Sandi screamed. It was earsplitting.
“Lars.” Ashley snapped his fingers and pointed. “Control her, please.”
Ed slapped both hands to his throat, clearly trying to scream, too, but his body wouldn’t let him. His mouth was nailed shut — literally — by a steel framing nail, pierced through his lower jaw at an upward angle, harpooning his tongue to the roof of his mouth. Ashley imagined it wriggling in there like a bloody eel. And he was genuinely curious how deep the 16-penny nail had tunneled — could its needle-tip be tickling the floor of Ed’s brain?
He pushed the man over with his foot. Ed slumped against the regional map of Colorado and slid down the wall, sobbing silently into his hands, blood pooling in his palms and dribbling dime-sized blots on the floor.
“Have a seat. You should know, Eddie-boy, I hate alcoholics . . .”
Sandi was in hysterics. She cried out again, a hyena scream, another big glob of shiny snot hanging from her chin. Lars thrust the Beretta’s muzzle into her face, and she promptly shut up.
“Change of plan,” Ashley said, tapping Lars’s shoulder, and the fluorescent lights shuddered above him. “See, you and me, baby brother, we’ve already carpet-bombed this little building with forensic evidence, and we don’t have nearly enough bleach, or time, to scrub everything down. So we’re going to have to get creative, if you catch my drift.”
Lars nodded once. Spy Code message received.
Ashley continued, stepping over a spreading puddle of Ed’s blood. “And as for Darby and—”
Wait.
He realized something.
“Wait, wait . . .” He grabbed Sandi by the elbow, snapping his fingers in her face. “Hey. Look at me. You said . . . you trapped Darby and Jaybird in the restroom, right? The men’s restroom?”
She sniffled, looking up at him with bloodshot eyes, and nodded.
No.
Lars looked at him, too, not getting it. But Ashley did.
No, no, no—
He threw Sandi to the floor, stomping past her, past Ed, toward the restrooms, and he elbowed the MEN door open to see . . . an empty room. Snowflakes wafting in through the triangular window.
Lars watched.
Ashley Garver stepped back out and slammed the door violently. “I’m so sick of that fucking window—”
*
Darby twisted Sandi’s key and the truck’s engine revved to life. A diesel roar shattered the silence of the parking lot.
Jay crawled into the passenger seat. “What if Ashley hears?”
She cranked the shifter knob. “He just did.”
She’d already scraped away a viewing hole in the windshield and dug out a few scraping armfuls around the rear tires. Just enough to form icy ramps, to gain some momentum. Sandi had come prepared; this F-150 was a beast of a truck with studded tires, jangling chains, and a monstrous eighteen inches of lift. If anything parked here could it make it down the mountain, it was this rig. And if it couldn’t . . . well, Darby remembered Ashley’s lame little Ford joke: Found on road, dead.
Let’s hope not. She rubbed the chemical sting from her eyes. Her face was still drenched from that carafe, the hot water rapidly cooling on her skin.
“Everyone here is bad,” Jay whispered.
“Not me.”
“Yeah, but everyone else—”
Darby tried not to think about it. Her head was still spinning, too. First Ashley had presented himself as an ally before betraying her. And now Sandi had revealed her involvement in the kidnapping plot. She couldn’t possibly know where Ed Schaeffer stood in all of this chaos, but she hoped he was still alive in there.
If he’s even on our side to begin with.
She hoped he was, but with every passing second, the Wanapani rest area seemed to become more hostile. The plastic tightened around her face. Her allies dwindled. Her enemies multiplied. The conspiracy was dizzying.
“What was my bus driver doing here?” Jay asked.
Darby gripped the steering wheel. “Moment of truth.”
She pressed the gas pedal and the Ford inched forward in the sludgy snow, tires spinning, throwing sheets of hard ice. Steady pressure under her toes. Not too hard, not too soft. Grinding, skidding motion — but it was motion.
“Come on. Come on, come on—”
“How far away are the police?” Jay asked.
She remembered the CDOT broadcast Ed had described to her. The jackknifed semi at the bottom of the pass. “Seven, uh, maybe eight miles.”
“That’s not far, right?”
Darby spun the wheel into a sloppy half-turn, sliding Sandi’s truck into icy divots, twisting south now. Downhill, down the off-ramp, facing oncoming traffic — if there were any. She searched for the Ford’s headlights and flicked them on. Ashley and Lars had already been alerted by the lope of the motor, so stealth was out. They were coming, right now.
“You stole her truck,” Jay whispered.
“She pepper-sprayed me. We’re even.”
The girl laughed, a fragile little sound, as a slice of orange light appeared on the glass behind her. It was the visitor center’s front door swinging open. A shaft of light, and in it, a thin figure.
It was Lars.
Rodent Face. All black shadow. The silhouette raised its right arm, as casually as a man aiming a television remote, and Darby understood instinctively, grabbing Jay by the shoulder and hurling her down against the cold leather seat—
“Get down—”
CRACK.
The passenger window exploded. Gummy shards chattered off the dash. Jay yelped, covering her face.
Darby huddled low under a hailstorm of settling glass. The gunshot echoed like a firecracker in the thin air. Her body urged her to stay down in her seat, as low as possible, beneath Rodent Face’s line of fire, but her brain knew better: He’s coming toward us. Right now.
Go, go, go—
She found the gas pedal with her toes and stomped it. The truck surged forward, engine thrumming with power, knocking them back into the seats. The world heaved. Luggage thudded noisily in the back. Then Darby righted herself against the clammy leather, peered sideways over the steering wheel — just exposing an eye, an inch — and guided Sandi’s F150 toward the highway.
Jay grabbed her wrist. “Darby—”
“Stay down.”
“Darby, he’s shooting at us—”
“Yes, I noticed—”
CRACK. A bullet pierced the truck’s windshield and Darby flinched. A chilly breeze whistled to her left; her side window was blown out, too. Snowflakes blew inside, slashing her cheek.
“He’s chasing us,” Jay said. “Drive faster—”
Darby was trying. She increased pressure on the gas, and the truck fishtailed but accelerated. The tires sprayed ice chips through the windows, peppering the interior with cold grit. Lars fired again — CRACK — and the truck’s side view mirror exploded. Jay screamed.
Darby tugged her down with her free hand. “Keep your head down. It’s fine—”
“No, it’s not.”
“He’s not going to catch us—”
CRACK. Another hole punched through the windshield, a jagged star-shape above Darby’s head. But Lars’s gunshots sounded different. They were getting hollow, thinning across a widening distance.
“Yes.” Her heart fluttered. “Yes, yes, yes—”