Page 11 of Finding Gideon
“Morning?” she sniffed. “It’s practically noon. I’ve already been to the bakery, the post office, and two-thirds of the town’s gossip circuit—” She leaned to the side, peering past me toward the back hallway. Her eyes narrowed, and I didn’t need to turn to know she’d spotted Gideon.
“—and not one of them mentioned youmighthave company. I swear, this town’s gossip chain is falling apart.”
Evelyn didn’t know shit. She just liked to toss out bait and see what she could reel in.
Behind me, Gideon stepped into view and said a quiet, “Ma’am.” He gave her a polite nod before moving past us with a low, “I’ll let you work.”
I didn’t know why I noticed the way he moved past us, or why it felt… off, somehow. Just one of those things you can’t quite put your finger on, so you shake it off and move on.
I cleared my throat. “Gideon—uh, thanks again. For… you know. The door.”
He paused long enough to glance back and nod. A moment later he was gone, Evelyn’s sharp gaze following every step, like a hawk tracking a field mouse.
“Well,” she said, drawing the word out like a dish of warm gossip. “You gonna tell me who Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Tragic is, or am I supposed to invent my own backstory?”
“Evelyn,” I warned, already moving toward the exam room, “no more secret-agent stories. I still haven’t lived down the month you told everyone I was in witness protection.”
She smirked. “Alright, no witness protection… but don’t think that means I won’t come up with something better.”
“Uh huh.”
I held the door open, and she swept inside like royalty entering a throne room.
But my eyes lingered for a second on the space where Gideon had been.
And even though I had work to do—cats to examine and Evelyn’s conspiracies to deflect—I couldn’t shake the feeling that I already missed having him close.
Chapter 4
Gideon
I’d rinsed our coffee cups, dried them, and lined them up beside the sink like I was expecting a health inspection. Wiped down the counters too, even though there wasn’t a crumb in sight. The place was cleaner than clean—just like everything else I’d seen so far.
Still, I needed something to do with my hands.
I wandered the kitchen, keeping my touch light. The cabinets were older, but well-kept. Hinges oiled, no creaks. Whoever built them cared enough to do it right. Same went for the rest of the house. Solid bones, sturdy work. I straightened the dish towel on its hook, nudged a chair back into place, adjusted the fruit bowl so it sat square on the table. Little things that didn’t belong to me, but didn’t cross a line either.
It wasn’t as though I was snooping—at least, I hoped it didn’t look that way—but curiosity was hard to resist. Malcolm Jones wasn’t exactly an open book. Quiet, certainly. Polite. And beneath that calm exterior, there was something tightly coiled—visible in the way his jaw worked when he was thinking, or how his shoulders never seemed to quite relax, even over coffee.
Was he married? Divorced? Did he have children somewhere? Or was he simply one of those people who learned early on how to keep everything about themselves locked away?
I hadn’t seen any photographs in the house. There was no partner’s jacket hanging by the door, no small shoes tucked in a corner. Of course, that didn’t mean anything. Some people simply didn’t leave traces of their private lives where others could see them.
And perhaps I shouldn’t have been wondering about it in the first place. He had been nothing but generous in letting me stay here. The last thing I needed was to start imagining the story behind his eyes.
A sudden yelp cut through the quiet—sharp, high-pitched, unmistakably the sound of an animal in pain. It carried from the clinic out front, enough to make the hair at the back of my neck stand on end.
Another cry followed, and then the muffled sound of Malcolm’s voice, low but urgent. I couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was enough—controlled, but with no room for hesitation.
I didn’t stop to wonder. Just headed out the door at a run, crossing the yard in a few steps to the clinic. My pulse kicked up to match my pace. I didn’t know what I was about to walk into—but something told me I had to be there.
When I stepped inside and reached the exam room, Malcolm was crouched beside a dog splayed out on the exam table, its fur soaked red down one side. Then the smell hit me—blood, sharp and metallic, thickening the air.
A woman hovered nearby, tear-streaked and wide-eyed, wringing her hands while whispering the same word over and over—“Please, please, please…”
The pup was maybe thirty pounds, mottled gray and white, breathing too fast. One of its hind legs jutted at the wrong angle, and blood kept seeping from somewhere under its belly.
“I—I didn’t see him,” the woman stammered, catching sight of me. “He ran out into the road—oh God, I didn’t?—”
