The air outside was a violent collision of extremes. Behind them, Number 4 Bittersweet Court roared with a heat so intense it singed the hair on their arms. In front of them, the storm unleashed a freezing deluge that turned the manicured lawns into a black swamp.
Maya didn’t feel the cold. She didn’t feel the heat. She only felt the primal, animalistic drive to put distance between her friends and the man standing on the porch of Number 5.
“Run!” Maya screamed, her voice shredded by the smoke.
They scrambled over the wet grass, slipping in the mud. Chloe gripped Sarah’s arm, dragging the older woman forward. Elena was limping, clutching her side where she had hit the window frame.
“Where?” Chloe shrieked over the wind. “The street is blocked!”
She was right. The storm had downed a massive oak tree across the entrance of the cul-de-sac, and the fire from Maya’s house was creating a wall of heat that made the driveway impassable. The woods behind them were a black void of mud and rising water.
There was only one place left. The center. The stage.
“The gazebo!” Maya yelled.
They sprinted toward the white hexagonal structure in the middle of the asphalt circle. It offered no walls, no locks, no real protection. But it was elevated. It was defensible. And it was the only dry ground left in the flooding street.
They stumbled up the wooden steps, collapsing onto the floorboards where generations of Gables children had taken prom photos. The roof amplified the sound of the rain, turning it into a deafening drumroll.
Maya spun around, putting her back to the railing.
Elias Thorne was walking toward them.
He didn’t run. He moved with a terrifying, measured calm, ignoring the rain that plastered his thin hair to his skull. He wore a yellow raincoat that caught the flickering light of the fire, making him look like a toxic beacon in the dark.
In his right hand, he held a gun.
It wasn’t a modern tactical weapon. It was a heavy, blued-steel revolver. A police service weapon.
Garrett’s gun, Maya realized, the memory of Sarah’s confession flashing through her mind. The gun that went missing the night Juniper died. Elias hadn’t just watched; he had collected a souvenir from the aftermath.
“Stay down,” Maya hissed to the others. She pushed Sarah behind the central pillar.
Elias stopped ten feet from the gazebo steps. He stood in a puddle, the water rushing over his boots. The flames from Maya’s house cast his shadow long and dancing across the wet pavement, stretching it until it touched the women’s feet.
“Cut!” Elias shouted.
The word was absurd, a director’s command thrown into a war zone. But his voice carried a terrifying authority.
“That wasn’t the blocking,” Elias said, raising the gun. “You were supposed to stay in the sunroom. The script called for a purification by fire. You’ve ruined the lighting.”
“You’re insane, Elias!” Chloe screamed, clutching the railing. “You burned down Maya’s house!”
“I burned down the set,” Elias corrected calmly. “The season is over. The story arcs are complete. The Journalist failed. The Influencer went bankrupt. The Doctor lost her license. And the Witness…”
He turned his gaze to Sarah, who was trembling behind the pillar.
”…The Witness finally speaks, only to be silenced by the consequences of her own history. It’s poetic. It’s a tragedy.”
Lightning flashed, a blinding strobe of white that froze the world for a millisecond. In that flash, Maya saw Elias’s face clearly.
He wasn’t the fussy, rule-obsessed neighbor who measured grass height. His eyes were wide, dilated, filled with a euphoric, manic energy. He wasn’t seeing them. He was seeing characters. He was seeing the final scene of the masterpiece he had been writing in his head for thirty years.
“It’s not a story, Elias!” Maya shouted, stepping to the edge of the stairs. The rain soaked her instantly, washing away the soot on her face. “It’s murder. You’re just a murderer with a microphone.”
“I am the Producer!” Elias roared, the gun shaking in his hand. “I gave this neighborhood a narrative! Before me, you were just boring, desperate people hiding your sins in the dark. I brought them into the light! I gave you stakes! I made you interesting!”
“You killed a pregnant woman,” Maya said, her voice cutting through the wind.
“I fixed a mistake!” Elias retorted. “My father… the Blue Suits… they were messy. They were blunt instruments. They left loose ends. I don’t leave loose ends. I edit.”
He took a step closer. He cocked the hammer of the revolver. The metallic click was audible even over the fire.
“Get back in the formation,” Elias ordered. “Sarah in the middle. The rest of you around her. Like the photo in the Gazette. A tableau of guilt.”
Elena gripped Maya’s arm. “Maya, he’s going to do it. He’s going to shoot us.”
Maya looked at the gun. She looked at the fire consuming everything she owned. She looked at her friends—women who had been strangers, then enemies, and now sisters in survival.
Fear, cold and paralyzed, tried to seize her throat. It told her to beg. It told her to run.
But beneath the fear, something else ignited. A spark from the burning house that had landed in her chest.
She was done running. She was done hiding in the pantry. She was done letting men write the story of her life.
Maya reached into her pocket. Her hand closed around her phone. It was cracked, wet, and had 4% battery life.
She pulled it out.
“What are you doing?” Elias snapped, the gun twitching toward her chest. “Put that away. No props.”
Maya didn’t put it away. She tapped the screen. She opened the camera app. She swiped to LIVE.
She hit the red button.
“We’re live, Elias,” Maya said, holding the phone up.
The screen glowed. The counter started ticking up. 00:01. 00:02.
“Turn it off,” Elias warned.
“No,” Maya said. She stepped down one stair. Closer to the gun. Closer to the madness.
“You wanted an audience?” she shouted. “You wanted a finale? Well, you’ve got one. But you’re not the director anymore. You’re the villain.”
She angled the phone so it framed Elias against the backdrop of the burning house. The image on the screen was horrific and cinematic. A man in a yellow raincoat holding a gun, silhouetted by hellfire.
“Smile, Elias,” Maya said, her voice steady, broadcasting to the thousands of followers Chloe had amassed, to the neighbors watching from their windows, to the police scanners picking up the signal. “Tell the world why you did it. Tell them about the Blue Suits. Tell them about your father.”
Elias hesitated. The red “LIVE” icon on the screen seemed to mesmerize him. He was a creature of media. He understood the power of the lens.
“You can’t produce this,” he stammered. “This is my show.”
“Not anymore,” Maya said. “I’m the showrunner now.”
She took another step down.
“You wanted to expose us?” she challenged. “You wanted to reveal our secrets? Go ahead. We already told them. We told our husbands. We told each other. You have nothing on us, Elias. The leverage is gone.”
Elias looked confused. The script was breaking. The characters weren’t hitting their marks.
“I… I know about the debt,” he tried, his voice wavering. “I know about the source.”
“Old news,” Maya said. “We own our sins. Do you own yours?”
She thrust the phone closer to him.
“Did you kill her, Elias? Or did you just watch your daddy do it and then spend thirty years trying to recreate the thrill?”
“I didn’t just watch!” Elias screamed. “I recorded it! I have the tape! I have the sound of her last breath! It’s art!”
“It’s evidence,” Maya said. “And you just confessed to a live audience of…” she glanced at the screen, “…twelve thousand people.”
The number was fake. She had no idea how many people were watching. But Elias didn’t know that.
Panic flickered in his eyes. The euphoria was cracking. The reality of the world outside the cul-de-sac was rushing in.
“Stop recording!” he shrieked. He raised the gun, aiming directly at Maya’s face.
“Shoot me,” Maya said. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t blink. She held the phone steady. “Shoot me live. Let the world see exactly what kind of man runs the Gables HOA.”
It was a gamble. A terrifying, suicidal gamble. But Maya knew men like Elias. They thrived in the shadows. They thrived on editing. They couldn’t handle the raw feed.
Elias’s hand shook. He looked at the phone. He looked at Maya’s eyes—fierce, unyielding, burning brighter than the house behind her.
“You’re ruining it,” he whispered. “You’re ruining the ending.”
“The ending was ruined thirty years ago,” Maya said. “We’re just fixing the credits.”
Behind her, she heard movement. Soft. Rustling.
Chloe had moved. While Elias was fixated on the screen, Chloe had slipped off her heels. She was crouching by the railing, holding the heavy, decorative garden gnome that usually sat by the gazebo steps—the one Elias had tried to ban three times for being “tacky.”
Elias didn’t see her. He was staring at his own reflection in Maya’s phone screen.
“I am the Producer,” he muttered, trying to reclaim his narrative. “I decide who lives.”
“You decide nothing,” Maya said.
She dropped the phone.
It was the cue.
“NOW!” Maya screamed, diving for Elias’s legs.
Elias fired. The gun went off with a deafening crack that sounded like the sky tearing open.
Maya felt the heat of the muzzle flash, the wind of the bullet passing her ear. She slammed into his knees, driving him back into the wet asphalt.
He went down hard, splashing into a puddle. But he held onto the gun. He kicked out, his boot connecting with Maya’s shoulder, sending a shockwave of pain down her arm.
He scrambled to get up, raising the weapon again.
“Cut!” Chloe yelled.
She swung the garden gnome with both hands, putting every ounce of her Pilates strength and repressed rage into the blow.
The ceramic statue connected with Elias’s wrist.
CRACK.
Elias howled. The gun skittered across the wet pavement, spinning away into the dark.
“Get him!” Elena shouted, launching herself from the gazebo stairs.
The four of them descended on him. Not as victims. Not as characters. As a force of nature.
The finale had begun. And the script was being written in real-time, in the mud and the rain.