Survive the Night by Riley Sager
INT. GRAND AM—NIGHT
Driving—honest-to-goodness driving—has taken a toll on him. He’s a sweaty, pain-wracked mess by the time he reaches the entrance to the Mountain Oasis Lodge. Sitting in the car next to the sign with the missing “O,” he wants nothing more than a warm bed, a cold beer, and a couple of Extra Strength Tylenol.
He resumes driving because he doesn’t like the situation. Marge told him all she wanted to do with Charlie was talk. Well, you don’t need to bring someone to an abandoned hotel in the Poconos to talk. They could have done that in the diner.
Even if it was easier to talk in another location, there’s no good reason that Charlie’s boyfriend felt the need to surreptitiously follow them there. The Volvo passed the sign a minute ago, going slow, its headlights out to keep Marge from noticing it.
Something else is going on here, and he feels the need to check it out.
He owes it to Charlie.
She wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for his lies and tricks and half-truths. None of which he’s proud of. It was all part of the job. At least, that’s what he told himself when trying to justify it. But the truth is that none of it was kosher. He knew that but ignored it.
Because the job was simple.
That’s what Marge told him when they spoke on the phone. She had called him out of the blue, saying she got his name from a friend whose brother is a cop in Scranton and that he came highly recommended.
“Never let a man get away from me yet,” he said.
“How about a woman?” Marge said.
“Plenty of them have gotten away from me,” he’d said, trying to make a joke about his woeful dating history.
Marge hadn’t found it funny.
“This one’s young. Twenty. She shouldn’t be a problem. You think you can help?”
“I usually only track down fugitives,” he told her. “At the request of law enforcement. What you’re talking about sounds a lot like kidnapping.”
“I prefer to think of it as chaperoning.”
He would have hung up if Marge hadn’t then given her offer. Twenty thousand dollars. Half of it wired to him beforehand with the rest paid upon delivery. God help him, he couldn’t say no to that. Business had been slow the whole summer and his savings account was all dried up. He was a month behind on his most recent car payment and would be short on rent at the end of the month if another job didn’t come his way.
“Give me the details,” he said.
Marge told him about the murder of her granddaughter at the hands of a serial killer, sparing none of the gory details. Stabbed. Tooth pulled. Body dumped in a field.
“I’m never going to see justice done,” she said. “Not while I’m alive. Unless I get to talk to one particular person.”
That person was her granddaughter’s best friend, who had seen the killer but couldn’t recall a single thing about him.
“You think she’s lying?” Josh said.
“I think she just needs someone to jog her memory,” Marge replied.
The trouble, according to her, was that the girl had made herself scarce. She hadn’t come to the funeral, and she no longer answered her phone.
“I need you to find her and bring her to me,” Marge said. “I want to see if she can remember anything that might help find the man who killed my Maddy.”
“Don’t you think that’s a job for the police?”
Marge sniffed. “I’m prepared to give you twenty grand to make that none of your business.”
He agreed, and the rest is history. The job turned out to be not so simple, and Charlie was a problem, albeit one he can’t keep himself from admiring. Now he’s driving over a no trespassing sign into a situation he’s really not physically or mentally prepared for.
Like Charlie’s boyfriend, he cuts the Grand Am’s headlights and lets the wan light of the moon guide him. Not the best idea. When taking the car across a bridge in front of a waterfall, a bolt of pain hits, causing him to swerve close to the wooden guardrail and almost crash into the ravine.
With the bridge behind him, he begins the slow, twisting drive up the hill to the lodge. His body sways with each hairpin turn, the stitches in his side straining. At the top of the hill, he parks the Grand Am just inside the circular drive leading to the front of the lodge and cuts the engine. Both the Cadillac and the Volvo belonging to Charlie’s boyfriend are also there, parked under the portico, no one inside them.
Before leaving the car, he grabs the steak knife Charlie had stabbed him with. It’s sat on the floor of the passenger side the entire drive, still wet with his blood. He wipes it clean with his sweatshirt.
Knife in hand, he gets out of the car, unsure of what will be waiting for him when he enters the lodge.
The only thing he knows is that it’s his fault Charlie’s in this predicament.
And now it’s his job to get her out.
