No Exit by Taylor Adams 2

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withdrawn centimeter—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.