No Exit by Taylor Adams 2

No one did.
On the long drive from Boulder, she’d hated the quiet
stretches between songs, because that’s when her mind went
into overdrive. Remembering things she’d called her mother.
New pains. New regrets. And now she rethought Ed’s answer
to her question, when she’d asked how serious Jay’s four
missed injections were. He hadn’t mouthed later.
No, she realized with a sinking heart. He’d said something
different.
He’d said fatal.
Jay would die if she remained under the care of Ashley
and Lars tonight. Even if they hadn’t planned to murder her,
they were still clueless about how to handle her adrenal
condition. And her time was running out.
But really, it made perfect sense that the Garver brothers
would turn out to be tragically inept kidnappers. Ashley may
have had a cruel streak a mile wide, but he clearly wasn’t
methodical enough to quarterback a ransom operation. He
improvised too much, and he toyed with his victims. And
Lars? Just a whiskered man-child, a soft and undeveloped
psyche Ashley had molded into his own morbid image. These
two overgrown kids were unprepared for the complexity and
scale of what they were attempting. They weren’t remotely
qualified for it. They were something far worse.
In a dark Walmart parking lot a few years back, watching
a crackhead with a buzz-cut break into their Subaru from the
safe lights of the Home and Garden section, she remembered
her mother holding her shoulder and telling her: Don’t fear the
pros, Darby. The pros know what they’re doing, and do it
cleanly.
Fear the amateurs.
“They’re …” Sandi cupped her hands against the window.
“Okay. Ashley just carried something out of his van. An …
orange box.”