by TAYLOR ADAMS
She wanted to scream.
She sagged against the locked door, feeling her fingers twist inside the doorframe. Another jolt of meat-grinder pain. She felt weightless, like dropping into free-fall, plunging to some unknown depth. She wished for it to all be over.
No one is coming to save us.
We’re all alone.
I got us all killed—
Ashley sighed petulantly, like a frustrated child, and now he jammed the nail gun against Ed’s temple and squeezed the trigger—
“Stop,” Darby gasped. “Stop. I’ll tell you where your keys are, if you . . . if you promise you won’t kill him.”
“I promise,” Ashley said.
It was a lie, she knew. Of course it was a lie. Ashley Garver was a sociopath. Words and promises were meaningless to him; you might as well attempt to negotiate with a virus. But she fell apart and told him anyway, the entire room falling silent, her voice a fractured whisper: “In the snow . . . outside the restroom window. That’s where I threw them.”
Ashley nodded. He glanced at Lars, then Jay. Then back at her, his lips curling into a boyish grin. “Thank you, Darbs. I knew you’d come through,” he said, raising the nail gun to Ed’s forehead anyway.
THWUMP.
4:55 a.m.
“Don’t kill her until I’m back with the keys,” Ashley instructed his brother. “I need to be sure she’s telling the truth.”
Rodent Face nodded as he dumped gasoline over Ed and Sandi’s bodies, drenching them, darkening their clothes, slicking their hair, swirling ribbons into the blood on the floor. Acrid fumes curdling the air. Then he poured a glugging trail toward Darby, mouth-breathing as he approached her, raising the fuel jug high with both hands.
She closed her eyes, bracing for it.
An icy gallon crashed down on her, pounding the back of her neck, splashing off her shoulders, plastering her hair to her face. Droplets spattered off the door behind her and pooled at her knees, shockingly cold. Gasoline in her eyes, her mouth, a pungent taste. She spat on the floor.
Lars backed up into the center of the room, holding Jay’s shoulder. He set down the fuel can and it sloshed, still half-full. Right beside a roll of shop towels and that familiar white Clorox jug. It all made sense now.
Bleach to break down their DNA evidence. Towels for their fingerprints. Fire for everything else.
Something white dangled from Lars’s back pocket as he leaned to wipe the countertop. She recognized it — the rock-in-a-sock Ashley had thrown into the parking lot hours ago, now obediently retrieved by Lars. The brothers were in cleanup mode now, performing the grim work of erasing any forensic clues that might pin them to the massacre here.
That’s why the keys are so important, Darby realized numbly. That’s why Ashley can’t leave them behind here.
They’re evidence.
The worst part of it all? Their sheer, dumb optimism. These brothers weren’t criminal masterminds. Not even close. Even if they torched every square inch of this building to cinders, the Colorado police would find something. A stray hair. A skin flake. Something distinctive about the Astro’s tire tracks. A thumbprint on one of Ashley’s steel nails. Or even some circumstantial detail connecting Sandi to them; something they’d overlooked in their rush to eliminate her before she cracked under police scrutiny. They’d been careless. This entire ransom plot had been naïve and stupid, and it was almost certainly doomed to fail, but not before costing innocent people their lives tonight, and to Darby, that was somehow the most offensive part of it all.
She wiped an oily strand of hair from her face. Dripping with accelerant, moments from burning to death, she knew she should be terrified, screaming, hysterical, but she couldn’t summon the energy. She just felt tired.
The front door creaked — Ashley was walking outside now. Just a few seconds left. He’d go out behind the visitor center, and find his keychain in the snow, and then Darby’s life would become as worthless as Ed’s and Sandi’s. A nail or bullet to the skull if she was lucky, and a flicked match if she wasn’t. Either way, she’d die right here, with her right hand smashed in a door, and then her bones would blacken in this fiery grave while Ashley and Lars escaped with Jay. The burning visitor center would be a useful distraction until authorities discovered the three skeletons inside the wreckage. By then the Brothers Garver would be hours ahead. Plenty of time to vanish into an indifferent world.
But this left one unknown.
One final, itching question.
What are they going to do with Jay?
Ashley had been planning to meet Sandi here, to murder her and sever ties. But what about Jay? If it’s not for a ransom . . . then what?
Jay approached her now.
“No. Don’t come any closer.” She spat again. “I have gasoline on me.”
But she came anyway, her little footsteps rippling the dark puddle, and sat quietly on Darby’s knee. Then she buried her face in the shoulder of Darby’s Art March hoodie. Darby wrapped her unhurt arm around this stranger’s daughter, and they huddled there together, in a shivery little embrace over their own reflections, as Ashley’s footsteps faded outside.
“You didn’t tell me your mom died,” Jay whispered.
“Yeah. It just happened.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright.”
“Was she mean to you?”
“No. I was mean to her.”
“But you still loved each other?”
“It’s . . . complicated,” Darby said. It was the best answer she had, and it broke her heart. It’s complicated.
“Are your . . . are your fingers okay?”
“They’re locked in a door. So, no.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Let’s talk about something else.”
“Does it hurt, Darby?”
“It hurts less now,” she lied, watching a second bead of her own blood inch down the doorframe, thicker than the first. The gas fumes were clouding her mind, smearing her thoughts like watercolors. “Can we . . . hey, can we just talk about your dinosaurs for a while?”
“No.” Jay shook her head. “I don’t want to.”
“Come on.”
“No, Darby—”
“Please, tell me about your favorite one, the Eustrepto-thing—”
“I don’t want to—”
The tears came to Darby now, now of all times. Hard, choking sobs, like a seizure in her chest. She turned away. She couldn’t let Jay see.
Then Jay shifted her weight, and Darby thought the girl was only settling in her lap — until she felt something touch her left palm. Small, metallic, ice-cold.
Her Swiss Army knife. She’d forgotten all about it.
“Later,” Jay whispered. “I’ll tell you about it later.”
Darby looked back at her, understanding in a silent flash. Those glassy blue eyes now pleading into hers: Here’s your knife back.
Please don’t give up.
But it was too little, too late, because the two-inch blade was better in Jay’s hands than hers. Knife or no knife, Darby was about to die in this room. She was trapped here, with her shattered hand locked in a door, and Ashley was coming back to finish her off. Any second now.
“You should keep the knife,” she said to Jay. “It’ll . . . it’ll just be wasted with me. You’re going to save yourself now. You understand?”
“I don’t think I can—”
“It’s all you now.” Darby blinked away tears and racked her brain, trying to recall the layout of their Astro, whispering so Lars wouldn’t overhear: “I . . . okay. You broke the kennel, so they’ll probably tie you down in the back, under the windows. But try to loosen a panel on the wall, and if you can reach inside, rip out every wire you can find. One of them might power the brake lights. And if the brake lights go out, the cops might pull them over . . .”
Jay nodded. “Okay.”
Long shots upon even longer shots. It was so grimly futile. And Jay’s adrenal cris
is was as volatile as a hand grenade; any additional stress could trigger a fatal seizure. But Darby couldn’t give in to despair, her thoughts swimming, her words racing: “If . . . if they get careless, try to stab one of them in the face. The eyes, okay? An injury that needs medical attention, so they have to go the hospital—”
“I’ll try.”
“Whatever it takes. Promise me, Jay.”
“I promise.” The girl’s eyes glimmered with tears. She stared up at Darby’s smashed hand in the door again, unable to look away. “It’s . . . it’s my fault they’re going to kill you—”
“No, it’s not.”
“It is. All of this is about me—”
“Jay, this is not your fault.” Darby forced a dizzy smile. “You know what’s funny? I’m not even a good person. Not usually. I was a rotten daughter and I planned to spend Christmas alone. My mom thought I was the flu when she was pregnant with me. She tried to kill me with Theraflu. Sometimes I used to wish she had. But tonight, at this rest stop, I’m something good, and I can’t tell you how much that means to me. I got to be your guardian angel, Jay. I got to fight for a good reason. And I’m going away soon, and it’ll be all you, and you need to keep fighting. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Never. Stop. Fighting.”
And then for a moment, the fumes dispersed, and Darby caught hold of a crystalline thought. Everything slipped into sharp focus.
She glanced up at the horror of her right hand — at her ring finger’s top digit, smashed between the door’s teeth. At her pinkie finger, crushed beyond recognition. At the squeezed beads of blood lining the hinge, the way red jelly blurts out of a donut. She knew it might appear hopeless, but no, there was one last option she could try. Maybe she was delirious from the gas vapors. Maybe it was pure fantasy. But maybe, just maybe . . .
I’m not trapped.
Only two of my fingers are.
It would be a horrible thing. It would be a desperate, nasty, wrenching act, and it would hurt more than she could imagine, but then she glanced over at the dark figure of Larson Garver in his stupid Deadpool beanie, who’d finished wiping up fingerprints and now stood in the center of the room with his .45 aimed at herself and Jay, and she made a final vow through gritted teeth: I’ll hurt you even worse, Rodent Face. I’ll take your gun.
Then I’ll kill Ashley with it.
This girl is going home.
Tonight.
“I have an idea,” she whispered to Jay, concealing the Swiss Army knife under her unhurt palm. “One last idea. And I’m going to need your help.”
* * *
Lars saw them whispering.
“Hey.” He raised the Beretta. “Stop talking.”
Darby murmured something else into Jaybird’s ear, and the little girl nodded once. Then she stood up, stepping aside with silent purpose. Now Darby stared across the room at him, eyes rock-hard.
“Stop looking at me.”
She didn’t.
“Turn your head. Ah, look at the floor.” He thrust the Beretta at her for emphasis, but she didn’t flinch. The pistol had lost its menace. It had become a prop. She wasn’t afraid of it anymore.
Lars aimed — but he’d been aiming it this entire time; how do you get more threatening than that? He tried to cock it with his thumb, like they do in the movies, but the hammer was already cocked. It was already in single-action, because it had already been fired tonight. At her. Five times.
Darby kept staring at him, making his guts coil. Something about her eyes. Something had changed. Slowly, slowly, she slid forward, hunched her knees together, and stood up, her mangled hand twisting behind her back. Her hair stuck to her face in black tangles as she rose, like a scary movie he’d seen where a dripping Japanese ghost emerged from the floor.
He wavered, looking back at the door. “Ashley,” he shouted outside into the night. “I . . . did you, ah, find the keys yet?”
No answer.
His older brother was too far away to hear. He considered moving to the men’s restroom, maybe, and shouting through that busted window, but that would require turning his back on them.
“Ashley,” he shouted again, backing up, bumping into the cracked vending machine. “Something . . . ah, something changed. She’s looking at me.”
He wanted to move to the front doorway, but that would also require him to turn his back on Darby. He was afraid to. She was clearly trapped there, helpless, with her fingers locked in a door, but somehow he couldn’t dare to lose sight of her. With her unhurt hand, she was now reaching for something — a little plastic panel on the wall, to which he hadn’t paid any attention to all night, up until this moment—
The light switch, he realized, as the room went black.
“Ashley.” A tremor in his voice now.
Perfect darkness.
Lars knelt to the floor and groped for his brother’s flashlight. His fingertips found it beside the gas can — bumping it, sending it rolling. He chased it down, his heart banging in his ribs, clicked the button, and aimed the blue-white LED beam at the closet door.
To his relief, Darby was still there, and Jaybird, too, both standing in his spotlight, both squinting back at him. Of course they were. Why had he been so frightened? He was sick of this. He wanted to shoot Darby now. Right now. And torch this stupid building with Ashley, and end this hellish night, and get to Uncle Kenny’s and kill some grubs in Gears of War.
“Ashley.” His voice was hoarse. “Can I kill her yet?”
No answer.
Just the rasp of wind outside.
“Ashley, can I please—”
Jay moved suddenly, startling him, and walked around the room’s dark perimeter. Lars aimed his Beretta at her, and his flashlight, tracking her like a searchlight as she walked past Ed and Sandi’s bodies, past the barricaded window. “Jaybird, ah, what are you doing?” She ignored him and stopped at the doorway. Then she grabbed the front door.
She pushed it shut.
“Jaybird. Stop.” He turned back to Darby, spotlighting her with the flashlight. He was splitting his attention now between the two females in the dark room — Darby to his left, Jay to his right. He could only illuminate one of them at a time.
He didn’t like this. Not at all.
He heard a click behind him and whirled back, aiming the beam — now Jay was on her tiptoes, engaging the deadbolt. Locking the door. Then she turned around to face him, squinting in the glare, and he recognized that same frightening look as Darby. Yes, they were both definitely in on it, some veiled joke that Lars didn’t get. This was normal. He never got jokes. Most of the time, they were about him.
A sore cavity in his stomach told him this one was, too. Like the moment before Ashley had hurled Stripes into that campfire two summers ago: Hey, baby brother. Wanna see a shooting star?
“Jaybird,” he repeated.
No reaction.
“Jaybird, you’re . . . ah, you’re gonna get a red card when Ashley gets back,” he said, glancing back left to the closet door, pointing his flashlight back at Darby—
She wasn’t there.
Just the door. A trickle of blood. And a mashed little red piece still wedged in the door, like the juicy inside of a rare hamburger, and it took a half-second to register in Lars’s thick mind as what it really was, what it meant, what had just happened, and what was coming—
* * *
Darby slammed into Rodent Face hard, from the side, sending the flashlight tumbling into wild shadows. No time for fear. Screaming with pain and adrenaline, something raw, black, and feral.
She got under Lars’s right arm, under the pistol, and knocked it aside, clattering against the brochure rack. She had one chance now, one racing chance — and she also had her father’s Swiss Army knife in her left hand (Congratulations on Graduating College!), its blade dulled from sawing through the bars of Jay’s dog kennel, but still sharp enough — and with it, she throat-punched Larson Garver squarely in his Adam’s apple.
<
br /> The knife slipped right in.
Blood spurted into her face. Into her eyes, her mouth. The taste of warm nickels. Lars’s hand swiped at her, his sharp fingernails scratching her cheek, but he was going for his own neck. Trying to hold back the bleeding.
His other hand moved, too. Half-blinded by Rodent Face’s blood, she caught a blinking snapshot, a moving blur — gun.
Jay screamed.
That black .45. In a panic-flash, she realized Lars hadn’t dropped it after all — the clatter she’d heard must have been his flashlight — and he still had the weapon in his knuckled hand, twisting the muzzle toward her belly—
Gun-gun-gun—
* * *
Ashley was kneeling to grab the keys from the snow when he heard a single gunshot thump from inside the building. Like a trapped thunderclap, muffled by flat walls and doors. He couldn’t believe it.
Really?
He sighed. “Goddammit, baby brother.”
Quickly, he checked the keychain in his phone’s flashlight — yep, there it was. Sandi’s stupid little Sentry Storage key, silver, circular, stamped with a little A-37, otherwise unremarkable. He’d found the keychain half-buried in the snow where it had landed, thirty feet from the restroom window.
Darby had been telling the truth, more or less.
And he was grateful for that. If she’d been lying, and Lars had blown her brains out just now, they’d be leaving behind a forensic goldmine of perfectly preserved fingerprints. And they’d never access Jaybird’s steroid shots, meaning the little girl would likely die long before they reached their destination. And then everything — this entire bloody clusterfuck, the AMBER-Alert in California, the FBI’s probable involvement, the murders of Sandi, Ed, and Darby — all of it would be wasted without making a single cent. All because dear, sweet Lars got jumpy and shot Darby without permission.
Thank God she told the truth.
Ashley mashed the chattering keychain into his pocket, lifted his cordless nailer from the snow, and raced back to the entrance.