The gunshot did not echo. The sound was swallowed instantly by the roar of the wind and the crashing thunder, a singular, flat crack that felt less like a weapon firing and more like a timeline snapping in two.
For a second, nobody moved. The strobe light Chloe had thrown onto the floorboards continued to pulse—flash, dark, flash, dark—turning the scene inside the gazebo into a stuttering horror movie.
Maya blinked, waiting for the pain. She checked her chest, her stomach, expecting the wet warmth of a bullet.
Nothing.
“He’s down!” Elena yelled, her voice cracking with a ferocity Maya had never heard from the surgeon.
Maya looked down. Elias Thorne lay sprawled on the wet wood of the gazebo floor. The gun had skittered out of his hand, spinning into a puddle of mud near the stairs. He was curled on his side, clutching his left thigh. Dark blood pushed through his fingers, black in the strobe light, mixing with the rain blowing in sideways.
He wasn’t screaming. He was making a low, wet sound in his throat.
Sarah Vance stood over him, the concrete garden gnome still clutched in her trembling hands. The gnome’s cheerful red hat was chipped, revealing the grey cement beneath. Sarah looked at the weapon, then at Elias, her eyes wide and vacant.
“I killed him,” Sarah whispered. “I killed the neighbor.”
“He’s not dead,” Elena said, dropping to her knees beside Elias. She wasn’t a neighbor now; she was a doctor. She slapped Elias’s hands away from the wound. “Femoral artery is intact. He’s just bleeding out into the muscle. It’s a through-and-through.”
Elias rolled onto his back. His glasses were gone, lost in the scuffle. His face was pale, wet, and contorted.
But he wasn’t grimacing. He was grinning.
A laugh bubbled up from his chest—a jagged, wheezing sound that made the hair on Maya’s arms stand up.
“Cut!” Elias choked out, laughing harder. “Cut! Perfect! The twist! The victims… the victims become the executioners!”
“Shut up!” Chloe screamed. She kicked him, hard, in the ribs. “Shut up, you psycho!”
“Don’t,” Maya said, grabbing Chloe’s arm. “He’s done. It’s over.”
“It’s not over,” Elias wheezed, staring up at the roof of the gazebo where the red dress had once hung. “This is just the cliffhanger. The ratings… the ratings will be huge.”
Maya looked at him with a cold, sudden clarity. He didn’t see them as people. Even now, bleeding in the mud, he saw them as props. He saw Sarah as the Fallen Matriarch. He saw Chloe as the Vapid Influencer. He saw Maya as the Final Girl.
He was insane. Not in the legal sense, perhaps, but in the moral one. He had edited his reality until empathy was just a filter he could turn off.
“We aren’t your characters,” Maya said, her voice low and steady over the wind. “And you aren’t the director. You’re just a man bleeding in a gazebo.”
She pulled her phone out. The livestream was still running. The comments were scrolling so fast they were a blur of emojis and panic.
DID HE GET SHOT? CALL 911! OMFG SARAH WITH THE GNOME!
“It’s over,” Maya said to the camera, and ended the stream.
Then, the lights came.
They didn’t come from the sky. They came from the street entrance. Blue and red, cutting through the rain like lasers. Sirens wailed, a discordant symphony rising above the storm.
“Finally,” Elena muttered, pressing her knee into Elias’s groin to keep him pinned.
The police cruisers roared into the cul-de-sac, splashing through the standing water. One, two, four of them. They swerved around the island of hydrangeas, tires screeching.
Doors flew open. Officers spilled out, weapons drawn, flashlights slicing the darkness.
“POLICE! DROP THE WEAPON! HANDS IN THE AIR!”
Sarah dropped the gnome. It hit the wood with a heavy thud, rolling away. She raised her hands slowly, shaking uncontrollably.
“We’re the victims!” Chloe shouted, her voice breaking. “He has a gun! He shot himself!”
“ON THE GROUND! NOW!”
“Do it,” Maya commanded. “Just do it.”
The four women sank to the wet floor of the gazebo. Maya knelt beside Sarah, grabbing her hand. Elena stayed with Elias, keeping pressure on his leg even as she raised her other hand.
“I am a doctor!” Elena shouted at the approaching beams of light. “Suspect has a gunshot wound to the left thigh! I am applying pressure!”
The officers swarmed the stairs. Boots thundered on the wood. Hands grabbed Maya, rough and efficient, pulling her away from the center.
“He’s the shooter,” Maya gasped as a young officer patted her down. “Elias Thorne. He’s the one.”
“Clear!” an officer yelled.
“Weapon secured!” another shouted, retrieving Elias’s gun from the mud.
Paramedics pushed through the line of black uniforms. They descended on Elias like a flock of white birds.
“Don’t touch the scene!” Elias cackled as they lifted him onto a backboard. “The lighting is perfect! Did you get the wide shot?”
An older paramedic strapped a mask over Elias’s face, silencing the manic commentary.
Maya watched them carry him away. He was thrashing against the restraints, his eyes wide and rolling, trying to catch one last glimpse of his set.
“Is everyone okay?”
The voice belonged to the new detective—Detective Miller, the one Maya had spoken to after the car crash. He stood at the bottom of the gazebo steps, looking at them. He wasn’t wearing a raincoat. He was soaked to the bone, his tie plastered to his shirt.
“We’re alive,” Maya said.
“The storm took down a tree on the main road,” Miller said, sounding apologetic. “We had to come in through the construction access. We got here as fast as we could.”
“You were late,” Sarah said, her voice trembling. “But we weren’t.”
Miller looked at the gnome lying on the floor. He looked at the shattered glass of the sunroom in the distance. He looked at the four women—muddy, bleeding, barefoot, and fierce.
“I can see that,” he said softly. “Let’s get you out of the rain.”
They huddled under the rear hatch of an ambulance, draped in foil shock blankets that crinkled with every shiver. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but the cul-de-sac was chaos. Neighbors were standing on their porches, phones out, filming. The secret investigation was public spectacle now.
Maya sat on the bumper, flanked by Chloe and Sarah. Elena was standing in front of them, refusing a blanket, checking their pupils with a penlight she had borrowed from a paramedic.
“Chloe, look at my nose,” Elena commanded.
Chloe obeyed. “Am I blind? That strobe light was intense.”
“You have a mild corneal dazzle, but you’ll be fine,” Elena said. She moved to Sarah. “Sarah, let me see your hands.”
Sarah held them out. Her palms were scraped raw from the concrete gnome.
“Superficial,” Elena diagnosed. “You need tetanus, though. That gnome has been in the dirt for five years.”
“I hated that gnome,” Sarah whispered, a bubble of hysterical laughter escaping her lips. “Rick’s mother gave it to us. I always wanted to smash it.”
“Well, you smashed it on Elias’s head,” Chloe said, grinning weakly. “So, mission accomplished.”
Maya watched them. They were a mess. Chloe’s expensive leggings were torn. Sarah’s silk blouse was ruined. Elena had mud in her hair.
And Maya… she looked down at her own hands. They were steady.
“Are you okay, Maya?” Elena asked, moving to her. She touched Maya’s forehead, checking for clamminess.
“I’m fine,” Maya said.
“You have a cut on your cheek,” Elena noted. “From the glass door?”
“Probably.” Maya touched her face. Her fingers came away with a smear of red. She didn’t feel it.
“He’s gone,” Maya said, looking toward the cruiser where Elias was being held before transport. “He’s in cuffs. It’s actually over.”
“Is it?” Chloe asked, pulling the silver blanket tighter. “What about the other stuff? The secrets? The money?”
“The money is evidence now,” Maya said. “Garrett will have to open the books. The corruption, the Blue Suits… it’s all going to come out in the trial.”
“Garrett,” Sarah said, stiffening.
Maya scanned the police line. Chief Garrett wasn’t there.
“He didn’t come,” Maya realized. “He sent Miller.”
“He knows,” Sarah said. “He knows it’s all collapsing.”
“Let it collapse,” Elena said. “We’re still standing.”
A paramedic approached them with bottles of water. Maya took one, cracking the seal. The sound was loud in the quiet aftermath.
She looked at her friends.
They weren’t the women she had met at the Tuesday Toss months ago. They weren’t the stereotypes Elias had tried to cast.
Chloe wasn’t just a vapid influencer; she was a tech wizard who had blinded a shooter.
Sarah wasn’t a fragile trophy wife; she was a woman who had wielded a lawn ornament like a mace to protect her friends.
Elena wasn’t just a detached doctor; she was a warrior who had tackled a gunman in the mud.
And Maya… she wasn’t a failed journalist anymore. She was the editor.
“We need to call our husbands,” Chloe said, looking at her phone. “Rick has called me forty times.”
“Dan too,” Maya said.
“Not yet,” Sarah said. “Just… give us a minute.”
She reached out and took Maya’s hand. Chloe took the other. Elena completed the circle.
They sat there in the rain, the silver blankets shimmering like armor.
“He wanted a finale,” Maya said softly. “He wanted us to disappear.”
She squeezed their hands.
“We’re still here.”
The ambulance doors slammed shut on Elias Thorne. The siren wailed as it pulled away, taking the villain out of the story.
But the set remained. The white fences. The hydrangeas. The glass houses.
Maya looked at the dark windows of her own home across the street. The sunroom was shattered. The nursery was empty. The perfect facade was broken.
It was beautiful.
“Okay,” Maya said, standing up and letting the blanket fall from her shoulders. “Let’s go talk to the police. I have a statement to make. And this time, I’m going on the record.”