by TAYLOR ADAMS
“I’ll kill you.” Ashley kicked again. “You fucking whore—”
Darby stood up, wiping gasoline off her hands. “Listen to me, Jay. We’re not waiting for the police. We’re not waiting for a rescue. I’ve been waiting all damn night and no one’s rescued me. Almost everyone I’ve trusted tonight has turned on me. We are the rescue. Say it, Jay—we are the rescue.”
“We are the rescue.”
“Louder.”
“We are the rescue.” Jay stood up on shaky legs.
“Can you run?”
“I think so. Why?”
Darby had one more idea. Last-ditch didn’t even do it justice. She grabbed a handful of brown napkins from the counter and mashed them into the bagel toaster. Pressed the plunger. It clicked, like a gun’s chamber closing, and inside it, the toaster’s heating coils warmed.
Jay watched. “What’re you doing?”
She knew she had ten, maybe twenty seconds, until the coils turned red hot.
We are the motherfucking rescue.
She grabbed a half-drunk cup of black cowboy coffee—Ed’s, maybe, long cold—and chugged it on the run, squeezing Jay’s fingers and racing for the restroom. Hand in hand. Running for that tiny window.
“Don’t stop, Jay. Don’t stop—”
“You’re sure fingers grow back?”
“Yep.”
* * *
Ashley bashed his way inside. He vaulted the window on his unhurt hand, careful not to slash his palm on the jagged glass, and coughed on a pungent odor. Boy howdy, it was potent. The fuel can must’ve spilled, and mixed with the bleach and Sandi’s pepper spray vapor, it created a truly noxious atmosphere.
He rubbed his stinging eyes as he clambered in, aiming the nailer, sweeping left to right. First he saw the crumpled bodies of Ed and Sandi near the Colorado map. Legs sprawled open in the immodesty of death. Blood mixing with the gas on the floor, swirling vivid ribbons.
Beside them, baby brother Lars.
Oh, Lars.
On his belly. His head twisted sideways in an ocean of red, his hair mussed, his eyes still drowsily half-open. His throat a meaty slash. His jugular cut to the bone; a human Pez dispenser.
The scrawny kid who’d worn an army surplus helmet and combat boots to junior high school, who loved ranch sauce on his Famous Star cheeseburgers, who’d rewatched Starship Troopers until his VHS copy strangled the VCR with black ribbons—he was gone now. Gone forever. He’d never play the new Gears of War on Xbox One. All because he got sucked into a school bus driver’s ill-fated little ransom scheme. Because between the changed locks, the cops, and the blizzard, this entire week had careened wildly off the rails.
And it all would’ve been manageable, still, were it not for Darby Thorne.
Darbs. Darbo. That fiery little redhead from CU-Boulder who broke into their car with a shoelace, of all things, who handed Jaybird a knife and tipped an already volatile night irreversibly off course. He suspected his entire life had been building to this confrontation. Hers too. She was his destiny, and he was hers.
In a better universe, perhaps he’d marry her. But in this one, he’d have to kill her. And, unfortunately, he’d have to make it hurt.
Oh, Lars, Lars, Lars.
I’ll make this right.
I promise, I’ll—
He heard a whoosh to his right and he whirled, aiming the cordless nailer, expecting to see Darby and Jaybird cowering behind the coffee stand. But Espresso Peak was empty. Pierced with nails, dripping with gasoline, messy with tipped cups and plastic fragments, but empty. They weren’t here.
He noticed the toaster was crammed with brown napkins.
The noise he’d heard?
A cloud of gray smoke, curling from the toaster’s glowing coils. A sizzle as the napkins ignited. Ashley ran his tongue along his upper lip, tasting gasoline vapor, and then it all made sense.
“Oh, come on—”
* * *
A fireball ripped through the restroom’s triangular window, pushing a scorching wave of pressurized air. Darby leaped outside, a half second ahead of the blast, bouncing off a picnic table and landing hard, twisting her left ankle.
She felt a sickening pop.
Jay turned, a few paces ahead. “Darby!”
“I’m fine.”
But she knew she wasn’t. Her ankle throbbed with jarring pain. Her toes went instantly numb; a sharp mess of pins and needles inside her shoe, like invisible fingers pinching her nerves—
“Can you walk?”
“I’m fine,” she said again, and another surge of fire roared through the broken window above her, drowning out her voice. Another wall of hot air threw her to her knees in the snow.
The visitor center erupted into towering flames behind them, tongues of fire pumping a column of filthy smoke. It climbed the sky, a furious tornado-swirl of glowing embers. The size and closeness of it was overwhelming. Raging heat on her back, the whining suction of devoured air. The charcoal odor of fresh fire. The snow lit up with orange daylight and the trees cast bony shadows.
Jay gripped her hand. “Come on. Stand up.”
Darby tried again, but her ankle folded limply beneath her. Another surge of nauseating pain. She hobbled forward.
“Is he dead?” Jay asked.
“Don’t count on it.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means no.” Darby pulled Lars’s handgun from her jeans. She wasn’t sure if Ashley had been inside the building when the fumes ignited; she just hoped her improvised firebomb had at least blown his eyebrows off. But dead? No. He wasn’t dead, because she hadn’t killed him yet. She could rest when she’d fired her stolen .45-caliber bullet right into his smirking face. No sooner.
“I hope you got him,” Jay said as the inferno swelled behind them, turning the world foggy with low smoke. The moon was gone. The trees had become jagged ghosts in the firelit smog. Big Devil held its blackened shape as it burned, a cage of roiling fire around an epicenter of bone-cracking heat.
And now the glowing embers descended like fireflies from the darkness, peppering the snow around Darby and Jay. They sizzled on contact, hundreds of tiny meteors striking puffs of steam. Too fast to outrun.
“Jay. Take off your coat.”
“Why?”
“There’s gasoline on it.” Darby tugged off her own coat and hurled it into the snow. Seconds later, a spark touched it and it erupted into blue-orange flames, like a campfire.
Jay saw this and tore hers off immediately.
“See? Told you.”
More embers descended around them, more fireflies riding the winds, and Darby followed Jay one painful step at a time. She couldn’t stop. Her hair was still soaked with fuel. One errant spark was all it would take, and she’d come too far and fought too hard tonight to be killed by a goddamn spark.
She peeled a wet strand from her face. “The parking lot. We’ll get into Blue—”
“What’s Blue?”
“My car.”
“You named your car?”
“I’ll run the engine to keep you warm. And . . .” Darby trailed off as they trudged through the smoky darkness, letting the next thought go unsaid: And while you’re sitting in Blue’s passenger seat, I’ll go find Ashley and shoot him in the face.
And end it, once and for all.
Jay twisted her neck, watching the roiling flames over her shoulder as she ran, like she was expecting Ashley to emerge from the wreckage. “You . . . you killed his brother.”
“Yeah. I did.” It was still sinking in to Darby—yes, she’d killed someone today. She’d stabbed another human being in the neck, broken his finger and cheekbone, and slit his throat. As worn and chipped as it was, that Swiss Army knife had slipped right in, like she was cutting meat (and, technically, she was). Just dirty, grim business. And before tonight ended, she knew, she’d have to kill one more.
Jay fretted. “He loves his brother.”
“Loved. Past tense.”
/> “He’s not going to be happy with you—”
“I . . .” Darby choked on a hoarse laugh. “I think that ship has sailed, Jay.”
Just one more.
I’ve already killed Beavis. Only Butt-Head left.
Fifty yards back, the Big Devil building groaned like a monster turning over in its sleep, blackened ribs creaking and popping inside the firestorm. Melting snow slid off the roof in a billow of scalding steam.
Then . . . then I can finally rest.
They’d reached the Nightmare Children—those dozen or so half-gnawed kids frozen in apocalyptic playtime, buried to their waists in snow—when Jay stopped, pointing downhill, stabbing with her finger: “Look. Look, look!”
Darby wiped Lars’s blood from her eyes and saw it, too.
Headlights.
Approaching the entrance ramp of the Wanashono rest area from the highway. Big, industrial high beams over a curved silver plate throwing an arc of backlit ice chips. The first CDOT snowplow was finally here.
Jay squinted. “Is . . . is that for us?”
“Yeah. That’s for us.”
Seeing this reassured Darby that there was still an outside world. It was still out there, it was real, it was populated with decent people who could help, and holy Christ, she’d almost clawed her way out of this fiery, blood-drenched nightmare. She’d almost rescued Jay. Almost.
Her knees gave out and she fell to a crouch. She was crying and laughing all at once, her face a tight mask, her scar as visible as a billboard. She didn’t care. She was so close now. She watched the yellow lights float closer in the darkness, like twin lanterns. She heard the lope of an engine. “Thank you, God. Oh, thank you, God—”
She’d lost her phone but she knew the time was now almost 6:00 a.m. It’d been ten hours since she’d first found this girl in a padlocked dog kennel, reeking of urine, in an unattended van. In another hour, the sun would be up.
Road crews are ahead of schedule.
Or they received special direction from the cops, maybe, in light of a mysterious text message concerning a similarly named rest area—
“Darby.” Jay grabbed her wrist, her voice rising with panic.
“What?”
“I see him. He’s following us.”
5:44 A.M.
“Daaaaarby.”
Yes, Ashley Garver was following them, a ragged shadow silhouetted against the roaring blaze. Nail gun carried in his left hand now. His right was injured, clenched under his left armpit. He was fifty yards behind them, a shambling figure in smoking clothes, raising his unhurt hand to wipe his mouth.
He was too far away to shoot.
Darby’s marksmanship was too uncertain, and she couldn’t waste her single bullet. So she concealed the pistol behind her waist, and at her back, the headlights intensified as the snowplow chugged closer.
She turned to Jay. A murderer approaching behind them, and the assistance of a stranger ahead of them—it should have been an easy choice.
Jay tugged her. “Let’s go—”
And in a way, she realized . . . it still was.
“Darby, let’s go. We have to run—”
“No.”
“What?”
She nodded at her ankle. “I’ll just slow you down. You run.”
Alarm in Jay’s eyes. “What? No—”
“Jay, listen to me. I have to stop him. I can’t run anymore. I’ve been running from him all night, all freaking night, and I’m sick of it.”
The headlights grew brighter, cutting shafts in the smoky fog, drawing harsh shadows in the glittering snow. They burned Darby’s eyes. And behind her, the shadow of Ashley Garver staggered closer—thirty paces away now. But still not close enough. She tightened her grip on the Beretta.
“You have to run.”
“No.”
“Run,” Darby shouted, smoke in her throat. “Run to those headlights. And tell the driver to turn his truck around, to take you to a hospital.”
She pushed her forward but Jay fought back. The girl shrieked, dug her feet in, tried to punch Darby in the shoulder, but then it all melted into a hug. A shivery, aching embrace under intensifying lights—
“I’ll come back,” Darby whispered into the girl’s hair, rocking her. “I’ll get him, and then I will come back to you.”
“Promise.”
“I promise, Jay—”
“You’re lying again—”
“I pinkie-swear,” she said, raising her duct-taped right hand.
Jay winced. “That’s not funny.”
Something sliced through the air above them, tugging a handful of Darby’s hair. Her first thought was shrapnel, but she knew better. It was a nail, a steel projectile twirling past her scalp. Ashley was shambling closer to them—but still not close enough to risk her only bullet.
Not yet.
She pushed the girl away, toward the headlights. “Now run.”
Jamie Nissen took two shaky steps in the snow and looked back, her eyes brimming with fiery tears. “Don’t miss.”
“I won’t,” Darby said.
Then she turned back to face Ashley.
I won’t.
* * *
Ashley was perplexed to see them separate—Jaybird ran for the incoming snowplow while Darby turned around to face him.
They were now twenty paces apart.
His right fist throbbed like it was full of gravel. The skin on his cheeks and forehead felt tight, tingly, like a sunburn. His lips were cracked, splitting and leaking down his chin. He reeked of burnt skin and hair, a dense and fatty odor curling off him in wisps of smoke. His North Face jacket had melted weirdly to his back, hanging off in molten strings.
But hell, he was alive. No rest for the wicked, right? And he was feeling pretty goddamn wicked tonight. He’d broken a woman’s neck with his bare hands and nail-gunned an innocent man to death. It’d make for a hell of an episode of Forensic Files. To do all that, then to dive out the window of an exploding building while sustaining only second-degree burns takes the luck of the devil. Jelly-side up, indeed.
Now he noticed that Darby was limping toward him. Away from the bright lights of safety. Away from any hope of escape.
Toward him.
He choked on a laugh that sounded like a bark. Maybe . . . maybe she’d gone a little crazy, too, in this wild pressure cooker of a night. He couldn’t blame her. He wasn’t even sure he could hate her—his brain was a potent sugar rush, a cocktail of confused feelings for this tenacious bitch. But feelings aside, he still had to red-card her for killing his baby brother, so he raised the cordless nailer at Darby, squinted through hot smoke, and fired again.
A hollow click.
What?
He pulled the trigger again—another click. To his horror, the Paslode’s battery light now blinked an urgent red. Sapped by the cold weather. It had finally, finally happened.
“Oh shit—”
He looked back up. Darby was still approaching, still coming at him like his personal angel of death, limping but eerily, inhumanly calm. And he noticed something else. Something carried in her swinging hand, concealed from his view behind her hip, an angular shape, half-glimpsed—
Lars’s Beretta.
No, his mind fluttered. No, that’s impossible—
* * *
Jay sprinted into the headlights, arms waving.
The snowplow stopped, big tires locking up, skidding sideways as the air brakes whined a shrill cry. The lights surrounded her, igniting the snow at her feet, brighter than daylight. She couldn’t see anything else. Just those twin suns, overpowering.
She screamed—something she wouldn’t remember.
The engine made a chuffing sound. The cab door opened. The driver was older than her father, bearded, potbellied, with a Red Sox hat. He jumped out and raced to her, already out of breath, shouting something.
She was winded, too, and she collapsed to her knees in the ice. He reached her, a stomping black shadow in the high bea
ms, and the truck’s engine made another chuffing sound. Like her aunt’s German shepherd. Then the man grabbed her shoulders, his whiskery face in hers now, Dr Pepper on his breath, bombarding her with questions.
Are you okay?
She was too out of breath. She couldn’t speak.
What happened?
Uphill, the flaming visitor center’s roof caved in, a shattering wooden crash that unleashed more fireflies into the night, and he squinted up at it, then back to her, his rough hands on her cheeks. You’re safe now—
She wanted to tell him about Ashley, about Darby, about the nail gun, about the life-or-death battle happening a short distance uphill. But she had no words. She couldn’t assemble any thoughts. Her mind was jelly again. She just started crying, and he took her into his arms and hugged her, and the world fell apart.
He was whispering now, like a chant: You’re safe. You’re safe. You’re safe—
Darby, she wanted to say.
Darby is not safe—
And then she saw it—a heartbeat of red and blue illuminated the trees. Behind the snowplow, halted bumper to bumper, was a police car. In the glow of the truck’s taillights, she read a banner on the side door.
highway patrol.
* * *
Ashley Garver ran like hell.
Impossible. I counted the shots.
The Beretta is empty.
He told himself this, over and over, but still he wasn’t brave enough to turn around and call Darby’s bluff. Instead he raced back to his parked Astro, where he knew he’d left a second battery rattling around inside the Paslode box. He could reload his nail gun, at least, and then decide how to handle this new development.
He tripped on a snow bank, wincing for the crack of a gunshot and a bullet in the spine, but it never came.
He reached the Astro. Unlocked. Flung the driver door open. Scrambled inside, reaching under the passenger seat, knocking Lars’s stupid plastic A-10 Warthog off the dashboard, and opened the Paslode’s hard case. Two latches to unclasp with trembling fingertips.
He knew he’d heard Lars fire four gunshots in the scuffle. He was certain of it. One-two-three-four. Plus the five shots he’d fired at Sandi’s truck. That equaled nine. The Beretta stored eight in the single-stacked magazine, plus one in the chamber. How could Darby have willed another .45-caliber cartridge into existence? The floor of the van, maybe; he recalled Lars opening the Federal box upside down and dumping fifty clattering rounds to the floor—