NO EXIT a gripping thriller full of heart-stopping twists

by TAYLOR ADAMS

  Each year, Ashley had returned to grade school armed with an arsenal of killer jokes. Every September he’d been the most popular kid on the playground, letting them go viral. By October or so, the school district had always held an emergency assembly about tolerance.

  But there was a lot more to Uncle Kenny than his rip-roaring funnies. He also owned an onsite diesel station on a single-lane highway south of Boise, popular with truckers and nobody else. Ashley used to climb the apple trees with Lars and watch the eighteen-wheelers roll in and out. Sometimes they parked on Kenny’s land, chewing muddy divots in the yellow grass, arriving late at night and leaving early in the morning. They rarely entered Uncle Kenny’s house, though — they went to his storm cellar.

  It was like a fallout bunker, a single hatch door protruding from the weeds twenty yards from the laundry room. This submarine door was always, always padlocked. Until one morning when, under a gauze of damp fog, he’d found it wasn’t.

  So he’d gone inside.

  Ashley remembered few details about the dark room at the bottom of the long, rotten staircase. Mostly just the odors — a musty, sweet staleness that was simultaneously putrid and oddly alluring. He’d never smelled anything like it since. Cold cement under his feet. Electrical cords on the floor; big lights set up on tripods. Indistinct shapes, lurking in the dark.

  He’d just been leaving, climbing back up the stairs when a woman’s voice called out to him: Hey.

  He’d turned, nearly tripping. He waited for a long moment, half-on the stairs, half-off, gooseflesh prickling on his arms, wondering if he’d just imagined it, until finally, the female voice spoke again.

  Hey, there. Little boy.

  This had been a shock — he hadn’t known how the woman in the cellar could possibly see him. It was pitch black down there. Only as an adult, could Ashley begin to reason that her pupils had been adjusted to the darkness, while his weren’t. Like Darby’s crafty little shut-one-eye trick.

  You’re a nice boy, aren’t you?

  He’d cowered there on the steps, covering his ears.

  No. Don’t be afraid. You’re not like them. The ghostly voice lowered, like she was divulging a secret: Can you . . . hey, can you please help me with something?

  He’d been afraid to answer.

  Can you bring me a glass of water?

  He wasn’t sure.

  Please?

  Finally he gave in and raced back up the rotten steps, ran back to his uncle’s rancher, and filled a blue glass in the kitchen sink. The tap water tasted like iron out here. When he came back outside, Uncle Kenny was standing by the open cellar door, his hands braced on his flabby hips.

  Little Ashley froze, spilling some water.

  But Uncle Kenny wasn’t angry. No, he was never angry. He’d been all jolly smiles, showing yellow horse teeth, plucking the glass from Ashley’s petrified little fingers: Thanks, kiddo. It’s alright, I’ll take this down to her. Hey, why don’t you go walk your baby brother down to the gas station and grab yourselves two chicken flautas, on the house?

  The flautas had been dry as sandpaper, withered by the heat lamp. Lars didn’t mind, but Ashley couldn’t finish his.

  That same year, a month or two later, Ashley had returned to Uncle Kenny’s a second time for Memorial Day weekend, and he remembered finding that same cellar door propped wide open, with a rattling fan blowing air out. When he descended the steps this time he found the lights on, revealing a bare, gutted bunker, the concrete walls damp with condensation. Scrub marks on the floor. The acrid odor of bleach. The woman was gone.

  Long gone.

  Even at that age, Ashley had known he should confront his uncle about this, or better yet, tell his parents and let them call the police. And he’d come very close, sitting on that knowledge all weekend like a loaded gun. But that Saturday night, Fat Kenny made macaroni and cheese with jalapenos and whole slices of bacon in it, and told a joke so epically funny it made Ashley spray a half-chewed mouthful.

  Hey, Ashley. How can you tell a nigger has been on your computer?

  How?

  Your computer’s missing.

  In the end, he’d simply liked Fat Kenny too much. He was too much fun. And he was genuinely decent to four-year-old Lars, too — letting him carry tools in the workshop, teaching him how to shoot crows with a BB gun. So, bottom line, whatever those truckers were doing with the woman in the bunker ultimately didn’t matter to Ashley. He’d just filed it away in a dark corner of his brain.

  That was seventeen years ago.

  And now, at the Wanapani rest area in Colorado, on the frigid night of December 23, these roles were shuffled, like a classic TV show returning with a cast of new actors. Ashley himself was the new Fat Kenny, scrambling to protect a damaging secret. And Darby was the accidental witness.

  History doesn’t quite repeat itself, but damn, it sure can rhyme.

  Ed reached behind the chattering security grate, testing the hot water dispenser, and then separated two bags of coffee grounds. “I’ve got a dark French Roast, and a light.”

  “Either’s fine,” said Sandi.

  “Dark roast, please,” Ashley said. “As dark as it gets.”

  He didn’t actually have a preference; he just liked how dark roast sounded. His taste buds were more or less dead, so all coffee tasted the same to him. But hell, if there was ever a night for jet-black coffee, this would be it. He stuffed Darby’s brown napkin into his jeans pocket, noticing it was smeared with a crescent thumbprint of her blood.

  He realized he’d lost sight of her.

  Quickly, he scanned the room. Ed was there by the locked coffee stand, Sandi was seated like a fat yellow bumblebee, Lars was guarding the front door — but yes, Darby was gone. She’d vanished. She’d taken advantage of his inattention and made a move.

  But it was fine. No worries. Ashley Garver would just make a move, too.

  Restroom?

  Restroom.

  He nodded to his brother.

  * * *

  Darby knew she only had a few seconds.

  She closed the men’s restroom door behind her without breaking stride, passing the stained sinks, her doppelganger following her in the mirrors. Scar visible, like a white sickle. Haunted eyes in the glass.

  Yes, the Wanapani rest area was a pressure cooker. She’d almost gotten Ed and Sandi killed. She needed to get out. She needed to reframe this battle, to relocate it somewhere else. Somewhere without the risk of collateral damage.

  I’ll run, she decided. I’ll run up the highway. As fast, and as hard, as I possibly can. I won’t stop until I find signal and call 9-1-1.

  Or I’ve frozen to death.

  She checked her iPhone again. The screen must have broken when she fell on the toilet, spreading a spider web of deep cracks. The battery was now two percent.

  She looked up at the empty window — a triangular little slice of night sky and treetops. It was almost eight feet off the floor. Getting inside had been easy, thanks to the stacked picnic tables outside. Getting outside would be much harder. Even on her tiptoes, she couldn’t reach the window frame. She’d need one hell of a flying leap to catch it with her fingertips. She’d need a running start, and every inch of it.

  She backed up, past the green stalls, past PEYTON MANNING TAKES IT IN THE ASS, all the way back to the door, her back touching the wall, and the rectangular restroom stretched out before her like a twenty-foot runway. Smooth linoleum under her feet, slippery with moisture. She arched her back, dug into a runner’s crouch, and closed her hands into fists.

  She took a full breath — the bitter smell of ammonia. She let it half-out.

  Go.

  She ran.

  Mirrors, urinals, stall doors, all racing past her. Air whooshed in her ears. No time to overthink. No time to be afraid. She flattened her hands into blades, pumping her legs, and took a hurtling kamikaze leap at the tiny opening—

  Mid-air, she thought: This is going to hurt—

  It
did. She crashed into the tile wall knees-first, bruising her chin, punching the air from her lungs, but (yes!) she’d caught the window frame with two desperate fingertips. Fingernails in the soggy old wood. She braced her wet Converse against the wall. Then she re-arched her back, locked her elbows, and tugged her body upward, gasping through clenched teeth, like the world’s most hellish chin-up bar, and pulled and pulled and pulled—

  She heard mouth-breathing. Outside.

  No.

  No, no, no, please don’t be real—

  But yes, there it was. Directly outside, on the other side of the wall. That gentle wheeze she knew all too well, that juicy little huff. Lars, Rodent Face, had circled around the building and now waited for her outside. Watching that window, pistol in hand, ready to put a bullet in her brain the instant she clambered up and exposed her face.

  Now what?

  She hung there on aching fingertips, her shoes dangling three feet off the floor, desperately wishing she’d just misheard the growl of the wind outside. But she knew she hadn’t. She knew Ashley had sent obedient little Lars out there to cut off her escape. Which left a far more cunning and dangerous enemy unaccounted for.

  Then she heard the restroom door click shut.

  He’s in the room with—

  A plastic bag tugged over Darby’s face from behind. She screamed, but it was trapped inside her mouth.

  1:09 a.m.

  Jay Nissen sawed through the last bar on the dog kennel.

  She’d cut them one at a time, sawing with the toothed knife the way the red-haired young woman had instructed. Like a miniature tree cutter. Her left hand throbbed with pins and needles, so it took a long time. Twice, she’d dropped the knife and had to grope for it in the darkness. Once, she’d feared it had bounced outside the kennel and been lost forever. But she found it.

  And now?

  With a push, the grating fell away and chattered against the van’s door.

  This was the first time the cage had been open since they took her. She didn’t know how many days ago. She hadn’t been counting. Going more than a night without her shots made her woozy, and since then she’d fallen into an irregular rhythm of sickly, four-hour naps. The sun had been up and down, rising and falling from different windows. The smell of ketchup, ranch sauce, and stale sweat dewing on glass. The crumple of Jack in the Box wrappers. Their murmuring voices, Ashley’s knee-slapping jokes, the hum of blacktop, the urgent tick of the van’s turn signal. Could it have been a week already? What were her parents doing right now?

  Her Wii U controller had been charging when they came to her house.

  She’d been plugging the gray wire into the Nintendo port when a single, sharp knock came from the front door. Like a tennis ball. She’d scurried to the door and opened it a few inches — there’s a little brass chain the door catches on — and that was when she first saw him, the one she now knew as Lars. Back then, he hadn’t developed his head cold yet. He’d smiled thickly down and told her he was here with the Fox Roofing Service, that her father “Mr Pete” had given them permission to enter the house.

  Jay said no.

  Lars had asked her a few more times, in a few different ways. He seemed to think “Mr Pete” was at the grocery store, which was false (her father had called from the office to tell her the babysitter had the flu and that there was leftover Mongolian Grill in the fridge). Even then, Jay got the impression that Lars wasn’t like other adults in her life. She suspected that even at her age, she was already smarter than he might ever be.

  Lars asked less politely. Leaning in. His teeth smelled like dead leaves.

  Jay shut the door.

  When she turned around, the one she now knew as Ashley was sitting at the oval kitchen table. His boots had left muddy prints on the parquet. He’d looked up at her casually, munching a handful of banana chips from the ceramic bowl. She still didn’t know how he got inside the house — a window, maybe? The garage?

  She ran for the living room. She didn’t make it.

  Here and now, Jamie Nissen — or Jay, as she’d gone by since first grade — crawled out of the dog kennel on her palms, over the itchy blankets and towels her rescuer had hidden beneath two hours ago. The metal bars chattered and twanged around her; she hoped Ashley and Lars weren’t nearby to hear. She reached the rear door of the van, expecting it to be locked. Lars had always been careful to re-lock the van’s doors, every time he—

  The handle clicked in her bloody fingers.

  The door swung open.

  Jay froze there on her hands and knees, looking out into the darkness. Thousands of swirling snowflakes. A shivery gust of night air. A parking lot of smooth, undisturbed white, glittering with crystals. It was strangely thrilling. She’d never seen this much snow before in her entire life.

  Now what?

  * * *

  “Now what, Darbs?”

  She couldn’t breathe or see. Plastic stretched tight over her face, suctioning against her front teeth. Knuckled hands around her throat, twisting the bag, squeezing her airway shut. Slippery, buried-alive panic.

  “Shh, shh.”

  She thrashed but Ashley was too strong. He had her arms twisted backward in some kind of wrestling hold. Both of her shoulder blades were wrenched ajar and her hands were somewhere far behind her, pinned and useless. Like fighting the embrace of a straitjacket. She kicked, her feet searching for the restroom wall to use as leverage, but found only empty space. Her backbone cracked.

  “Don’t fight,” he whispered. “It’s all fine.”

  Pressure building inside her chest. Her lungs burning, swelling against her ribcage. She felt her own last breath — a half-gasp that had been inside her throat when the bag came down — trapped against her face, foggy and wet. Warm copper spreading down her chin. Her nose was bleeding again.

  She fought again, twisting, flailing. Her legs kicked out into space. Her fingers clawed and scratched; she found the loop of the lanyard in his jacket. Keys chattered. But there was no gun, no weapons to grab. She was losing energy, too. This thrash had been weaker than the first.

  This is it, she realized. I’m going to die here.

  Right here, in a dingy restroom off State Route Seven. Next to the bleached toilets, the carved mirrors, the peeling stall doors scrawled with graffiti. Right here, right now, with that Lysol-taste still in her mouth.

  “Shh.” Ashley moved his head, like he was checking over his shoulder. “It’s almost over. Just let it happen—”

  She screamed silently inside the Ziploc bag. The plastic flexed a small bubble. Then her lungs reflexively inhaled — a bracing gulp — but found only negative pressure, sucking a scant few centimeters of reused air.

  “I know it hurts. I know. I’m sorry.” The bag twisted tighter, clockwise, and now she saw the window. Through one clamped eye, blurred by cloudy plastic and tears, she saw that little triangular window, eight feet off the floor, dusted with snowflakes. So close. So agonizingly close. Somehow, she wished it were further away, across the room, hopeless and unreachable. But no, it was right there, and she could almost reach out and touch it, if her hands weren’t pinned.

  She thrashed a third time, but it was uncoordinated and limp. This time Ashley barely had to hold her. She knew this was the last one; that there couldn’t possibly be a fourth rally. She was a goner now. Ed and Sandi were in the same building, on the other side of a wall, ten feet away, oblivious while she suffocated to death in the arms of a killer. She felt time dilate. A thick and comfortable rest settled over her, like a heavy wool blanket.

  She hated how good it felt.

  “Rest now.” Ashley planted a wet smooch on the top of her head, crinkling the plastic. “You tried real hard, Darbs. Get some rest now.”

  His revolting voice was so far away now. It sounded like he was in another room. Speaking to someone else. Smothering some other girl to death. The ache in her lungs was already fading. All of these awful sensations were happening to someone else, not Darby Th
orne.

  Her mind wandered now, disconnecting, drifting, taking stock of all the unfinished items in her life. Her capstone painting, incomplete. Her Stafford loans, unpaid. Her Gmail password, locked forever. Her bank account with $291 in it. Her dorm room. Her wall of gravestone rubbings. Her mother at Utah Valley Hospital, awakening from surgery, about to learn that her daughter had been randomly murdered at a rest stop two hundred miles away from—

  No.

  She fought it.

  No, no, no—

  She held onto this, onto forty-nine-year-old Maya Thorne, languishing in the ICU. Because if Darby died right here, right now, in this restroom, she’d never get to apologize for all the things she’d said to her mother on Thanksgiving. It would all become unchangeable history. Every ugly word of it.

  And suddenly she wasn’t afraid. Not anymore. She tasted something far more useful than fear — anger. She was livid. She was absolutely fucking furious at the unfairness of it all, of what Ashley was attempting to do to her and her family, raging hard against the enveloping darkness. And something else . . .

  If I die here, she knew, no one will save Jay.

  “. . . Darbs?”

  She arched her back, and commanded her weary lungs to do one final task — to open and inhale as hard as possible. To suck the plastic airtight against her open mouth, so it was contracted between her front teeth like bubble gum, just a thin, withdrawn centimeter—

  She bit down.

  Not hard enough. The plastic slipped out of her mouth.

  “Pancreatic cancer?” Ashley’s lips slithered against her ear, like he’d read her mind. “Your mom has . . . you said pancreatic cancer, right?”

  She tried again. She sucked the bag taut with burning lungs.

  Bit down.

  Nothing.

  “Isn’t it funny, then?” His dense grip, his rotten voice. “You were so certain you’d bury your mom, but it turns out you had it backwards, you dumb cunt, because she’s going to bury you—”

  Darby bit down again, and the plastic ripped.

  A pinprick of ice-cold air whistled inside. Racing down her throat in a pressurized rush, like inhaling through a straw.