Page 93 of Survive the Night

Josh puts his hands on her shoulders, almost as if checking for signs of damage. “Are you okay? Did she hurt you?”

Not an easy question to answer. The throbbing pain inside her mouth where the pliers had scraped and clawed tells her that yes, Marge hurt her. But not as much as she could have. Not yet. To save time—and to spare her aching mouth—Charlie just shakes her head.

“Good,” Josh says.

He pulls something out of his pocket.

The knife.

The same one Charlie had plunged into his side.

Unlike her, Josh puts it to better use by cutting through the rope wound around her wrists. He does it carefully, sawing through the rope in a way that won’t cut her. Charlie can’t believe what she’s seeing.

Josh is saving her.

Using the very knife she tried to kill him with.

“I’m getting you out of here,” he says as the rope binding Charlie’s wrists finally falls away.

Josh moves behind her, trying to undo the rope wound around her torso and the chair.

“I’m sorry,” Charlie says, relieved to find that the pain in her mouth lessens when she speaks. “I’m sorry for what I did to you.”

“I’m the one who’s sorry. I never should have let you get into my car. She told me she just wanted to talk to you. I didn’t know she was going to do something like this.”

“And I didn’t know you were a—”

“Bounty hunter?” Josh says. “I figured that.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I couldn’t. You’re not a fugitive. And this wasn’t a law enforcement gig. You’re just a college student some old lady hired me to bring to a diner in the middle of fucking nowhere. A private job I took because I needed the money. I could lose my license if anyone found out.”

“So everything you said in the car—”

“Was all just a way to get you here as easily as possible,” Josh says. “I was never planning to hurt you, Charlie. Using force would have been a last resort. So I had to get creative. But messing with your head like that was a shitty thing to do, and I’m sorry.”

Charlie would have been less forgiving under normal circumstances. But it’s hard to stay mad when the rope around her arms drops away from the chair and into her lap. Because her hands are free, Josh lets her try to unloop it from around her as he comes around front again and starts sawing at the ties around her ankles.

He’s almost through one strand when Charlie notices the glow of a lantern over his shoulder.

Marge.

She stands on the other side of the canvas drop cloth, kerosene lantern in one hand, pistol in the other.

Seeing Josh there, about to set Charlie loose and ruin her plan, breaks something inside the woman’s grief-rattled psyche. Charlie sees it happening. An internal snapping that jerks her whole body.

And before it passes, Marge raises the gun, aims, and fires.

EXT. LODGE—NIGHT

Robbie almost used the front doors. After quietly steering his Volvo to a stop behind the dented Cadillac, he intended to just storm into the building, tackle that old waitress if necessary, and retrieve Charlie.

But then he thought about the gun.

He knows the waitress has one. He saw it poking against Charlie’s back outside the diner.

And he’s watched enough movies with Charlie to know things usually don’t end well for characters who simply burst through the front door. Especially if the bad guy has a gun. And since the only weapon Robbie has is the same tire iron he’d used to knock out the Caddy’s taillight, he opted for an alternative route.

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