No Exit by Taylor Adams 2

“Shoot her, Lars—”
She ran like hell. Staggering through deep snow. Hard
gasps stinging her throat. She’d night-blinded them both. Not
by flashing them with the LED beam, which their pupils had
already adjusted to — but by taking it away. She’d been
shielding her own eyes to preserve her night vision. This was
her solution to problem one. As for problem two—
Ashley’s voice behind her, calm but urgent: “Give me the
gun.”
“Can you see her?”
“Give me the gun, baby brother—”
Even downhill, it was like running in waist-deep water.
Lurching over snowdrifts, dodging trees, stumbling, banging a
knee against icy rock, recovering, her heartbeat thudding in
her ears, no time to stop, don’t stop—
Ashley’s voice raised: “I see her.”
“How can you see her?”
He kept an eye shut, she realized with racing panic. Just
like I taught him—
He shouted after her: “Thanks for the trick, Darbs—”
He was aiming at her right now, taking a marksman’s
stance. She felt the pistol’s painted sights tingling on her back
like a laser. Inescapable. No chance to outrun him. Just
dwindling microseconds, now, as Ashley squeezed the trigger
and Darby executed her desperate solution to problem two—
What’s faster than running?
Falling.
She hurled herself downhill.
The world inverted. She saw a whirl of black sky and
frozen branches, plunging in a half-second of free-fall, and
then a wall of shorn granite rushed up to meet her. Thunderous
impact. Stars pierced her vision. She lost the flashlight. She