No Exit by Taylor Adams 2

swaddled in a snug blanket. Darby hoped it was true. She
hoped Jay hadn’t suffered.
She called out again into the darkness.
Still no answer.
To her left, she heard Lars whisper, “How much longer?”
To her right, “As long as it takes.”
She knew Ashley wasn’t stupid — he was running the
same numbers in his mind. Thirty minutes spent following
these half-buried footprints, plus a twenty-minute head start (at
least), meant Jay’s chances of survival in these freezing woods
were poor, and getting worse every second.
Halfheartedly, Darby assessed her own options here at
gunpoint. Fight? Get shot. Run? Get shot in the back. She
considered turning and shining the flashlight into the
gunmen’s eyes to blind them, but they’d been around it for
over a half hour, so their pupils were already adjusted to it.
This was problem one. And even if she could blind them for a
few seconds, the snowbound terrain was too rough for a quick
escape — which was problem two.
To her left, Lars fretted. “What if we got Jay killed?”
To her right: “We didn’t.”
“What if we did?”
“We didn’t, baby brother.” A pause. “She might have,
though.”
This hit Darby like a twisting dagger in her gut, how
painfully right Ashley was. It made sense, in an evil way. If
she hadn’t intervened tonight, Jay would still be penned up in
that dog kennel inside their van, captive but very much alive.
Icy fingers reached around her stomach and slowly, oh-soslowly,
began to squeeze. Why did I have to get involved?
Why couldn’t I have just called the cops in the morning?
She tried to focus on her own survival, on solving problem
one (the light) and problem two (the terrain), but she couldn’t.