Steve wakes in one of Barb's elaborate South Carolina treehouses and spends the morning studying documents recovered from Sheriff Scroggie's computer. Barb fusses over healthy drinks and rules about clean living, while Steve's joking resistance to the retreat's regime underlines how out of place he feels there.

Amy and Rosie arrive at the treehouse porch, and the conversation quickly turns from jokes about Steve's borrowed clothes to the murder investigation. Amy lays out the pattern: Andrew Fairbanks, Bella Sanchez, and Mark Gooch were all influencers, all were flown to glamorous locations for work, and all were shot almost as soon as they arrived and then displayed publicly.

Steve and Rosie add the links that make the pattern more disturbing. All three victims were clients of Maximum Impact, and each murder happened close to where Amy was at the time. Because of that overlap, Steve reduces the mystery to two pressing questions: why these influencers were killed, and why someone keeps positioning Amy near the crimes.

Steve then shares the most important discovery from Scroggie's files. Along with murder instructions, Scroggie had been sent a blood sample and told to leave it at the scene, which makes Rosie conclude that someone was trying to incriminate another person. When Amy asks whose blood it might be, Steve cannot answer, but the idea makes Amy think of the mandatory drug tests Maximum Impact requires every three months. The chapter ends with Amy fearing that Francois Loubet or someone connected to the agency may have gained access to her blood, raising the threat that the murders were designed to frame her.