Fifteen minutes later, Charlie shuffles out of the diner still woozy from the chloroform, which lingers far longer than a movie in her mind. Those she snaps out of almost instantly. But the chloroform takes it sweet time to go away. Right now, only half of her world has returned. Just what’s directly in front of her. Everything on her periphery is still out of focus. Nothing but shifting blurs.
But she’s aware of Marge directly behind her, holding the pistol at the small of her back. The end of the barrel knocks against Charlie’s spine as they move, awkwardly, toward Marge’s Cadillac.
When she came to in the storeroom, Charlie found herself in a standing position, propped against a shelf like a mummy on display. An apt description, seeing how she has again been wrapped with rope. This time it’s around her ankles, binding them closely together, hence the shuffle.
Her wrists are also tied, forcing her to hold her forearms awkwardly together in front of her. Marge clearly hadn’t searched her, otherwise she would have found Josh’s handcuffs still in the front pocket of Charlie’s jeans and used those instead. It would have been more comfortable for Charlie—even though she suspects making her comfortable isn’t something on Marge’s agenda.
In addition to the gun, Marge also sports a black parka thrown on over her uniform. Hanging from her shoulder is a bulky satchel. Whatever’s inside clangs together as they walk around the rear of the car. Charlie also hears a crunching sound beneath her feet. When she looks down, she spots bits of red glass scattered across the parking lot surface.
“Get in,” Marge says as she opens the rear door on the passenger side.
Charlie stares at the inside of the car and thinks about running. She knows it’s not possible. Not with her legs and arms tied like they are. Even if it were, Marge could easily put a bullet in her back.
Yet Charlie considers it all the same.
Just springing away from Marge, hoping the old woman is a lousy shot and somehow misses her as she hops out of the parking lot and into the road, not stopping until she reaches the highway. Surely someone would stop for her. A truck driver or a cop like Officer Tom or someone coming home from the late shift. Some Good Samaritan who’d slam on the brakes as soon as they spotted her hobbling along the road’s shoulder, panic writ large in her eyes.
Charlie pauses beside the car, doing the math, gauging to see how quickly she might be able to do it.
It doesn’t take her long to deduce that it’s impossible.
Even if it takes her only ten seconds to get out of the parking lot, she knows Marge can use those same ten precious ticks of time to jump into the car, start the engine, and make chase. Even if it took Marge minutes—one, five, ten—Charlie would still be shuffling down Dead River Road, with no guarantee of stumbling upon a kindly motorist. Especially at this hour.
“Get in,” Marge says again, this time nudging her with the gun barrel.
Charlie does, with much reluctance and even more struggle. With her arms tied, she’s forced to turn around, bend at the waist, and slide inside. She then twists her legs until she’s completely in the car, leaning awkwardly against the back seat.
Marge shuts the door, rounds the front of the car, and slides behind the wheel. Before turning the key, she hits the button that locks all the doors.
Charlie is trapped. Again.
They leave the parking lot quickly, tires kicking up gravel as Marge swerves onto the road, heading toward the highway.
Charlie looks out the window, spotting the same scenery the Grand Am passed when she and Josh traveled to the diner from the opposite direction. That was two hours ago, and she’s now in a different car with a different captor.
The only thing that remains the same is her fear.
INT. VOLVO—NIGHT
Robbie watches the dented Cadillac leave the parking lot. Since he doesn’t want the waitress to know he’s following her, his plan is to let her gain a little bit of distance before going after her.
It shouldn’t be hard to keep up. There aren’t any other cars on the road, for one thing. Then there’s the fact that he knocked out one of her taillights in the parking lot, a trick he learned thanks to Charlie. It was in a movie she’d made him watch. A black-and-white one from the forties that mostly bored him. But he remembered the taillight trick, and the broken one now winks at him as the Caddy glides down the road.
It wasn’t easy getting to the diner as fast as he did. After sprinting out of his apartment, Robbie got in his Volvo and hightailed it to I-80. On the interstate, he drove like a bat out of hell, not caring if he got pulled over. In fact, he hoped that he would, thinking he might get a police escort out of it.
He didn’t know what to expect once he got to the Skyline Grille. He’d hoped to find the place open and bustling and Charlie enjoying a milkshake, the whole thing a complete misunderstanding. Instead, the diner was closed and the only person around seemed to be that waitress, who clearly had been lying. In the span of a few sentences, she told him that Charlie had said goodbye when she left and that she hadn’t seen her depart.
So after breaking her taillight, he decided to drive a few hundred yards up the road and wait, the front of the diner still within view. He wanted to see the waitress leave. He thought he’d follow her, ask her a few more questions, get the police involved if necessary. Not that the police had been useful the first time he called them. Considering the way that dispatcher brushed him off, he doubted a cop ever stopped by the diner.
Which is why he sat in his car, the engine off but the keys still in the ignition, watching for the waitress. What Robbie didn’t expect was to see Charlie with her, being led out of the diner like a death row inmate heading to the gas chamber. It was such an awful sight that he almost jumped out of the car and ran to rescue her.
But then he saw the gun the waitress was pointing at her back and decided that running was the worst thing he could do at the moment. As Charlie got into the back of the car, Robbie tried to get a good look at her. Although it was hard to tell from such a distance and in the middle of the night, she didn’t appear to have been physically harmed.
He hopes it stays that way.
What he doesn’t understand—and hasn’t since the moment Charlie called him—is what the hell happened between the university and here. What little she told him on the phone suggested it had something to do with the guy Charlie had gotten a ride with.
Josh.
Robbie thinks that was the name she had mentioned.
But he saw no sign of any guy when he peeked into the diner as the waitress was lying to him. Nor did it look like there was anyone else inside the Cadillac as it sped out of the parking lot.
He can only assume that this Josh—whoever he is and wherever he might be now—is working with the waitress.
What they want with Charlie, however, is impossible to know.