The gazebo was no longer a shelter; it was a cage suspended in the center of a hurricane. Rain lashed sideways, stinging like buckshot, and the wind howled through the latticework with the voice of a dying animal.
Elias Thorne stood in the center, the antique service revolver trembling in his hand. He looked less like a villain and more like a man whose internal architecture had finally collapsed under the weight of his own script. He was shouting, but the thunder swallowed his words, leaving only the pantomime of rage.
Maya stood ten feet away, her phone held high. The screen glowed with the red “LIVE” indicator.
“You want an audience, Elias?” she screamed over the wind. “You have one! Twelve thousand people are watching you right now! Tell them! Tell them why Juniper had to die!”
Elias’s eyes flicked to the phone. For a fraction of a second, the director in him took over. He wanted to frame the shot. He wanted to control the narrative.
“She was the rot!” he bellowed, stepping toward Maya, the gun leveling at her chest. “She was the infection! My father… he knew! He knew you have to cut it out!”
“And us?” Maya shouted, stepping back, drawing him in. “Are we the rot too?”
“You’re the credits!” Elias screamed. “You’re the tragic ending that teaches the lesson!”
He raised the gun higher. His finger tightened on the trigger.
Maya didn’t flinch. She didn’t look at the gun. She looked past him, into the darkness of the gazebo’s shadowed corner.
“Now!” she yelled.
The command wasn’t part of his script. It was an edit.
From the bench behind Elias, Chloe rose. She didn’t look like the terrified influencer who had cried in the pantry. She looked like a technician. She held her heavy-duty Maglite—the one she used for lighting her sets—and slammed the button.
Click.
A beam of concentrated, blinding strobe light exploded into the darkness, hitting Elias directly in the eyes.
He screamed, throwing his free hand up to shield his face. The sudden assault of lumens in the pitch-black night disoriented him instantly. He stumbled back, his vision washed out in white.
“My eyes!” he shrieked.
“Elena!” Maya shouted.
Elena Russo moved. She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t think about her surgical hands or her career. She launched herself from the railing, a missile of blue scrubs and maternal fury.
She hit Elias low, tackling him around the waist.
The impact drove the air out of him with a wet whoosh. They went down hard, crashing through the wooden railing of the gazebo and tumbling onto the sodden earth below.
Mud splashed up, thick and cold.
“Get the gun!” Chloe yelled, jumping down after them, the flashlight beam swinging wildly through the rain.
Maya dropped her phone—leaving the audience staring at a tilted view of the wet pavement—and threw herself into the fray.
It was a mess of limbs and mud. Elias was wiry, fuelled by a psychotic strength that made him thrash like a hooked fish. He kicked out, his boot connecting with Elena’s shoulder. She grunted but didn’t let go. She dug her fingers into his coat, trying to pin his arms.
“Get off me!” Elias roared, spitting mud. “You’re ruining it! You’re ruining the scene!”
“The scene is over!” Maya shouted, grabbing his wrist—the one holding the gun.
The metal was slick with rain and oil. Elias twisted, trying to bring the barrel around to point at Elena’s head.
“Sarah!” Maya screamed, her grip slipping. “Sarah, help us!”
Sarah Vance stood at the top of the gazebo steps. She was frozen. The lightning flashed, illuminating her pale face. She looked at the women struggling in the mud—the journalist, the doctor, the influencer—fighting for their lives against the man who had haunted their street for thirty years.
She looked at Elias. The boy next door. The watcher.
She looked at the garden gnome standing by the stairs—a kitschy, concrete figure holding a fishing pole that she had always hated but kept because the HOA bylaws required “whimsical lawn ornamentation.”
Sarah moved.
She didn’t run. She walked down the steps, reached down, and picked up the gnome. It was heavy, solid concrete.
She stepped into the mud.
Elias had managed to buck Elena off. He was rising to his knees, the gun shaking in his hand, aiming at Maya.
“Cut!” Elias screamed.
Sarah swung.
She didn’t swing like a girl. She swung like a woman who had been holding her breath for three decades.
The concrete base of the gnome connected with the side of Elias’s head with a sickening, dull thud.
Elias crumpled. He didn’t go unconscious, but the blow shattered his equilibrium. He slumped sideways, dazed, blood instantly matting his wet hair.
But his finger was still on the trigger.
And as he fell, his hand jerked.
BANG.
The gunshot was louder than the thunder. It was a flat, final crack that tore through the soundscape of the storm.
The muzzle flash lit up the circle of women for a microsecond—a tableau of violence frozen in amber.
Then, darkness.
Silence rushed back in, filled only by the rain drumming on the gazebo roof.
“Maya?” Chloe’s voice was a whisper, terrified.
“I’m okay,” Maya gasped, checking herself. She felt bruises, she felt the cold mud, but no heat. No hole.
“Elena?”
Elena was pushing herself up from the mud. “I’m good. He missed me.”
They all turned to look at Sarah.
Sarah was still standing, the broken gnome hanging from her hand. She was staring down at Elias, who was groaning in the dirt. She didn’t move. She didn’t speak.
“Sarah?” Maya asked, stepping toward her.
Sarah looked up. Her eyes were wide, shocked. She opened her mouth to speak, but then her knees buckled.
She collapsed into the mud, her hand pressing against her side. Dark liquid began to mix with the rainwater, swirling around her fingers.
“Sarah!”
Elena was there in a second, her training taking over. She ripped Sarah’s cardigan open.
“She’s hit,” Elena shouted, her voice cutting through the wind. “Abdomen. Lower quadrant. Pressure! I need pressure!”
Maya ripped off her scarf and pressed it against the wound. Sarah gasped, a wet, ragged sound.
“It’s okay,” Maya said, her tears mixing with the rain. “We got him, Sarah. You stopped him. You stopped the show.”
Sarah looked at Maya. A faint, bloody smile touched her lips.
“I finally…” Sarah whispered, her voice fading. “I finally made a noise.”
Maya looked down at Elias. He was curled in a fetal ball, clutching his head, the gun lying uselessly in the mud a few feet away. He was broken. Defeated.
But as the sirens finally began to wail in the distance—real sirens, not sound effects—Maya knew the story wasn’t over. The neighbors were waking up. The lights were coming on.
And the Cul-de-Sac Cold Case Club had one last scene to play.