“And now you’re going to do, what, climb deeper in it? Drag me in, too?”
“Don’t blame it on me. You dragged yourself in, Dani. You’ve been in it since you walked in my office that first day.”
“What are you going to do to me?” she pressed.
This time he didn’t answer. He just continued down 82, occasionally turning up the police radio to listen to the chatter.
“Just sit there. Nothing you can do about it anyway. I can’t let them kill him, Dani. I can’t. I’ve done enough wrong. That’s where I hold the line.”
“What are you talking about? Kill who?”
She saw it in the tightening on his face. The predicament he was in. She knew only one thing would make him do this. “Kyle?”
He switched lanes, turning the radio up higher.
“It’s Kyle, isn’t it? What are they making you do, Wade? They’re squeezing you, aren’t they, and you’re about to do something terrible? You don’t have to do this. You’ll regret it the rest of your life.”
He put on his blinker. “Maybe I will.”
He pulled off the highway at the outskirts of Glenwood Springs, and turned onto what Dani knew was Red Mountain Road for a while and started to wind into the hills.
She knew where she was. At the top was Cutter Point. She’d been up there once, with a bunch of paragliding friends. It was the spot they jumped from in Glenwood. There were houses on the road at first, on both sides, and past them, aspens rising into the sky as the road turned from paved to dirt.
There was nothing up there but a sheer drop.
“Where are we going?” Dani asked, trepidation setting in.
“Just shush.”
“You have to tell me, Wade! Where are you taking me?”
“There’s only one place up here, girl. I think you know that.”
Her thoughts flashed to Ty. She didn’t know if he was alive or dead now. Only that he hadn’t answered her all night and she’d called several times. It was clear he wasn’t going to save her this time. He wasn’t anywhere near her. Even if he was alive. She wrestled against her cuffs. She tried to slip her wrist through, but it only made the clasps tighter. She’d been stupid, she realized. She’d been stubborn and foolish, and bulled her way into things she didn’t belong in. Even Ty had told her that. She had dragged him in, too. And now she was going to pay. Wade had the flushed countenance of a trapped, hunted animal, looking for some way out of the box, but with a single-minded determination to do what he had to do.
He continued to wind up the road as it narrowed, putting on his brights.
“Please don’t do this to me, Wade. You were married to my mom. We’ve known each other since I was a child …”
“Best just hold on, Danielle.” The crackle of the police chatter grew thinner and less audible the farther up they climbed.
There was a time in her life when she had trusted him. He wasn’t exactly loving—she wasn’t his, Kyle was—but he was always fun and full of life. When she was a kid, he’d taken the two of them camping and rafting. She and Kyle. That’s how she first got started. When her mom got sick, he’d taken her to her college back east, almost like a dad. And now he was taking her where …? To do what? Kill her. Doing someone’s dirty work to shut her up. The car wound up higher and higher up the mountain. Dani knew it went two thousand feet up. There were no lights up here. Only the moon. There was a series of narrow switchbacks with only boulders to act as a guardrail; even by day it would make your stomach uneasy. Dani eyed the lock switch next to Wade. She thought about diving across and slamming into him when he slowed at one of the turns. Forcing the vehicle off the road. The car would surely roll. She didn’t know how high up they were now, but there were still trees to block their fall. Then maybe she could make her way out and run for it.
Whatever he was going to do, she wasn’t going to just go willingly. Without a fight. No way.
“Wade, I know they’ve gotten to you somehow. But you don’t have to do this. We can take it to Sheriff Warrick. This isn’t going to help you, Wade. Only suck you in deeper.” She saw she was talking to a stone wall. “Wade, listen!”
He put his foot on the brake and slowed to about ten miles an hour as they went around a turn, the car wheels grazing the edge. The lights of the valley flickered far below them. Dani suddenly dove across him and grabbed hold of the wheel and jerked it to the left toward the edge as hard as she could.
“What the hell are you—”
The vehicle lurched, its front wheels rolling off the embankment, teetering a second or two on the edge, just a foot or two from rolling off and tumbling down the mountain. It was her only chance. Dani kept the wheel pinned as Wade slammed on the brake, the vehicle hanging there over the darkness, front wheels spinning.
“You dumb little shit …” Wade said. He ripped her hands off the wheel and swung the back of his into her face.
Dani’s head snapped back, and she felt the warm drool of blood running down her chin.
She tried to dive across him again, this time to unlock the lock switch and somehow get out of the car. But Wade blocked her and pulled her back by the hair and struck her again, opening her lip. Dani gasped with pain. He pushed her back over to her seat, keeping his hand pinned on her throat, his thumb digging into her larynx, causing her to gag.
“Wade! Wade, please!” she pleaded, trying to tear away his hand. Tears burned in her eyes. “What are you trying to do? You’re hurting me!”
He kept his hand pinned there. Choking her. Driven by some uncontrollable urge in his ruined life to protect what he knew was now beyond protection. His rage seemingly built up from so many things. Anger. Shame. Guilt. Futility.
“Wade, please …” She shook herself free. “What’s the plan?” Dani stared at him incomprehensibly. “What are you going to do, Wade? Tie me into that parasail up there and throw me over the edge?”