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"Answer me!" she shouted as he slammed into the other door.
"Dammit!" he yelled. His head was now bleeding from one of the collisions.
She glared at him. "Who tipped you off?"
"No one!" he screamed back at her.
With a sudden veer, the vehicle lurched off the road, tires biting into the earth. They skidded to a halt just shy of a steep ravine, the land dropping away like the cliffs of judgment. Without a word, Rachel threw open her door and stalked around to the back.
"Out," she commanded, her tone brooking no argument.
Wyatt stumbled as she dragged him from the car, his legs weak after his hair-raising trip. His breath came in ragged gasps, each one tasting of the dust kicked up by their abrupt stop. She was a force of nature, unstoppable.
"Please!" Wyatt began, the plea dying in his throat as he caught sight of the ravine's edge.
"Talk," she demanded. Her hand on his arm was a vice.
"Look, I'll tell you everything." Wyatt's words tumbled out in a frantic cascade, his fear a living thing between them.
Dust settled in the wake of Rachel's fury as she flung Wyatt to the parched Texas soil. His body thudded against the ground, a cloud of dust rising up like a ghostly specter. His eyes, wide and pleading—pools of panic—locked onto hers. But her glare was steel; it cut through his desperation, unyielding.
"Please," he mouthed, voice barely a whisper over the howl of the distant wind that swept across the ravine.
"Silence." Her command was a whip-crack in the still air. She seized him by the collar, hauling his lanky frame with an ease that belied her slender build. A testament to those orphan days, where only strength guaranteed survival.
Wyatt's feet stumbled, scrambling for purchase as Rachel marched him towards the abyss. The edge loomed—a precipice hungry for secrets and sins. His hands, bound with unforgiving zip ties, were useless. He could only stagger after her, his pleas swallowed by the dry gale. Ten feet from the edge. Five. She rotated him until his back was over the steep drop.
His voice cracked under the strain of terror.
"Shut it." Her words sliced through his babble.
At the brink, the world fell away into shadow and void. Rachel's grip was iron on his arm, holding him suspended between life and a plummeting demise. Below, jagged rocks grinned like the maw of some ancient beast, waiting to feast.
Wyatt’s raven hair whipped around his face, his scar—a jagged line from brow to jaw—paled against the flush of fear. He peered over the edge, heart thundering against his ribcage, a drumbeat heralding doom.
"Look at me!" she barked.
He did, his gaze latching onto hers with the fervor of a drowning man clinging to a lifeline.
"Everything you got," she growled, "now."
"I swear—I—"
"Swear harder," she pressed, her own pulse racing beneath her stoic exterior. Every muscle tensed, ready to act, to judge.
"God—" His voice broke as she shifted her weight, tilting him an inch closer to oblivion.
"God's not on your side, bud," she said, her tone hollow but her intent clear as the unrelenting sun above them.
A vulture circled above, its shadow fleeting across them, an omen. Wyatt's eyes screamed the terror his voice failed to articulate, every second an eternity as he hovered over the edge.
"Ranger... I—"
"Talk!" Her demand was a gunshot, echoing off the canyon walls.
"Alright! Alright!" Panic seared his words.
She waited, breath bated, the revelation she sought just beyond reach. And in that moment, suspended between confession and consequence, the land seemed to hold its breath with her, waiting for the truth to break free.
