Survive the Night by Riley Sager
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.
Now he clambers through the woods to the right of the lodge. His plan is to find a back way into the building that will let him sneak up on the waitress. But this side of the building isn’t landscaped. It’s just a strip of rocky, tree-choked terrain sitting between the lodge itself and the rushing creek that leads to the nearby waterfall, which is deafening in its roar. Robbie can’t hear anything else, which is good in that it masks the sound of his approach but bad in that it does the same to anyone who might be trying to sneak up on him.
The darkness doesn’t help. The trees here are mostly evergreens with full branches that blot out the moonlight and crowd the ground with shadow. Wearing only sneakers, Robbie’s feet slip often on the snow that had fallen earlier. Never a good thing when you’re mere yards from water. One false step could send him tumbling into the creek, at which point it would be over. Sure, Robbie was the star of the swim team and now a coach, but not even an Olympic gold medalist would be able to overpower the pull of that waterfall.
As he trudges through the snow and the dark, always keeping an eye on the rapids to his right, Robbie knows it would have been easier to use the pay phone he saw outside the diner to call the police.
It also would have been foolish.
He’d already tried calling the police once, and that didn’t help. Then there’s the fact that, had he waited in the diner parking lot for the cops to arrive, he’d have no idea where the waitress had taken Charlie. He certainly wouldn’t have known this place existed if he hadn’t followed the Cadillac here.
Making his way to the rear of the lodge, Robbie knows deep down that he made the right decision. It’s better for him to be here, where he can actually do something, than back at the diner, waiting for cops who may or may not believe him.
But he also knows he needs to be cautious. Not just in his movements, but in his thinking. He’s a smart guy. He’s studying to be a math professor, for God’s sake. He can deduce his way out of this. Slow and steady. That always wins the race.
But then a noise erupts from deep inside the lodge.
A gunshot.
Robbie’s sure of it.
Not even the angry roar of the falls can disguise that sound.
Hearing it, he knows instantly that slow and steady are no longer going to cut it.
He needs to be fast.
And even then it might already be too late.
