No Exit by Taylor Adams 2

REST AREA ONE MILE.
* * *
“Hey.” Fingers snapped in Darby’s face. “Lost you for a
sec.”
Her right hand felt like it’d been submerged in boiling
water.
At first, it hadn’t hurt at all — just the whoosh of
displaced air and the cannon blast of the door slamming beside
her right eardrum — and then the pain arrived a moment later.
Deafening, shattering. At once sledgehammer-blunt and
needle-sharp. It hurled her out of her body, out of this world.
For a black instant she was nowhere, and in another, she was
back in her tiny childhood house in Provo, six years old again,
racing up the creaking staircase, hurtling into the warm
blankets of her mother’s bed, taking refuge from a witchinghour
nightmare. I’ve got you, her mother whispered, flicking
on the nightstand lamp.
It was just a dream, baby.
You imagined it all.
I’ve got you—
And then the bedroom bled away like paint and Darby was
back in this little Colorado rest stop with fluorescent lights and
stale coffee, this hellish place she could never escape. She’d
slumped into a crouch when she lost consciousness, her back
to the door. A sour taste in her throat. She was afraid to look
up at her right hand. She knew what had happened. She knew
the door was shut, that at least two of her fingers were crushed
inside it, pulverized between merciless brass teeth—
I’ve got you, Darby—
“Earth to Darbs.” Ashley snapped his fingers. “I need you
lucid.”
“Ashley,” Sandi hissed. “You’re insane. You’ve lost your
mind—”