No Exit by Taylor Adams 2

map, slithering through mountain topography, and the rest
areas were marked as red circles. Wanapa, Wanapani,
Colchuck, Nisqual.
This one was Wanapani. Big Devil.
Not Wanapa.
But she’d typed her text message to 9-1-1 earlier in the
night, around 9 p.m., before she’d learned this. Back before
she’d returned inside, reexamined the map, and realized her
error — that she’d transposed two similar-looking, similarsounding
Native American names, both concerning devils.
My text sent to the cops to the wrong rest area.
To a completely different one, twenty miles down
Backbone Pass. On the other side of that jackknifed eighteenwheeler.
The police weren’t coming after all. They were still
miles away, unreachable, misdirected. No one was coming to
arrest Ashley and Lars. No one was coming to save them.
She wanted to scream.
She sagged against the locked door, feeling her fingers
twist inside the doorframe. Another jolt of meat-grinder pain.
She felt weightless, like dropping into free-fall, plunging to
some unknown depth. She wished for it to all be over.
No one is coming to save us.
We’re all alone.
I got us all killed—
Ashley sighed petulantly, like a frustrated child, and now
he jammed the nail gun against Ed’s temple and squeezed the
trigger—
“Stop,” Darby gasped. “Stop. I’ll tell you where your keys
are, if you … if you promise you won’t kill him.”
“I promise,” Ashley said.
It was a lie, she knew. Of course it was a lie. Ashley
Garver was a sociopath. Words and promises were