Make a choice.
So she did.
She slammed the door. Pocketed Ashley’s keys. And, with the Brothers Garver still pursuing somewhere behind her, she circled around the vehicle on aching bones and ran for the orange glow of the visitor center. She had to warn Ed and Sandi. She had to do the right thing. They’d all escape the Wanapani rest area together. No one else would die tonight.
Ed and Sandi, I can still save you both.
She had, at best, sixty seconds before Ashley and Lars caught up to her. Sixty seconds to make a new plan. She looked back at that cartoon fox, at the nail gun in its furry hand, that stupid slogan now a ghoulish promise: WE FINISH WHAT WE START.
2:16 a.m.
Darby froze in the doorway.
Ed was murmuring something (“No signal this far from—”) and stopped mid-sentence when he saw her, mid-step near Espresso Peak with his Android in his palm. Sandi was kneeling by the table, and she whirled to face Darby, revealing a tiny shape standing behind her.
It was . . . it was Jay.
Oh, thank God.
The girl’s dark hair was speckled with snowflakes. Her cheeks were rash-red. She was shrouded in Sandi’s bumblebee-yellow parka, dwarfed by its saggy sleeves. This was the first time Darby had seen the girl in full light, outside of that dog kennel, and for a shivery moment, she wanted only to close the distance between them, to lift this little child she barely knew and squeeze her into a bracing hug.
You turned around.
Oh, thank God, Jay, we lost your tracks but you turned around.
Sandi stood up, a black pepper-spray canister raised in a knuckled hand, her eyes rock-hard. “Not one step closer.”
Jay grabbed her wrist. “No. She rescued me—”
“Sandi,” Ed hissed. “For Christ’s sake—”
The door banged shut behind Darby, jolting her back into the moment. She tried to figure — how far behind her were the brothers now? A hundred yards? Fifty? She caught her breath, tears in her eyes, struggling to speak: “They’re coming. They’re armed, and they’re right behind me—”
Ed knew who they were. “You’re sure they’re armed?”
“Yeah.” She locked the deadbolt.
“With what?”
“They have a gun.”
“Have you seen it?”
“Trust me, they have a gun.” Darby glanced between Ed and Sandi, now realizing the deadbolt was pointless. “And they will not stop until we’re dead. We need to take your truck and drive. Right now.”
“What if they chase us?” Sandi asked.
“They won’t.” Darby showed her Ashley’s keys.
Ed stopped pacing behind her, considering this. He seemed to like it.
Darby realized the ex-veterinarian was holding a lug wrench in his right hand, half-concealed under his Carhartt sleeve. A blunt weapon. He stepped past her, wiping sweat from his eyebrow. “Okay. Okay, Darby, keep your Honda keys on you, too. We can’t have them stealing your car and following us—”
Jay stood up. “Let’s go, then.”
Darby liked her already.
And she noticed a yellow bracelet glinting on Jay’s wrist. She hadn’t seen it before in the murky darkness of the kidnappers’ van. It looked vaguely medical. She wondered briefly — what is that?
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—”