Stay close is the television adoption of Harlan Coben’s same-titled novel. It was released on 31st December 2021. It consists of 8 episodes.
Daniel O’Hara is the director of the drama and Danny Brocklehurst, Harlan Coben, Nicola Shindler, and Richard Fee are the executive producers.
Plot:
It is a story of a mother Meghan who is trying to live peaceful life leaving the dark past aside. However series of events happens following serial killing and she is linked to that as she used to work at the club where all this begins.
How she manages to save herself from past and was she the killer or someone else?
Let’s find out who?
Story-line:
It’s a story of Megan a suburban mother who is about to get married to Dave, after 16 years of dating. She has 3 kids namely Kayleigh, Laura, and Jordan. She has happily left her dark past behind and is living in a big well-organized house. Everything was going so smooth and they were all set to get married, but shockingly a letter and her life turns upside down. It has ‘Cassie’ written on it with scribbled fonts. As she opens the card, there was nothing specific. No name, No sender ID too! The camera on the porch brings images of a shadowy figure in a hood dropping it off, someone Meg seems to know.
It was cluster clear that she is hiding her past where she was known as Cassie. Shockingly she finds a familiar woman (Lorraine) at a tennis match with her daughter and meets her later in the day.
Detective Mike Broome is appointed to find out why is Carlton Flynn, a 20-year-old guy is missing. Mike is also consumed by the thought of not being able to solve a similar kind of case about missing Stewart Green. Mike and his wife together discover the possibility of Carlton visiting a lively strip club on Friday.
On the meet, Lorraine tells her that Stewart Green is back and asking for girls. Suddenly horror starts running down her veins. The audience is now curious about what have Carrie done in past and what would happen when investigator Mike will unfold the pages of her dark past?
Bringing more problems to her messed-up life, she visits Stewart’s house and meets his wife. His wife soon smells something off and asks her to leave.
She meets old acquaintance Harry Sutton, who is high on overtaking drugs and alcohol. Meanwhile, they were talking, someone tries to rob her and she escapes the place with him.
Hold the seat audience, another shocking piece of information on the way. Megan’s daughter is seen wearing a chain of missing persons, Carlton.
Now Kayleigh is the new focus as in flashbacks, she and Bea are seen following Megan, who is wearing Kayleigh’s dress and shows up at the club. They try to discover more about viper’s club and to enter they asked for the help of Carlton. Girls smartly escape the place and Carlton follows them to the woods.
At present, Megan discovers at Larroine’s place that she was the one to watch Stewart on the way out of the club yelling “I know Cassie was in,” and thanks to CCTV footage, it’s brought up old memories. Another person goes missing i.e ‘Guy’ and his partner Simona shows up to see Ray, who was with him at carnival night.
Megan discovers that there are numerous flyers of Viper’s are there. She smells something tragic is cooking around. The detective on his investigation finds out that Carlton and Tanwy are connected. They were together at carnival’s night and Carlton broke her 2 fingers furiously when things went wrong with him. Now she does not know where the hell is he!
The news of Carlton reaches Kayleigh and along with Bea, she goes to find him out.
On the other hand, the detective opens the file of all the missing people in the last 17 years. And surprisingly all of them seem connected. All the missing people were last found in April. To add more confusion to the investigation, there is a photo taken by Ray, which shows blood spatters on stone, and on the other side CCTV footage of Carlton showering is found.
Buckle up the seat, as you are about to read something tragic! In the woods, a hooded figure is seen dumping a car in the lake, and guess who? He was none other than Dave!
And the scary things won’t stop here. Rumors about blad guy wearing charming formals took away, Megan’s youngest child Jordan. To Megan’s relief, Jordan is back home safe. The guy that talked to him gave him a letter which had a flyer of viper’s. To Meghan’s doubt, it was Stewart Green.
A psychopathic couple of assassins is seen killing Tawny in her house. Wrapping up the body, they take her to a secluded spot overlooking a large bridge and dump the body.
As the pages of the story turn, we get to know that Ray is Cassie’s old boyfriend and has lots of photos of her on his PC. There happens to the photo of Guy too. However, Ray is unable to collect the memories from that night as he was drunk.
Kay and Bea, taking their investigation further follows Ray and Lorraine and almost get caught. Ray manages to take a photo of the number plate.
Well, the detective and Lorraine are seen kissing and seem to have a history together!
Harry calls from Guy’s murder scene asking Broome to meet where Cassie is also joining them. However, the detective could not notice Megan but mike somehow manages to glance at her and finds out that Megan is Carrie.
The couple that killed Tawny is actually working for our detective’s boss! And now he orders to kill Harry too!
Megan accepts that Stewart was obsessed with her and didn’t like the idea of her dating Ray back then. He made her life hell and she could not even manage to call the police because of her working as a stripper. Best she thinks is to run away far from her dark life. To ruin things she found a dead body, she was not sure but thought it was Stewart and started to run away and start a new life from scratch.
When Ray was interrogated officially, he confesses that he was a the pub before she arrived at Vipers on April 16th mid-night. He was much drunk hence does not remember much.
Hiding truth is equivalent to lying and Ray does the same by hiding the truth that there happened a fight at the club at night. He was robbed the next day however managed to click photos and he hands over it to the police.
Following car of Kayleigh’s, he reaches her house where Carrie/Megan, and Kayleigh greet each other. He is stunned by the scene.
After breaking into Sarah’s place he finds a suitcase full of money tagged with ‘Stewart Green’.
Kayleigh while checking her mom’s tablet finds out that she visited the pool bar 22 minutes drive away.
While investigating, Broome (detective) finds out that guy named Jamal is imprisoned with one of the linked murders of Zain. Zain had assaulted Jamal’s girlfriend and hence as a part of revenge, he murdered him.
Kayleigh finds out Ray and Megan kissing and rushes out! Megan tries to explain to her that he was his boyfriend when she used to work at Viper’s.
Later Harry is found dead due to a drug overdose. However, when police visit his home where the body was found, they clearly call it murder.
On the other hand, Simona points a gun at Ray asking all the truth about Guy. He informs her about Guy dancing off with some girls and causing problems at the club that day.
To the surprise of Megan, Barbie and Ken arrive at home to confront Kayleigh!
After searching a few pics of Dave and Carrie, he realizes that he was also present there on April night in a fight and wants to find out what he has been hiding all this time.
Ray and dave end up fighting at the stag party asking each other the truths. Right before hitting Dave with a pole, something about that night strikes in his mind and he now demands to fester to follow him to the woods.
Kayleigh is gone when Megan reaches home and definitely, the culprits are Ken and Barbie. They have left a number and some instructions are given to her when she called. She is told instructions about how to meet them.
Many things happen when Megan goes to meet Kayleigh and she suddenly finds out that she is also locked in now!
Back to Ray’s sudden realization, he now remembers that he was the one to carry Stewart’s body in the back seat but is unsure about what he was actually up to.
Broome finds out Kayleigh and Carlton’s photo and she explains about the night with a spiked drink that Carlton actually tried to make them drink up and ends up drinking himself.
Dave is off due to finding out about Meghan’s past and thinks of taking a break from all this. They are already engaged and Megan thinks it’s too late for him to run away. He still walks away.
Broome receives the message ‘Megan is the witness of Harry’
Megan receives a voice mail inviting her to meet! Later we find out that it was rudy and rudy is wants a share in the money she took away from Stewart! He also confesses that he was the one to chase her in the woods, not Stewart.
Some of the money she took away was to pay back rudy too.
Broome confronts Ray who confesses right before getting arrested that he was the one to kill Stewart. However, before Broome could arrest him he runs away. Broome manages to check the photos he takes and gets a clue that there is something in the woods.
He later finds out that there is a pile of dead bodies in a secret compartment.
The ending:
Lots of spoilers ahead!
In end, all the twisting things get solved!
Barbie stabs Megan badly and Megan is now rushed to hospital. Broome is behind Ray, a suspect for all the murders. Ray makes a deal with Broome that he would confess everything if he can meet Megan.
In the meet with Ray, a flashback shows that Megan had received a note to go into the woods. She thought it was a Ray, but that was not the case. Ray was following her and found out about Stewart’s body. Just because he did not want her to end up in jail, he chops his body into pieces and throws it into the lake.
When Broome enters Lorraine’s home, he sees the bloodhound there. Lorraine is holding a knife and confesses that she was so angry at the world that she decided to kill one person every year at carnival night.
She is the real killer and behind all this 17-year-old case mystery.
As the series closes out, Megan comes to the shocking realization that Dave actually murdered Carlton, who somehow remained unconscious and out of it all that time.
Well, there is no news on whether there will be a second season or not. The last episode pretty much wrapped up everything except one clue in the last. It might not be strong enough to bring the second season. Let’s see what the writer decides.