Page 18 of Hunter

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.

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