The thud of the boot on the floorboards overhead wasn’t just a sound; it was a physical blow that struck the center of the basement ceiling, shaking the dust loose from the rafters.
Maya stared up at the exposed beams, her breath trapped in a throat that felt lined with sandpaper. The script in her hand—The Season Finale—trembled, the pages rustling with a sound that seemed deafening in the sudden silence.
Footsteps above.
The stage direction had become reality.
“He’s here,” Chloe whispered, the words barely escaping her lips. She backed away from the center of the room, bumping into the metal rack of servers. The equipment hummed, indifferent to their terror.
The footsteps moved. Heavy. Deliberate. They weren’t the shuffling steps of a browsing homebuyer or the cautious tread of a security guard. They were the stomps of a man who owned the floor he walked on.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
He was moving toward the basement door.
“The window,” Elena hissed, pointing to the high, rectangular window well on the far wall. It was caked with dirt and cobwebs, sealed shut with layers of paint.
“Too small,” Maya said, her mind snapping into a survival rhythm that bypassed fear. “We’ll never get all four of us out before he comes down.”
The handle of the door at the top of the stairs rattled. It was a loose, metallic sound, followed by the groan of a hinge that hadn’t been oiled in a decade.
He was opening the door.
“We run,” Maya said. She shoved the script into the waistband of her jeans, against her spine. “We rush him.”
“Are you insane?” Sarah gasped, pressing herself against the wall. “He’ll kill us.”
“He’s going to kill us anyway,” Maya snapped. “The script says we die in a fire. I’d rather die fighting on the stairs.”
She didn’t wait for a vote. She grabbed a heavy, metal microphone stand from the desk—The Producer’s own equipment—and wielded it like a spear.
“Move,” Maya commanded.
She sprinted for the stairs.
The door at the top swung open. A rectangle of light from the hallway cut into the gloom of the basement stairs, blindingly bright after the darkness of the studio. A silhouette stepped into the frame.
He was huge. The shadow stretched down the steps, elongating into a monster.
Maya didn’t slow down. She screamed—a primal, guttural roar meant to startle him—and charged up the wooden treads.
The figure hesitated. For a fraction of a second, the predator was confused. He had expected cowering victims, huddled in the dark waiting for their cue. He hadn’t expected a stampede.
Maya swung the microphone stand. Ideally, she would have aimed for his head, but the angle was wrong. She swung low, aiming for the knees.
Crack.
The heavy metal base connected with a shin bone.
The figure grunted—a sharp, wet exhalation of pain—and buckled. He stumbled backward into the hallway, arms flailing to catch his balance.
“Go! Go! Go!” Maya screamed, cresting the stairs and shoving past the stumbling figure.
She burst into the foyer of the empty house. It smelled of stale paint and sawdust. The only light came from the streetlamps outside, filtering through the uncurtained windows in long, blue bars.
Chloe was right behind her, then Elena.
“Sarah!” Elena yelled, turning back.
Sarah was at the top of the stairs, but the figure had recovered. He wasn’t Elias Thorne. Elias was a man who got winded measuring grass. This man moved with the coiled, explosive speed of a viper.
He lunged.
A gloved hand shot out of the shadows and clamped around Sarah’s ankle.
Sarah shrieked, pitching forward. She hit the hardwood floor of the foyer hard, her chin cracking against the floorboards. She clawed at the wood, her fingernails scraping uselessly against the varnish.
“No!” Sarah screamed, kicking wildly. “Let go!”
The figure dragged her backward. He was silent. He didn’t speak. He didn’t laugh. He just pulled, hauling her back toward the basement mouth like a spider retracting a fly.
Maya spun around. She saw Sarah’s terrified face, illuminated by a shaft of moonlight. She saw the dark shape looming over her legs.
Maya didn’t think. She hurled the microphone stand.
It spun through the air, a clumsy projectile, and smashed into the wall inches from the figure’s head. It missed him, but the violence of the impact made him flinch. His grip on Sarah’s ankle loosened for a microsecond.
“Kick him!” Elena shouted, rushing forward. She didn’t have a weapon. She had her doctor’s bag, weighted with a heavy tablet and supplies. She swung it overhead and brought it down on the arm holding Sarah.
The figure snarled. He let go.
“Get up!” Elena grabbed the back of Sarah’s coat and hauled her to her feet.
Sarah scrambled up, sobbing, missing a shoe.
“Run!”
They bolted for the front door. Maya hit the crash bar, throwing her shoulder against the wood. The door flew open, and the humid night air hit them like a wall of water.
They spilled out onto the front porch of Number 5.
The rain was falling in sheets now, drumming against the roof, drowning out the sound of their breathing. The cul-de-sac was dark. The streetlights flickered, struggling against the storm.
” The car!” Maya yelled, pointing toward her driveway next door.
They ran. They slipped on the wet grass, mud splattering their legs. The pristine lawns of Bittersweet Court had turned into a swamp.
Behind them, the front door of Number 5 slammed open against the siding.
Maya risked a glance back.
The figure stood on the porch. He wasn’t wearing a mask. He was wearing a hooded raincoat, the hood pulled low, casting his face in absolute shadow. But his build… the way he stood…
He vaulted the porch railing.
He didn’t use the stairs. He cleared the four-foot drop in a single, fluid motion, landing in the mulch and sprinting after them.
He was fast. Terrifyingly fast.
“He’s coming!” Chloe screamed, her voice pitching up into hysteria.
Maya reached the Volvo. She fumbled for the fob in her pocket, her wet fingers slipping on the plastic.
Unlock. Unlock. Unlock.
The lights flashed. The mirrors unfolded.
“Get in!”
Elena threw the back door open and shoved Sarah inside, diving in after her. Chloe scrambled into the passenger seat.
Maya threw herself behind the wheel. She slammed the door and hit the lock button just as a heavy weight collided with the side of the car.
THUMP.
A fist slammed against her window.
Maya screamed, recoiling toward the center console.
Through the rain-streaked glass, a face was inches from hers. The hood had fallen back slightly.
She couldn’t see features—it was too dark, the rain too heavy—but she saw the eyes. They weren’t dead eyes. They were wide, frantic, burning with an intensity that seared through the safety glass.
He raised his fist again. He was holding something. A rock? A tool?
Maya jammed the start button. The engine roared to life. She didn’t check the mirrors. She threw the car into reverse and stomped on the gas.
The Volvo shot backward out of the driveway. The figure was clipped by the side mirror—a sickening crack of plastic—and spun away into the darkness.
Maya didn’t stop to check on him. She spun the wheel, tires screeching on the wet asphalt, the traction control light flashing frantically on the dashboard. She threw it into drive and floored it.
The car fishtailed, then gripped. They rocketed toward the exit of the cul-de-sac, the headlights cutting swaths through the rain.
“Did you see him?” Chloe gasped, turning in her seat to look back. “Did you see who it was?”
“I saw him,” Maya said, her voice shaking so hard the steering wheel vibrated in her grip. “He wasn’t old. That wasn’t Arthur. That wasn’t Elias.”
“He was strong,” Sarah whimpered from the back seat. She was curled in a ball, clutching her bruised ankle. “He pulled me like I was nothing.”
“He had a script,” Elena said, holding up the crumpled pages Maya had shoved into her waistband earlier. She had retrieved them from the floorboard where they had fallen. “He wasn’t just chasing us. He was trying to get this back.”
Maya looked in the rearview mirror. The cul-de-sac was receding, a shrinking circle of light in the storm. No headlights followed them. He wasn’t pursuing in a vehicle.
He didn’t need to. He knew where they lived.
“Where are we going?” Chloe asked. “The police station?”
“No,” Maya said. “The script said the police are part of the finale. If we go there, we hand ourselves over to Garrett.”
“Then where?”
“My article,” Maya said, her mind racing. “I kept a backup of my files. A safe deposit box. In the city.”
“The city?” Elena asked. “Maya, that’s forty minutes away.”
“It’s the only place he can’t script,” Maya said. “He controls The Gables. He controls the HOA. He controls the local cops. But he doesn’t control Chicago.”
She merged onto the highway, merging into the stream of unsuspecting commuters. The wipers slashed back and forth, rhythmic and hypnotic.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
“We have the ending,” Maya whispered, glancing at the script in Elena’s lap. “We know what he’s planning. And if we know the ending, we can change it.”
But as the adrenaline faded, a cold, creeping realization settled over her. The figure on the porch. The way he moved. The familiarity of his sprint.
She had seen someone run like that before. Recently.
Jogging past her house. In the mornings.
Maya gripped the wheel tighter. The suspect list had just narrowed, but the terrifying part wasn’t that she didn’t know who it was.
It was that she was starting to think she did.