NO EXIT a gripping thriller full of heart-stopping twists

by TAYLOR ADAMS

  No time to ask. Everyone crowded up to the front door, and Ed unlatched the deadbolt with a hard swipe. He rallied the group, like a reluctant coach. “On three, we’ll, uh . . . we’re all going to run to the truck. Okay?”

  Darby nodded, noticing the odor of vodka on his breath. “Sounds good.”

  “Are they out there?”

  Sandi peered out the smudged window. “I . . . I don’t see them yet.”

  “Alright. Sandi, you’ll take Jay to the front seat and start the engine. Give it gas and go drive, reverse, drive, reverse—”

  “I know how to drive in the snow, Eddie.”

  “And Dara, you’re at the back tires with me, so we can push.”

  “Deal.”

  He pointed at Jay, snapping his fingers: “And somebody carry her.”

  Sandi hoisted the girl over her shoulder, despite her protests (“No, I can run, too.”) and checked the window again. “They’ll get here any minute—”

  “Don’t try to fight them. Just run like hell,” Ed whispered, leaning against the door, starting the count: “One.”

  Run like hell.

  Darby lowered into a shaky runner’s crouch at the back of the group, behind Sandi, feeling her tired calves burn. No weapons — they would only slow her down. From the door, she recalled it was fifty feet to the parking lot, over a narrow footpath cut into the snow.

  “Two.” Ed twisted the doorknob.

  She rehearsed the next minute in her mind. She estimated the four of them could run fifty feet in maybe . . . twenty seconds? Thirty? Another ten seconds to pile into the truck, for Sandi to fumble her keys into the ignition. More time for the Ford to start moving, slogging through the dense snow. And that was assuming Ed and Darby wouldn’t need to push it. Or dig the tires out. Or scrape the windows.

  And somehow, in the back of her mind, she knew: It’s been too long.

  Ashley and Lars were only a minute or so behind me.

  They’re back already—

  “Three.” Ed opened the door—

  Darby grabbed his wrist, vise-tight, all fingernails. “Stop—”

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Stop-stop-stop,” she said, panic tightening in her chest. “They’re here already. They’re hiding behind the cars. They’re waiting for us out there—”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do.”

  * * *

  “I see Lars,” Sandi whispered from the window, her hands cupped against the glass. “He’s . . . he’s crouched out there. Behind my truck.”

  Clever bastards.

  “I see him, too,” said Ed.

  Darby re-locked the deadbolt. “They were going to ambush us.”

  It would have been bad. The brothers could’ve gunned them all down, catching them single-file on that narrow path with nowhere to run. Target practice. It gave Darby a sickly shot of adrenaline, as sour as tequila — they’d been a single poor decision away from being murdered. Her gut feeling had just saved their lives.

  Clever, clever, clever.

  “How did you know?” Ed asked her again.

  “It’s . . . it’s what I would’ve done.” Darby shrugged. “If I were them.”

  Jay smiled. “I’m glad you’re not.”

  “I think I see Ashley, too,” Sandi said. “Behind the van.”

  Darby imagined Ashley Garver out there in the cold, crouched in the snow with his green eyes trained on the door. She hoped he was disappointed. She hoped he was realizing, right now, that his nasty little trap had failed, that his prey had outwitted him for the third or fourth time tonight. She hoped he was keeping score. She hoped the self-proclaimed magic man was getting pissed off.

  Sandi squinted through the glass. “I can’t . . . I can’t tell what they’re doing—”

  “They’re guarding the cars,” Darby said.

  Ashley’s words echoed in her mind, like half-remembered strands of a nightmare: We’re going to catch you. And when we do, you little bitch, I’ll make you beg for that Ziploc bag—

  At the window, Ed tugged Sandi’s shoulder. “Stay down.”

  “I see them. They’re moving—”

  “Stay away from the goddamn window, Sandi. They’re going to shoot you.”

  Darby chewed her lip, knowing Ed was right — the glass was a major structural weakness. A bullet, or even a big rock, and the two brothers could climb the snowdrift and slide inside.

  She stood in the center of the room, spotlighted under fluorescent lights, running her fingertips along the table’s scratched surface. She turned a wobbly three hundred and sixty degrees, scanning from east, to north, to west, to south. Four walls on a cement foundation. A front door with a deadbolt. One large window. And two smaller ones, in each restroom.

  We have the building.

  But they have the cars.

  “It’s a stalemate,” she whispered.

  Sandi looked at her. “Then what happens next?”

  “They’ll make their move,” Ed said grimly. “Then we’ll make ours.”

  Each move would be a calculated risk. If they stepped outside they’d be shot. If the brothers attacked the building, they’d be leaving the cars unguarded. If one brother attacked, he’d be vulnerable to an ambush in close quarters. The possibilities and consequences made Darby’s head spin, like trying to think six moves ahead in chess.

  She realized Jay had moved to her side and now held her hoodie sleeve, gripping the fabric in white knuckles. “Don’t believe Ashley. He lies for fun. He’ll say anything to get in here—”

  “We won’t fall for it,” Darby said, glancing to Ed and Sandi for support. They offered only weary silence. Maybe stalemate was the wrong word, she realized in the growing tension. Maybe a better one was siege.

  And she realized something else — everyone was now looking at her.

  She hated it. She wasn’t a leader. She’d never been comfortable as the center of attention — she’d practically suffered a panic attack last year when the Red Robin servers crowded her table to sing happy birthday. Again, she found herself desperately wishing for someone else in her place. Someone smarter, tougher, braver, who everyone could turn to. But there wasn’t.

  There’s only me.

  And us.

  And the monsters circling outside.

  “And never insult Ashley, either,” Jay warned. “He . . . he acts like it’s okay at first, but he remembers for later. And he gets his payback if you hurt his feelings—”

  “Trust me, Jay. Tonight, we are way past hurt feelings.” Darby emptied her pockets, placing Ashley’s keychain, her Honda keys, and her iPhone on the counter. Then she unfolded the brown napkin, exposing her handwritten message to Ashley, and his message to her: IF YOU TELL THEM I KILL THEM BOTH.

  Ed read it and his shoulders sagged.

  Sandi gasped, covering her mouth.

  “When . . . when they realize we’re not running to the truck,” Darby said to everyone, “they’re going to change their tactics and come for us. They have no choice, because we’re all witnesses now, and we have their hostage. So this building is going to be our Alamo. For the next four hours.”

  She pulled the final item from her pocket — she’d almost forgotten about it — and placed it on the faux-granite countertop with an emphatic click. It was Lars’s .45-caliber cartridge, gleaming gold in the harsh light.

  Seeing the bullet made Sandi collapse into her seat, burying her red cheeks in her hands. “Oh, Jesus Christ. We are not going to last four minutes—”

  Darby ignored her. “First, we need to block the window.”

  “Alright.” Ed pointed. “Help me flip that table.”

  * * *

  Ashley watched the window darken.

  A broad shape moved against the glass from the inside, rotating upward, reducing the orange light to glowing cracks. He imagined the glass creaking with pressure.

  “Oh, Darbs.” He spat in the snow. “I love you.”

  Lars gla
nced over to him. He was crouched in a diligent firing stance by the Ford’s tailgate, his elbow resting on the bumper, his Beretta aimed at the front door.

  “Don’t bother,” Ashley said. “They’re not coming out. She called the ambush.”

  “How?”

  “She just did.” He stood up and walked a few paces, cracking his sore vertebrae, stretching his legs, inhaling the alpine air. “Jesus, isn’t she something? I just . . . I just love that little redhead.”

  Perched against a vertical world of firs, white spruce, and rocky summits, the Wanapani visitor center looked like a nut to be cracked. The snowfall had ended; the sky had opened up to a pristine void. The clouds thinning away, revealing a pale crescent and piercing stars, and the world had changed with it, drawn in the icepick shadows of new moonlight. A moon begging for blood.

  The fun, as always, was deciding how. He’d been through dozens of Lars’s pets — turtles, fish, two dogs, more shelter-rescue cats than he could count — and whether it was bleach, bullets, fire, or the meaty click of a knife striking bone, there’s no dignity in death. Every living creature dies afraid.

  For all her cunning, Darby would learn this, too.

  Ashley stood silent for a long moment, sucking on his lower lip. Finally, he decided. “Change of plans,” he said. “We’ll do it indoors.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes, baby brother. All of them.”

  * * *

  “Weapons,” Darby said. “What do we have?”

  “My pepper spray.”

  “What else?”

  Sandi pointed to Espresso Peak. “I mean, there’s a coffee kitchen there, but it’s locked—”

  “Hang on.” Ed crossed the room. “Let me try my key.”

  “A key? Where’d you get a—”

  He smashed the padlock with his lug wrench, sending pieces skittering across the floor. Then he grabbed the security shutter by the handle and rolled it up to the ceiling. “Espresso Peak is open for Christmas.”

  Darby vaulted the counter, landing hard on her sore ankles, and searched the front façade — coffee machines, a bagel toaster, a cash register, syrup bottles. Then she opened the drawers, starting at the bottom and working upward. Bagged coffee beans, vanilla, powdered milk, jingling spoons—

  “Anything?”

  “Nothing useful.”

  Ed checked the back. “No landline phone, either.”

  “There has to be one.” Darby searched the next set of drawers, peeling off a yellow Post-It note: REMINDER, PLEASE MOP RESTROOMS — TODD.

  “Any knives?”

  “Spoons, spoons.” She slammed another drawer. “Nothing but spoons.”

  “What kind of coffee shop doesn’t have knives?”

  “This one, apparently.” Darby wiped sweat from her eyes, glancing back to the cash register (too heavy), to the pastry case (not a weapon), to the toaster (nope), to the coffee machines lining the countertop. “But . . . okay, these things will dispense scalding hot water. Someone, please, fill a carafe.”

  “For a weapon?” Sandi asked.

  “No. For fucking coffee.”

  “We already have coffee.”

  “I was being sarcastic.”

  Pattering footsteps behind her — she’d expected Sandi to come forward — but it was Jay. The little girl carried the COFEE carafe and placed it under the spout. She stood on her tiptoes to press the button. The machine grumbled.

  “Thanks, Jay.”

  “No problem.”

  Sandi was still at the front of the room. On her knees, peering outside through a three-inch gap between the flipped table and the window frame. “Ashley and Lars just moved again,” she said. “They’re . . . they’re by their van now.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  “Keep your head down,” Ed reminded her.

  “It’s fine.”

  Darby opened the last drawer below the cash register, and found something rattling on the bottom with pens and receipt paper — a silver key. She picked it up, peeling off another Post-It note: DON’T DUPLICATE — TODD.

  The closet, she remembered.

  She raced to it, inserting the key, twisting the knob. “Please, please, God, let there be a phone in here—”

  Darkness inside. She thumbed a light switch — revealing a small janitor’s closet, five feet by five, with crooked shelving and racks of saggy cardboard boxes. The stuffy odor of mildew. A mop bucket in the corner, sloshing with gray water. And a white first-aid box on the upper shelf, filmed with dust.

  And, to her left, bolted to the wall . . . a beige landline telephone.

  “Oh, thank God—”

  She grabbed the plastic receiver and mashed it to her ear — no dial tone. She tried pressing buttons. Shook it. Checked the spiral cord. Nothing.

  “Any luck?” Ed asked.

  She noticed another Post-It note on the wall — FIBER LINE DOWN AGAIN — TODD — and slammed the phone down. “I’m really starting to hate Todd.”

  “Hot water’s full,” Jay called out.

  Darby backpedaled out of the closet, nearly bumping into Ed, and grabbed the carafe off the drip tray. “Thanks, Jay. Now fill another, please.”

  “Okay.”

  Then she carried the sloshing carafe to the visitor center’s front door, feeling the steam on her palm. The water was hot enough to burn skin, and to maybe temporarily blind an attacker. But it was also rapidly cooling. In a few minutes, it would just be a harmless jug of warm water.

  She was halfway there when she noticed something — a brown napkin crammed under the carafe’s silver carrying handle.

  Her napkin.

  She halted and unfolded it. On one side, her MEET ME IN THE RESTROOM and Ashley’s probably-false response: I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND. On the other, IF YOU TELL THEM I KILL THEM BOTH. And finally, underneath that, in the loopy handwriting of a child, she found Jay’s message to her.

  DON’T TRUST THEM.

  What?

  She glanced up. Jay was filling the second carafe now, holding the red button, but watching her expectantly.

  Darby whispered, “Don’t . . . don’t trust who?”

  Ed and Sandi?

  Jay didn’t answer. She just nodded her head in short motions. Concealing the gesture from the other two adults in the room.

  Darby almost asked aloud, but couldn’t.

  Why? Why can’t we trust Ed and—

  A rough hand clapped down on her collarbone, startling her. “Three entrances, so three possible routes of attack for Beavis and Butthead,” Ed huffed, counting on his fingers. “Front door.”

  “Dead-bolted,” Darby said.

  “Front window.”

  “Barricaded.”

  “Restroom windows?”

  “There’s two. I broke one of them, earlier tonight, to climb inside.” She felt her shoulders sag. “That’s what I’m worried about.”

  She wasn’t just worried; she was now certain — that was the route Ashley and Lars would try first. The stacked picnic tables outside formed a stairway up to the broken men’s restroom window. It was another structural weakness, and Ashley was acutely aware of its existence. It had saved Darby’s life twice tonight.

  Ed was still considering this, and again, she whiffed that odor on his breath — vodka, or gin, maybe. Please, she thought. Please, don’t be drunk.

  “Can they fit through it?” he asked.

  “They’ll try.”

  “We don’t have much to block it with—”

  “Maybe . . .” Darby considered this, eyeing the lug wrench in Ed’s hand. She remembered Sandi’s pepper spray, plus the carafes of scalding water. She dashed to the restrooms, her mind racing: “Maybe we’ll use that to our advantage.”

  “How so?”

  She elbowed open the door and pointed down the long room, past the green stalls, at the empty triangular window on the far wall. “Ashley and Lars will have to crawl through, one at a time, to get inside t
o us. They can’t go feet-first. They’ll have to go head-first, so they can cover the room with their gun, and then they’ll have to twist around and drop down to land on their feet.”

  Ed looked at her, impressed. “And you climbed that?”

  “Here’s my plan. One of us will . . .” Darby halted, remembering her conversation in this very same restroom, under the same buzzing lights, with Ashley himself. Two hours ago, they’d bickered over who would be Person A (the attacker) and who would be Person B (the backup). From now on tonight, she decided with a held breath, I’m Person A.

  No more excuses.

  “Dara?”

  “I’ll squish flat against the wall,” she continued, pointing at the furthest stall. “Right in that corner there, and they won’t see me when they climb inside, and—”

  Ed grinned. “We can pepper spray him.”

  “And take his gun.”

  And kill them both.

  The brothers were armed and physically stronger, so allowing one or both of them inside would be fatal. But this window was a natural bottleneck, and it would be their only realistic route inside, unless they managed to break the deadbolt or get through the barricaded window. And, Darby knew, if Ashley entered first with the gun, she’d stand a half-decent chance of overpowering him with pepper spray or scalding water. If she managed to steal their .45, it’d be a game changer.

  Ed opened the stall door. “I’ll guard the window.”

  “No. I’m doing this.”

  “Dara, it should be me—”

  “I said I’m doing it,” she snapped. “I’m the only one small enough to hide here. And I’m the one who started this.”

  And I’ll never be Person B again.

  For as long as I live.

  She’d expected more of an argument, but Ed only stared. She’d also almost corrected him about her name, once and for all. But she didn’t, because hell, tonight, Dara was close enough. And she was grateful she didn’t have to mention the alcohol on his breath.

  Maybe . . . maybe that’s why Jay doesn’t trust you?

  He paused. “So, you were the one who found Jay?”

  “Yeah. I got her out.”

  “And they’d been traveling with her? Parked outside, right under our noses, while I played Go Fish with the dirtbag?”

  “Yeah.”