“Sure.”
Charlie scoops up the wallet and stuffs it in her coat pocket before rushing back to the car and opening the driver’s-side door. Josh then hands her a coffee cup so big she has to hold it with both hands as she slides into the passenger seat. Back inside the car, both of them cradle their steaming cups. Charlie takes a few small, scalding sips to show her appreciation.
“Thank you for the coffee,” she says after another demonstrative sip.
“It was no problem.”
“And I’m sorry about earlier.”
“It’s fine,” Josh says. “We’re both dealing with shit right now. Emotions are a little raw. Everything’s cool. Ready to go?”
Charlie gives the pay phone outside the store a brief, disinterested glance and takes another sip of coffee. “Yeah. Let’s roll.”
It’s not until Josh has started the car and is backing it out of the parking spot that Charlie notices the lump in her coat pocket. Josh’s wallet, all but forgotten. She holds it up and says, “What do you want me to do with this?”
“Just set it on the dashboard for now.”
Charlie does, the wallet sliding a few inches as Josh turns the Grand Am onto the main road. It slides again a few seconds later when they veer to the right, hitting the entrance ramp to the interstate. It keeps on sliding as Josh shifts into second gear—a sudden jolt of speed. The wallet drops off the dashboard and into Charlie’s lap, flapping open like bat wings taking flight.
The first thing she sees are credit cards tucked into individual slats that obscure everything but the tops of Visa and American Express logos. On the other side of the wallet, snug behind a plastic sleeve, is Josh’s driver’s license.
His license photo is enviably good, the shitty DMV camera somehow managing to highlight his best assets. The jawline. The smile. The great hair. The picture on Charlie’s license makes her look like a stoned zombie—a secondary reason she chose not to get it renewed.
Charlie’s about to close the wallet when she notices something strange.
Josh’s driver’s license is issued by the state of Pennsylvania. Not Ohio, which would make sense, considering that’s where he’s from. Even more logical would be a New Jersey license, seeing how Josh told her he’s worked at Olyphant for the past four years.
But Pennsylvania? That just seems wrong. Even if he lived there before moving to Ohio with his father, it would have expired like her own.
Charlie’s gaze darts to the date when the license was issued.
May 1991.
As current as you can get.
Then she sees the name printed at the bottom of the license and all the air leaves her lungs.
It says Jake.
Not Josh or Joshua or any other variation of the name.
Jake Collins.
Charlie snaps the wallet shut and tosses it back on the dashboard. A sinking feeling overwhelms her, as if the car is coming apart and at any second her heels will start scraping asphalt. Her gaze flicks to the road ahead, just in case such a scenario is actually happening and she needs to know what to expect. Ahead of them is a dark ribbon of highway stretching toward the horizon.
They’ve reached Interstate 80.
The road that will take them out of New Jersey, all the way across Pennsylvania, and into Ohio.
And Charlie has no idea who the man driving her there really is.
TEN P.M.
INT. GRAND AM—NIGHT
Charlie keeps her gaze fixed on the highway ahead. There are other cars on it, but not many. Certainly not as many as she thought there’d be. Taillights glow red in the distance—too far away to provide any comfort. The same goes for headlights behind them. A quick glance in the side mirror reveals only one car on their tail. Charlie estimates it’s a quarter mile away. Maybe more.
It only reinforces the feeling that she’s alone.
In a car.
With a stranger.
“It’s quiet in here.”
Charlie’s so distracted by the highway and the license and the wallet sitting on the dashboard that at first she doesn’t hear Josh.
Or Jake.
Or whoever he is.
It’s only when he says her name—a curt, curious “Charlie?”—that she snaps out of it and turns his way.
“What did you say?” she says, studying Josh, double-checking to make sure it really is his picture on that driver’s license, even though there’s no reason he’d be carrying another man’s license. No good reason, that is. No legal one.
“I said it’s quiet in here.” Josh flashes his killer smile, inadvertently confirming for Charlie that, yes, he is the man pictured on that license. Few people have a smile like that. “Were you watching a movie?”
Charlie doesn’t know what to do. Once again, her film knowledge—a guidepost for most of her mundane actions—has failed her when she needs it most. She thinks about Shadow of a Doubt and that other Charlie, her namesake. What would she do in this situation?
She wouldn’t be stupid, that’s for sure.
She’d be smart. She’d be plucky.
That was good old Movie Charlie.
And being plucky means being brave and facing the situation head on. It doesn’t mean throwing open the passenger-side door and flinging herself out of the car, injuries be damned, which is Real Charlie’s first instinct. Her fingers have wrapped around the door handle, even though she doesn’t remember moving them there. She forces her hand into her lap.
Another thing Movie Charlie wouldn’t do is let Josh know she knows he might be lying to her, which goes against common sense. Most people, if stuck in this scenario, would just flat-out ask if his name is really Jake Collins.
That’s what Maddy would have done.
But Maddy’s dead now, maybe because she did exactly that. Called some guy out. Got him angry. Made him want to hurt her.
And not just any guy.
The Campus Killer.
So Charlie stays silent, even though the question is perched on the tip of her tongue, ready to springboard into the air. She starts to wash it away with a splash of coffee but decides against it before taking a sip. If Josh isn’t who he says he is, she’s certainly not going to drink more from the coffee cup he just handed her. Never accept a drink from someone suspicious. That’s Common Sense for Women 101.
“I’m just thinking,” she says.
It’s the truth. She is thinking. About the license in Josh’s wallet. About what it means. About why she hopes there’s a simple, rational, non-scary reason behind it.