Survive the Night by Riley Sager
INT. GRAND AM—NIGHT
He drives toward the diner, even though what he’s doing doesn’t really qualify as driving at all. It’s merely rolling and steering at the same time. And he’s doing a shit job of it. Moving down Dead River Road at a snail’s pace, he can barely manage to keep the Grand Am inside the lane.
The stab wound is to blame. Each time he presses a pedal or shifts gears, pain flares along his side, making it feel like everything from shoulder to knee is on fire.
At least the bleeding’s stopped, thanks to his stitch job, the gauze pad, and an abundance of medical tape. Crisscrossing the gauze multiple times, the tape has seared to his skin, pulling it whenever he moves and creating another, more pinching layer of pain.
It’s still better than what he felt while sewing himself back up. He’s been stitched up plenty of times. That’s nothing new. And back when he was still on active duty and serving in Beirut, circumstances forced him to give stitches to others. But he’s never had to do both at the same time before.
It wasn’t pretty.
When you’re about to hurt yourself, your nerves send a signal to the brain that tells you to stop doing whatever it is that’s causing the pain.
Simple.
Not so simple is forcing yourself to do it anyway, no matter what your brain tells you, knowing you’re about to cause yourself a world of hurt. He paused as the needle went in and paused as it went out, repeating the process five times before the cut in his side was fully closed.
Now he’s driving.
Or trying to.
Heading to the Skyline Grille instead of a hospital, which is where he really should be going. But he doesn’t like hospitals. He’s not a fan of all the questions they ask in the ER. And the first one he’ll get when they take one look at his amateurishly stitched, overly taped wound is “Who stabbed you?”
Because of that, he’d rather skip the hospital for now.
There may come a time tomorrow when he can’t avoid it. If that moment comes, he’ll be sure to make up some excuse as to how he took a steak knife to the gut. He has no plans to mention Charlie. That wouldn’t be wise.
So it’s off to the diner, drifting out of the lane with each line of pain that burns up his side. He needs to get to the diner because that’s where Marge is. It’s also likely Charlie’s location, considering how there’s really nowhere else to go around these parts.
Just the Skyline Grille.
The place where Charlie was supposed to have stayed.
That was the plan, at least. Find her, get her into the car by any means possible, and take her to the diner. Done, done, and done.
Once at the diner, when Marge came to take their order, he gave the signal that Charlie, no stranger to code words herself, didn’t notice.
What’s your blue-plate special?
Translation: This is the girl.
The rest depended on Marge’s response. If she had told him, “We don’t do that here. What’s printed on the menu is what we got,” it meant that everything was called off. Instead, she said, “Salisbury steak.” Which meant that everything was still a go and that he should leave Charlie at the diner.
What definitely wasn’t part of the plan was Marge purposefully spilling tea on Charlie so the two of them could have a moment alone. He knows why she did it. She didn’t think he was doing a good enough job and that Charlie might act in unpredictable ways because of it.
Turns out she was right.
He certainly didn’t predict Charlie playing that damn song on the jukebox, revealing she knew if not everything, then at least enough. Nor could he have foreseen that she’d insist on getting back into the car with him. He only agreed to it because he knew he could easily bring her back in a few minutes. Besides, it seemed better than just taking off while she was still in the bathroom and never seeing her again. He thought it might be nice to drive a little and chat a bit more. A proper goodbye before he slapped on the cuffs.
Then Charlie stabbed him and now he’s got five homemade stitches in his side, tape tugging at his skin, and a sweatshirt crunchy with dried blood.
So much for a proper goodbye.
When the diner comes into view a half-mile down the road, he sees that the place is dark and that the parking lot is empty. Yet there’s still an unusual amount of traffic for this road at this hour. About halfway between the Grand Am and the diner is a Volvo sitting on the road’s shoulder, its headlights off and the engine still. Far in the distance, a car with a broken taillight travels in the direction of the on-ramp to the interstate.
He pounds the brakes and cuts the Grand Am’s own lights, curious to see what happens next.
When the car with the broken taillight fades from view, the Volvo comes to life and edges onto the road. As it drives off in the same direction as the other car, he spots an Olyphant University sticker on the rear bumper.
The boyfriend, he assumes.
Here to rescue Charlie.
Another assumption he makes is that this boyfriend of hers didn’t come all this way just to tail some random car. That means the one with the broken taillight is Marge, with Charlie in tow.
He allows himself a pain-tinged smile.
Maybe he’ll get his goodbye after all.
He waits until the Volvo is a good distance away before flicking on the Grand Am’s headlights again. Then he resumes driving. For real this time, even though his rolling-and-steering approach hurt far less. He grits his teeth, grips the steering wheel, and endures the pain.
There’s no other choice. He knows that he needs to keep up with the Volvo and that this night, already a clusterfuck to begin with, just got a lot more complicated.
