Survive the Night by Riley Sager
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.
Not until Robbie gets to wherever it is the Cadillac is heading.
Up ahead, the broken taillight disappears below the horizon. Time to move. Robbie quickly starts the car, puts it in gear, and begins to follow.
