How can I surprise my readers with a surprise betrayal?
In my action/adventure story, the two main protagonists are rescuing the injured victim and escaping the dungeon. (Or jail cell. Or whatever.) Once the protagonists have rescued the victim, I want to surprise the readers with a betrayal--the victim was working for the bad guys all along, and leaves the protagonists trapped. (Think Elsa Schneider betraying Indy in The Last Crusade.)
The only problem is I'm pretty sure readers would see it coming from a mile away. How can I set it up so that the readers are surprised, and only in retrospect does it look obvious? Do I have to distract the readers? Can I make them come to the conclusion that the character is a good guy?
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I think you have to approach this from a slightly meta point of view.
We're all familiar with Chekhov's gun - that 'every element in a narrative is to be irreplacable'. So assuming you're following this principle, and doing it well, by the time your readers reach the stage where the victim is being rescued from the dungeon they're quite likely to be thinking 'so, what makes this character irreplacable?'
If the character does nothing that couldn't be cut prior to the betrayal, then the reader is not going to be surprised. If the character does very little that couldn't be cut prior to the betrayal, then the reader is going to be wondering why this dead weight is being dragged around and still not be very surprised. You need to think of a reason why the character is being rescued that is both plausible to the in-universe protagonists, to maintain suspension of disbelief, but is also plausible to the reader based on the literary conventions of whatever genre you're writing in, to lead said reader down a blind alley. To that end I'd suggest looking few a few books from authors you want to emulate and seeing how they introduce supporting characters, and what kind of roles they have them fill. Then take this and subvert it - the character fills this role, the reader thinks they know what's going on, and then pow, betrayal!
As an aside, if you do this really well, then I can imagine it may end up working against you. A truely surprising betrayal will by definition mess with readers' expectations. And if everything else so far has been lampshaded, that can be jarring. Depending on how the rest of the story is playing out and what kind of conventions you're following there can be nothing more satifying than introducing a character who is trusted by the protagonists, but the reader can tell is shady. The tension then builds from how and when the betrayal happens - the reader get a 'I knew it!' payoff, and you can still surprise them by revealing the betrayer's motives are not quite what they expected.
Give the victim a reason to betray the good guys.
Make the victim a rounded character. Give him or her motivation, backstory, and personality. The reader may not see all the backstory you've created, but you as the author should know what it is, and write the person accordingly.
Maybe the victim is being blackmailed by the bad guy and is genuinely sorry to trap the good guys. Maybe the victim is the bad guy's secret sibling/spouse/servant/child. Maybe the victim owes the bad guy something, and trapping the good guys is just business, nothing personal — it's a favor to the bad guy.
Whatever the victim's reason, remember: Each of us is the hero of our own story. Consider from the victim's perspective why s/he would do such a thing, and why s/he would want to hide his/her motivations from the good guys. That's how you can set up the surprise.
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