by Riley Sager
“You’re bluffing,” he says. “Besides, why would I need to be worried about the police?”
“You tell me, Jake.”
For the first time since they met, Josh looks worried. He tries to hide it by taking a swallow of coffee and leaning back in the booth, his arms crossed, but Charlie knows he’s concerned. She can see it in his eyes.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says. “You’re confused, Charlie. And kind of sad.”
Charlie shrugs. She’s been called worse.
“Then we’ll wait.”
They stay that way, staring each other down, until the song ends. Only then, when the diner is plunged into silence, does Josh decide that maybe Charlie’s tougher than she looks and that maybe—just maybe—she’s not bluffing. He waves to Marge, who’s been watching them from behind the counter.
“Could we get the check, please?”
“Sure thing,” Marge says, seeming surprised, probably because they barely touched their food. Charlie feels bad about that. All that work for nothing. Marge brings the check and places it on the table. To Charlie, she says, “I took your order off the bill. After what I did to your coat, it’s the least I can do.”
“You’ve done so much already,” Charlie says, meaning every word. Without Marge, she might not have realized what she needed to do. As far as she’s concerned, the waitress helped her realize this situation could be more blessing than curse.
“It was nothing,” Marge says, locking eyes with Charlie. “I help when I can.”
On the other side of the table, Josh reads the check and pulls out his wallet. Watching him count out bills, Charlie says, “Be sure to leave a big tip.”
Josh slaps twenty dollars onto the table. Satisfied that the tip is indeed big, Charlie says, “Shall we go?”
Josh doesn’t move. He’s preoccupied—looking past her, over her shoulder, out the front window. Charlie swivels in the booth until she sees what he’s looking at.
A cop car.
Local.
Pulling up to a stop in front of the diner.
Charlie can’t believe her eyes. Turns out she wasn’t bluffing, even though she certainly thought she was. But Robbie understood her message loud and clear and had indeed called the police, a fact that leaves her feeling proud and relieved and grateful.
Josh waves to Marge, who’s now behind the counter, dutifully cleaning the Formica even though no one’s probably sat there for hours.
“You’re working too hard, Marge,” he says, patting the space next to him. “Join us. Take a load off.”
“I don’t think the boss would like that very much,” she says.
“Is he here?”
“No.”
“Then you’re the boss.”
Charlie’s attention is split between the cop car outside and the waitress tittering behind the counter. Her head moves back and forth, like she’s at a tennis match, trying to take it all in.
The cop getting out of his patrol car.
Then Marge dropping her rag on the counter.
Then the cop ambling toward the front door, in no hurry at all.
Then Marge coming to their table, taking a seat next to Josh, and saying, “I suppose it won’t hurt to get off my feet for a second.”
By the time the cop enters the diner, Charlie’s hit with a third distraction.
The steak knife.
It’s no longer on the table.
Josh holds it again, gripping it the way a movie thug wields a switchblade, the tip vaguely aimed in Marge’s direction.
Charlie’s gaze hopscotches around the diner, going from the knife to Marge to the cop now standing at the counter. He’s tall and lanky and young. Face like a choirboy.
“Evening, Tom,” Marge says. “Didn’t think you’d be coming in tonight. I thought you hit the pizza place on Tuesdays.”
At first, Charlie wonders if the cop can see the steak knife in Josh’s hand and how in the past few seconds it seems to have moved a little closer in Marge’s direction. It’s not until she follows the cop’s gaze from the counter to their table that she realizes everything below Josh’s shoulders is blocked by the back of the booth.
“I’m here on business,” Officer Tom says, looking not at Marge but to Josh seated beside her. “We got a call about a possibly dangerous situation.”
“Here?” Marge says, incredulous. “Nothing happening here. Slow night as usual.”
“We’re just passing through, Officer,” Josh adds.
Officer Tom turns to Charlie. “Is that true, miss?”
“Me?”
Charlie turns her head in a way that lets her see both the cop and, in the edge of her vision, the knife in Josh’s hand, which seems to have gotten even closer to Marge. Then again, it might just be Charlie’s imagination. It’s steered her wrong before.
“Yes,” she says. “That’s the truth.”
Charlie eyes the holster on Officer Tom’s hip and the police-issued pistol strapped inside of it. She wonders how much experience a cop so young has had. If he’s ever had to face a man with a knife. Or defuse a hostage situation. Or shoot someone in the line of duty.
She gives the scene another all-encompassing glance, skipping from Officer Tom’s gun to Josh’s knife to Marge and then back to the cop, trying to gauge the distance between all of them.
She wonders if she should yell to Officer Tom that Josh is a killer.
She wonders if he’d be able to draw his weapon before Josh jammed the steak knife into Marge’s stomach.
She wonders if Officer Tom would then open fire on Josh.
Charlie pictures the immediate aftermath. Her cowering in the booth, her hands over her ears as Josh lies dead on the table and Marge bleeds on the floor and smoke still trickles from the barrel of Officer Tom’s gun.
She wonders if this, right now, is all just a movie in her mind. It doesn’t matter that Josh can see the cop and Marge can see him and that both spoke to him. All of that could also be part of the movie. A fever dream built out of hope and denial and wishful thinking.
It wouldn’t surprise her if it was. She’s experienced them enough to know the drill. They emerge when she’s stressed and scared and needs to be shielded from the harshness of reality, which describes her current mood in a nutshell.
Sitting in that booth, looking at a cop who may or may not exist, Charlie thirsts for a reality check the same way an alcoholic craves booze. An intense yearning that threatens to overwhelm her. But asking Officer Tom if he’s real isn’t a good idea. Charlie learned her lesson in the rest stop bathroom. She knows that saying what she’s thinking will only make her look crazy and, ultimately, untrustworthy.
Plus, there’s Marge to consider. Poor, innocent Marge, who has yet to realize that inches from her midriff is a knife sharp enough to take out her spleen. If Charlie says or does anything suspicious, Josh might hurt her. He might even kill her. Charlie can’t let that happen. Her conscience, already so burdened, wouldn’t be able to take it.
“So there’s no trouble here?” Officer Tom says.
Charlie forces a smile. “None at all.”
“You sure about that?” His gaze darts to Josh for a moment. “You feel safe in this man’s presence?”
“Of course she does,” Josh says.
“I was asking the lady,” Officer Tom says.
Across the table, Josh gives her an unnerving look. Cold smile, dark eyes, weighted stare. The knife in his hand continues to glisten.
“I feel absolutely safe,” Charlie says. “But thank you for your concern.”
Officer Tom studies her, his gaze surprisingly piercing as he decides whether to believe her.
“I’m sure it was a crank call,” Marge says, deciding for him. “Some bored kid trying to stir up trouble. Now if you stop bothering my customers, I’ll fix y
ou a coffee for the road. On the house.”
She stands.
Josh sets the steak knife back on the table.
Charlie lets slip a tiny huff of relief.
Marge joins Officer Tom at the counter and pours coffee into a to-go cup. “Thanks for checking in on us, Tom. But we’re fine. Isn’t that right, folks?” She turns to Charlie and Josh, giving them an exaggerated wink.
“We’re fine,” Josh says.
“Yes, fine,” Charlie says, a weak echo. She looks to Josh. “In fact, we were just leaving. Weren’t we?”
Josh, surprised, takes a beat before replying. “Yes. We were.”
He slides out of the booth. Charlie does the same and follows him to the door, knowing that she’s about to lose her last chance at rescue.
It’s a risk she needs to take.
A couple of years ago, in one of her elective psych classes, she’d read about kidnap victims who stayed with their captors long after they could have escaped. Stockholm syndrome. The mind warping over time until the abducted came to sympathize with those who took them. At the time, Charlie judged those young women. And they were all young women. Weak, vulnerable, victimized women who didn’t have the good sense to flee at the first opportunity.
“I’d never let that happen to me,” she told Maddy.
But now she understands.
Those women didn’t stay because they were weak.
They stayed because they were scared.
Because they feared what would happen to them if their escape plan failed. That it would be worse than their current situation. And it could always get worse.
In this case, “worse” means Josh doing something rash and hurting not just her but also Marge and Officer Tom in the process. And this has nothing to do with them.
This is between her and Josh.
Because of that, it’s best to get out of the diner and back in the car, where she’s the only one in danger. Sometimes you can’t simultaneously be smart, brave, and careful. Sometimes you need to choose one.
By following Josh to the door, Charlie’s choosing bravery.
When she reaches the dessert case, still lit and lazily spinning, Officer Tom calls out to her from his spot at the counter.
“You forgot your backpack, miss.”
“Oh, my goodness,” Charlie says, hoping it sounds authentic. “Thank you.”
She returns to the booth and grabs the backpack she’d left there on purpose. Then, after an over-the-shoulder glance to make sure Marge and Officer Tom aren’t looking, she snatches the steak knife from the table and stuffs it into a pocket of her coat.
MIDNIGHT
INT. GRAND AM—NIGHT
Charlie watches the diner recede in the Grand Am’s side mirror—a blur of chrome and neon that’s soon replaced by night sky, moonlight, and the ghost-gray trees crowding the edge of the road. They’ve reentered the middle of nowhere. Just the two of them.
They ride in silence, both of them facing forward, their eyes fixed on the sweep of headlights brightening the road ahead. Charlie has no idea if they’re heading toward the interstate or away from it. Not that it matters. She already assumes that wherever they’re going, it’s definitely not Ohio. And that there’ll be no coming back from this.
“How much do you know?” Josh says after they’ve traveled a mile without another car or building in sight.
“Everything,” Charlie says.
Josh nods, unsurprised. “I figured as much. Why’d you get back in the car?”
“Because I had to.”
It really is that simple. Charlie couldn’t risk letting Josh do something to Marge or Officer Tom. And she certainly couldn’t let him leave on his own, where he could do the same things he did to Maddy to someone else. So now she’s here, sitting next to a killer.
Call it fate.
Call it karma.
Whatever it is, she understands she needs to be the one to stop Josh. It’s her duty and hers alone.
That doesn’t make her any less frightened. She’s more scared now than she’s been the entire car ride. Because now she knows the stakes.
Stop Josh from getting away, or die trying.
The problem is that Charlie doesn’t know how, exactly, she should try to stop him. She sits with her hand thrust deep in her coat pocket, her fingers curling and uncurling around the handle of the steak knife. Part of her is tempted to attack Josh now and just get it over with. She doesn’t because the idea of stabbing someone—literally thrusting a knife into another human body—frightens her as much as thinking about what Josh might try to do to her.
“Most people wouldn’t have done that,” he says.
“I guess that makes me plucky.”
Josh chuckles at that. When he looks Charlie’s way, it’s with what she can only discern as admiration.
“Yes, you are certainly that.” He pauses, as if debating whether he should say what’s on his mind, ultimately deciding to just go for it. “I like you, Charlie. That’s what’s so fucked-up about all this. I like talking to you.”
“You like lying to me,” Charlie says. “There’s a big difference.”
“You got me there. I told you a lot of things that weren’t true. I won’t deny that.”
“Like your name being Josh.”
“That’s one of them, yes. My real name is Jake Collins. But you already knew that.”
Charlie nods. She did. Even at the height of Josh’s mind games, a small part of her knew she was right about that.
“Your real name. Your real driver’s license. That game of Twenty Questions. Why did you let me think I’d imagined all of that?”
“Because I needed to keep you in the car,” Josh says. “You looked like you were about to bolt, so I came up with something on the fly. I guess it worked.”
That it did. And Charlie feels stupid and angry with herself for believing it, even though she shouldn’t. It’s not stupid to want to believe the best in people. You shouldn’t get mad at yourself for thinking someone is good and not inherently evil.
“Is there anything you told me tonight that is true?” she says.
“That story about my mom. That’s all true. She left on Halloween just like I said. I haven’t told too many people about that.”
“Why did you tell me?”
“Because I like talking to you,” Josh says. “That wasn’t a lie, either.”
Inside her coat pocket, Charlie’s fingers continue to clench and unclench around the knife handle. Earlier, they did the same thing around the handle of the passenger-side door. Once eager for escape, now eager for a fight.
But Josh shows no sign of giving it to her. He simply drives, unhurried, ready to say something else he’s unsure about.
“My dad always blamed me for my mom leaving,” he says. “He said it was my fault. Right up until the day he died.”
“Another thing you lied about.”
“Not really,” Josh says. “He did have a stroke. It’s what killed him. And I would have dropped everything to take care of him, if I’d needed to. Even though he hated me and, well, I guess I hated him.”
“Because he blamed you for what your mom did?” Charlie says.
Josh shakes his head. “No. Because he convinced me to blame myself. It didn’t matter that my mother chose to leave all on her own. I thought it was because of me. I still do.”
Charlie knows that feeling all too well. So heavy and cumbersome and exhausting that she would do anything to rid herself of it.
Even die.
She knows because she almost did. Not tonight. Before that. Four days before.
“I almost killed myself,” she says.
The words surprise Josh. They surprise Charlie even more. She’s never admitted it before. Not even to herself.
“Why?” Josh says, shock sti
ll potent in his voice. Charlie notices something else there, too—a note of concern.
“Because I wanted the guilt to go away.”
“So that’s why you accepted a ride from a stranger.”
“Yes,” Charlie says. “That’s exactly why.”
Josh stays silent a moment, thinking. “How did it happen?”
“Accidental overdose,” Charlie says. “Sleeping pills.”
They were the little white pills, prescribed to offset the restlessness brought on by the little orange ones. Charlie hadn’t taken many, preferring to spend her nights indulging in revenge fantasies that bore zero resemblance to the real-life one she’s now experiencing.
But then came the night in which the human-shaped blank she normally fought was replaced by a mirror image of herself. It startled her so much that she put a movie into the VCR, crawled into bed, and downed a handful of little white pills.
She told herself that she just needed to sleep.
That it was just a coincidence the VHS tape she picked was Singin’ in the Rain, which she once told Maddy was the last movie she wanted to see before she died because it was as close to heaven as any film could get.
Charlie continued to lie to herself even after her body rebelled and she threw up the pills and then flushed the meager few that remained down the toilet. She let herself think every excuse in the book. She was too tired to know what she was doing. She wasn’t thinking straight. It was all an unfortunate accident.
That’s the real reason she needed to leave Olyphant immediately. Why she couldn’t wait until Thanksgiving or when Robbie was free. Why she went to the ride board and put up that flyer and jumped at the chance to share a ride with Josh.
Charlie was afraid that if nothing changed, she’d experience another unfortunate accident, this time with a different result.
But as the shame and sadness of that morning come back to her, she knows the truth.
None of it was accidental.
For a brief, soul-shaking moment, she would have preferred to die than spend one more minute weighed down by her guilt.
Now, though, she wants to live. More than anything.
“I’m glad that didn’t happen,” Josh says. “And I’m sorry we didn’t get to meet under different circumstances. I think I would have liked that.”
