The Ledger

[SFX: Floodlight hum. Rain. Distant engine.]

MARA: Callum Voss looked like a man who had never raised his voice because no one had ever required him to.

CALLUM: Mara Vale. I expected more resemblance.

MARA: To Elise?

CALLUM: To the version of Elise she invented for you.

ELISE: Let them go.

CALLUM: You still speak as if bargains are moral objects.

PRICE: Tanner Polk. Step away from the van.

POLK: Jonah, go home.

PRICE: I tried that. Didn't take.

CALLUM: You have footage, I assume. License plates. Faces. My voice, if Jonah remembered to charge that antique recorder.

MARA: Then you should be nervous.

CALLUM: I am disappointed. Nervous is for people without contingency.

MARA: Callum lifted a phone and played a video.

CALLUM: Her name was Lacey Moore. Seventeen. Dead twelve minutes after this was filmed.

ELISE: You killed her.

CALLUM: I gave you a choice. You made one.

MARA: Elise went white.

CALLUM: Here is tonight's arrangement. Elise comes with me. The vans continue. You keep your recordings and spend the next decade discovering how little proof matters when every witness is compromised.

PRICE: No.

CALLUM: Then Deputy Polk will discover Mara holding a stolen firearm beside six unstable fugitives, one disgraced detective, and a sister with an outstanding psychiatric hold.

MARA: Psychiatric hold?

ELISE: He renews it every year.

CALLUM: A legal kindness.

MARA: I looked at the vans.

MARA: The ledger is under Hannah.

CALLUM: Yes.

PRICE: Mara.

MARA: You want it before the sale.

CALLUM: I want many things.

MARA: Then trade.

CALLUM: For what?

MARA: Me.

ELISE: Absolutely not.

MARA: You did it for a stranger.

ELISE: And I ruined your life.

MARA: You do not get to be the only reckless sister.

PRICE: Both of you stop inheriting each other's bad ideas.

CALLUM: Moving. Truly. But unnecessary.

MARA: Callum did not want me.

[SFX: Long car horn. Chaos.]

RUTH: Everybody down!

[SFX: Glass break. Women shouting. Engines rev.]

MARA: Ruth had brought people.

[SFX: Footsteps in mud. Shouting.]

MARA: Callum did not run.

CALLUM: Polk.

[SFX: Single gunshot into mud.]

PRICE: Next one is not the ground.

MARA: The women in the van began screaming names.

ELISE: The field. Now.

MARA: Why?

ELISE: Because Callum would rather burn the ledger than lose it.

MARA: We ran.

[SFX: Shovel biting wet earth.]

MARA: The clinic field was twenty minutes away.

ELISE: I'm sorry.

[SFX: Branch snap.]

CALLUM: So am I.

[MUSIC: End.]