Page 24 of Hunter

The door flew open, and she found herself facing Chip McCourt.

Their gazes locked, and she thought for a moment that he was going to bar her way. Instead, he stepped aside and ushered her into Emerson’s office.

“Did you get my message?” the man behind the desk asked.

She came to a jerky stop two feet inside the room. Was Emerson the one who’d left the note on her car? As soon as the idea surfaced, she dismissed it as wishful thinking. If he’d wanted to contact her secretly, he’d hardly be talking about it in front of McCourt.

Without waiting for a reply, the Chief of Operations waved her toward one of the guest chairs. “I received an updated copy of your clearance this morning he said, thumping a folder that sat in the middle of his desk blotter. We’ve been trying to track you down so we could discuss your assignment.”

“Good,” she answered, striving for composure as she lowered herself into the seat. She’d come prepared to do battle. Now she needed to tone down her approach.

“You were supposed to be working on performance appraisals. Where were you?” McCourt asked.

She turned toward him, made eye contact. “Dropping off my medical forms.”

He nodded curtly, and she was sure he was going to check up on her. Thank God she’d remembered to leave the forms.

“The senior staff have been discussing how you might instill some of the social graces in . . . Hunter,” Emerson said. “Dr. Kolb picked up on what you said at the meeting about most individuals learning to interact with other people in a home environment.”

Kathryn tried to conceal her surprise. “Dr. Kolb?” she asked.

“He wondered if you’d be willing to take on that role with our subject.”

“What role, exactly?” she asked cautiously.

“Providing a home-like atmosphere for him. I’ve been studying your professional background carefully, and I see you have a very impressive record with delinquents and other troubled teenagers. And you did an internship as a house mother at an inner-city home for runaways.

“Yes.”

“In many ways, Hunter is like an undisciplined teenager. At least in his emotional development. I think you could be very effective with him.”

“I hope so,” she responded, still trying to figure out where he was headed.

“What if we moved him into the guest cottage where you’re already living? You could have access to him before and after the regular training day and when he has a break from other activities. Socialization lessons might fit naturally into that kind of arrangement.”

She tried not to goggle. Emerson was offering her more than she would have dared to ask for.

“That sounds like a very effective arrangement,” she managed. “I’d be able to teach social skills and reinforce them over an extended period.”

“Don’t minimize the risk to yourself,” McCourt interjected. “We can give you a beeper to sound an alarm if you get into trouble. And we can have men stationed near the house. But we can’t guarantee he won’t fly off the handle.”

“Hunter won’t hurt me,” she said with conviction. She’d just given him the perfect opportunity to assault her, and he’d acted with a lot more civility than the security forces “And if guards are looking over our shoulders, we won’t make much progress.” She thought for a moment, remembering the comments about the surveillance system in the locker room being disabled. “And no microphones either.”

Emerson looked uncomfortable. “Okay,” he agreed in a flat voice.

McCourt gave her a wry look but said nothing. Probably he thought she was being foolish. Perhaps she was pushing her luck. But she wanted the arrangement to work, and she knew that their interaction would be stilted if they had an audience.

“Of course, I’d want to see some quantifiable progress,” Emerson interjected. “I’d want a report from you on my desk after the first week.”

“A week isn’t much time,” she countered.

“I insist on results. Or we try another approach.”

Beat socialization into him? Drown him until he saw things their way? She refrained from asking the sarcastic questions.

She wasn’t sure if she’d won a major victory or stepped into a carefully constructed trap, but she allowed herself to be cautiously optimistic as the three of them discussed details. Still, she didn’t relax. Perhaps Dr. Kolb had come up with the idea because he expected her to fail. Maybe he and Swinton had hatched the plan together because they saw it as a way to make her look unprofessional and get her off the project.

As she left the building with McCourt, she was glad she hadn’t let her guard down. He’d only participated in the conference when called upon to outline security procedures. Now he asked, “So are you going to function as his mommy or his wife in this little domestic drama?”

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