Page 21 of DFF: Delicate Freakin' Flower

Her face didn’t change much at first, her muscles just tightened. Like her body was trying to keep all her reactions in check to conserve emotional fuel.

She was listening hard and processing everything I was telling her.

When I finished, she leaned back and blew out a breath.

“So… it's not that great, really,” she muttered.

“Nope.”

“And Maddox is out of the country?”

“For now, but the guy he left in charge is worse. Think ‘mercenary with a clipboard.’ And he doesn’t care who you are, just what you’ve got.”

She nodded slowly. “So, what now?”

I looked at her. Not the sunburn, not the sarcasm. I looked at the woman, the one smart enough to dig this stuff up and brave enough to run when it got too dangerous.

“Now,” I drawled, “we figure out how to end this in a way that doesn’t leave you at the bottom of a construction site in a fresh pour of concrete.”

She blinked once. “Cool, so something slightly better than death. Great.”

“We’ll come up with something.”

“We have to,” she said. “Because if I’ve come this far just to die looking like a lobster and wearing bucket-bath shame, I swear to God, I’m haunting you.”

I gave her the smallest smile. “Deal.”

But beneath it, my gut told me time was running out.

The first warningwas the silence. It became too quiet, too suddenly, as if the woods had taken a breath and decided not torelease it. There was no birdsong, no buzzing bugs, just stillness and the low hum of something pressing against the air.

I’d been to this place enough times to know what that meant. Something—or someone—was moving out there.

I stood from the table where Gabby and I had just finished laying out our options, which had ranged from “brilliant but risky” to “dumb and probably fatal.” My hand instinctively went for the small black case tucked behind the pantry shelf.

Inside it was my Glock 19. It was clean and familiar, but most importantly, it was loaded.

Gabby stood too, her eyes wide but clear. “What is it?”

“Something’s close.”

Her expression tensed. “How close is close?”

I flicked the safety off and moved to the window, careful not to disturb the curtain. “Close enough that the birds have shut up.”

She stepped beside me, arms crossed tightly against her chest. She was still wrapped in the oversized flannel she’d taken from the hook by the fire, still barefoot and still shaken from what I’d told her an hour earlier. Now we could add this to what she was going through.

“Get in the back room,” I whispered over my shoulder, pointing blindly with my finger.

“No.”

I turned to her, making it clear I wasn't joking. “Gabby.”

She shook her head. “No, I’m not hiding again. Not after everything.”

“This isn’t about bravery, it's about survival.”

“Then I want to see what I’m surviving.”

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