Page 6 of Devoured By the Forbidden Mountain Man

I looked again at Meredith’s name.

“Gavin had a habit of getting involved when he thought someone needed protecting.”

“I remember.”

There were years of family history inside that fact, and I didn’t need to unpack them all in the field office. Gavin had stood between our father and the rest of us often enough that protecting people had become instinct long before he was old enough to understand the cost.

I traced the edge of the paper instead.

“This still doesn’t prove Meredith had anything to do with why he ran.”

“No.”

“But I didn’t know she mattered to him before that night.”

Rex pulled the chair out and sat at the corner of the desk. “Tell me what you remember.”

So I did.

The conversation stretched instead of breaking into an interrogation. I told him Gavin had mentioned a Lantern House server whose ex worried him. I couldn’t remember every word after seven years, and Rex never pressed me to manufacture certainty. He asked when Gavin had mentioned her, whether he had sounded frightened or angry, and whether her name had surfaced again after the incident. When I didn’t know, I said so.

In return, Rex showed me the limits of his own information. Meredith had been one contact among several. She had never offered a useful lead to Gavin’s location. Nothing in Rex’s notes established that she and Gavin had spoken after he made bail.

The absence of answers made the name more interesting, not less.

Eventually I closed the folder and left my palm resting on the cover.

“If Gavin was already worried about her, then I want to know whether that connection mattered later.”

Rex’s gaze dropped briefly to the file before returning to me. “Tomorrow we can find out what’s current. We start with what we can verify and don’t decide the answer before we have one.”

I nodded.

That was exactly how I wanted to approach it.

The clock had moved past six by the time we stopped.

Rex gathered the archive folders while I collected my notes. When he glanced toward the bag I had left near the front chair, his attention lingered on it.

“You packed a lot for an employment conversation.”

“I packed before I came over because I wasn’t sure what tonight looked like. Case’s couch remains available, but I’d rather stop living out of one room of his apartment if I can afford not to.”

Rex locked the file cabinet, then tipped his head toward the ceiling. “There’s an unused loft upstairs.”

I followed the direction of his glance. “That’s what the exterior stairs lead to?”

“Yes. It has its own locked entrance, bathroom, kitchenette, and enough furniture that you wouldn’t need anything immediately. Nobody’s using it.”

The offer was practical, but I needed the boundary to be equally practical.

“How does that fit with the job?”

“It doesn’t.” Rex leaned one hip against the edge of the desk, leaving several feet between us. “The loft isn’t compensation. Living there doesn’t reduce the Dean balance, and leaving the job doesn’t create some penalty on the housing side. I’m offering because it’s sitting empty and you’re trying to cut expenses.”

The clarity made my next question easier.

“If I take it and decide in three days that working for you was a terrible mistake?”