Through designer eyeglasses, she was slinging wicked looks his way. What made it worse was she was a fox—around twenty-five, with lush lips and knockout legs. She was wearing a black business suit and looked more like an actress playing the part of a school administrator. If this were a Hollywood script, they’d be in bed an hour from now. He must have inadvertently smiled, because her eyes grew angrier. She sneered at him. Too bad. He hated being dissed by anyone, let alone a fox.

She spoke in a clipped cadence. “Follow me.”

She led him down a flight of stairs, through a long, wide Berber-carpeted hallway, designated the student locker area. They were waiting for him—rows of adolescent boys standing next to their little bit of privacy, their hands at their sides. Two uniformed guards were watching them. The scene made Decker feel as if he were the aggressor, and that didn’t sit well with him. He stopped. “Is there any specific place I should start?”

“One is as good as the next.” Jaime tapped her toe, her left buttock moving with each rhythmical click of the shoe. “Let’s go from freshmen to seniors. They know what to do. They just went through the routine drill a few weeks ago.”

“They may know the drill, but I don’t.”

Jaime sighed impatiently. “One boy at a time will open his locker, swing the door all the way out, then take two steps back. Then you do your search and seizure. When you’re done, you step away and let the boy close his locker. Give them back a little piece of their stripped dignity.”

“That sounds fine—”

“I’m glad you approve,” Jaime snapped back. “Shall we get on with it?”

“The quicker I’m out of here, the happier I am.”

“I suppose that about sums it up for me, as well.”

“Why are you so unhappy about this, Dr. Dahl? Drug checks are part of standard operation in this school. You had to have known that when you took the job.”

“For the administration to do what’s necessary to maintain standards—that’s one thing. We don’t need the gendarmes telling us how to run our school.”

“Ah—”

“Yes, ah!”

Decker’s smile was wide. He tried to hold it back and that only made her angrier. She stomped over to the first lad—a fourteen-year-old moonfaced kid with a sprig of freckles across the nose—and asked him to open his locker.

He did, following Jaime Dahl’s drill to a tee. Decker was impressed.

Inside were papers, notebooks, pens, a few car magazines, and lots of candy wrappers.

“Thank you,” Decker said, taking a step backward.

The boy closed his locker. Jaime told him that he could go.

The boy left.

One down, about three hundred to go.