Page 32 of Devoured By the Forbidden Mountain Man

I looked up.

Rex turned a legal pad toward himself but did not start writing yet.

“If Gavin believed he was protecting someone connected to Brad’s death, then his disappearance makes more sense as a deliberate choice instead of panic. That doesn’t tell us where he went, but it changes what we should be looking for once Meredith gives you more.”

“Once.”

A small smile touched Rex’s mouth. “You think she’ll talk again.”

“I think she already decided she has to. She just hasn’t decided how much of her life she’s willing to set on fire when she does.”

My own words left me quieter.

Rex reached across the desk and laid his hand over mine.

The contact was warm, steady, and completely free of urgency.

I turned my hand beneath his and held on.

For most of my adult life, family problems had become things I carried privately because carrying them was what I knew how to do. With Rex, I had spent less than two days discovering how different a problem felt when someone capable sat beside me without taking it away.

“I’m angry with her,” I said. “I’m also looking at those kids’ drawings behind her and understanding why she’s terrified, and I hate that I understand.”

“You don’t have to pick one.”

The answer loosened something in my chest.

I rubbed my thumb over the side of his hand.

“No wonder you kept Gavin’s file.”

Rex glanced toward the folder. “I’ve had skips disappear before. Most of them make mistakes because running is expensive, exhausting, and hard to sustain. Gavin left almost nothing behind that I could use. It never made him innocent, but it never felt random either.”

“And now?”

“Now we know somebody who was there believes the public version was incomplete. That’s enough to keep going.”

I nodded.

For the first time since the call ended, the room seemed large enough to breathe in again.

Rex’s thumb moved once against my hand. The gesture was comforting, but it was also the same hand that had rested at my waist yesterday while he kissed me.

My awareness shifted before I could stop it. His eyes dropped briefly to my mouth, and the silence changed. I knew he felt it too because his hand tightened slightly around mine before he released it and leaned back.

Neither of us rushed toward the heat, which somehow made it stronger.

My phone buzzed on the desk. Case’s name filled the screen, and I answered expecting a check-in. Instead, restaurant noise hit me immediately.

“Before you tell me you’re busy,” he said, “I have a problem that became your problem when you made the catastrophic mistake of demonstrating competence in public.”

I smiled despite myself. “What happened?”

Case gave me the useful version rather than turning it into a comedy routine. The Lantern House had sold more Halloween party wristbands than the kitchen prep sheet reflected. The owner had been tracking the dining-room reservations separately from the late-night bar crowd, while the food order assumed they were the same number. Nobody was going to starve, but the appetizer quantities would run short early enough to make the problem obvious.

I pulled a blank page toward me.

“How far off are the counts?”