No Exit by Taylor Adams 2

her. A NEW MESSAGE bubble blocked her touchscreen. She
was about to swipe past it, until she saw the sender’s number.
It was 9-1-1.
An answer to her text message; the one she’d tried to send
hours ago tonight, and must have only now successfully autosent:
Child abduction gray van license plate VBH9045 state
route 7 Wanapa rest stop send police.
The answer?
Find a safe place. Officer coming ETA 30.
Darby almost dropped her phone. ETA, as in estimated
time of arrival. 30 must be minutes, right? It couldn’t be
hours, or days—
Thirty minutes.
“Is it working?” Jay asked, panting as she dug.
Darby couldn’t believe it. It felt like a hallucination. She
blinked, afraid it would all disperse like a dream, but the
letters were all still there, trembling in her numb hands. Her
text had successfully sent at 3:56 a.m. She’d received the 9-1-
1 dispatcher’s response at 3:58 a.m. Just minutes ago.
Oh, thank God, the cops will be here in thirty minutes—
Her chest swelled with gulped breaths. Nervous electricity
in her bones. She had questions. Tons of them. For starters, she
didn’t know how this reconciled with CDOT’s snowplow
situation — were the plows due in thirty minutes, too? Were
they due first? Were they all charging up Backbone Pass at
once — cops and road crews — as one big convoy? She didn’t
know, and truthfully, she didn’t care, as long as the cops got
here and shot Ashley Garver in his smirking face.
“Oh, Jay,” she whispered. “I could kiss you—”
The girl’s voice pitched: “Darby, stop.”
“What?”