Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 114793 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114793 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
“All right,” I said, handing it over, “let’s see what you’ve got.”
Gabby took it confidently, then hesitated and turned to me with a sheepish look. “Okay, technically, I’ve only ever shot at a range with paper targets, and I may or may not have been less than impressive.”
“Define less than impressive.”
“I once hit the ceiling of an indoor range.”
I blinked. “The ceiling?”
“In my defense, I panicked. There was a spider on my foot.”
I sighed and adjusted her grip. “Okay, you little chaos gremlin—safety first. Keep your eyes forward and take a deep breath. You’re not fighting spiders, you’re keeping your aim on the target. Control the weapon, don’t let the nerves do it for you.”
She nodded seriously, did as I'd outlined, and took her shot.
It hit the can square on.
Her jaw dropped, and she squealed, “Did you see that?”
I grinned, her excitement infectious. “Try it again.”
We spent the next two hours shooting and laughing, and she got better with every shot. Much to my embarrassment, I was half-distracted by the way her smile kept breaking through the worry in her eyes. She looked lighter out here as if the weight was lifting, piece by piece.
Afterward, we got to work on the traps.
Now, when I say “traps,” I don’t mean normal ones. I mean Townsend-Rossi special editions—the kind that involves fishing lines, noisemakers, and a lot of questionable ingenuity. We had trip alarms, tin cans full of nails, one old motion-triggered sprinkler rigged to spray anyone who got too close to the back trail, and Gabby’s favorite: a cat toy rigged to a string that would jingle whenever someone stepped past it. These were efficient but tame in comparison to the ones I'd set when she wasn't with me.
“You warned Eddie, right?” she asked, eyes wide as we tested the trip line on the eastern side.
“Yes,” I confirmed. “Three times.”
“Good. I’d hate to accidentally tangle him in fishing line and drop a bucket of marbles on his head.” She paused. “Wait, do we have marbles?”
“No.”
“Damn, that's a total missed opportunity.”
I glanced over at her—cheeks smudged with dirt, hair in a messy braid, and her t-shirt sticking slightly with sweat. She was flushed, exhausted, and still a little sore from the day before, but she was fighting.
She was trying.
As the sun started its slow slide behind the trees, tinting everything gold, I realized something: she wasn’t just surviving. She was learning how to win.
Gabby was crouched a few yards ahead of me, tying one end of a trip wire to a low tree branch with her tongue poking out in concentration. The other end led to a set of tin cans filled with nails and pebbles, ready to rattle like an angry ghost if anyone so much as breathed on it.
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.”