Page 56 of Hunter

Well, now she knew why she’d instinctively disliked most of the staff, she thought with a grimace. They were lawless. And ruthless. And she had the data to prove it.

Was there some way she could use the information to her advantage? She didn’t know yet. But maybe a plan would come to her. Closing the file, she switched to the information on decathlon winners.

At first, she was disappointed because she didn’t find anyone who could be the right man. None of the recent champions was dead, she saw as she went down the list. The first deceased medal winner she came to was a man named Ben Lancaster who had taken the gold seventeen years ago—when he’d been twenty-five, she noted, her brow wrinkling. That would make him forty-two, if he were still alive. And there was no way Hunter could be anywhere near that old. If she had to guess, she would say he was in his late twenties.

Still, Lancaster was the only one who fit the prime criterion—death. So she accessed the additional information Hunter had downloaded and found herself confronting a picture of the man.

The hairs on the top of her head prickled as she stared at the picture. It was Hunter, but a different Hunter, a man at least fifteen years older than the man that she knew.

Chapter Nine

Impossible. Nobody turned back the hands of time. The clock ran in only one direction. Kathryn thought of plastic surgery. It might take years off your face. But it couldn’t give a forty-two-year old the body of somebody in his twenties. Could it?

Strangely light-headed, she studied the man who could be Hunter’s older twin, trying to dredge up some feeling of connection to him. But she could generate no emotions besides shock at the remarkable resemblance. Perhaps if she read the information, she thought as her eyes began to scan the text. Lancaster had been a track and field superstar at the University of California at Berkeley in the early eighties before going on to the Olympics. He had given up his sports career, gone back to graduate school and ended up as a research physicist at the Sandia National Lab, of all places, working on cold fusion.

He had married a high school teacher, she read with a sharp pang. She had wanted Hunter to have a life before he lost his memory. She hadn’t bargained for discovering a wife. But she should have been prepared, she told herself with a little inward stab.

However, two years ago, the Lancasters had been killed on a New Mexico highway when a tractor trailer had come around a mountain curve on the wrong side of the road. So the wife was dead, she thought, caught between relief and guilt.

And so was Lancaster—

She studied the picture and re-read the short bio, trying to make sense of the startling new information. Ben Lancaster had been an athlete and a scientist—an unusual mixture that could account for the combination of multiple talents and high intelligence in Hunter. But he was much too young to be the same person. Could Lancaster have had a secret child—who had somehow fallen into Emerson’s clutches? The likelihood seemed remote. And it didn’t explain the cryptic remark about previous careers.

The feeling of being observed made her head snap up to find Hunter standing in the doorway—watching her. He’d slipped back into the house so quietly that she’d never even heard him.

“How long have you been standing there?” she asked.

“Two minutes.”

“I’ve found something,” she told him.

“I know. From the look on your face.” His own face had hardened into a look of resignation as he watched her gesture toward the computer.

###

The two men had arranged another meeting—this time well past midnight in the woods behind the research center. The older one was angry—angry with himself for being reduced to working with morons. Angry with the way things were falling out. He usually hid his frustration well. Tonight, he took out his anger on his companion.

“Your dumb idea backfired. They’re still cozied up in that house like newlyweds.”

The answer came as a sharp retort. “You thought it was a great idea at the time. All you have to do is sit back and let me take the chances.”

“I’m paying you well enough.”

“You’re paying me peanuts, considering the risk. Maybe I’ll quit.”

“The hell you will. We have an agreement.”

The younger man cursed. He’d wanted to get back at Kelley. Now he wished he’d thought before he hooked up with this nut.

“Relax. I’ve got an idea that will do the trick.”

“Oh yeah?”

The more intelligent of the two began to outline his plan. When he finished, the other one nodded.

“It might work—if we have the time. Deployment has been moved up.”

“Are you sure?”

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