Chapter 11:
Quinn chokes on the last remnants of her sleep at the sight of the man she has only ever seen in an ancient high school year book and grainy mugshot staring down at her live and in person.
Waking up in a dark, desolate Nebraska town to find anybody staring down at you would be frightening enough, but add the mysterious, sordid past that Quinn knows this man has and that fear filters in tenfold.
From what Quinn can make out of Peter under the dense moonlight, he looks wild.
While he still has the same eyes that he had in his pictures from eighteen years ago, the rest of him has grown old and gaunt.
He looks nothing like the yearbook photos that Rachel had seen. He doesn't even look like his mugshot, where he looked less than his best.
Time hasn't seemed to have treated Peter Gabbanelli very well. His hair is long, down to his shoulders and is dull and grayer than it had been in his youth. His face is wrinkled with an overgrown, patchy stubble sprouting unevenly along his jaw. He is rail thin.
For a moment, Quinn puts aside her horror to relish on the fact that him and Shelby are the same age. This man cannot be older than thirty-five or thirty-sex, yet standing here in the dark, he looks closer to sixty.
That doesn't make him any less intimidating, hovering over Quinn.
The blonde jumps backwards away from him. She feels her shoulder knock into Rachel and hears the girl beside her snap awake with a confused groan that is quickly followed by a gasp of surprise when she sees who is hovering over them.
"Who are you?" Peter snaps when he realizes he has both girl's full attention. "What are you doing here?"
Peter's voice matches his appearance. It is stringy and high-pitched. Quinn notices immediately how different his voice is from Rachel's or Shelby's. The two women are portraits of control, always. It is obvious that Rachel got that trait from Shelby. Looking at Peter, Quinn is starting to realize that Rachel had gotten just about everything from Shelby.
Except for those damn eyes…
Both of the girls stumble deafly over Peter's question. This is not how they had expected to meet the man.
In all fairness, this is likely not how Peter expected to meet them, either. In fact, he probably hadn't been expecting to meet them at all.
"P-please sir, we're sorry to bother you. We're just looking for somebody."
Rachel is the first to find her voice. She stutters a little bit, but sounds remarkably calm and is smart enough to keep her intentions vague even though they both know that the man they are looking for is the one standing right in front of them.
Despite her better judgment, Rachel gets out of the car. She wants Peter to know that she means no harm, even if that means separating herself from the only means of protection that she has.
Quinn wants to grab her and reel her back in, but she doesn't want to spook Peter so instead, she just gets out of the car too in the hopes that it will show that the girls mean no harm.
"This is private property," Peter accuses. "Who are you?"
He looks to Rachel for answers because he has already gotten her to speak once. He is not so very tall, but Rachel is so short that he appears to be hovering over her.
The moon lightens his elongated, drooping face. Quinn tries to blame it on the shadows, but somehow, he looks even older than before.
"My name is Rachel Berry and this is my friend Quinn Fabray," Rachel answers, her voice gaining strength with practice. "We're looking for Peter Gabbanelli."
"Are you police?" the man asks tentatively. For the first time, he is the one who looks frightened. He takes a step back like he is ready to run just in case Rachel is to answer yes to his question.
"No…" Rachel answers hesitantly. "I'm a high school student."
Peter takes pause at this. He raises his eyebrows so that he looks just as confused as Rachel and Quinn.
He takes in the two girls in front of him, really takes them in this time. His eyes fall onto Quinn's t-shirt and the logo emblazoned across it. She is wearing a William McKinley Cheerios t-shirt. She hadn't even realized what an identifying marker it was when she had put it on this morning. She had just thrown random clothes into her backpack when she had packed.
A dawn of familiarity passes across the man's face. He looks back at Rachel with an expression like he has just seen a ghost.
"What did you say your name was?" he asks Rachel, his voice softening. Rachel notices that he speaks with a low drawl. He has been living in the Midwest for too long. Still, a hint of Brooklyn remains in the undertones of his accents.
"Rachel Berry," the girl swallows and when she does, the man's entire face changes.
"You're Shelby's daughter…"
Rachel hesitates. In her mind, this seems like a terribly convenient way of phrasing things. Then again, Peter probably hadn't come home tonight expecting to find his long-lost daughter sleeping in a car outside of his house. She passes his words off as an expression of surprise and forces herself forward.
"Yes," she answers. "Yes, I am."
Peter turns to Quinn next, eyeing her up and down too in an effort to see if she, like Rachel, bears a stunning likelihood to him and one of his exes.
"You're not one of mine too, are you?" he asks Quinn. Quinn thinks he is trying to make a joke to ease some of the discomfort of the situation, but she is almost offended by the crudeness of his comment.
"No," Quinn replies curtly. "I'm just a friend of Rachel's."
He nods, looking almost relieved as he turns back to Rachel.
"I don't have any money to give you, if that's what you came all this way for," he tells Rachel. Rachel feels her face turn bright red at his comment. She is glad that it is so dark outside so that nobody can see it.
"It's not," she insists, her voice low and embarrassed. "I just… I wanted to meet you."
Peter nods once, but his jaw is still tight as his head swivels back and forth between Rachel and Quinn, trying to take them all in. Rachel isn't sure that he believes that she isn't here for money, and she doesn't know what to make of that.
"I guess you probably want to talk then?" he asks after a moment.
Rachel nods. That is the real reason she had come all this way. She had come up with a million questions to ask Peter in the past few weeks, yet now that she is face-to-face with him, she cannot think of a single thing to say.
"Listen, my house is a mess," Peter continues when neither girl says anything. "Why don't we take a ride? There's a town a few miles down the highway that actually has restaurants and things unlike this dump. Besides, I think I'm gonna need a stiff drink for this."
Quinn and Rachel glance at each other again, speaking silently to each other. Both feel uncomfortable about this arrangement, but can agree that they would be better off out in public than they would be sitting alone with Peter in this back-country trailer.
"Come on, we can take my truck," Peter waves the girls forward. They agree with a nod, following Peter towards an old Chevy truck sitting in the driveway that hadn't been there before.
The truck looks old and beat down. Before she climbs into the cab, Quinn glances over her shoulder taking one last look at the BMW, wondering if they would be better off following Peter in her car…
But by the time the thought even crosses Quinn's mind, Rachel is already settled inside of the truck and she doesn't want to sound rude, so she climbs inside too and closes the door being her.
"I didn't mean to sound so unwelcoming before," Peter says absently. "It's just that I've been robbed before and didn't want to take any chances."
Quinn glances out the window. Everything that Peter owns seems to be scattered along the front lawn. Silently, the blonde thinks to herself that it's no wonder he's been robbed, but thinks better than to say it out loud as Peter pulls out of his driveway and into the night.
They drive for about twenty minutes.
Quinn spends the entire time sitting idly in the passenger seat, her jaw buried in her hand as she pays careful attention to every turn that Peter makes in an effort to avoid concentrating on the increasingly awkward silence. Not even the radio works in this godforsaken town. The quiet is seeping through all of them.
"I have to admit that I was more than a little surprised to see you here," Peter speaks first.
"I realize that it may have done me well to call first…" Rachel admits hesitantly. She cannot read Peter's tone. She is having a hard time telling whether he is making an offhanded comment or if he is accusing her.
"It's not that," he insists. "It's just that… well, Shelby told me that she had lost the baby when she was pregnant with you. I… well, I didn't even know that you existed."
Rachel feels Peter's words spark something inside of her stomach. Only she is not angry at Peter, but at Shelby. How could Shelby be so ashamed of her that she was willing to tell people that Rachel had never even been born? Had Shelby planned to carry her to term at all? Or had she just wished that she hadn't?
"Why would Shelby say something like that?" Rachel breathes, her voice low and seething.
"She always did have a tendency to tell tall-tales, your mother," Peter shrugs. He sounds indifferent. "Theatrics, she used to call them."
Rachel swallows. She is starting to wonder whether or not even Peter has the answers that Rachel had come all this way to hear. Is Rachel ever going to find out the truth? Or did Shelby's lies permeate so deeply that nobody on this planet knows what actually happened in the summer of 1994.
"Lies, you mean," the young brunette mumbles.
"You told me earlier that your last name is Berry?" Peter asks after a moment. His eyes dart to Rachel in the middle seat, checking in on her composure. If he senses that she is starting to lose it, he doesn't mention it.
"Yes," Rachel swallows again. Peter nods his head slowly like he is piecing together the pieces of an impossible riddle. Rachel wishes that he could impart some of his wisdom onto her. "Why do you ask?"
"I guess it's the reason Shelby told me she lost you when she was pregnant," Peter breathes. Rachel cringes at the reminder of Shelby's harsh explaining-away of her. "She hired a lawyer named Hiram Berry. Is that your dad?"
"Yes…" Rachel nods again, recognizing that Peter seems to be the one asking all the questions even though it was supposed to be her getting answers from him.
"She gave you to him…" Peter breathes. There is something strange inside of his tone, but Rachel can't quite place it. "And Shelby never mentioned me? Not once."
"N-no sir," Rachel stutters apologetically even though she has nothing to apologize for. "I only just met Shelby about two years ago."
"Hmm," Peter answers vaguely and then he says nothing at all.
Rachel watches his eyes twitch, flickering between her and the road ahead. She wishes that she could tell what he is thinking. She wonders if he can tell how nervous she is. He certainly doesn't look nervous.
"Do you have any other kids?" Rachel asks suddenly, trying to turn the questions onto Peter.
"Not that I know of," Peter laughs. "Hell, I didn't even know that I had one kid before today. Does Shelby have any other kids?"
Rachel nods and pulls her lip between her teeth. This man certainly has a lot of questions about Shelby and Rachel isn't entirely sure what to make of that. Something doesn't seem to be adding up. Peter was supposed to give her more answers, not more questions. What would she have come all this way for otherwise?
Rachel's eyes flash quickly towards Quinn, who has been surprisingly quiet. The blonde is paying close attention to the scenery just outside the window. She doesn't seem to be paying attention to Rachel and Peter at all.
"No," Rachel lies because it seems like the right thing to say.
Peter doesn't say anything else. Instead, he throws on his blinker and pulls into a long driveway. At the end is a dilapidated, two-story house. It is certainly not the restaurant that Peter had promised, and Rachel looks up at him confused, and just a little bit frightened.
"I just have to make a stop first," Peter informs Rachel, noticing the look she is giving him. "This is my boss's house. I have to pick up my paycheck before we go out. Just wait here for a minute."
Rachel swallows and nods as Peter throws his car into park and exits the dingy old truck, leaving it running so that Rachel and Quinn could get the heat from the truck while he is inside.
"What do you think that's all about?" Quinn asks, watching Peter carefully as he knocks on the front door of the house.
The blonde is whispering, Rachel notices, even though Peter is all the way on the porch. She sounds nervous. For a moment, that makes Rachel feel better about the nerves she is also feeling, but then she realizes that the fact that they are both uneasy should only make her feel worse.
"He has to pick up his paycheck…" Rachel shrugs, trying to excuse Peter's odd behavior because she hardly wants to believe that his intentions are malicious.
This is hardly going the way she had planned, although now that she thinks about it, she doesn't really know what she had been expecting to find here.
"It's 9:00 at night," Quinn points out, and Rachel doesn't say anything because she doesn't want to think about how strange all of this actually is.
"Does he seem a little… I don't know… off to you?" Quinn asks when Rachel still doesn't say anything.
She speaks as politely as she can think to. The truth is that Peter seems more than a little off to her. The only thing keeping her from saying so is the fact that she knows how desperately Rachel wants this to work.
"You weren't even paying attention to him," Rachel points out, but not even she sounds convinced by her own excuse. "You were staring out the window the whole time."
"I was trying to give you two as much privacy as possible in this tiny ass truck," Quinn points out. "That doesn't mean I wasn't listening."
"It's probably this place," Rachel makes excuses for Peter, watching as he continues to wait out on the porch for somebody to answer the door. "Living out here in the middle of nowhere? It would make anybody a little crazy."
Quinn shrugs, unconvinced and follows Rachel's gaze out the windshield. She watches the front door open, flooding the porch with light.
The woman who answers the door is big and burley. She is taller than Peter and much wider with short hair that sits in wild, grey curls on top of her head.
She is wearing a nightgown that looks grimy despite being faded from being washed so much with a robe over it. She reminds Quinn of a cartoon character. The blonde would laugh if the woman didn't give off the impression that she could snap Quinn in half if prompted. The expression on her face tells Quinn that she wouldn't hesitate to do so, either.
Even through the shadows of the night, Quinn can tell that the woman does not look happy to see Peter at her front door. She figures that if somebody came to her house this late at night, she would be rather irritated herself.
The woman doesn't appear to say anything, but Peter bursts into an immediate fit of very animated talking. The girls cannot hear what he's saying, but his lips are moving at a mile a minute and his hands are waving through the air to support whatever claim he is trying to make.
Whatever he says, it seems to work because the woman steps aside to let him into the house and closes the door behind her, shrouding Rachel and Quinn in darkness once more.
"What was that about?" Quinn asks, looking uncertainly at Rachel, even though she knows that Rachel cannot possibly know anymore than she does.
"No idea…" Rachel breathes. "He doesn't seem to have the answers I was hoping he would."
Rachel looks concerned and just a little disappointed that Peter Gabbanelli has hardly turned out to be the person she was hoping he would be.
Quinn frowns and reaches over to grab Rachel's right hand with her good left one. Their fingers weave together, fitting like a puzzle. The blonde knows that this is hardly the time to concentrate on them, whatever they are, but now that they have both put their feelings for each other out in the open, Quinn figures that this small dose of affection could hardly hurt.
"I can't believe that that guy is my dad…" Rachel breathes. Quinn cannot tell if her tone is one of amazement or disappointment. "I can't believe that Shelby told him that she miscarried me."
"I'm sure that Shelby had a good reason to do what she did," Quinn tells her. Even she cannot believe that she is defending Shelby. "Don't hang her and your dads out to dry for a guy you've only known for a half hour."
"But he's my dad," Rachel reiterates, and Quinn can only shrug.
"Look at my dad," she points out, trying to emphasize that a paternal title hardly holds meaning if the actions cannot match it. "Besides, mothers can do crazy things when they think it's for their child's best interest. Trust me, I thought I would be able to use Shelby's high school pregnancy scandal as a means to try to get Beth back."
"You what?"
Quinn realizes, far too late that she should have kept this information to herself. Paling, the blonde turns to Rachel, who is looking at her like she has never seen her before.
"I didn't mean it like that," Quinn backtracks quickly as Rachel's face slowly starts to register the betrayal. "It was stupid, I know that now, but… but I was different back then."
"Back then?" Rachel accuses. "Quinn, it's only been two weeks since I found out!"
Rachel rips her hand out from inside of Quinn's. The loss of contact is obvious and Quinn swallows, but she has no means to defend herself. Instead, she offers Rachel a look that is purely apologetic.
This is far from the first time she has hurt Rachel. In fact, that happens a lot. But Quinn is finding that the closer the two get, the more it hurts Quinn whenever she does something stupid that makes Rachel look at her as though they are strangers.
The brunette used to be able to ignore things like this; easily brushing it off as Quinn being Quinn. But she had been foolish enough to believe that Quinn had changed, and she isn't sure who she is more disappointed with; Quinn for not changing or herself for being stupid enough to believe that she had.
Quinn stammers, searching for an explanation that never comes. She struggles to explain her reasoning; how, at the time, she had been drunk with jealousy and self-loathing. How her intentions had nothing to do with Rachel, but the crushing desire to feel whole again.
How she had not realized at the time that that source of wholeness had been right in front of her the whole time.
But in the end, nothing ever comes out of the blonde's mouth and Rachel only looks more hurt because of it.
"I can't believe you, Quinn," Rachel breathes in a low, cool voice. She stares hard for a long moment, suddenly realizing that you can hate somebody and be crazy about them all at the same time.
She doesn't want to be stuck in this car anymore. Rachel slides over to the driver's seat, away from Quinn, and pushes herself out of the old Chevy, slamming the door shut so hard behind her that the entire truck shakes.
"Rachel, wait!" Quinn calls after her, stumbling out of the truck into the cold night herself.
"Leave me alone, Quinn!" Rachel calls over her shoulder. She is storming down the long driveway. She has that familiar, determined look on her face like she is planning to march all the way back to Lima in her anger. Quinn wouldn't put it past her.
Her back is turned towards Quinn, but it is cold enough outside that Quinn can see each of Rachel's heavy, angry breaths puffing out of her mouth and hanging over her head like smoke. It creates the illusion that Rachel is breathing fire, which only solidifies her anger.
"Rachel, please let me explain!"
"I've already let you explain!" Rachel roars back. Turning over her shoulder, she squares up angrily against Quinn. The blonde stumbles backwards, creating space between the two of them. She has only seen Rachel look this angry once before, and that had been when she had decided to single-handedly take on the Skanks in a fistfight in the hallway of their high school.
"I've given you the chance to explain every single stupid thing you have ever done to me, Quinn!" Rachel continues. "But it never seems to end, and I'm sick of it. I thought that you were different. I thought you changed!"
"I did change!" Quinn insists, desperation laced inside of her voice. "Rachel, you have to believe me."
"You didn't change," Rachel accuses. She isn't yelling anymore, but her voice is seething with disappointment and somehow, this hurts Quinn even more. "You're still the same Quinn Fabray that you've always been. I can't believe how stupid I was for thinking otherwise. I thought you liked me, Quinn!"
Tears glisten along the bottoms of Rachel's eyes now. She is humiliated all over again, convinced that Quinn has only ever been working to make a fool out of her.
"I do!" Quinn insists. "Please, Rachel! You have to believe that my feelings for you are real! I meant everything I said before. I like you. I… I love you!"
It's not exactly the circumstances that Quinn pictured admitting this little tidbit of information to Rachel, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
Rachel's entire body seems to slacken. She stares at Quinn as though to gauge her sincerity, shivering in the cold.
She doesn't know what to believe. The clouds above her head are rapidly closing in, blocking the light of the stars and the moon so that the dismal blackness of this desolate Nebraska town is starting to get to her head.
Quinn wonders what Rachel is going to say. She is getting the impression that not even Rachel knows, but before she can think of anything, they are interrupted by the front lawn flooding with artificial light.
The front door of the house is thrown open. Both girls squint up into the light. That woman is back in the doorway again. They cannot see her face through the shadows, but she is just as lumbering and intimidating as she had looked before.
Peter scurries up behind her. He does so in a way that seems jittery and nervous. She must have heard the girls' loud squabbling and came to investigate. Judging by Peter's expression, he never intended for this woman to know that they were here at all.
"Who's there?" she barks into the night. Her voice matches her hulking frame; angry and bellowing.
"Um… Darlene, this is my daughter Rachel," Peter answers. His voice is soft and nervous behind this woman; this Darlene.
"Daughter?" she questions. She sounds surprised by the revelation, and everything from her voice to her stature seems to change, suddenly interested. "Come here, girl. Let me get a good look at you."
"Um… yeah, Rachel why don't you come inside quick." Peter sounds uncertain, but he waves Rachel forwards anyway. "I want you to meet a few friends of mine."
Friends? Quinn thinks. A few moments ago, this woman had merely been Peter's boss, and he had merely been looking for his paycheck to take his newly-found daughter and her friend out to dinner. That feeling of unease is back inside of Quinn's stomach again, but caught like a deer in the headlights, she doesn't know how she can subtly warn Rachel not to heed Peter's invitation.
"You can bring your friend if you want," Peter offers, but Rachel only shakes her head.
"She can wait here," the brunette grumbles, giving Quinn one last, cold glare before moving towards the house.
"Shit…" Quinn mutters under her breath as soon as the front door closes behind Rachel, Peter, and Darlene, leaving Quinn outside alone in the dark and the cold.
She wants to hit something, but the last thing she needs are broken knuckles on her left hand to match the ones on her right. Instead, she just resumes her pacing, marching up and down the driveway until she doesn't even feel the cold any more, all the while wondering what else she can possibly do to screw things up with Rachel.
The moment Peter closes the door behind her, Rachel feels her anger ebb to nerves.
It is still cold inside of this house, although it is not nearly as cold as it had been outside.
The interior of the home is even filthier than the outside had been. The people who live here can have a guest spot on one of those reality TV shows that Rachel only watches when she is truly bored about people who never throw anything away.
Piles of old newspapers and magazines are tied together by twine and stacked so high that some of the piles are taller than even Rachel is. In the corner, Rachel spots four or five bowls full of what looks like cat food, but she doesn't see any animals.
Swallowing, Rachel all but completely forgets her anger at Quinn and instead, curses her stubbornness for leaving the blonde outside in the cold. She wishes that she was here inside with her. She wishes that anybody was here inside with her.
Rachel follows Peter and the woman into what looks like a dining room. The woman walks around to the opposite end of a long table and leans against it, staring at Rachel hard. She doesn't look any less angry than before, and Rachel swallows nervously under her watchful eye before she can stop herself.
"Rachel, this is Darlene Ross." Peter attempts to ignore Rachel's obvious discomfort and introduces the intimidating woman. Rachel forces herself to nod politely, but she gets no acknowledgment from Darlene aside from a strategic tightening of her jaw that makes her look even more intimidating.
"N-nice to meet you," Rachel manages, but the woman only continues to stare. Rachel gets the impression that she is trying to X-ray her.
"This is your girl, Peter?" she finally asks after a moment. She is still staring at Rachel, but she speaks only to Peter.
"This is her," he nods in confirmation.
"How old are you, girl?" she barks at Rachel.
"S-seventeen," Rachel answers, unable to hide the way her voice stutters.
"Seventeen, huh?" Darlene answers. She is giving Rachel the impression that she knows something that Rachel does not, and she finds that she is tired of always being the last person in the loop about everything. "You're a pretty girl. Take after your mother, I guess."
Rachel raises an eyebrow. The comment is so strange that for a moment, she forgets that she is supposed to be terrified.
Darlene sounds like she is speaking from experience, but it is impossible that this woman has ever met Shelby. Rachel interprets it as a purposeful quip against Peter instead.
Rachel doesn't want to say anything to this woman, so she doesn't. Darlene takes the opportunity that Rachel gives her in her silence to approach her. She takes big steps that shake the entire dining room. Rachel can see her tree trunk legs, veiny and swollen sticking out from underneath her nightgown. She is eyeing Rachel like she is preparing to devour her.
Darlene starts to circle Rachel before the girl can even process how strange this interaction is. Darlene is walking around her, eyeing her up and down like a hawk and Rachel can't help but wonder if maybe this woman is planning to devour her after all.
"I think I may have just found a way for you to work off your debt, Peter," Darlene comments.
Rachel's ears perk as she feels her heart sink straight into her knees. Peter was supposed to have come here to collect a paycheck. Paying off a debt seemed to be the exact opposite of that, and far too late, Rachel realizes that Peter Gabbanelli has likely not spoken an honest word to her since they met.
"Um… I'm sorry, what is going on here exactly?" Rachel risks asking, trying to keep her voice from trembling.
Both Darlene and Peter ignore her. Rachel knows that they must have heard her. Darlene is standing so close to her that she can smell the cheap body wash on her skin. Rachel considers asking again, but before she can, Peter is speaking.
"Come on, Darlene, she's a kid," he argues. "She can't sell."
The more they talk the more Rachel feels her heart pound. It is obvious that she had just sailed herself into a storm much too big for her little boat. Darlene wants to use her to sell something, and Rachel might be a naïve high school girl from a quiet Ohio suburb, but she isn't an idiot. She knows exactly what Darlene is selling.
Closing her eyes, Rachel wonders how she had gotten herself into this situation. The deciding factor seems to lie in her own stupidity.
More importantly, she wonders how she is going to get out of this situation. Her only hope seems to be for Quinn – who is still outside – to realize that something is wrong and come save her.
But the two of them had just been fighting. What if Quinn had left already? Worst, what if Darlene found her first? The woman seems to have a plan for Rachel, but what did she plan on doing with Quinn? Hurt her? Kill her? What had she been thinking dragging Quinn into all of this?
"Well, you sure as hell can't do it," Darlene clicks her tongue, clearly disappointed with Peter. "The cops are all over you, Peter, and nobody is going to come to me anymore if they think a sting is just around the corner. I'm losing business because of you. You have a lot to make up for."
Peter sighs, but seems to deflate, giving up on an argument to protect Rachel that he never even tried to finish.
"Fine…" he sighs, wiping his fingers through his long hair. He backs off his loose argument – if you can even call it that – the moment Darlene threatens his cash flow, and what Rachel is assuming to be a fairly steady flow of drugs as well.
Darlene nods, satisfied before turning back towards Rachel to study her again.
Frightened and confused, Rachel stumbles backwards, trying to escape Darlene's watchful eye. She had come all this way searching for answers, but - naively perhaps - she never expected to get only more questions; especially questions like this.
She squeezes her eyes shut, feeling overwhelmingly stupid. Why hadn't she just listened to Shelby when the woman had told her to talk to her dads? Even if they didn't tell her the truth, Rachel is at least confident that they wouldn't try to sell her out to a drug mule.
Why did she have to drive all the way out here, in the middle of nowhere where nobody knew where she was and certainly nobody would hear her cries for help.
"I-I think I should go…" Rachel breathes. She takes another step back, but her feet betray her. They don't move no matter how hard she tries to tell them to.
Because of this, Darlene catches up to her easy. She places a hand the size of a bear paw down against Rachel's shoulder and pushes her down into a wooden chair behind her. Rachel feels her knees buckle under the pressure and she goes flying into the seat with an emphatic oomph.
"Oh honey," Darlene shakes her head. Her voice is soft and impossibly hard at the same time. "You aren't going anywhere."