Page 55 of Hunter

“I—”

“We must make the most of our time,” he interrupted. “You must read the thumb drive and then erase the data. It’s dangerous to keep the evidence if the house can be searched at any time.”

She gave him a tight nod. Yes, the house could be searched. And men like Winslow and McCourt could burst in at any time. Yet that didn’t negate a basic fact that kept nagging at her. Why had she been given such unprecedented access to Hunter?

He must have seen the question on her face. “What?”

“The more I think about being left alone with you, the more I wonder why it’s been arranged this way.”

“I heard Dr. Kolb and Dr. Swinton talking about it when I was in the hospital.”

“They were talking in front of you?”

“They were in the hall. I heard them. Dr. Kolb said this is the best field trial he could think of. If I pass this test, I’m ready to go off into enemy territory. Dr. Swinton thanked him. He said that he had thought Dr. Kolb was fighting him. But now they were working like a team.”

“Enemy territory? Where?” she asked, hoping the answer might slip out.

“A country where Americans aren’t welcome. A country where one man might be able to slip in.” he answered evasively.

“Who is funding Project Sandstorm?” she tried.

“The Department of Defense.”

She kept her voice neutral. “Um. And does the Department of Defense own Stratford Creek?”

“Yes.”

When she tried to ask another question about his mission, he stopped her with a quick shake of his head.

“I can’t tell you any more about it.”

“I want to understand.”

“You have to read the computer data tonight,” he reminded her.

She gave a little sigh, knowing he was right. They didn’t have much time.

“What are you going to do?”

“Check the security at the motor pool,” he said

“Why?”

“Don’t ask me that either.” He made a quick exit from the room, and she stared after him. If he was checking the security of the motor pool, he must be thinking about leaving the base.

Could that really be true? Was he preparing to go against his training, after he’d told Winslow he wouldn’t run away?

She couldn’t answer the question, and she knew she was wasting time speculating. Taking the laptop off the dresser, she brought it to the bed where she propped up the pillows so she could sit comfortably. On the drive were two files. One was labeled “pers.” The other “Olympics.”

She ached to go right to the second file. But she knew the first one was more urgent. She had to see what she could find out about the men she was dealing with here.

An hour later, her head was swimming with information—information that didn’t come entirely from reading dry personnel entries. Apparently, Bill Emerson liked keeping track of his staff’s peccadillos, and record the information in memos he’d attached to each man’s record. Kind of like the J. Edgar Hoover method of personnel control, Kathryn thought with a shudder. If your employees knew you had something on them, they were likely to stay in line.

Among other things, she’d learned that Lieutenant Chip McCourt had a violent streak. He’d been thrown in the brig on several occasions. And he’d almost gotten himself court-martialed for assaulting a civilian worker on a tour in Germany. That time, Emerson had personally stepped in to get him off the hook. The lieutenant was allowed to leave the army with an honorable discharge, and he’d come straight to Stratford Creek to help set up Project Sandstorm.

Also enlightening were the confidential notes on Dr. Jules Kolb. According to Emerson, Kolb was an alcoholic who had badly mishandled a score of patients at a VA Hospital in Virginia, causing the deaths of several. The scandal had been covered up, and Kolb had been ordered into an alcoholic rehab program.

Reid, the man who had brought Hunter home this evening, had been jailed for selling supplies stolen from military bases. And then there was the brilliant Dr. Avery Swinton. His early reputation had been damaged by a scandal involving the fudging of test results in a scientific paper he’d published in theJournal of Biological Sciences.Still, he’d gone on to win a research grant at Berkeley—and then been dismissed for illegally experimenting with human fetal tissue.

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