Page 35 of DFF: Delicate Freakin' Flower

Her traps were smart and effective, but in the grand scheme of things, they were tame.

She’d insisted on helping as we set up more of them. She said that if she was going to stay, she needed to do more than just cry on people and scream at frogs.

I couldn’t argue with that.

But as she worked, stringing up the fishing line, I knew the real deterrents were happening just beyond her view where Eddie was setting up the serious traps. The kind you don’t walk away from with a bruised shin and a funny story. The kind that hurt and that stopped someone who came creeping too close. Concealed steel-wire snags that’d tear up a boot if stepped on wrong. Barbed throw traps that released if someone ducked under a line too fast. And the flares—we’d rigged three of them.

These ones needed to be tripped with force, so a wandering raccoon wouldn’t set one off, but anything heavier, anything two-legged and sneaking? They’d light up the sky and let everyone in a five-mile radius know we weren’t alone anymore.

With the newest intel from Matty and Marcus, we were past the point of hoping this would blow over. This was the line, and I wasn’t letting anything happen to her.

Not on my watch.

Not while she was out here, with dirt on her hands, her braid falling apart, her t-shirt soaked from humidity and determination, and setting booby traps with bottle caps and duct tape like she was MacGyver’s awkward cousin.

She looked over her shoulder then, brow furrowed. “Webb?”

I blinked and straightened, looking at her blankly.

“You zoned out. What’s next?”

I nodded toward the back trail. “Motion sensor’s ready. We just need to angle the reflector for a wider field.”

She gave me a little salute and wiped her forehead with the back of her arm. “You know, I don’t love that I now know the difference between a warning trap and a bone-shattering one.”

I didn’t smile. Not really. But I reached for the wire coil beside me and pointed at the next location. “Welcome to the front lines, chaos cupcake.”

Chapter Thirteen

Gabby

There was something almost criminal about how good Webb looked, standing over a cast iron skillet, backlit by firelight, sleeves rolled up, cooking fried chicken as if we weren’t hiding from hired muscle in the middle of the swamp.

I sat a few feet away, pretending to casually throw chunks of chicken skin to the raccoons and not think about how his forearms flexed when he flipped a thigh piece.

There was a war going on inside me.

Half of me was stuck on: You're in danger, focus on survival, Gabby. The other half kept repeating: But what if we kissed behind the cabin, and he held my hips while the world burned down?

Every brush of his arm when he passed me something, every low rumble of his voice, it all buzzed under my skin like a damn electric fence. I was one poorly timed lean away from full-on,unhinged, bad-decision energy. Something had to be wrong with me. Horny in the swamp? Was this what cabin fever did?

“Dinner,” Webb said, handing me a plate, completely unaware that I was imagining a future where I straddled him in a rocking chair.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, taking it and trying to focus on the food. It was surprisingly good—crispy, salty, and hot.

Of course, I immediately tossed a piece of the skin into the bushes. There was a rustle, and Steve emerged like a tiny, fluffy assassin, followed by two of his raccoon minions. They took the offering as if it were a tribute and began munching with alarming speed.

Webb eyed me. “You’re creating a problem.”

“They’re family now.”

“They’re bandits, Gabby. You feed them enough, they’re going to break in and steal every edible thing in the house.”

“We’ve got at least sixteen expired tins of food,” I reminded him. “We’ll hold them off.”

“They’ll eat the food, and then they’ll eat the labels.”

I grinned, feeling the warmth of the fire and him settle around me like a trap. “What if we trained them?”

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