One Night in Weaver... by Allison Leigh Read Free Book Online Page A

McGregor, according to Adam, were Hayley and, even less frequently, Tristan. Tristan’s meetings with McGregor were recorded. Audio and video.
    Hayley’s, however, were not. She’d evidently dismissed the warnings that being observed during her sessions was for her own safety and insisted that her patient’s privacy be honored. Her only concession had been to carry a panic button whenever she was alone with McGregor.
    “Well.” Seth scrawled the exit time in the log next to his equally indecipherable signature. “Enjoy the grub.” He’d brought Adam dinner from one of the diners in town.
    “Already am,” Adam said around a bite of his roast beef sandwich.
    Seth left the safe house and drove his truck well out of sight before pulling to the side of the road. He’d planned to make his usual quick stop at the place to check on things and be home at his apartment in plenty of time before Hayley came. But witnessing McGregor’s temper tantrum had waylaid him. And even before he’d heard her voice on the phone, he’d known that Hayley would be canceling on him.
    His conscience didn’t particularly bother him.
    Just because he’d considered the possibility of gaining inside information from her about what McGregor revealed during their private sessions didn’t mean Seth was acting on it. She had limited knowledge of those involved with Hollins-Winword and there was no reason for her to know he was anything other than what she believed him to be: a lowly Cee-Vid security guard.
    So he sat there off in the distance on the side of the road and waited until her car arrived. She parked in the driveway of the ordinary-looking ranch-style house situated in the middle of a half-dozen other ordinary-looking houses, got out, walked up the sidewalk and knocked on the front door. A few seconds later, the woman who lived in the house with her real-life husband opened the door as if greeting a friend, and Hayley disappeared inside.
    In his mind, Seth followed her movements. Through the living room filled with ordinary furniture. Probably greeting the husband, where he’d be parked on his recliner, watching sports on television after having spent his day in the drugstore where he was the pharmacist. Through the kitchen, which was usually filled with the warm scent of something the pharmacist’s stay-at-home wife was baking, and down the stairs to the basement. Then through a steel security door as thick as Seth’s thigh and down another flight to the very depths below the house where she’d be greeted by a guard just like Adam who didn’t hide the fact that he was armed the way the couple upstairs did.
    And even though Hayley had the trust of Tristan Clay, for security purposes she would still have to surrender that sleek briefcase she carried and be wanded and patted down before she’d be allowed into the heavily locked room with her patient, the panic button tucked into her pocket.
    The process would take a minimum of five minutes if she didn’t stop to shoot the breeze with anyone along the way.
    Seth sat there slouched in his truck seat watching the house. Porch lights came on up and down the street as darkness fell and his butt turned numb.
    And finally, a little more than three hours later, the front door of the safe house opened again and Hayley appeared on the porch. Accompanied by the lady of the house, she stood there for a moment, smiling and holding a foil-wrapped package in her hand, before returning to her car with a casual wave of her hand.
    She definitely had the routine down. Anyone taking the time to watch would have seen only one friend stopping to visit another.
    Exhaling, and not particularly anxious to examine the reasons why he was relieved she was out of there, Seth straightened in his seat, started up his ancient truck and drove home to the microwave in his apartment.
    * * *
    “You’ve got a visitor.”
    Hayley looked up from her case notes to see her office manager, Gretchen, standing in the