Opening
In a single night, Pippa "Pip" Fitz-Amobi crosses the line from investigator to architect of a crime. As she moves to frame Max Hastings, she twists the tools that once exposed truth into instruments of deception, pushing the limits of her own morality under the banner of Justice and the Flawed Legal System.
What Happens
Chapter 36: The Danger Inside
Nat distracts Max at the front door while Pip slips through an unlocked back patio. Inside, she spots Max’s water bottle on the coffee table, unscrews the cap, and empties crushed sleeping pills into it. As Nat confronts Max about the libel suit, tensions climb—until a brief scuffle erupts and Nat lands a hit, giving Pip time to hide in the under-stairs closet.
Max, dazed and irritated, slams the door and stumbles past Pip’s hiding place, holding frozen peas to his eye. Mistaking the oncoming haze for the effects of the punch, he sinks onto the couch, sips from the drugged bottle, and tries to play a video game. His movements slow. He slumps. Unconscious. Pip emerges, steady and shaking all at once. The The Unreliability of Truth and Perception pulses through the scene: Max misreads his own body while Pip rewrites the night. She takes his phone and car keys—fuel for what comes next.
Pip lingers long enough to accept what this is: survival and revenge. She snaps into action, pocketing what she needs and stepping back into the dark.
Chapter 37: Planting the Seeds
Outside, Nat, Jamie, and Connor wait in Jamie’s car. Nat admits she stayed to keep watch, proof of Love, Loyalty, and Sacrifice under pressure. Pip passes Max’s phone—bagged—to Jamie with precise instructions: drive to Green Scene Ltd., slip the phone behind a rock outside the gate, don’t go in, then vanish to a late-night movie festival in another town. They are to become each other’s alibis—and to never speak of their part in any of this.
When they drive off, Pip re-enters Max’s house to collect evidence that will tether him to the murder of Jason Bell. From his bedroom, she takes a dirty hoodie, sneakers with a distinctive tread, and a baseball cap. The most intimate theft—a DNA sample—comes with a small, careful tug at Max’s hair. She bags it, resets the scene, and leaves his keys in his unlocked car before walking back to her own, peeling off latex gloves one finger at a time.
Chapter 38: Building an Alibi
Pip drives to the Wards’ house. Cara Ward and her sister, Naomi, take one look at Pip and know something is wrong. Pip asks for help without details, invoking plausible deniability and revealing the jagged edges of Trauma and Its Aftermath that now shape her choices.
A burner phone rings—Connor reports the plant is done. Pip tells him to destroy the phone and SIM. Then, using the Wards’ landline for a clean timestamp, she calls Christopher Epps, Max’s lawyer, and accepts the settlement in the libel case. She agrees to apologize publicly and retract her accusations—a move that both humiliates her and builds a plausible motive for Max to celebrate, drink, and be careless on the night of the “murder.” Cara and Naomi, terrified and resolute, agree to the plan without the full truth.
Chapter 39: A Performance for the Cameras
They head to a McDonald’s at a busy I-95 service plaza—a stage of fluorescent lights and relentless surveillance. Pip pays with her debit card, leaves a trail of receipts, and keeps her voice steady while fear hums beneath the table. To cement the timeline, they take photos and videos; Pip directs a selfie with the lock screen time—10:51 p.m.—glowing on Naomi’s phone. The image echoes the method she once used to dismantle a false alibi, a bitter emblem of her Loss of Innocence.
The performance takes its toll. Pip rushes to the bathroom and vomits. She returns pale and silent. They buy McFlurries—one last transaction—and leave, carrying their fear and the evidence of their presence.
Chapter 40: The Rendezvous
Pip drops Cara and Naomi home just before midnight, rehearsing the simple script they’ll stick to if questioned. Back at her house, she lets her parents hear her return and claims she lost her phone. After the lights go out, she checks the bloody clothes and duct tape steeping in bleach—dissolving the most damning links—then slips out into the night.
At a nearby intersection, she meets Ravi Singh, waiting in Max’s stolen car, panic hardening his voice as he tallies their lateness against their plan. They debrief quickly. The alibi holds. Now they drive to Green Scene Ltd. to finish staging the scene before Jason Bell’s body is found. Gloves on, beanies down, Ravi at the wheel—they head into the dark to complete the story they’ve begun.
Character Development
Pip’s conscience and calculation duel all night. She plans with surgical precision, uses friends as chess pieces, and steels herself to plant evidence and harvest DNA—yet her body betrays her with nausea. The old code remains inside her even as she breaks it.
- Pip: Shifts from seeker of truth to designer of lies; shows both ruthless control and visceral remorse.
- Ravi: Becomes Pip’s co-conspirator and emotional anchor, channeling fear into focus when the timeline slips.
- Cara and Naomi: Choose trust over certainty, accepting risk without details to protect Pip.
- Nat, Jamie, and Connor: Prove their loyalty under pressure, executing high-stakes tasks and embracing silence as protection.
Themes & Symbols
Pip’s plan is an indictment of institutions that fail victims. When the courts and community won’t hold Max to account, she manufactures accountability, embodying the jagged logic of vigilante justice. The system’s inadequacy creates the very conditions that turn evidence—phone data, timestamps, surveillance—into props in a staged truth.
Perception becomes pliable. Max mistakes drug-induced dizziness for the aftermath of a punch; investigators will one day trust photos, receipts, and CCTV that all point to a lie. Pip’s arc marks the cost of that fabrication: innocence traded for survival. Cameras and phones—once her tools for revealing truth—now serve as masks, recording a story designed to mislead. The same methods that freed the innocent now ensnare the guilty.
Key Quotes
“We never speak of this.” Pip’s command fuses loyalty with secrecy, binding her friends to a story that protects them and endangers their integrity. The line crystallizes the moral compromise at the heart of the plan.
“10:51 p.m.” The glowing timestamp in the selfie turns time into a weapon. It’s the series’ full-circle moment—evidence that once exposed lies now constructs them, underscoring how easily proof can be repurposed.
“I accept the settlement.” Pip’s capitulation to Max’s lawyer is both humiliation and strategy. It builds her alibi while giving Max a believable reason to be careless that night, tightening the narrative trap around him.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters mark the execution phase of Pip’s darkest plan. Every move builds an alibi, frames Max, and implicates her friends, braiding their fates together. The section reframes the series’ investigative DNA: what once dismantled a false story now manufactures one. By the end, Pip isn’t just solving a case—she’s creating one, revealing how the pursuit of justice can contort into something unrecognizable when the system fails.