Page 54 of Devoured By the Forbidden Mountain Man

The assumed name appeared with a recent phone number in more than one public recommendation.

I wrote the number on the legal pad and turned it toward Georgia.

For several seconds she only stared at it.

Outside the office windows, the wind had picked up again, pushing pale clouds across the mountains and sending damp leaves skittering over the gravel. Inside, the heater hummed beneath us and Georgia sat beside me with the first direct path to her brother in seven years.

Her hand rested near the phone without picking it up.

“When he first disappeared, I answered every unknown number,” she said. “Even spam calls. I used to think there would be some terrible connection and then I’d hear his voice.”

I closed the laptop while Georgia kept her gaze on the number.

“After a while, I stopped expecting it.”

I rested one hand beside the phone instead of pushing it toward her.

“You don’t have to know what you’re going to say before you call.”

She gave me a faint smile. A recovery plan had always been easier than a family.

The smile stayed this time.

She took one deep breath, set the phone on the desk between us, and dialed with the speaker on.

The first ring passed, then the second. By the third, Georgia’s shoulders had gone rigid.

A man answered before the fourth ring finished. “Hello?”

Georgia’s expression changed so completely that I recognized him before I consciously recognized the voice.

Seven years had roughened the voice slightly, but it was still Gavin.

Georgia swallowed. “Gavin?”

The line went silent long enough for me to hear his breathing through the speaker.

“Georgia?”

Her eyes filled. “Yes.”

Neither spoke for several seconds, and for once silence did more work than any question could.

When Gavin finally asked how she had found him, caution had entered his voice. Georgia told him that I had helped and that the old recovery file still existed.

His response to my name carried enough history to make me remember the months after he skipped: empty addresses, dead ends, the family home, Georgia at twenty-one glaring at me from a porch as if I represented every person taking something else from her.

Present-day Georgia didn’t let the old tension take over. She went directly to Meredith, and that changed Gavin faster than my name had.

He wanted to know what Meredith had said. He wanted Georgia to leave her alone. The protective reflex surfaced so automatically that Georgia’s face tightened.

She gave him time to finish before answering.

“I am not calling Meredith to punish her, and she is not a frightened twenty-four-year-old trapped with Brad anymore. She has a husband, children, a career, and a life she built after him. She also has the right to decide what she wants to tell me now. You don’t get to make that decision for her from Oregon.”

Gavin was quiet long enough for Georgia’s grip on the phone to relax slightly before he answered. “You’re right.”

The lack of argument seemed to unsettle her more than resistance would have.