Read Online The Summit by Kat Martin - Free Book Online

name’s on the list. You’re here on a special pass to see Gerald Meeks?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œYou’ll still have to go through security check-in just like any other visitor.”
    â€œI was told I would.”
    â€œFollow me.”
    The matron led her along a linoleum floor waxed to a polished sheen, toward a door that led to the check-in area. There were even more cameras inside and three male guards who looked as if they took their jobs in deadly earnest.
    Visiting hours ended at three o’clock and it was almost two now, so most of the inmate visitors had already checked in. Still there were a couple of beefy guys dressed like bikers with stringy hair and tattoos in line behind a heavyset Hispanic woman who was accompanied by a chubby girl of about fourteen.
    As Autumn took her place at the rear of the line, the bikers’ attention swung from the girl and they eyed her as if they had just been served a fresh piece of meat. Autumn’s nose wrinkled at the sour smell of body odor and the foul breath of the man standing beside her, his lecherous gaze creeping rudely over her breasts.
    â€œNice tits,” he said to his buddy.
    â€œNice ass,” the other man said.
    â€œKeep a civil tongue,” ordered the guard, “or you won’t be seeing your good-for-nothing brother.”
    The men said no more but the curl of their lips and their heavy-lidded gazes made it clear what they were thinking. Wishing she were anywhere but in that room, Autumn fixed her attention on the guard and set her purse on the conveyor belt that carried it beneath an X-ray machine like the ones at the airports. She was asked to remove her shoes and jacket, which also went through the machine.
    She had read in the regulations that visitors were subject to random drug tests and prayed she wouldn’t be chosen. But she only had to walk through a metal detector—which thankfully didn’t go off—and make her way to the opposite end of the conveyor belt.
    â€œFirst door to your left down the hall,” said one of the guards as she picked up her purse and slung it over her shoulder.
    Eager to escape, she walked out the exit door, made a left and spotted a door with a small window in it. When she opened the door, she saw that it wasn’t the main visiting area, but a narrow room that accommodated only four inmates at a time. It was set up much the way she had seen on TV, with the prisoner seated on one side of the glass and the visitor on the other.
    Three of the four spaces were currently in use. An obese woman with dirty, coarse black hair sat on one of the stools talking to a huge, dark-skinned man with earrings in both ears. There was a skinny white guy talking to his girlfriend, who looked like she was on drugs but couldn’t be because they wouldn’t have let her in.
    The third guy was talking to a man in a cheap striped suit who seemed to be trying to conduct some sort of business, though Autumn couldn’t imagine what. The entire scene was depressing and she began to think coming here was the worst idea she’d ever had.
    Then the door on the opposite side of the glass swung open and Gerald Meeks walked in. He was wearing the khaki inmate’s uniform and looked exactly like his picture—thin to the point of being gaunt with hollow, sunken eyes. His hair was a faded brown, not blond like the man in her dreams.
    He took a seat across from her. When he looked into her face, Autumn shivered.
    â€œTake it easy, lady. You’re way too old to interest me.”
    She sat up a little straighter. She had come here to talk to the man. She wasn’t about to let him intimidate her.
    â€œThank you for seeing me,” she said.
    â€œI don’t get many visitors. I figured it might help pass the time.”
    â€œI came here to ask you some questions about Molly McKenzie.”
    He smiled, a thin slash across the lower half of his face. “A lot