- Ryan manages to speak to Debra by cellphone and the search to find where they've buried her begins. When they find the car Joe's followers used, they walk into a trap. The clock is ticking down and Debra is running out of oxygen. Claire meanwhile wakes up in a house by the ocean. Joe is waiting for Ryan to show up so his story can come to an end. He shows her what it's really like to kill someone and be responsible for a death. Ryan and Joe have their final confrontation. There is one of Joe's followers who is off the radar however.—garykmcd
- Havenport, Maryland
The day after the attack, the FBI finds surveillance footage of Alex stuffing Agent Debra Parker in a trunk outside the community center.
Mike Weston and Ryan Hardy go outside when they see a young boy walking up in a Poe mask. Emma paid him to wear it. There's a phone number written inside.
A phone rings with Debra in her underground coffin. Her hands are bound. She tells Ryan she's buried.
They trace the call, but it's relayed through a dummy server. She relays what she remembers. They went over railroad tracks and drove for awhile. She counted to 700 and they made lots of turns. They turned onto a dirt road and took her out in the woods.
The forest beyond the tracks is 3,000 acres. They guess she has three to five hours of air.
The police find Alex's car.
Claire wakes up in a darkened house with the sounds of the ocean outside. She runs out the front door and sees she's in a stone cottage by a lighthouse. Joe finds her; he ushers her back inside at gunpoint. He downs painkillers. Claire thinks the lighthouse is predictable.
"It's a motif, Claire. It's a bookend to the story," he says.
"You're a brilliant teacher, Joe, it never really translated to your writing," she says. She tells him to hurry up and kill her, but he's waiting to kill her in front of Ryan. She calls him predictable again and he throws her in a room. There's someone else in there.
Ryan and Weston and a team of agents go to the abandoned car in the woods. Alex takes aim at them with a rifle and hits an agent. Ryan sneaks up around behind him and disarms him. He asks where Debra is and hits him when Alex plays dumb.
The man in the room introduces himself as Neil Meyer. A couple of kids hired him to bring a boat here and broke his ankle.
Weston and Ryan take Alex to an abandoned warehouse to torture information out of him. When he won't talk, they take turns punching and kicking him. Weston whacks him in the legs with an iron pipe and Ryan gouges one of his eyes out with his thumb. Alex gives them a location. "If you're lying, I will kill you," Ryan says.
At the lighthouse, Joe comes for Claire. She tries to convince him to let Neil go. Joe's counting on Ryan finding them.
Ryan and Weston talk to Debra as they race to find her. They tell her that they're on the way. She asks them to call her sister and her parents and tell them she loves them. Weston urges her to hang on. Debra tells Ryan that she is not his fault, she accepted the life.
Alex directs them to the grave in the woods and they dig furiously. Alex watches as they pry off the lid. Debra's inside, but she's not breathing. Ryan starts CPR, but she doesn't respond. She's dead. "Aw, that's too bad. Just a little too late, bummer," Alex taunts.
Ryan walks over to Alex and shoots him in the head as Weston watches in horror.
Later, with forensic teams on the scene, Ryan notices a manuscript in the bottom of the coffin. It's Joe's book. Ryan flips to the end and sees the burial in the book, including Debra's death. But the manuscript also says that Alex shot Weston dead in the woods.
Ryan sees that it tells him to go to a house alone.
Weston argues to go with him, but Ryan is too afraid that something might happen to him since Joe is killing everyone close to him.
Back at the lighthouse, Joe asks Claire when she knew he liked killing. She suspected when Ryan came to him and told her about the literary references, but she blames herself for not knowing.
Claire breaks down crying, blaming herself for not seeing what he was up to and saying she killed the college girls but not stopping him. He assures her she's the victim.
Joe gets Neil out of the next room and stabs him repeatedly in front of her. "That's what it's actually like to kill someone. You killed no one, Claire. So don't you dare take responsibility for my actions. I earned them, I owned them, they are mine," he says.
Ryan arrives at the designated house from the manuscript and finds Emma waiting for him. She tells him to ditch his gun and phone and put his hands on his head. When he doesn't, a man comes out behind him and injects something in his neck.
Ryan wakes up by a roaring fire in a room with Joe and Claire. Joe asks Ryan when he fell in love with Claire. "Love at first sight, that's the acceptable answer," Joe says.
Next, Joe asks Ryan when he knew he was the killer. Ryan followed Claire to see if she would lead him to Joe, then he fell in love with her. Joe takes a knife and holds it at her eye. Ryan argues that he should die instead, because it's more surprising. Ryan argues killing her is bad storytelling.
"Listen to you, trying to get under my skin," Joe says.
Ryan says it's not hard and throws words like second rate, no-talent and flop at him. "I'm so bored with you, you and Edgar Allen Poe. What a trumped up, piece of trumped up nothing talent he was. Loser, morphine addict, just as pathetic as you," Ryan says.
Ryan lunges at Joe. He runs. Claire screams at Ryan to go kill Joe.
Ryan runs outside after Joe, over to the boathouse. Joe tackles him in the dark. They struggle for the gun and it goes off, igniting barrels of gasoline. Ryan throws Joe off him and into the flames. The boat house starts to fall apart around him. Ryan runs outside as Joe is engulfed in flames.
Once he's clear, the boathouse explodes in a giant fireball. Claire runs up and together they watch the structure burn, with Joe inside.
The next day, the FBI is one the scene, combing the area. They found partial remains. Ryan wants confirmation it's Joe. They have seven total followers in custody.
Claire takes a call from Joey. Ryan plans to take her home with him and then to the FBI briefing.
Ryan checks in with Weston. "You OK?" Ryan asks. "No," Weston says.
Back at Ryan's place with Claire, Ryan gets a call that the dental records match Joe's, as does early DNA. They kiss.
Mobile, Alabama Emma watches the news of Joe's death in tears.
Back in New York, Ryan puts on music and accepts delivery brought up from FBI guarding him. He takes out a knife to open the plastic bag and goes to investigate a noise in the hall. When he comes back, the knife is gone. He turns around and Molly, his follower neighbor, stabs him in the stomach, saying he was always her chapter.
Claire comes out of the shower and sees Ryan on the floor. She runs over to him and Molly comes up behind her and stabs her in the back.
The End
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