The text message arrived with a cheerful ding, the same sound Chloe Vance used for her Instagram notifications. But the content wasn’t a sponsorship offer or a fan comment.
UNKNOWN: You have 24 hours, Princess. Payment in full, or I send the screenshots to Rick. I bet he’d love to know he’s financing a ponzi scheme.
Chloe dropped the phone onto Maya’s kitchen island as if it were radioactive. She stood with her arms wrapped around her waist, her face the color of the skim milk she usually put in her latte.
“I can’t do it,” Chloe whispered. “I can’t pay him. I maxed out the cash advance on the Amex to pay the last installment. I have eighteen dollars in my checking account, Maya. Eighteen.”
Maya looked at the phone, then at the other women gathered in her kitchen. Elena was leaning against the refrigerator, looking clinical and detached, though her eyes were tight. Sarah was sitting at the island, staring at the text message with a mixture of horror and recognition.
“Who is he?” Maya asked. “You said it was a loan shark. Give me a name.”
“He calls himself ‘Vegas’,” Chloe said, her voice trembling. “I met him online. A ‘hard money’ lender. I thought it was legit. I needed cash to pay the staging company before the architectural digest shoot last month. I thought… I thought if I got the magazine spread, the sponsorships would cover the loan.”
“And the interest rate?” Elena asked.
“Forty percent,” Chloe admitted, staring at her Gucci loafers. “Weekly.”
Sarah gasped. “Chloe. That’s criminal.”
“I know!” Chloe wailed. “But he has my driver’s license. He has Rick’s work email. He said he’d burn me down.”
Maya picked up Chloe’s phone. She swiped open the screen. The text history was a one-sided barrage of threats and Chloe’s desperate, pleading replies.
“He’s not the Podcaster,” Maya said decisively.
“How do you know?” Chloe asked, wiping her nose. “He’s threatening me. He’s ruining my life. It fits the profile.”
“The Podcaster is playing a long game,” Maya said, scrolling through the messages. “He’s theatrical. He uses metaphors about fences and secrets. This guy?” She pointed to a text that read PAY UP OR U DIE. “This guy is a thug. He’s a bottom-feeder. He doesn’t care about Juniper Black. He cares about his forty percent.”
“Does it matter?” Chloe cried. “If he tells Rick, my life is over anyway. The killer won’t need to touch me. Rick will throw me out on the street.”
Maya looked at the women. They were terrified. They were victims. But they were also part of the Club now. And the Club didn’t leave a member behind.
“We’re going to fix this,” Maya said.
“How?” Elena asked. “We don’t have ten thousand dollars lying around. Well, Sarah might, but…”
Sarah stiffened. “My husband watches the accounts like a hawk. I can’t move that kind of money without a signature.”
“We’re not paying him,” Maya said, her voice dropping into the register she used to use when cornering a corrupt alderman. “We’re going to make him wish he never met Chloe Vance.”
She looked at Chloe. “Unlock the phone. Call him.”
“What? No!”
“Call him,” Maya commanded. “Put it on speaker.”
Chloe’s hands shook so badly she had to use two thumbs to tap the screen. She hit the call button and set the phone on the quartz counter.
Ring… Ring…
The sound filled the kitchen, amplified by the high ceilings.
“Yeah?” A voice answered. Male. Gravelly, but not the digitized gravel of the Podcaster. This was the gravel of cheap cigarettes and aggression.
“It’s… it’s me,” Chloe squeaked.
“I told you, Princess. Text me when you have the wire confirmation number. Otherwise, save your breath.”
Maya stepped forward. She placed her hands flat on the counter, leaning over the phone.
“This isn’t Chloe,” Maya said.
There was a pause on the line. “Who’s this? You got a friend? Tell her the debt just went up for the inconvenience.”
“My name is Maya Lin-Baker,” she said, enunciating every syllable. “I’m an investigative journalist. Formerly with the Chicago Tribune. Currently researching a piece on predatory lending rings operating in the northern suburbs.”
“I don’t care who you are, lady. Put the girl back on.”
“I’m recording this call,” Maya lied. “And I have already traced this number to a burner activated in Cicero. I’m guessing you’re not licensed to lend capital in the state of Illinois. Which means you’re committing usury. Extortion. And interstate wire fraud.”
The line was silent.
“Here’s how this goes,” Maya continued, her confidence surging back. This was a language she spoke fluently. “You are going to consider Chloe’s debt paid in full. Principal and interest. You are going to delete her contact information. You are going to lose her husband’s email.”
“Or what?” the man sneered, though there was a tremor of hesitation in his voice. “You write a blog post?”
“Or I call my contact at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office,” Maya said. “His name is Marcus. We used to get drinks after work. He’s looking for a win before the election cycle. A predator targeting suburban mothers? That plays very well on the six o’clock news.”
She let the threat hang there.
“I have your number,” Maya said softly. “I have your voiceprint now. And if you send one more text to Chloe Vance, I won’t just write a story. I will make you the face of the crackdown.”
Silence stretched out, thin and taut.
“She borrowed the money,” the man grunted. “It’s business.”
“The business is closed,” Maya said. “Walk away. While you still can.”
A long exhale crackled through the speaker.
“Tell her to lose my number,” the man spat.
Click.
The call ended.
The kitchen was silent for a heartbeat. Then, Chloe let out a sob that sounded like a laugh. She grabbed the counter to steady herself.
“Is he… is he gone?”
“He’s gone,” Maya said, her heart rate finally slowing. “Guys like that thrive on isolation. They count on you being too ashamed to tell anyone. Once you shine a light on them, they scurry.”
Elena let out a breath she seemed to have been holding for ten minutes. “Remind me never to get on your bad side, Maya.”
“That was… impressive,” Sarah admitted, looking at Maya with a new kind of respect.
Chloe threw her arms around Maya, burying her face in Maya’s shoulder. “Thank you. Thank you. I thought… I thought I was dead.”
Maya hugged her back, feeling the tremors in Chloe’s slight frame. It felt good to win. It felt good to be the predator instead of the prey for five minutes.
But as she looked over Chloe’s shoulder at the phone on the counter, the triumph began to curdle.
“Wait,” Maya said, pulling back.
“What?” Chloe wiped her eyes, her mascara smeared. “He said he’d walk away.”
“He did,” Maya said. “But think about the timing.”
She picked up the phone again.
“The podcast episode—The Liars—came out two days ago,” Maya said. “The narrator specifically mentioned your debt. He called you a fraud. He said ‘default is imminent.’”
“Because he knew,” Chloe said. “Like you said, he watches.”
“But how did he know the details?” Maya asked. “How did he know about the ‘imminent’ part? Vegas just texted you the final notice today.”
Elena frowned. “You think the Podcaster is working with the loan shark?”
“No,” Maya said. “I think the Podcaster is watching the loan shark.”
She walked to the window, looking out at the birdhouse in the woods.
“Think about it,” Maya said. “Chloe didn’t tell anyone about the debt. She only talked to Vegas. On her phone. Or via text.”
“So he hacked my phone?” Chloe asked, clutching the device.
“Or he has a keystroke logger,” Maya said. “Or he’s mirroring your screen. But it’s worse than that. He knew exactly when to release the episode to maximize the damage. He waited until the pressure from Vegas was peaking.”
Maya turned back to the group. The relief in the room evaporated, replaced by the cold chill of realization.
“He used Vegas,” Maya said. “He used a real-world threat to spice up his narrative. He saw you drowning, Chloe, and instead of throwing a rope, he set up a camera to broadcast the bubbles.”
“He’s omniscient,” Sarah whispered. “He really does see everything.”
“He wants us to think that,” Maya said. “But he made a mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“He quoted the debt,” Maya said. “In the episode. He said ‘forty-two thousand.’ Is that the exact number?”
Chloe nodded. “To the penny.”
“Only two people knew that number,” Maya said. “You. And Vegas.”
“And the bank,” Elena added.
“The bank’s records are encrypted,” Maya said. “Vegas’s records… probably less so. If the Podcaster knew the exact number, he either hacked the bank—which is hard—or he hacked the loan shark.”
Maya looked at the phone again.
“Or,” she said slowly, “he hacked you.”
She looked at Chloe. “When you applied for the loan… did you do it on your laptop? The one you use for editing?”
“Yes,” Chloe said.
“The same laptop you used to analyze the audio files?”
“Yes.”
“He’s in your system,” Maya said. “He’s not just listening to the room bugs. He’s inside the hardware. He saw you apply for the loan. He saw the emails. He saw the panic.”
Chloe looked at her phone as if it were a snake. “So he heard us just now? He heard you threaten Vegas?”
“Probably,” Maya said.
“Then he knows we’re fighting back,” Elena said.
“Good,” Maya said, though her stomach twisted. “Let him know. Let him know we solved one puzzle. Let him worry about which one we’ll solve next.”
She looked out the window again. The sun was setting, casting long shadows across the cul-de-sac. The loan shark was gone, a minor villain dismissed from the stage. But the Director was still watching.
“We need to scrub our digital lives,” Maya said. “Burner phones. Paper trails only. From now on, we go analog. If he lives in the wires, we cut them.”
“Analog,” Chloe repeated, looking lost. “I don’t know how to do analog.”
“You’re about to learn,” Maya said. “Because the next secret he reveals won’t be about money. It’ll be about blood.”
She handed Chloe’s phone back to her.
“Turn it off,” Maya said. “And let’s get a bottle of wine. We have a debt to celebrate, and a war to plan.”