Sabrina
“You ready?” Gabe stood at my front door, wearing a flannel shirt, jeans, and work boots. His hair was covered by a Lawrence farm hat, and he hadn’t shaved.
His stubble alone made my stomach flip.
“You said we weren’t going to the farm.”
“We’re not. I told you, this is a secret date.”
“Normally when I go on dates, it’s at least closer to evening, and I’m wearing nicer clothes,” I explained.
He’d been adamant that I should wear casual clothes and be “incognito,” whatever that meant.
He gave me that cocky, crooked smile. “You’ve never been on a date with me. Get ready to have your mind blown.”
As I was settling in the passenger seat of his Jeep, I discovered a stainless-steel mug of my favorite ginger tea in the cupholder and a variety of my favorite snacks in a small bag.
“You going to tell me where we’re going?” I asked as he merged onto 89, headed north.
“Birch Hollow,” he said.
Shock hit me like a physical blow, and I pushed back into my seat.
“The local maple producers are meeting today to discuss regional tourism.”
“And we’re crashing it?” I said, rubbing my hands together.
“Technically, no. Josh was invited, and I’m going in his place. But I want to lay low, see what we can learn.”
Excitement coursed through my veins. Going behind the scenes in Birch Hollow? The TAP team would be so jealous. “We need aliases,” I demanded.
He heaved out an amused sigh. “Absolutely not. We’re just going to observe.”
“Don’t ruin this.” I clutched his arm. “Don’t you know corporate espionage is foreplay for me?”
He looked over and smiled brightly. “You have never been sexier.”
I mirrored his expression. “Let’s prepare. We need a backstory, a list of dummy questions to ask to make people think we’re not a threat, and at least one or two diversion plans in the event that they make us and we need to cause a scene.”
Sipping my tea, I watched the scenery and plotted.
When we arrived, I was underwhelmed by the generic small-town vibe. While I knew a lot about Birch Hollow, I’d never been there. Everywhere I looked, there were luxury SUVs, and the buildings had the kind of corporate artisanal look that made me immediately distrustful.
Their town hall was a sleek building, all steel and glass. So different than the two-hundred-year-old brick building in Maplewood.
The streets were lined with evenly spaced trees, and there was little foot traffic, even on a sunny Wednesday.
“This place looks like it was designed by a focus group,” I murmured as we walked toward town hall. I wished I’d have thought to snag one of Harper’s fancy microphones. I could probably pick up a lot of dirt here.
“I need to get a few photos with my phone,” I told him. “Then Meg can run them through facial recognition software so we know who’s who.”
Gabe beamed at me. “I expected no less.”
The lobby had gleaming marble floors and a sleek registration desk. Several men in suits milled around, and other were set up at small tables.
“Is that…?” I craned my neck. “Keith Hurst?”
Gabe nodded.
“Neutral, my ass,” I grumbled. I’d like to say I was surprised about the director of tourism who had pretended to be deeply concerned about Maplewood’s plight.
We shuffled into the main room, and as we settled into seats in the back, Gabe put his arm around me. “Warren Manheim is over there. He’s a private equity investor from New Hampshire. Has bought up a lot of commercial farmland.”
A man wearing a polo shirt with Arcadian Biotech embroidered on the chest walked by.
My pulse picked up. “They’re here?”
Gabe shrugged. “Get a picture of him. Let’s figure out who he is.” He put his arm around me, giving me a little cover so I could discreetly snap a photo. As I set my phone in my lap, he pulled his hat lower over his eyes.
The people-watching was fascinating. There were probably forty or fifty people here, some corporate types, others farmers.
The Birch Hollow mayor was a red-faced guy who wore an unironic bow tie and a flashy Patek Philippe watch.
“What the hell is a small-town mayor doing with a three-hundred-thousand-dollar watch?” I whispered.
Gabe’s brows shot up, and he angled forward almost imperceptibly.
The mayor approached the man in the Arcadian Biotech shirt, and the two of them laughed, gripping shoulders like old friends.
Interesting.
“This place feels like a country club where everyone is cheating on both their taxes and their wives,” I said. “Just missing the thirty-dollar martinis.”
The corner of Gabe’s mouth twitched. “Stay cool.”
“Oh, I’m cool,” I said, pushing to my feet. “Just going to hit the ladies’ room before this thing gets started. You know, wander casually through the crowd while collecting intelligence.”
With a wink at him, I weaved around the seating toward the back of the room, keeping my eye out for Ethan. When I located him, I stopped in front of one of the sponsor displays—something about the future of tourism—and inched closer to where he stood by the coffee station with a few other men.
“Maplewood’s finished,” one declared. “That murder killed any charm that dump ever had.”
“And our influencer girl WanderBetch finished it off.” Another laughed. “Maybe it was worth the twenty-K she charged for Murderville after all.”
The group made sounds of agreement.
“The town’s been dying a slow death,” Ethan said. “This just accelerated the timeline.”
A chill ran through my body. He sounded like he was already sure of the outcome.
“And the tourists don’t want authentic,” he continued. “They want curated. Dumb sheep will travel wherever we tell them to.”
“And we did hire that brand consultant for the festival.”
“What about the holdouts?” the man in the Arcadian polo shirt asked. “I’ve made no progress with Lawrence or Fitzgerald.”
“They’ll come around eventually. Subtle pressure, a few underperforming trees. Maybe some mistakes on the farm. Tubes cracking, collection containers leaking. We’ll have them ready to sell in no time.”
Sell? Sabotage? My blood pressure spiked. Holding my breath, I subtly checked my purse. Motherfucker. I hadn’t packed my taser.
So I did the next best thing. I covertly snapped a few photos, then captured some of the voices on audio. Meg would have a field day ruining these guys’ lives.
As I was leaning toward them, a warm object made contact with my lower back, and my muscles went rigid, my body preparing to elbow my attacker in the throat.
“It’s me,” Gabe whispered in my ear as he wrapped an arm around my waist. His touch steadied me and soothed me immediately.
“They’re talking about Maplewood like it’s dead,” I hissed.
His jaw clenched, and a wave of weariness rolled over his expression. The poor man had been carrying so much on his shoulders. Quickly, he brushed off the look and tightened his arm around me. “We’ll save it.”
The certainty in his voice undid me.
Heat prickled behind my eyes. “Do you have bail money?” I asked.
Head lowered, he shook it. “I don’t want to know.”
I craned my neck, continuing to listen to the conversation nearby. “No, you do not want to be an accessory to the felonies I’m about to commit, Gabriel. It would really tank your approval ratings.”
He glowered. “Stand down. No fights. We’re not committing felonies.”
I stuck my lip out in a pout. “Misdemeanors?”
“We’re outnumbered,” he reminded me.
“Remember the black eye I gave you?”
“Vividly.”
“There are more where that came from.”
The grin he gave me momentarily distracted me, and I considered pulling him down a back hall and ravaging him.
Behind us, a throat cleared, and as we turned, Gabe instinctively grabbed my hand.
Sure enough, Ethan was watching us, wearing a superior sneer. His focus drifted to our joined hands, and he broke into a predatory smile.
“Well. What an unexpected surprise,” he said. “Monroe. Mayor. Nice to see you here. Enjoying the meeting?”
“Yes,” I said with an aggressive smile. “You know how much I love economic posturing, weaponized incompetence, and emotionally repressed men in fleece vests.”
Gabe choked back a laugh.
Ethan stared at me for a moment. Then, without a word, he turned and walked away.
“I fucking hate that guy,” Gabe snarled.
I patted his chest. “You sound jealous.”
“More like homicidal.”
“Now who’s at risk of committing felonies?” I teased, waggling my brows.
We endured the meeting, which was nothing more than a bunch of bloated jerks congratulating themselves for existing.
One guy got up and bragged about how some tech billionaire from California had bought a multi-generational family farm and was turning it into a compound, thus “elevating the brand experience.” Apparently the phrase meant evicting people and building a helipad.
“That sounds like a worst-case scenario,” I whispered to Gabe.
He squeezed my thigh. “We’d never let that happen to our farmers.”
Our farmers. The possessiveness hit me.
Next came several cracks at Maplewood and the most half-assed presentation I’d ever seen about how they were going to “dominate” the Maple Festival in a few weeks, along with several other examples of excessive mediocrity.
They celebrated Maplewood’s “declining demographics” and our “negative public perception.” Which I could now say with certainty was a direct sabotage campaign.
If they could get bimbo influencers to bad-mouth our town, who knew what else they were capable of.
When one woman lamented that Will McManus’s murder was “an unfortunate branding event,” I almost launched myself across the room.
Gabe clutched my arm, keeping me in place while we were forced to endure a very boring and uninspired presentation about their upcoming Maple Festival, which consisted of old drone footage, corporate sponsors, and more beige than any maple tree deserves.
We attracted several stares, and by the end of the meeting, most of the people in attendance were whispering about us. I didn’t care. I was used to having a healthy supply of haters. I even cupped my belly a few times, enjoying how some of the older women gasped in disapproval.
Near the end, a severe middle-aged woman with a tight perm from the economic development council was answering questions. “Several of you have asked me about social media. Apparently Maplewood has decided to lean into”—her face screwed up like she smelled something foul—“social media gimmicks.”
Around the room, chuckles went up.
I clenched my fists, keeping my anger safely under control.
“We won’t be lowering ourselves to spectacle. Birch Hollow values sophistication. Which is why we attract a more elite clientele.”
“But they keep going viral,” a woman from the crowd said. “They’ve got subscriptions and live streams and merchandise.”
The speaker waved a dismissive hand. “We know what drives tourism. And we’ve been preparing for this for years. This town is better than online fads. We are the pinnacle of regional luxury tourism.”
I looked at Gabe.
He looked back at me.
Then, suddenly, we were both laughing. And it wasn’t quiet, polite laughter either.
This was objectively hilarious.
“They wish they could achieve our authentic chaotic charm,” I said between giggles.
“Harper will eat them alive once we tell her.”
“She’ll be making edits dunking on them before the day is over.”
We got up to leave, our heads held high and my hand in his as every eye followed us out the door.
While Birch Hollow might have corporate money and asshole billionaires and helipads, Maplewood was blessed in so many more important ways.
We had people. Real people. Passionate, ridiculous, and resilient. And a one-eyed bear. Birch Hollow could never.
“I’m actually more upset now,” I explained as the bright sunlight warmed my face. “Not that we lost the festival, but that we lost it to such losers.”
“They were not, um…impressive,” Gabe said as he opened the passenger door for me.
“Be honest. Those people could not organize a bake sale without a consultant.” I huffed. “And they don’t even understand maple culture, the heritage, or the history. It’s insulting.”
“You’re very defensive about my town,” he said as he climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Our town. Now let’s get outta here before I get arrested.”
His grin widened.
I wasn’t ready to process why, but I liked making him smile. He seemed to enjoy me at my most unhinged.
With other men, I’d tried to tone it down, to keep myself under control. But with Gabe, there was no holding back. I was ready to throw down in a small-town meeting, and he would have had my back.
As he pulled out of the lot, I typed out a message in the TAP chain while talking in stream of consciousness bullet points.
“Maybe new logo. Online naming competition. Bear awareness campaign starring Betsy. Maplewood Games announcement has to be fire. Can I pour a bucket of syrup over your head?”
I looked over at him. He was still smiling, the expression a little dopey, both hands on the wheel.
“You writing this down?”
“I’m driving,” he replied.
“Excuses.”
As we reached the town limits, I lowered my window and leaned out.
“Hey, Birch Hollow,” I screamed. “Get fucked.”
Gabe laughed until he cried. “I think I might be falling in love with you.”
Shifting, I gaped at him. The weight of his words wrapped around me like a hug.
His face reddened as he focused on the road, his hands tightening around the steering wheel. He wasn’t joking. This was pure honesty.
Panic swept over me, snuffing out the comfort that I’d initially experienced. How the hell was I supposed to respond to that?
“You like pie?” he blurted after an excruciating silence.
“I fucking love pie,” I replied.
“Good. I know a place.”