Page 88 of Survive the Night

“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 Charliewasa problem, albeit one he can’t keep himself from admiring. Now he’s driving over ano trespassingsign 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 theentire 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.

INT. LODGE LOBBY—NIGHT

Charlie stares at Marge, realization bubbling up from the addled depths of her brain. No wonder she thought there was something familiar about the waitress when she first came to their table. Charlie had seen her before tonight. Not in person, but in a photograph. A young looker posing poolside with Bob Hope.

“You’re Mee-Maw,” she says.

“We never had the pleasure of meeting,” Marge says. “But I heard all about you, Charlie. My Maddy talked a lot about you. She said you were a smart cookie. I warned her about that. I told her, ‘Watch out for the smart ones, baby doll. They know how to hurt you.’ And I was right.”

But Charlie wasn’t smart. Not when it came to Maddy. She was devoted. Except for that one time.

And that was all it took.

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