No Exit by Taylor Adams 2

8:17 p.m.
She went back inside.
Ashley glanced up. “Any luck?”
She didn’t answer.
He was seated now, at the wood table, playing cards with
Ed. A new woman was here, too — Ed’s wife, apparently —
sitting next to him. She was a fussy little forty-something with
a black bowl cut and a crinkly yellow parka, busily popping
cartoon bubbles on her tablet. She’d been the one in the
restroom.
As the door clicked shut at Darby’s back, she tallied three
possible suspects: Chatty Ashley, sad-eyed Ed, and Ed’s
frumpy wife. So who did the gray van belong to?
Oh, my God, there’s a kid outside in that van.
Locked in a cage or something.
It hit her again, all at once. She tasted raw oysters in the
back of her mouth. Her legs went mushy. She needed to sit
down, but was afraid to.
One of these three people did it—
“Make sure the door is shut,” Ed said.
Like nothing had happened, the card game resumed.
Ashley checked his hand and glanced sideways at Ed. “Four of
hearts?”
“Go fish. Two of spades?”
“Nope.”
Something else was wrong, Darby realized. The math
didn’t add up. There were three cars outside besides her own.
Three suspects in here. But Ed and his wife had almost
certainly traveled together. Right? So there had to be a fourth
person at the rest stop. But where?