by Riley Sager
“Do all humans have it?” she asks, silently pleading that Josh says yes and she can stop tallying all the pornographic possibilities he might be thinking of.
“We do,” Josh says, more straightforward this time, as if he’s realized he’s crossed some invisible line he didn’t intend to breach. Not that it makes Charlie feel any better. Now that the idea of Josh being a rapist is in her head, she can’t shake it.
Her fingers have never left the door handle. She flexes them against it. A test. Seeing how long it might take to pull the handle and fling the door open, if it should come to that.
She desperately hopes it doesn’t come to that.
“Is this body part located above the waist?”
“As a matter of fact, it is,” Josh says.
“Is it above the neck?”
“Yes.”
“Is it something we’re born with?”
Josh appears thoughtful, taking a moment to squint at the thinning fog outside the windshield. Charlie does the same, relieved to see not only the lightening of the gray outside but a set of taillights glowing not too far in front of them. She checks the side mirror, and her relief grows. There’s a car behind them now, headlights cutting through the dissipating gloom. Another pair of headlights joins it. Then another.
Charlie’s hit with a faint shimmer of hope. Maybe one of the cars will try to pass them. Maybe she can flag down the driver.
“It’s funny you should ask that,” Josh says, still gazing out the windshield. “Because we’re not.”
In an instant, all of Charlie’s hopefulness disappears. Because she knows the object Josh is thinking of—a realization that makes it feel as if all the blood has drained from her body. Ice water pours in to replace it, leaving Charlie motionless and numb.
“You know the answer, don’t you?” Josh says.
Charlie nods, too unnerved to speak.
“Then say it, smarty-pants.”
Charlie swallows and forces herself to speak, willing the words onto her tongue and into the stifling air of the car.
“Is it a tooth?”
“It is.” Josh smiles, proud of himself. “Very good. You solved it in sixteen questions.”
“What made you pick that object?”
“I don’t know. It just came to me.” A stricken look crosses Josh’s face. “Oh, shit. I’m so sorry, Charlie. I wasn’t thinking. No wonder you look like you’ve just seen a ghost. It’s because of your friend. That guy pulled out one of her teeth after killing her, didn’t he?”
Charlie shakes her head, wanting him to stop talking. Needing him to stop. The urge to shut him up is so great that she’d lunge into the driver’s seat and clamp a hand over his mouth if there was a way to do it without them running off the road. Because the more he talks, the worse the situation becomes.
Still, she has another question. One she must ask. She needs to hear Josh’s answer. She wants to believe what he says, even though every ice-cold nerve in her body tells her she won’t.
“How did you know about the tooth?”
“I read about it in the newspaper.”
“It wasn’t in the papers,” Charlie says.
“I’m positive I read it there,” Josh says.
He’s lying. The police wouldn’t have made her swear not to tell anyone about Maddy’s missing tooth if they planned on giving that information to the press, and Charlie assumes she would have heard about it if they had.
She runs through all the ways Josh could know about the missing tooth, the least scary being that he’s somehow related to Maddy and heard it from her mother. But that makes no sense. If Josh was a family member, it’s likely Charlie would have known about him when Maddy was alive. Even if Maddy hadn’t mentioned him—and she loved to talk about her family—there’s no reason why Josh wouldn’t have brought up the connection immediately.
Next, Charlie considers the idea that Josh could be a cop. Or used to be one. Again, it’s unlikely. Any cop familiar with Maddy’s case would also know Charlie had been her roommate.
That leaves one last possible reason Josh knows about the tooth.
One so scary it makes Charlie simultaneously want to scream, throw up, and leap from the moving car.
Josh knows about Maddy’s missing tooth because he’s the one who took it from her.
Which would make him worse than anything Charlie had previously thought of.
It would make him the Campus Killer.
INT. GRAND AM—NIGHT
Charlie remains motionless in the passenger seat, thinking the unthinkable.
She might be in a car with the man who killed Maddy.
A man who might also plan on killing her.
A man who had flat-out warned her such a scenario could happen.
Charlie stares out the windshield, her gaze fixed on the yellow beams of the headlights chasing away the last bits of fog as she recalls what Josh had told her earlier.
He’s still out there.
He might know who you are.
He might try to come for you next.
Charlie clings to the second word of that thought.
Might.
She has no proof Josh is the Campus Killer. Only a vague suspicion based on something he said.
No.
More than something.
Several things. All of them adding up to a suspicion that’s more than vague. Charlie already knows Josh has lied to her—and is continuing to do so. The amount of lies he’s told since leaving Olyphant probably outnumbers truth ten to one.
But that doesn’t mean he’s a killer.
It especially doesn’t mean he’s the man who killed Maddy.
This isn’t a movie. This isn’t Shadow of a Doubt. Just because she’s trying to think like Movie Charlie doesn’t mean they share the same situation. Movies are fake, after all. Something she intrinsically knows but always forgets when the lights dim and the projector whirs and Technicolor fills the screen. That’s why Charlie loves them so much. They’re a bit of magic brightening a reality that’s cold and gray and dull.
Mundane.
That’s the best way to describe daily existence, with its endless parade of drudgeries and disappointments. In real life, people don’t break into song. They don’t battle space monsters. And they certainly don’t unwittingly get into cars with serial killers.
“You’re pretty quiet over there, Charlie,” Josh says.
Charlie struggles to summon a response. She doesn’t want Josh to know she’s suspicious or afraid. If movies have taught her anything, it’s that predators can sense fear.
“I guess I am.”
“You’re not mad at me, are you? For the tooth thing? You know I didn’t mean anything by it. It wasn’t intentional.”
“I know.”
“So we’re good?” Josh says.
“We’re good,” Charlie says, even as she mentally lists all the things that are definitely not good about Josh, starting with the fact that Josh isn’t his real name. And how he lied about working at Olyphant. And how he knew about the Campus Killer yanking out Maddy’s tooth after stabbing her to death.
Charlie sneaks a glance at Josh, searching for any similarities between him and the dark figure she saw in the alley the night Maddy died. Anything she comes up with is vague at best. Maybe they’re the same height. Maybe they share a broadness of the shoulders. But it’s all conjecture. The truth is that there’s no way for Charlie to know if they’re one and the same.
The inside of the car has become unbearably hot, even as Charlie herself remains freezing cold. It’s a clash of extreme temperatures that makes her think she’s going to melt away any moment now. Her skin sliding off. Her organs turning to gel. A disappearing. The only things left behind a steaming pile of bones.
And teeth, of course.
Charlie suspects there’s a reason Josh’s game of Twenty Questions led to that. It’s possible he was trying to tell her who he is and what he’s done. A roundabout confession. Or perhaps a warning.
It’s also possible he meant nothing by it, although Charlie has her doubts. The odds of him settling on a tooth as the answer are as slim as her accepting a ride from the man who killed Maddy.
Yet those are the only two options. Either Josh is a harmless liar who so far has managed to say and do all the wrong things, or he’s the man who brutally murdered her best friend and two other women. Charlie can think of no other scenario between those unlikely poles.
Faced with such uncertainty, she understands one thing and one thing only.
She needs to get out of this car.
Immediately.
It doesn’t matter if Josh poses no real threat. The alternative—that he does—is too risky to consider. It’s best to err on the side of caution. To be smart, to be brave, to be careful.
Staying in this car with Josh isn’t any of those things.
They’ve descended into the Delaware Valley, a few miles from the Pennsylvania border. The fog is completely gone now, revealing a night sky pulsing with starlight, a river to their left, and three lanes of blacktop stretching toward the horizon in front of them.
Charlie remains focused on the highway ahead, unable to bring herself to look at Josh for even a second. Yet she remains hyper-aware of his presence, mere inches away. The sheer bulk of him. The way his presence fills the car. The steady rhythm of his breath. There’s no way to ignore him.
There’s no way to escape him, either, short of throwing herself out of the car, an idea Charlie keeps returning to again and again. Her right hand continues to grip the door handle, her fingers tight around it, ready to spring into action.
Charlie would do it, too, if she was certain such a leap wouldn’t kill her. But it definitely could. She guesses she has a fifty percent chance of survival. Maybe less, considering there are now more cars on the road. Charlie counts four behind them. Four vehicles that might not be able to veer out of the way if she does jump, their tires rumbling over her body like it was a speed bump.
It would be different if they were in the right lane, where Charlie could attempt to fling herself onto the road’s shoulder, where grass would slightly soften her landing. But Josh has steered the Grand Am into the center lane, his driving as even as his breathing. Keeping the car tightly inside the lane lines. Going an acceptable three miles over the speed limit. Doing nothing to draw the attention of other motorists.
One of the cars behind them changes lanes, moving into the right one. Its shift in position leaves a speck of brightness in the side mirror outside Charlie’s window.
Headlights.
Getting larger.
Charlie twists in her seat to get a better look at the car coming up on the right. The driver clearly intends to pass them eventually, even though it’s technically only legal to pass on the left. As the car keeps coming, Charlie spots something on top of its roof—a light bar stretching from one side of the car to the other. She then sees the words that have been applied to the vehicle’s body, right over the front tire.
STATE TROOPER
Charlie’s heart gallops. A state trooper is pulling up beside them. Almost as if she willed him into existence. Now all she needs to do is get the trooper’s attention without Josh seeing.
Charlie presses her forehead against the window, the glass cool against her skin.
“You okay, Charlie?” Josh says.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“Just a little carsick.”
A warm breath rides the sibilant second half of the word. It hits the window, creating a tiny circle of fog on the glass. Charlie stares at it, not blinking until it fades.
She speaks again.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to puke or anything. It always passes.”
The window fogs again, this time in a slightly larger patch. Charlie counts off the seconds until it disappears.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
Eight.
Nine.
Josh notices the trooper, too, because he taps the brakes a moment, bringing them below the speed limit.
“You sure?” he says.
“I’m sure.”
A fresh bloom of fog spreads onto the window. Charlie counts again.
Another nine seconds.
Not a lot of time. But possibly enough.
She runs a finger along the glass, moving it in a pattern, tracing letters that don’t exist.
Yet.
Charlie turns toward Josh, making sure his eyes are still on the road. Then it’s back to the window, her forehead meeting glass, looking backward to track the state trooper’s progress. When the police car’s front bumper runs parallel to the Grand Am’s back one, she gets to work.
“I’m feeling better already,” she says. “Cooling my forehead helps.”
The twin huffs from those last two words create a circle of fog twice the size of the previous ones. The countdown begins.
Nine.
Charlie does another quick check of Josh.
Eight.
She returns to the window.
Seven.
She twists her body, blocking Josh’s view.
Six.
She presses the tip of her index finger to the glass and begins to write.
Five.
The first letter is three quick lines in the fog.
Four.
Another letter, this time one long line followed by three short bursts.
Three.
And another—two quick slashes.
Two.
The final letter. A slash and a swoop.
One.
The fog vanishes, taking with it the word she’d managed to scrawl.
HELP
“You ever get that way?” she asks Josh. “Carsick?”
The circle of fog reappears on the window, as does the word “HELP,” written backward so it can be read clearly by the trooper when he drives past them.
As the police car gains on them, Josh gives the brakes another brief tap. The reduction in speed brings the two vehicles in line. They travel side by side a moment, Charlie’s hopeful heart thumping even harder when she spies the trooper behind the wheel. He looks tough. A bulldog with a buzz cut. And all Charlie needs to get his attention is to breathe.
If that doesn’t work, she’ll scream.
So loud he’ll be able to hear her through two panes of glass.
Then the trooper will switch on those beautiful red and white lights and Josh will have no choice but to pull over and Charlie will run. She doesn’t care if Josh turns out to be harmless and she looks stupid. At that moment, all she wants is to be out of this car, free from Josh and all the doubt and uncertainty he carries with him.
Charlie inhales, gathering her breath, hoping for a cloud of fog on the glass that will last ten seconds, maybe longer.
She exhales.
The window fogs, obscuring the image of the trooper in the next car over as the word she drew starts to form.
HELP
Josh hits the brakes again. Harder this time. Enough for Charlie to feel momentum tug her against the seat belt as she watches the trooper pull ahead of them. A moment later, the state police car has passed them completely. Charlie’s heart, so wild seconds earlier, all but stops as the trooper keeps moving, his patrol car getting smaller with each passing second.
She’s missed her chance.
All because Josh tapped the brakes.
Did he do that on purpose?
>
More doubt.
Enough to heighten Charlie’s desire to get out of the car by any means possible.
Her hand drops back to the door handle and gives it a squeeze. God help her, she’s going to have to jump.
Right now.
The good news is that the highway has narrowed to two lanes—likely the reason the state trooper passed them on the right. He was running out of road. And maybe Josh knew that, hence the tapping of the brakes that foiled her plan.
Charlie sneaks a glance at the speedometer.
Now that the trooper is a Matchbox car on the horizon, Josh has increased his speed to sixty miles an hour.
Fast.
Too fast for the road ahead, which runs next to the Delaware River, hugging the mountainside in a series of tight turns.
And definitely too fast for her to leap from the car like she now knows she must do. Even if she could survive the jump unscathed—which she can’t; not at this speed—there’s now nowhere to go. On Josh’s side of the highway is more highway, a low stone wall, then river. Charlie’s side is nothing but mountain, rising high into the night sky, its trees and crags barely visible.
Charlie had always liked this stretch of road, for both its wild beauty and its incongruity. With its peaks and pines and wide expanse of curving river, it reminded her of something more likely to be found out west and not on the border between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. When passing through with Nana Norma or Robbie behind the wheel, she’d roll down the window, take in the fresh air, revel in the scenery she found beautiful in any season.
But that was always in daylight. She’s never traveled through this canyon at night until now. It changes things, the darkness. It makes the familiar foreign. The innocent suspicious.
She wonders if it’s the same with Josh, if it’s merely the presence of night that’s making her suspicious of everything he does and says and implies. Maybe all of this would feel different and less threatening in the light of day.
Charlie doesn’t think so.
Josh’s actions would be shady no matter the time.
He doesn’t acknowledge it when Charlie makes another check of the speedometer and sees they haven’t slowed. He hasn’t shown any interest in her at all since the state trooper appeared behind them. Yet he’s watching her all the same. Charlie can feel it. A prickle of heat coming from the driver’s side as he navigates another curve. As they speed through the bend, the pine air freshener swings from the rearview mirror like a corpse on the gallows.