Free Undercover Father by Mary Anne Wilson

standing in the doorway, one hand on the jamb, leaning out toward him. “You...you’re married. Does your wife know what you do on your way home?” The next instant, the door slammed shut and what should have been relief only shook him more.
    His wife. He jerked down the barrier and jabbed at the down button. He braced for the searing pain that always came with those words... his wife. But all that followed was anger. Searing anger. Anger at Megan, and anger at himself for ever calling her in the first place. He could be home with the boys, and Megan Gallagher wouldn’t be part of any equation. But he wasn’t home. Instead he was here, getting out of the elevator and heading for the exit.
    He was raging at himself as he went out into the balmy night and toward his car, feeling as if he’d been hit in the gut by an iron fist. He had no idea why he’d driven by the loft, let alone called up there to check on Megan. He’d been heading home, but found himself going in the wrong direction. Then he’d looked up and noticed he was passing the address he’d seen on the letter from Wayne Lawrence. He’d spotted her car parked between heavy-duty motorcycles and a psychedelic van. Instead of just driving past, the way he should have, he’d pulled to the curb beyond the bikes, then used his cell phone to call Zane, and in two minutes he’d had the phone number for the loft and had called it. Then he’d heard the scream.
    He crossed to his SUV, parked in front of the bikes, got in and started it up with a roar. A cat had attacked her? He drove off with a squeal of tires. If he was a cat he’d probably attack her, too. Right now she had likely forgotten how foolishly she’d acted, and was worried about cat hairs on her clothes.
    His cell phone rang, and he took it out and glanced at the screen before answering. “Zane?”
    “Yeah, it’s me.”
    “What’s up?” he asked as he forced himself to slow the car and drive in the right direction toward home. Hopefully by the time he got to the boys, he’d be calmer.
    “You hung up so fast when you called, I forgot to ask why you needed the phone number at the loft.”
    He thought about lying, just saying it was for his own reference, but the last person he’d lie to was Zane. “I found someone in Legal going through Mr. Lawrence’s desk when I made my rounds tonight.”
    “You what?”
    “It was a false alarm,” he said. “She’s the lady I told you about, the one I thought was crashing the ball. The one meeting up with Wayne Lawrence.”
    “What was she doing there? Waiting for him?”
    “No, going through his desk.”
    “What?”
    “Yeah, it got my attention, too. But it turned out she’s new, and she wasn’t on the list yet. She’s working in Legal with Mr. Lawrence.”
    “Jack Ford mentioned something about Mr. Lawrence getting someone from our West Coast office to fill a temporary vacancy in the company. Why was she going through the guy’s desk?”
    “She was getting something that she’d left in his office earlier. It turned out it wasn’t anything subversive.”
    “That’s a relief. But what does this have to do with you needing the phone number for the loft?”
    “That’s where Lawrence is putting her up. I haven’t been in the area for a long time, and last time I looked, it was pretty rough.” He glanced out the window, at a neighborhood that was still iffy, but heading in the right direction. “I went past it on my way home, and thought I’d check to make sure she got in safely.”
    “On your way home?”
    “Okay, I made a wrong turn.” That was so true it hurt. “And I thought, since I was there, it wouldn’t hurt to check.”
    “Lindsey lived there when I met her, and Jack’s lived there. In fact, LynTech is in the process of buying the building from the owner, Jack’s new father-in-law, George Armstrong, one of the last hippies around and one of the biggest LynTech stockholders.”
    The garish van. That explained that, at