The living room of Number 3 Bittersweet Court was a masterclass in beige. Beige walls, beige sectional, beige rug, and a beige-clad Chloe Vance sitting on the edge of the sofa like a porcelain doll that had been dropped and glued back together slightly wrong.
Maya sat opposite her, watching Leo and Chloe’s youngest son, Jax, build a tower of magnetic tiles. The boys were laughing, a pure, bell-like sound that felt utterly foreign in the heavy atmosphere of the house.
“Goldfish?” Chloe offered, holding out a bag of organic cheddar crackers. Her hand had a tremor in it, a subtle vibration that rattled the crackers inside the foil.
“No thanks,” Maya said. She kept her eyes on Chloe’s face.
Since the podcast episode dropped yesterday—The Betrayal—the dynamic of the Club had shifted from a circle to a firing squad. The narrator had been specific. “One of them is whispering,” he had said. “One of them is trading your secrets for their own safety.”
Elena had accused Sarah immediately. It was the logical choice; Sarah had the history, the affair, the motive to keep the past buried. But Maya’s journalist brain, the part of her that had survived Chicago newsrooms, knew that logic was often a trap. Sarah was too broken to be a double agent. Sarah was a victim.
Chloe, on the other hand, was desperate.
“Is the air conditioning working?” Maya asked. “It feels stifling in here.”
“Rick locked the thermostat,” Chloe said, her voice thin. “He says we need to cut utility costs. He… he saw the credit card bill.”
“The one from the podcast?”
“The one I told him about,” Chloe corrected, though her eyes darted away. “Before he heard it. Like we agreed. The Pact.”
“And?”
“And he took my cards,” Chloe said. She pulled her sleeves down over her hands. “He put me on an allowance. Cash only. He’s monitoring my phone usage.”
Maya looked at the phone sitting on the coffee table between them. It was face up. It lit up every few minutes with notifications that Chloe ignored.
“That sounds controlling,” Maya said.
“It’s consequences,” Chloe whispered. “I lied, Maya. For years. I spent money we didn’t have. I deserve this.”
The self-flagellation felt rehearsed. It felt like a line someone would say to deflect suspicion. Look at me, I’m suffering. I couldn’t possibly be the mole.
“Mommy, juice!” Jax screamed, knocking over the magnetic tower.
Chloe jumped as if a gun had gone off. “Okay, Jax. Okay. Mommy will get it.”
She stood up, smoothing her leggings. “Maya, do you want water? Coffee?”
“Water is fine.”
Chloe walked into the kitchen. Maya listened to her footsteps. The fridge door opened. The sound of ice hitting glass.
Maya looked at the coffee table. Chloe’s phone was still there.
It was a violation. It was a breach of the Pact. It was exactly what the killer wanted them to do—turn on each other.
Maya reached out.
Her hand hovered over the device. She checked the kitchen doorway. Chloe was wrestling with a juice box straw.
Do it.
Maya grabbed the phone. It was an iPhone, the screen protector cracked in the corner—a detail Chloe usually hid in her selfies. Maya tapped the screen.
Passcode.
Maya typed 1-2-3-4.
The phone unlocked.
“Jesus, Chloe,” Maya muttered. The lack of security was almost insulting.
She opened the messages app. The group chat The Club was at the top. Below that, Rick (Husband). Below that, a thread with Sarah.
But below Sarah, there was a thread with no name. Just a number.
Maya tapped it.
The messages were recent. From this morning.
Unknown: I need it by Friday. No excuses.
Chloe: I’m trying. Please, just give me more time.
Unknown: Time is over. You know what happens next.
Chloe: I can’t keep doing this. I can’t breathe.
Unknown: Then stop breathing. Pay up.
Maya stared at the words. I can’t keep doing this.
It was the language of a reluctant accomplice. Someone being squeezed. Someone who was trading information to keep a threat at bay.
“Here we go,” Chloe’s voice chirped from the hallway.
Maya dropped the phone back onto the table just as Chloe entered the room, carrying a tray of drinks. The phone clattered slightly, spinning on the wood.
Chloe froze. She looked at the phone. She looked at Maya.
The mask of the beige suburban mom dissolved. In its place was something feral.
“You touched it,” Chloe said. Her voice wasn’t high and breathy anymore. It was low. “You checked my phone.”
“You left it unlocked,” Maya said, standing up. She didn’t back down. She crossed her arms, creating a barrier.
“We have a pact,” Chloe said, setting the tray down with a slam that made the water slosh over the rims. “No secrets. That means trust, Maya. Not surveillance.”
“No secrets means you tell us who you’re texting,” Maya countered. “Who is the Unknown Number, Chloe? Who are you telling that you ‘can’t keep doing this’?”
Chloe’s face went white. “You read my messages?”
“I’m trying to save us!” Maya shouted, forgetting the children for a second. Leo looked up, startled. “The podcast said there’s a mole. It said someone is feeding him. And I see you texting someone who is threatening you. Is it him? Is it the Podcaster? Are you trading us for leniency?”
“You think I’m helping him?” Chloe stepped forward, her hands balling into fists. “You think I would help the person who destroyed my life?”
“I think you’re desperate!” Maya yelled back. “I think you’re drowning in debt and Rick cut you off and you need money. Did the Podcaster offer to pay your bills? Is that it? Did he offer to clear the debt if you gave him our secrets?”
“No!” Chloe screamed.
“Then who is it?” Maya pointed at the phone. “Who are you begging for time?”
Chloe grabbed the phone. She held it to her chest like a shield. Tears spilled over her lashes, hot and angry.
“It’s not the Podcaster,” she sobbed. “It’s the Shark.”
“The Shark?”
“The loan shark,” Chloe choked out. “I didn’t just use credit cards, Maya. I borrowed money. From bad people. Online lenders. Predatory cash advances. And then… when Rick froze the accounts… I couldn’t pay the vigorish.”
Maya felt the adrenaline in her veins turn to sludge. “A loan shark? In The Gables?”
“He’s not in The Gables,” Chloe cried, sinking back onto the sofa. “He’s on the internet. He’s everywhere. I borrowed twenty thousand dollars to pay off the Amex so Rick wouldn’t see it. But the interest… it’s three hundred percent. Now I owe forty. And he said if I don’t pay by Friday, he’s going to call Rick’s office. He’s going to send photos to the PTA.”
She unlocked the phone and threw it at Maya. It landed softly on the cushion between them.
“Read it,” Chloe wept. “Read the whole thread. Look at the dates. It started three months ago. Before the podcast. Before any of this.”
Maya picked up the phone. She scrolled up.
Chloe was right. The thread went back to April. It was a litany of demands, threats, and panic.
May 12: Interest payment due. June 1: Late fee added. June 15: We know where your kids go to school.
Maya felt a wave of nausea. It wasn’t the Podcaster. It was just regular, mundane, terrifying financial ruin.
“I’m sorry,” Maya whispered.
She sat down next to Chloe. She put the phone on the table.
“I thought…” Maya started, then stopped. “I don’t know what I thought. I’m paranoid. He’s making me paranoid.”
“He’s making us hate each other,” Chloe sniffed, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “He said one of us is a traitor, so we’d do this. So we’d tear each other apart.”
“I shouldn’t have looked,” Maya said. “It was a violation.”
“It was smart,” Chloe said, surprising her. She looked at Maya with wet, bloodshot eyes. “If it had been me… if I suspected you… I would have looked too. Because we have to know.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath.
“But now you know,” Chloe said. “I’m not the mole. I’m just broke. And terrified. And on Friday, this guy is going to blow up whatever is left of my marriage.”
Maya looked at the phone again. The Unknown Number.
“Does he have a name?” Maya asked.
“He calls himself Mr. V,” Chloe said. “I send the money via crypto. Untraceable.”
“Nothing is untraceable,” Maya said, her voice hardening. The suspicion was gone, replaced by the cold, tactical focus that made her a good journalist. “You traced the Podcaster to the library. You found the glitch in the VPN.”
“That was data,” Chloe said. “This is… thugs.”
“Thugs leave digital footprints too,” Maya said. “Did you click a link to get the loan?”
“Yes. An ad. ‘Fast Cash, No Credit Check.’”
“Do you still have the link?”
“Maybe. In my history.”
“Find it,” Maya commanded.
Chloe sat up. “Why?”
“Because we’re going to find Mr. V,” Maya said. “And we’re going to make him regret threatening a member of this Club.”
“Maya, these people break legs.”
“And we break stories,” Maya said. “Or in your case, firewalls.”
She put her hand on Chloe’s knee.
“You’re not doing this alone anymore,” Maya said. “The Pact means we share the secrets. But it also means we share the fights. If he wants money, we’ll give him something else.”
“What?” Chloe asked, a glimmer of hope sparking in her eyes.
“We’ll give him the Gables Ghost,” Maya said.
“What do you mean?”
“The Podcaster wants chaos,” Maya mused, watching Leo stack another block. “Let’s give him some. We use the loan shark. We use Mr. V as bait. If the Podcaster is watching us as closely as he claims… maybe he’ll be interested in a new player on the board.”
Chloe frowned, trying to follow. “You want to set them up? Against each other?”
“I want to clear the board,” Maya said. “We solve your debt problem. And we see if the Podcaster intervenes. Because if the Podcaster truly knows everything… he knows about Mr. V too. And he hasn’t mentioned him.”
“Why not?”
“Maybe he doesn’t know,” Maya realized. “Maybe this is the one secret you actually kept.”
She smiled. It was the first real smile she had felt in days.
“We found a blind spot in the woods,” Maya said. “Now we found a blind spot in his information. Chloe, this debt isn’t a liability. It’s a weapon.”
Chloe picked up her phone. Her hands were steady now.
“Okay,” Chloe said. “Let’s go fishing.”