The taillights of the blue Ford Explorer had long since dissolved into the grey slurry of traffic on Main Street, but the ghost of the vehicle remained burned into Maya’s retinas.
She sat in the idling Volvo, gripping the steering wheel until her knuckles ached. Beside her, Sarah was hyperventilating, short, sharp gasps that fogged the passenger window.
“We let him go,” Sarah wheezed. “He waved at us, Maya. He pointed at his watch. And we just sat here.”
“We didn’t have a choice,” Maya said, though the excuse tasted like ash in her mouth. “If we had blocked him in, he could have rammed us. Or worse.”
“He uploaded it,” Sarah said, glancing at her phone which lay face-down on the center console like an unexploded ordinance. “Chloe said the transfer finished. The episode is out there.”
Maya looked toward the library. The limestone building glowed softly in the rainy afternoon, a beacon of civic order in a world that felt increasingly chaotic. Inside that building sat Elias Thorne.
Chloe’s voice crackled over the car’s Bluetooth speakers, sounding tinny and frustrated. “I lost the SUV’s signal. He killed the connection the second the file sent. It was a burner MAC address. I can’t track it.”
“What about Elias?” Maya asked.
“Still logged in,” Chloe reported. “Still losing money. He just went all-in on a pair of twos. The guy plays poker like he manages the HOA—aggressively and with zero intuition.”
“I need to see it,” Maya said suddenly.
“See what?” Sarah asked. “Maya, the killer was in the car. Elias is… he’s just a distraction.”
“I need to know for sure,” Maya insisted. She unbuckled her seatbelt. “Chloe sees data packets. I need to see his face. I need to know that Elias Thorne isn’t sitting in there laughing at us while his partner drives away.”
“You’re going to walk up to the window?” Sarah hissed. “You’re the one who said he knows what we look like.”
“The guy in the SUV knows,” Maya said, opening her door. The cold rain hit her face instantly, a slap of reality. “Elias thinks he’s anonymous. Come on.”
“I’m staying here,” Sarah said, locking her door.
“Suit yourself.”
Maya stepped out into the puddle that had formed in the depression of the asphalt. The water soaked through her sneakers, chilling her toes. She slammed the door and pulled her hood up.
She moved through the parking lot, weaving between the cars. The library was designed with transparency in mind—walls of glass to symbolize the free exchange of ideas. Today, those walls were an interrogation room mirror.
She approached the south side of the building, where the study carrels lined the perimeter. The landscaping was dense here—holly bushes and ornamental grasses—providing cover.
Maya crouched behind a dripping holly bush, the prickly leaves snagging on her jacket. She peered through the glass.
He was there.
Elias Thorne sat at a round table in the corner, isolated from the high school students and the wandering retirees. He looked smaller than he did when he was patrolling Bittersweet Court with his ruler. His shoulders were hunched, his posture collapsing inward.
The bulky black laptop sat open in front of him. He wore over-ear headphones—the noise-canceling kind—that seemed too large for his narrow head.
Maya squinted, trying to cut through the glare of the interior lights reflecting on the wet glass.
On the screen, there was no audio editing software. There were no waveforms. No ominous scripts.
There was a green digital felt table. Animated cards slid across the screen. A chat box in the corner scrolled with text.
Maya watched as Elias moved his mouse. His hand was shaking slightly—not with the manic energy of a killer uploading a manifesto, but with the desperate twitch of an addict chasing a loss.
He clicked. A digital stack of chips slid into the center of the virtual table.
A moment later, the chips were swept away to another player.
Elias slammed his fist onto the table. It was a silent impact from where Maya stood, but she saw his face contort. It wasn’t a mask of calculated evil. It was the face of a man who had just lost his mortgage payment.
He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He looked exhausted. He looked defeated.
“He’s nobody,” a voice whispered beside her.
Maya jumped, her heart seizing.
Sarah was crouched next to her, clutching her purse against her chest. She had followed after all.
“Look at him,” Sarah said, her voice filled with a mix of disgust and pity. “He’s not the Gables Ghost. He’s just… pathetic.”
“Chloe was right,” Maya murmured. “It’s a vice. Online gambling.”
“Why the library?” Sarah asked. “Why not do it at home?”
“His wife,” Maya guessed. “Mrs. Thorne runs the church bake sale. She probably monitors the home router like a hawk. He comes here for the anonymity. For the ‘privacy’ he defends so vigorously at the board meetings.”
They watched as Elias typed something into the chat box on his screen. He looked angry. He looked petty.
Bing.
The sound came from Maya’s pocket. Then Sarah’s purse.
It was a synchronized chime that cut through the ambient noise of the rain.
Maya pulled out her phone.
NEW EPISODE AVAILABLE The Gables Ghost: Episode 5 - The Ledger
She looked up at Elias. His hands were away from the keyboard. He was peeling the wrapper off a granola bar.
“He didn’t do it,” Maya said, the finality of it settling over her like a shroud. “The upload just went live. He’s eating a Nature Valley bar.”
“So the guy in the SUV…” Sarah started, her eyes darting back toward the parking lot.
“Used him,” Maya finished. “The killer knows Elias’s schedule. He knows Tuesday at 2:00 PM is poker time. He knows Elias brings that ancient laptop that looks suspicious. He set him up as a lightning rod.”
“Why?”
“To waste our time,” Maya said bitterly. “To make us feel smart for tracking the IP, only to pull the rug out. He wanted us here. He wanted us to see the SUV. He wanted to point at his watch.”
She looked at Elias one last time. The man was a tyrant of shrubbery height and trash can placement, but he wasn’t a murderer. He was just a sad man hiding a sad secret in a public library.
“We were so sure,” Sarah whispered. “The Sinks. The dialect. The proximity to Juniper’s house.”
“All coincidences,” Maya said. “Or red herrings planted to lead us here.”
“So we’re back to zero,” Sarah said. “We have nothing.”
“We have something,” Maya corrected, turning away from the window. “We know the killer drives a blue Ford Explorer. We know he’s bold enough to sit in a parking lot while we watch. And we know he’s mocking us.”
She trudged back toward the cars, the mud sucking at her heels.
“Episode Five,” Maya said, looking at the notification on her screen. “The Ledger. What does that mean?”
“Money,” Sarah said. “You said last night we should follow the money.”
Maya stopped. The rain matted her hair to her forehead.
“Elias is gambling,” she said. “Chloe is in debt. Everyone in this town is chasing money or hiding the lack of it.”
She looked back at the library. Elias had resumed play, his face illuminated by the screen’s glow.
“Maybe Elias isn’t the killer,” Maya said slowly. “But maybe he’s still part of the story. Where does an HOA president get the money to lose thousands on poker every week?”
“The HOA funds?” Sarah suggested.
“The reserve fund,” Maya realized. “We pay four hundred dollars a month. There are two hundred homes in the wider development. That’s nearly a million dollars a year in operating budget.”
“And Elias signs the checks,” Sarah added.
Maya looked at her phone again. The Ledger.
“Let’s get in the car,” Maya said. “We need to listen to this. I have a feeling the Podcaster is done talking about feelings. I think he’s about to start talking about math.”
They climbed back into the Volvo. The interior was cold, the coffee smell stale.
Maya connected her phone.
“Ready?” she asked.
Sarah nodded, though she looked like she might be sick.
Maya pressed play.
The gravelly voice filled the car, accompanied by the sound of a cash register drawer opening and slamming shut.
“They say blood is thicker than water,” the narrator began. “But in The Gables, ink is thicker than blood. You can wash away a murder. You can paint over a stain. But you can’t delete a transaction.”
Maya stared at the dashboard. The false lead of Elias Thorne had burned an afternoon, but it had clarified the battlefield. The killer wasn’t just a voyeur. He was an accountant of sins.
And the audit was just beginning.