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"All-terrain tires. You need it more than me. I'm fine. Backup's coming."
She gave him a long look of gratitude, and he just frowned at her, concern etched across every line of his face.
But there was no further time for her partner's disapproval. She turned, clambering into the driver's seat of their unmarked car.
The engine roared to life beneath her, a feral thing yearning for the chase. Rachel flicked a glance at the rearview mirror, catching Ethan's silhouette against the sky, hand raised in a reluctant farewell. She knew he wouldn't have done it if he didn't think there was a high chance their victim would return to her car.
Ethan was a protector... of the people they helped as much as his partner sometimes. She respected him for it. Besides, out in the wilderness, she worked best alone... he would only slow her down, and right now, time was of the essence.
She gunned the engine, the car jolting forward, leaving behind a cloud of dust and doubt. Her knuckles whitened on the steering wheel as she steered off the paved road and onto the rugged terrain that stretched before her like a challenge.
The storm loomed closer now, an ominous wall of grey that seemed to devour the blue expanse above. It was as if the heavens themselves were closing in, ready to bear witness to the reckoning she sought. Lightning forked in the distance, a silent threat that underscored the peril of her journey.
"Come on, Elroy," she muttered to herself, a mantra against the howling wind that seeped through the cracks of her resolve.
Her heart beat in time with the thrumming of the car's tires over rough ground, each thud a drumroll in the symphony of her determination. There was no room for fear, only the laser focus of a hunter on the trail of her prey.
As the first drops of rain began to spatter against the windshield, Rachel knew that turning back was no longer an option. The storm was upon her.
The sky crackled, a web of electric veins splitting the twilight. Rachel’s grip on the wheel tightened with each strobe of lightning, her knuckles almost as white as the flashes that illuminated the desert's gnarled features.
"Damn it," she breathed, the words barely audible over the rumble of thunder. The storm was no longer at bay; it had encroached upon her with the ferocity of a cornered beast.
She shook the past from her head just as the terrain pitched upward. Her car growled in protest, climbing the incline that led toward the jagged silhouette of a cliff.
Her eyes scanned the outcrop through the passenger window where the land fell away to reveal gaping maws in the earth, dark openings that pocked the cliff face.
"Old mineshafts," she noted, the investigator within cataloging details even now. "Could be our guy's hideout."
She scanned the horizon, desperately, trying to pick out anything that caught her eye... Her attention snagged on a peculiar glint that seemed out of place against the rocky canvas.
There, amidst the turmoil of the storm and the desolation of the landscape, a pattern emerged: disturbed stones, faint tire tracks leading toward the abandoned shafts.
"Let's go!" She killed the engine, the silence that followed punctuated by the drumming rain and her own measured breaths. The ground was too steep and too pockmarked to approach by vehicle now.
She tensed, exhaling slowly, and then she moved fast, shoving open the door and hastening towards the base of the steep incline.
The rain pelted her as she moved, but her eyes refused to lift from the trail in the sand. Even as the downpour attempted to flood out the patterns in the dust, she could still detect the faint remnants of tire tracks leading towards the mineshafts. Narrow tracks. A much narrower vehicle. With each step she took, her boots sank into the wet sand, leaving behind imprints that would soon be swallowed by the storm.
As Rachel neared the entrance of the closest mineshaft, a surge of adrenaline coursed through her veins. She raised a hand, shielding her already sodden face from the pelting water droplets.
The cliff loomed, an insurmountable obelisk against the darkening sky. Rachel's boots crunched on the gravelly path as she approached, her breaths coming out in deliberate puffs that cut through the charged air. The storm above was a roiling cauldron of clouds, casting everything in a stark, unearthly light.
She spotted the ATV, then. Hidden in the mineshaft entrance... blocking it?
Had he entered...
She frowned... Where was the trail?
Her gaze scanned one way, then the other, desperately seeking, but the rain was increasing its tempo. She kept a hand over her face, shielding her eyes.
And then her gaze moved up the base of the cliff. And she froze.
Two silhouettes stood on the edge of the sandstone outcrop.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
"Drop it!" The words were sharp, barely discernible over the howling wind, but enough to halt Rachel's advance. There, silhouetted by the intermittent flashes of lightning, stood Elroy Terra—a wild-eyed specter with one arm locked around a woman's neck, the other brandishing a glinting blade at her throat.
