Opening
In a breathless pivot from sleuthing to scheming, Pippa "Pip" Fitz-Amobi and Ravi Singh decide to frame Max Hastings for the murder of Jason Bell. Their choice locks them into a point of no return—one that redefines “justice” and reshapes who Pip is willing to become.
What Happens
Chapter 31: The Plan
In twelve minutes, Pip and Ravi commit to a frame job: Max will take the fall for Jason’s death. Standing over Jason’s body, they justify the plan as a necessary correction to a world that keeps letting men like Max walk. Pip recognizes the moral rot at the heart of her decision—she’s edging toward the Elliot Ward line—and she resolves to shield Ravi by ensuring any evidence points only to her.
The immediate problem is time of death. After scouring Jason’s landscaping property for an industrial fridge and finding none, panic creeps in—until Pip spots Jason’s luxury SUV. Its powerful AC can chill the body to stall decomposition, and later the heaters can warm it back up to match a staged window. The SUV becomes their makeshift morgue and clock.
They work with grim precision. Pip forbids Ravi from touching the body. They wrap Jason in a mower tarp and haul him into the backseat of the idling SUV, AC blasting. Pip collects anything that could place her at the scene—the duct tape used on her included—then they leave, confident Jason’s own disabled alarms and cameras keep the site quiet.
Chapter 32: The Cleansing
On the drive back, Ravi outlines an airtight alibi: visit his cousin, appear on multiple CCTV feeds at ATMs, restaurants, and gas stations, and seed a digital trail of photos and texts. It’s a meticulous act of Love, Loyalty, and Sacrifice, designed to protect them both by separating him from the crime.
Pip slips into her house with a claim of urgent bathroom needs. One glance down the stairs—her parents and brother watching TV—presses on everything she’s risking and everything she’s already lost. Upstairs, she scorches herself clean under scalding water, scrubbing until her skin burns, determined to erase blood, DNA, and what she can of the last few hours.
After the shower she gathers the evidence: bloodied clothes, the duct tape with her hair and blood, Jason’s burner phone, the gloves. She drops it all into a plastic bucket, drowns it with bleach and water, and hides it in her closet. The chemical sting hangs in the air—a private alarm only she can hear.
Chapter 33: The Preparations
Dressed clean and masked with makeup, Pip repacks: burner phones, cash, latex gloves, plastic bags. She lies to her family, saying she’s meeting Cara Ward because Ravi’s busy. Her parents sense something off but chalk it up to relationship drama; they don’t press.
The normal rhythms of home—her dad joking about leftovers, her mom mentioning a day trip—hit like body blows. Pip feels cut out of that world, a person apart. It’s the moment her Loss of Innocence crystallizes: the distance between who she was and who she is now feels unbridgeable.
In the garage, she searches for a way to neutralize Max’s cameras and lands on a roll of gray duct tape—the very material Jason used to terrorize her. She pockets it. After a brief, fraught exchange with her father, she leaves. Stage one is done; the real danger is next.
Chapter 34: The Poison
Pip heads to Luke Eaton’s and demands “the stronger stuff”—Rohypnol. Luke sells her eight pills for a hundred pounds and warns her not to overdo it; even he can see how frayed she is.
In her car, Pip calculates a dose that incapacitates fast without killing: two and a half milligrams. She bags the pills and grinds them under her heel into a fine green powder—cool, clinical, unflinching.
With the powder tucked into her pocket, Pip drives on, resolved. The line between hunter and criminal blurs further as she leans into The Nature of Good and Evil, weaponizing her skills for a crime she insists is justice.
Chapter 35: The Alliance
Pip arrives at the Reynolds house. Jamie, Nat, and Connor are startled; Ravi has already primed Nat for a call. Pip says something terrible has happened and she needs their help to “make someone pay,” but they can’t know details—and they can never ask. She’s drafting them into a plan with built-in plausible deniability.
All three agree without hesitation. Jamie and Connor owe her; Nat understands Pip’s ferocity in a way the others can’t because of her own history with Max. Their consent forges a new coalition—one born of trauma, debt, and the belief that the system won’t deliver what’s owed.
They roll up to Max’s house. While the others wait in a nearby car, Pip tapes over the two front cameras, then peeks in: Max is alone, absorbed in a video game. Gloves on, she texts the signal. Nat rings the bell. A ninety-second countdown begins.
Character Development
Pip steps fully into the role of architect and perpetrator, applying her forensic mind to the work of staging, dosing, and alibi-crafting. The shift is chilling not because she’s reckless, but because she’s methodical.
- Pippa "Pip" Fitz-Amobi: Coldly strategic, she claims full responsibility to protect Ravi and repurposes the tools of her own victimization. Her choices flow from Trauma and Its Aftermath, recoding her moral logic toward ends-justify-means.
- Ravi Singh: He becomes a co-engineer of the plan, constructing a rigorous alibi and risking himself to safeguard Pip, not out of passivity but out of active, deliberate loyalty.
- Jamie, Nat, and Connor Reynolds: Their swift agreement shows the depth of trust Pip has earned and how their shared history—especially Nat’s with Max—binds them to a vigilante solution.
Themes & Symbols
Pip’s plan functions as an indictment of Justice and the Flawed Legal System. A court failed to hold Max accountable; Pip responds by becoming judge, jury, and stage manager. The narrative asks whether institutional failure authorizes personal retribution—or merely creates new harm.
These chapters live in the gray zone of The Nature of Good and Evil. Pip’s vigilante ethics collide with her tenderness for Ravi and her family, threading through [Love, Loyalty, and Sacrifice] and her [Loss of Innocence]. She’s not oblivious to the cost; she chooses it, and the story refuses to sanitize that choice.
- Duct Tape: Once an instrument of terror, it becomes Pip’s tool, a symbol of inverted power—survival alchemized into control.
- Cleansing: The scalding shower and bleach bucket promise erasure but deliver only concealment. The smell lingers, a sensory emblem of guilt that can’t be scrubbed out.
Key Quotes
“the stronger stuff”
Pip’s demand for Rohypnol marks the moment she arms herself not with evidence but with a weapon. The phrase signals a decisive escalation—she’s done asking systems to work and is now building her own.
“make someone pay”
This vow reframes the mission from truth-seeking to penalty-setting. It condenses grief, rage, and purpose into a single aim: rebalancing the ledger, whatever it takes.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
This run of chapters flips the series’ engine: the question is no longer who did it, but whether Pip can get away with what she’s doing—and what it will cost. The SUV-as-morgue, the bleach bucket, the powdered drug, the taped lenses, and the ninety-second clock all ratchet stakes while mapping Pip’s moral freefall. Her choice to involve friends multiplies the risk and binds more lives to the fallout, setting the stage for a climax where justice and survival collide.