“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 you 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.