confinement—run free across the expanse of grass and into the woods beyond. At least that was how she interpreted his fixed posture.
“Hunter? It’s Kathryn Kelley,” she said with a little tremble in her voice.
His back stiffened, but he didn’t move, didn’t turn.
Before she could stop herself, she closed the door. Moistening her dry lips, she took several steps closer. The room was small, and she found herself only a few feet from him, angling her gaze upward to compensate for the disparity in their heights. “Are you angry?” she asked.
No answer.
“Angry at me?”
The question got more reaction than her previous tries. He turned and stared at her, his features as tight as his knotted muscles. She started to lift her hand toward him but let it fall helplessly back to her side.
“I went out jogging a couple of times, hoping I’d see you,” she said, struggling to hold her voice steady.
He only stared at her, his features shuttered. The guarded look made her think of youngsters who had been abused. He had the same wariness in his eyes—signaling the same reluctance to trust anybody for fear of getting hurt. Well, she’d already figured that out.
“I’ve been wondering how you were doing, hoping everything was all right.”
“Why?” he asked, turning the question into a direct challenge.
“I didn’t like what happened the other day. It wasn’t what I intended when I came in to talk to you. Truly. And I’ve been worried that they might have hurt you,” she answered softly.
He gave a little shrug that tugged at her insides. This time she couldn’t stifle the impulse to reach out and lay a hand gently on his arm. Under her fingers, the muscles flexed. “What did the tranquilizer do to you?” she asked softly.
“My head hurt when I woke up. And my ribs. The ribs were from when they beat me.”
She fought for control but found she couldn’t prevent her eyes from filling with moisture. She felt a tear begin to run down her cheek.
He closed the distance between them, touched his knuckle to her face, stopped the downward flow of the droplet.
“You are crying,” he said gruffly.
“Because I feel so helpless.” Reaching up, she wrapped her fingers around his, holding tight, feeling the warmth of his skin and the slight tremble of his hand as she clung to him. Her hand was trembling, too. “I’m sorry about what happened. I didn’t know that a security team was coming into the locker room.”
He stiffened, pulled away. “Why should I believe that?” His voice was pitched so low she could barely hear.
“Because it’s the truth, Hunter.” She saw him react to the name and added in a voice as low as his, “I promise I’m not like everybody else around here.”
He studied her face intently, his eyes darkening. And she wanted to exchange confidences with him—about his life, and hers. Get him to tell her how he felt. Talk again about being friends. Clasp his large hand between her smaller ones.
But there were more important things she had to know—things he might tell her if she asked. “We may not have much time,” she said.
“Time for what?”
“Will you answer some questions?”
He gave no assurances, yet she proceeded as if she had his cooperation. “When William Emerson told me about Project Sandstorm, he said you were a—a convict who volunteered for a dangerous assignment. He claimed they used an experimental technique to—to wipe out the memory of your past life. Is that true?” Her pulse raced as she waited for an answer.
His eyes narrowed. “Colonel Emerson said that to you?”
“Yes.”
>
“I have not heard it.”
She kept her gaze steady. “If you aren’t a convict, who are you?”
He shrugged.
“You don’t remember your family. Your mother? Your father?”
Something flickered in the depths of his dark eyes, then he shook his head. “Things drift into my mind. The memory of picking up a coin. Crumpling a piece of paper in my hand. Smelling the wind coming off the sea,” he said wistfully. “And . . .” He reached to touch her hair. “There is no one here with hair like yours, yet I keep thinking I remember it. I think I remember you. Stronger than the rest of the things.” He stopped abruptly. “But that is not possible.”
He had spoken earlier of remembering her, and she wanted to believe in it. Yet her own recollection was no help. “If we know each other, where did we meet?” she tried.
He didn’t answer.
“What did we do?”
He shook his head. “I can’t answer your questions. All I know is that remembering you gives me—feelings. Like when a little of the music drifts into my mind.”
“What kind of music?”
“With many instruments. Complex. Blending. Trumpets. Cellos. The music swells and dies down.”
“A symphony?”
“Maybe.”
She watched the play of emotions on his face as he stood very still, staring into space. “Before you came here, the music was the most vivid. But with you, it is even stronger.”
She tried to imagine the deprivation of being cut off from her past—of snatching at bits of memory or making them up to fill a black void in her mind. Was he cursed with complete amnesia except for a few sensory memories? Or did he recall basic facts about history and other subjects?
“Who was president before John Kennedy?” she asked.
“Dwight Eisenhower. The first president was George Washington. The second was John Adams. The third—”
“You know all of them?”
“Yes.”
Few people could come up with the whole list. Amazed, she came up with a more difficult question. “Can you name the countries on the continent of Africa?”
