Page 74 of Survive the Night

“Pick them up and put them on,” Josh says.

Charlie shakes her head, and a tear flings from her eyes. A surprise. She didn’t know she’d started crying.

“You need to be smart now,” Josh says, his tone a warning. “Pick them up.”

“I—” Charlie’s voice cracks, cut short by fear and anger and sadness. “I don’t want to.”

“Please don’t make me get rough,” Josh says. “You don’t wantthat.Idon’t want that. So I’m going to count to three. And when I’m done, those cuffs need to be around your wrists.”

He pauses.

Then he starts to count.

“One.”

Still shaking her head and still crying, Charlie reaches for the handcuffs at her feet.

“Two.”

She scrunches down, one hand scooping up the handcuffs, the other burrowing back into her coat pocket.

“Three.”

Charlie sits up, the cuffs cold in her left hand, the knife handle hot in her right.

She doesn’t move.

“Damn it, Charlie. Just use the fucking cuffs.”

Josh lunges over the center console, moving in an instant from driver’s side to passenger side.

Charlie pulls the knife from her coat.

She closes her eyes.

Then, with a scream so loud it shakes the car windows, she thrusts the knife forward and plunges it into Josh’s stomach.

She thought it would go in easier than it does. In the movies, knives slide in smoothly, like a blade through butter. The truth is that it takes force. Teeth-gritting, grunting force to push it through Josh’s sweatshirt, then his flesh, then deeper still, into places Charlie doesn’t want to think about. She stops only when she feels blood on her hands and hears Josh moan her name.

“Charlie.”

INT. GRAND AM—NIGHT

Charlie opens her eyes.

She turns her head.

Slowly.

So slowly.

Her gaze inches to the left, stopping when the tree-shaped air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror hits the edge of her vision.

Charlie sucks in a breath, taking in the too-strong scent of pine.

“Whoa. You there, Charlie?” a voice next to her says.

Her head resumes turning. Fast now. A neck-snapping swivel that brings her face-to-face with Josh. He sits behind the wheel, looking both amused and expectant. Like he’s been waiting a long time for this moment, and now that it’s here, it pleases him.

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