Page 31 of DFF: Delicate Freakin’ Flower (Family Ties #5)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Webb

J ackson’s house had become our makeshift command center, chosen out of necessity and strategy.

The hotel was too exposed—too easy to watch, too public to risk—and the ranch was too far out.

If we had any chance of finding Gabby quickly, we needed to stay local and mobile.

Jackson’s place, hidden deep within a wooded neighborhood on the edge of Orlando, struck the perfect balance: close enough to the city to respond fast, yet quiet and tucked away enough to avoid drawing attention.

Inside, it was a scene of controlled chaos.

Maps were spread across the dining table, layered with highlighter marks, and crowded with sticky notes.

Every flat surface in the house buzzed with laptops, their screens glowing with open tabs and satellite feeds.

At the same time, phones rang and vibrated in a constant, chaotic rhythm no one could keep straight anymore.

Jackson’s dry-erase board—once used for whatever scribbles they'd drawn on it—had been completely repurposed, now covered in timelines, names, and grainy surveillance screenshots. At the center of it all, Gabby’s name was written in bold letters and circled in red.

We didn’t know where she was. We didn’t know if she was okay. But we were going to find her.

Matty sat with his laptop in front of him, three monitors hooked into his personal mobile server.

He hadn’t stopped typing in over an hour.

Next to him was Marcus’s friend Remy—normally the quiet ranch handyman with a gift for electrical repairs.

It turns out he also had a side gig in digital security and was currently running trace calls to every electronics store within a fifty-mile radius.

“I’ve spoken to four shops so far,” Remy told us, holding the phone between his ear and shoulder as he typed.

“Two confirmed a woman matching her description came in today.

One said she bought a couple of micro-cams, a portable recorder, and maybe a burner.

I'm still waiting to hear if she bought anything else.”

Matty didn’t look up as he clicked through another frame of grainy hotel surveillance.

“I’ve pulled every camera angle from within three blocks of the Halcyon.

Got three men leaving the hotel about an hour after we think Gabby made contact.

I’m enhancing one of the plates now. The other car had tinted windows and no front plate. ”

“Can you ID the make and model?” I asked, pacing the edge of the room.

“Already on it. Might take a few, but if I can cross-check traffic camera feeds, I might be able to trace their route.”

Marcus leaned in behind him, arms crossed, jaw tight. “If we get a direction, we can spread the search.”

“I’m also working off a few facial matches,” Matty added, his eyes still on the screen.

“I pulled the clearest frame I could from the guy who entered the room and ran it through the system. Got a hit on an ex-contractor with a history of overseas work—bad reputation, lots of red flags, and that type of shit. He’s not the kind of person you bring in unless you’re planning to keep things quiet and don’t intend to ask too many questions. ”

“And the others?”

“No hits yet, but I’m not done.”

I stepped outside as my phone vibrated in my hand, and Sasha’s name lit up the screen.

“Hey,” I greeted quietly, trying to keep my voice steady.

“Tell me you found her,” Sasha whispered, and I could hear the hope that she was trying to cling to.

"Not yet, but we’re getting close. We’ve identified some faces, and we’re tracking the vehicles. She left us a trail to follow—it’s just a subtle one, not easy to spot."

“I should’ve stopped her.” Her voice cracked, and she swallowed audibly. “I knew she’d try something like this.”

“She did it to protect us, but she’s not alone anymore. I promise we’re gonna get her back.”

The screen door creaked open behind me, its familiar sound breaking the quiet.

I turned to see my dad, Wyatt, standing in the doorway, arms crossed, and brow furrowed, watching me closely.

He looked worn, as if sleep had been a stranger for days, but he still maintained that steady presence—solid, grounded, and calm, just like he always had.

“All right,” he ground out. “Which one of my sons said I wasn't allowed to get involved?”

“None of them,” I shrugged. “It was Grandad.”

Dad's jaw dropped. “Hurst?”

“Yep.”

He gave a short laugh, muttered something under his breath, and stepped inside with me. I tapped my grandfather’s contact and put the call on speaker.

It rang once before he answered. “Tell me what kind of mess you’ve got brewing this time.”

“You’ve had people snooping around your place the past couple of days—that’s not a coincidence,” I said, my voice steady. “Gabby’s been taken by Colin Maddox. He was threatening all of us, and she gave herself up to protect us. She didn’t run, she made a choice to keep us safe.”

There was a long pause before Grandad replied, “I had to get the sheriff involved again. I’m too damn old for this, Webb. I’ve got livestock, a bad hip, and no patience left for armed trespassers. I just want to sit in peace with my dogs and my porch beer.”

He was so full of shit. “Believe me, I get it, but she saw something big. We're talking blackmail and buried bodies, and now Colin Maddox wants her gone, and he’s got the resources to make that happen. We’re trying to stop him.”

There was another pause, followed by the creak of a chair and a quiet sigh on the other end of the line.

“You know,” Grandpa mused, “I just had a woman named Sayla and her boyfriend’s kids go through something like this.

It's the same shit, just with different names.

I'm tired of it, son. Tired of the kidnappings, the gunmen, the secret files, and the endless string of people who believed the only way to settle a problem is to make someone disappear.

“Agreed.” Wyatt stood beside me with his arms folded tight. “We’re all sick of it.”

“I just want one normal family fight,” Grandpa muttered. "Maybe some yelling in the driveway, a thrown lawn chair, the usual kind of chaos—but not tactical extractions and police reports."

I couldn’t help the half-laugh that escaped. He wasn't joking either, my family was capable of calling that a normal family night. “You’re preaching to the choir.”

“Well,” he sighed again, “Gabby’s Sasha’s cousin, that makes her mine by extension. So yeah, I’ll make some calls. I know someone who used to work with Maddox. I don’t know if he’s still in the inner circle, but I’ll see what I can shake loose.”

“Thanks, Gramps. I really appreciate it.” My shoulders tightened with a mix of gratitude and urgency that hadn’t left me since she'd vanished.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he warned. “If Maddox has her, this isn’t going to end with a polite negotiation. He’s not the kind of man who hands anything back.”

I glanced from the map to the faces around me. “We’re gonna make him.”

Matty’s voice broke through the low buzz of conversation from the kitchen. “Got something,” he called out.

I crossed the living room in three strides, leaving Dad to talk to Grandpa, with Jesse and Elijah trailing behind me. Matty didn’t look up from his laptop—his focus was locked in like a sniper’s, fingers tapping fast as he scrolled through an email.

“The guy from the electronics shop finally got back to me. He's just sent through a full inventory list of what Gabby bought.”

He turned the screen so I could see. The receipt had the timestamp we expected, just after she arrived in Orlando. There were micro-cams, audio recorders, a burner phone… and then something that made the knot in my chest tighten.

“Tracker.” Matty tapped the line. “The model’s unfamiliar, so it might be one of the newer private-use types.”

“Can you trace it?” I asked, stepping in closer.

“Not directly,” Matty hedged. “That model doesn’t ping to any open GPS databases I have access to. I asked the guy if he had any internal tools or access codes. He said no, but he’d reach out to the manufacturer and call me back.”

“Could be encrypted,” Remy added from the corner, his voice calm but edged with focus. “Some of those trackers are subscription-based. The data is routed through cloud services, which require credentials to access. Unless Gabby linked it to something we can hack into, we’ll have to wait.”

That was the issue—the waiting was killing me. I hated the word now.

Remy’s fingers flew across his keyboard, windows, and tabs blinking across his screen like a Vegas light show. “I ran those faces Matty pulled from the hotel footage. I've got three hits, but something’s off.”

“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—almost too perfectly. 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.