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“What is it?” Gideon asks, brusquely, hiding that his heart is full of contrition and self-loathing.

“I will tell you what you want to know if you promise you’ll tell one person you love about what you plan to do with the information, and then come back here and feed the birds once a week.”

No. Gideon couldn’t tell anyone about his plans. They were for him alone, and he wouldn’t want his family to know about the dark things he was willing to do to protect them.

But it’s not that condition that stops him.

“The birds? Why?”

“Well, I’m not long for this world. Maybe that’s why I met with you today, in my favorite spot, and not in a warm café, drinking tea and eating cake. These birds have comforted me, maybe not these same ones, but their parents, their families, and their loved ones. As much as birds can love, I suppose. When I’m gone, I hate to think they’ll wonder where their food is in the winter and it would bring me comfort to know someone was here in my stead.”

Gideon wants to say no he just wants his information and he wants to get it without making any inane promises about feeding sparrows and magpies in the dead of winter.

“I’ll do it,” Gideon says, and pauses, surprised to hear himself agree.

The man just nods. “And you’ll tell someone you love about your plans before you do anything?”

“Fine. Yes.” He won’t. Lying won’t be the worst of his sins—not even today, and certainly not by the end of this. There’s that feeling again, that lurching in his chest at the acknowledgment that he’s been lying for months about being at Quest. Buying food and passing it off as his own, just so he has an alibi. So he can lie to his mates about where he’s been and how he’s been getting the information he needs.

The man just sighs, as if he can sense Gideon’s true intentions, but he tells him what he wants to know anyway.

“Connall has been in your father’s employ for fifteen years. I haven’t seen the boy since last summer, but I get the occasional email. He mentioned that he recently got a terrible sunburn at a work function. I’m guessing that three days ago, Patrick Carnell was at his compound in Clearwater Beach. It’s the only piece of property he owns where it’s warm enough to get a sunburn in January.”

“How would you know he’s not vacationing in Miami? Or Los Angeles?”

“I don’t. But it’s more than you had before you sat down with me today, no?”

It was true. If Carnell was in Clearwater, then Gideon had to be there, too. The thought makes him smile, though by the look on the man’s face, it’s not a pleasant one.

“I should go. The cold gets into these old bones. Never liked winter myself. Remember what you promised me, Gideon,” the man says, and stares at him for a minute longer. “You’ve been spending a lot of time in the dark lately.”

Gideon doesn’t deny it. “Are you saying I should let this go?”

“No. I understand well the need to protect your family, but I do think you should think about how you are going about it. You should also remember the kind of man your mother wanted you to be.”

He nods then, and makes his way away from the bench down to the main walkway. Gideon sits for a few minutes longer and watches until the man disappears from sight.

A glint of brass catches his eye as the sun shines briefly through the gray clouds. It illuminates the plaque embedded into the back of the bench, one of those memorial benches where families can dedicate a city bench to the memory of a lost loved one.

The plaque reads:In Loving Memory of Eleanor O’Daire. Beloved mother, daughter, and friend.

The bench hadn’t been a coincidence, then. He wonders why the man in the suit came here every day to sit with Gideon’s mother’s memory and feed the birds.

He’d left Gideon with more to think about than just the location where Carnell was lying in wait.

Gideon remembers his mother’s smile when the group chat text comes in.

2:56 PM – Luca

Nix is tossing his cookies at Common Grounds

2:57 PM – Jay

Tell him to pick up his phone

Finn?

2:59 PM – Finn