No Exit by Taylor Adams 2

into the restroom? After she made knowing eye contact with
him on her way out the door?
Jesus — what the hell was going on?
Bloody scenarios cycled through her mind like camera
flashes. She braced, half-expecting the thump of a gunshot.
But there was nothing. Only icy silence. Only the distant moan
of the wind. Only Jay and herself, standing on shaky legs in
that desolate parking lot.
The nail gun, she decided.
Lars’s nail gun was her new objective. She’d find it, figure
out how to operate it, and then she’d run back inside the visitor
center, kick open the door, and whatever was going on inside,
she’d fire a nail right into Lars’s whiskery little face. Kathunk.
Asshole dead. Innocent child saved. Nightmare over.
That would work.
She looked back at Jay, her teeth chattering. “Alright.
Where do you think Lars keeps his nail gun? Back here, or in
the front?”
“The other one keeps it in an orange box.”
“Keeps it where?”
“It used to be back here, but I think they moved it—”
But Darby wasn’t listening. Jay’s little voice bled away,
and in a flash of scalding panic, the prior sentence snagged in
her brain and echoed: The other one keeps it an orange box.
The other one.
The other one.
The other one—
Slipping, staggering back outside, she hit her kneecaps on
hardened snow, steadied herself against the brake light, and
peered around it—
The building’s door was now open.
Lars stood in the doorway. Beside him, Ashley.