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Rachel's jaw clenched; the insult scraped across her resolve like barbed wire. The bar seemed to shrink, the walls inching closer, trapping heat and hostility in suffocating proximity.
Ethan moved only slightly, the smallest shift away from the stain on the floor by his shoes, his face an unreadable mask. But Rachel saw it—the tightness around his eyes, the hard set of his mouth.
"Stick to the point, Kai," she said, her voice low but edged.
Kai tossed back his drink, slamming the empty glass with a thud that threatened to echo into violence.
"Anna was nobody," he spat, the words sloppy with drink and scorn.
But Rachel heard the lie in his tone, saw the truth shimmering beneath the surface of his bravado. She had touched a nerve, and she knew it. She held his gaze, unflinching, even as her mind raced.
"Was she more than a name to you, Kai?" Rachel pressed, her voice steady as a heartbeat.
Kai sneered, a cruel twist of lips beneath the feathers braided into his hair. "You think I'd waste my time on trash like that?"
"Did you share a bed with her?" The question hung between them.
"Your detective skills as dead as your folks, huh?" Kai's laugh was a jagged thing, cutting. "You couldn't find your own shadow at high noon."
Every word was a barb, designed to provoke, to unravel. But Rachel refused to be baited. This was more than a drunken deputy's taunts; it was a piece of the puzzle clenched tight in his fist.
"Answer the question, Kai." Her demand sliced through the noise of the bar, a clear note amidst the cacophony.
Ethan's hand twitched, almost imperceptibly, near the gun at his hip—a reminder of force restrained, of storms brewing beneath his composed exterior.
"I don't owe you shit," he said.
"You recognized Anna. You were first on scene. I want to know about that," Rachel said quietly, her voice still restrained.
Kai's hand, slow and deliberate, slid toward the sheath at his side. The rasp of metal against leather sliced through the din of the bar like a warning siren. His fingers wrapped around the bone handle of a knife, its blade catching the neon light in a sinister glint.
"Enough talk," he growled.
Rachel's instincts screamed. Time stretched as Kai brandished the blade with a drunken swagger.
"Kai, don't be stupid," she said, voice low, eyes locked on the weapon.
The deputy, flushed with alcohol, stumbled to his feet, hand gripping the bone-handle knife. In one fluid motion, Rachel sidestepped, her boot hooking around his ankle. He toppled like a felled tree, the thud of his body hitting the floor punctuating the tension.
"Damn you, Blackwood!" Kai spat. He tried to rise, but she shoved him again. He was far too drunk to track her motions. Good thing, too; she knew Kai was a dangerous fighter when sober.
Her hand closed around the deputy's dropped knife, the hilt familiar and cold. The other deputies, sobered by action, pawed at their guns, eyes darting between Rachel and their downed comrade.
"Everyone just calm down," Ethan's voice commanded, steady as bedrock.
"Put it down, Blackwood," one deputy warned, the words edged with fear rather than authority.
"Or what?" Her tone was ice, challenge woven through the chill. "You'll shoot me for defending myself?"
"Nobody needs to get hurt," Ethan added, holding his hands up but ready for whatever came next.
"Stay out of this, white man," another deputy snarled, bitterness lacing his words.
Rachel's thoughts raced, heart thrumming against her ribs. She scanned the faces before her—men she had known since childhood, now adversaries in a standoff that could end with blood on the sawdust floor.
Kai's face twisted, rage battling with the haze of alcohol even as he still sat on the floor, dazed. "You're all bark, no bite, Blackwood."
"Keep pushing, see where it gets you," she replied, each syllable a hammer strike.
