Page 72 of DFF: Delicate Freakin' Flower

“What do you mean?” Marcus asked, crossing his arms behind me.

Remy leaned back slightly, tapping his temple. “On paper, everything about them checks out—almosttooperfectly. Their background checks, licenses, and work histories are all spotlessasif someone has gone through every line, combed it clean, and pressed it flat until it looked just right. I’ve seen that kind of manufactured perfection before.”

He met my eyes.

“They’re hired security. Disposable. Probably don’t even know who they’re working for. Basically, they’re the kind of guys you hire when you want plausible deniability.”

“So, we’ve got ghosts in shiny clothes,” Jesse huffed, dragging a hand through his hair. “Fucking awesome.”

I turned away, pacing a slow circle as the walls started to feel like they were closing in. We were close. So damn close. But everything was moving at half speed—like we were fighting a fire underwater and losing seconds we couldn’t afford.

I dragged my hand through my hair roughly and finally stopped pacing. “We need more. We’re sitting here spinning plates while she’s out there—God knows where.”

Elijah stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder. “Webb.”

I shook my head, jaw clenched.

“Webb,” he tried again. “If you go too hard, too fast, you’re gonna miss something. You know that. Hell, man, youtaught us that.”

Jesse nodded, arms crossed. “This sucks, we all know it. But if you let the emotion cloud the objective, you’ll start chasing ghosts. You can’t afford that.”

Marcus didn’t say anything—he just gave me a look. The kind that said you know they’re right, even if it hurts like hell to admit it.

I ran a hand over my face, forcing myself to breathe, and then dropped into the chair closest to the window. I just needed a second—not to fall apart, but to remember. To find my footing again.

My gaze drifted to the opposite wall, unfocused, and before I could stop it, my mind took me somewhere else entirely.

The cabin.

Gabby’s laugh echoing off the walls as she burned the toast and tried to convince me it was intentional. Her bare feet tucked in my lap while she read a battered old book, half-asleep, barely turning the pages. The way she looked at me after I kissed her for the first time—like she didn’t quite believe she could have this but wanted it with everything she had.

I’d never met anyone like her. Sharp and stubborn. Kind in quiet, unthinking ways she didn’t even recognize. Half-wild, half-fire.

She hadn’t just walked into my life. She’d stormed in, knocked down the walls, and made herself at home in places I didn’t even know were empty.

And now she was out there, doing what she believed she had to do, even if it meant going down with the ship alone.

I closed my eyes and let the memory settle, heavy and grounding.

Then I stood. “Find that signal because I’m not losing her. Not now.”

Gabby

If this were a movie, I’d look incredible right now.

Even locked in a concrete room with crusted dust on the walls and a single flickering lightbulb, my hair would be effortlessly tousled, my makeup smoky but somehow still flawless. I’d be wearing the kind of artfully torn shirt that was designed to look sexy instead of tragic.

Instead, I probably looked like a skunk who’d just lost a fight with a leaf blower.

I ran my fingers through my hair, wincing when I hit a snarl that felt like it might need a pair of scissors to escape. There were probably better things to think about at this moment—like the fact I might be dead in a few hours—but now my brain was locked on the idea that, if I ever got out of this, I was enrolling in some kind of emergency beauty survival course. Hair, nails, skin—the works.

If I’m going to be kidnapped again, I want to at least look like a badass, not someone who crawled out of a ventilation shaft after three days of stress eating and sobbing.

I wandered toward the window if you could call it that. It was more like a narrow gap in the metal sheeting. Outside, the construction site buzzed with quiet movement. A couple of trucks rumbled across gravel, and one guy stood beside a pile ofbricks, just kind of staring at them like he was waiting for them to stack themselves.

For a construction site, it was weirdly… aimless. Busy but directionless.

Was that normal? Did construction crews just mill around, waiting for the plot to move forward?

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