The depot looms like a fortress of shadows, its metal heartbeat thudding in the silence as police tape flaps a mournful banner in the draft. Ja Sharma, a man who has learned to measure danger in the glint of a flashlight and the weight of a warrant, stands behind glass walls that feel less like protection and more like a fishbowl—the world watching as the net tightens around him. A new voice rides the room: Detective Inspector Harrow, a predator in a tailored coat, circling the wounded seal of this business, dissecting logs and ledgers with cold, clinical accuracy. She is the blade at the edge of a blade, a reminder that in the shadows of the depot, nothing escapes the truth for long.

Ray Walter, once a master of calm violence, watches from the shadows of a parked lorry, his swagger evaporated by the electricity of an imminent arrest. The glow of a phone screen becomes an accusing light in the night, Ray’s thumbs hammering out a message to Dylan with a desperation that sounds like a plea and a threat at once: meet me at the barn, now, or April pays the price. It isn’t a choice, really; it’s a line drawn in fear, a path toward a wall Ray might not be able to back away from.

Dylan arrives as Ray paces, dust motes dancing in beams of stubborn light. The barn smells of damp hay and old secrets, the air heavy with the unspoken threat of what will be decided in the next breath. Ray’s line is sharp, a blade in the dark: the police are here because someone talked, because someone lit a spark that set the entire operation trembling on its hinges. He spins toward Dylan with the feral glow of a trapped animal, gripping him by the throat and slamming him against a rough wooden post, the force of the strike cracking through the stillness. Shut up, Ray snarls, the moment sealing itself with the sound of wood meeting bone.

Then the confession, whispered like a fever dream in a voice that sounds too calm for what it carries: someone must find a name by sundown, or April will be handed over to a mother who knows how to “clean house.” The threat lands with the dull thud of truth too heavy to ignore. Ray’s eyes glitter with a dangerous clarity as he lowers himself to Dylan’s level, his voice dropping into a low, intimate register that sends a shiver through the scene: if the name doesn’t surface, if the government doesn’t blink at the ledger of his crimes, then April will vanish into the same shadows Ray has learned to fear.

Meanwhile, the world at Butler’s farm feels almost homey. The kettle sings its cheerful tune, a glow of domestic calm that belies the darkness just beyond the kitchen door. Celia, Ray’s mother and backbone of a far more terrifying empire, sits with a queenly posture and a china cup that catches the light like a trap. She plays the role of warm benefactor, weaving a web of discreet shipments and “unmarked vans” that sound like progress but carry the quiet hum of horror. Moira Dingle moves through this space with a practiced grace, almost unaware that the hospitality she extends will become the chain that binds her to a future she cannot yet see. Celia’s words are silver-tanged, promising collaboration and profit even as her smile never quite reaches the coldness in her eyes.

The contract talk becomes a knife’s edge. Celia’s assurances of secrecy, of high-value organic feed and quiet runs, wrap Moira in a ribbon of trust that feels almost ceremonial until the truth haunts the page she signs: a line in the ledger that ties her name to something far uglier than a bad deal. In the back of a container, frightened workers huddle like lost shadows—captives of the very “logistics” Celia touts as prudent. The truth leaks through the seams of the scene, a floodtide of guilt and fear that Moira cannot deny and dare not defy.

Nicola King, at the King household, threads a different kind of revelation. Her search for Ray Walter becomes a mosaic of scribbles and cold calculation. A reverse image search yields a single, devastating clue: the man Ray hides behind is not the man he claimed to be. The photograph surfaces as a wrecking ball—Simon Slick Vance, a teenage arsonist turned fugitive, a ghost who wears a familiar set of eyes as a mask. The realization hits Nicola like a punch: she has not only found a fraudster but a killer who has reinvented himself to outrun the past.

Laurel Thomas moves through this storm with a fragile hope tether