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Carefully, Rachel placed her hand on the hood of the ATV, feeling the residual heat beneath her fingertips. The engine had only recently been turned off.
"He's close," she murmured.
Her eyes scanned the sand at her feet, her ears perked, listening for any nearby sounds.
Rachel's boots sunk softly into the sand with each step. Her eyes strained in the dark, trying to keep track of Carlos' movements, and then she saw it—the faint outline of a boot print, half-eroded by the shifting sands but unmistakable in its form.
"Here," she breathed, squatting to trace the edges.
"Sure?" Ethan's voice was a low rumble beside her.
"Positive." Rachel's conviction stemmed from years of tracking, of learning to read the earth as one would a book.
They moved forward, their bodies low, slipping through the night. The desert seemed to hold its breath, waiting for the denouement of this silent pursuit.
"Keep to the rocks," Rachel instructed tersely. "Less disturbance of the trail."
"Copy that," Ethan replied, mirroring her movements.
The gulley loomed ahead, a scar in the earth's flesh, its walls tinged with hues of orange and crimson by the moon's ethereal glow. They approached with the caution of predators wary of becoming prey, every sense straining against the stillness.
"Could be watching us right now," Ethan mused, his hand resting on the butt of his holstered gun.
"Then let's not disappoint," Rachel said, her voice barely above a whisper. Her mind raced with the anticipation of confrontation.
As the gulley drew near, they paused, crouching behind a cluster of boulders.
The ridge offered a panoramic view of desolation, the moonlight casting eerie shadows over the jagged terrain. Rachel’s gaze cut through the night, sharp and searching. Below, nestled in a hollow, squatted a small trailer that someone had managed to drag out to the desolate location.
The trailer and the smoke spewing from the chimney did little to hide the intention of this place. A meth cook shack—a malignant growth on the desert's skin.
Rachel's fingers instinctively touched the cold steel of her sidearm, comfort in its presence. The scent of creosote bush mingled with the electric tension in the air, a harbinger of the storm to come.
Ethan scanned the ramshackle structure with binoculars, his eyes flicking from window to window. "Carlos might be down there."
"Too many blind spots," she whispered back, her mind constructing a maze of danger within the walls of that distant hovel.
A glint of light caught her eye—a reflection, a warning. Someone in the window. Her eyes widened, and she flung herself at Ethan, knocking him back. Time slowed as a bullet tore through the silence, a silver streak intent on destruction. Instinct and adrenaline surged as she jerked left, the projectile grazing the fabric of her jacket, whispering death as it passed.
"Sniper!" Ethan hissed, pulling her down. Grains of sand sprayed against her cheek as another shot followed, embedding into the rock where her arm had been seconds before.
"Close," she breathed out, the realization cold in her veins.
"Let's not make it easy for him," Ethan replied, already mapping their next move.
Together, they shuffled backward, away from the ledge, their bodies low. Every sense sharpened, anticipating another shot, another brush with mortality.
Gunshot reports rippled through the night in the barren desert. Rachel's pulse hammered in her ears, each beat echoing the blasts that punctuated the stillness. She kept low, muscles coiled, ready to spring.
"Alive, Ethan," she breathed out, the words slicing through the cacophony. "We need Carlos breathing."
"Got it," he grunted back, his eyes flinty as he peeked around their scant cover—a stubborn boulder jutting from the earth.
They moved as one, a dance they'd rehearsed in countless scenarios, never with stakes this high. He signaled, three fingers then two, and on one, they emerged. Rachel's weapon, an extension of her will, found its mark. The RV's window exploded in spider webs of fractured glass as she squeezed the trigger.
"Left side!" Ethan called his own gunfire a staccato accompaniment to hers.
She shifted, heart racing, her focus narrowing to the slivers of movement—the gleam of metal, the shadow of a head. Dust kicked up around them, mingling with the sharp scent of gunpowder.
