The camp is alive with the chatter of the students who are happily enjoying their day off. All the students have been assigned an activity to ensure the feast at night will be a delicious one. Some are collecting wood for the fire while others are on kitchen duty.Kat is busy peeling potatoes. Her hair is tied up with a pink scrunchie and she’s busy with her work when a shadow falls on her. She looks up to find Troy.“Troy?” She asks. “What’s up?”“I want to talk to you,” he abruptly says.“I can’t, I have to peel-”Troy doesn’t wait and grabs her arm. Kat protests but he drags her away from everyone. Some of the students are giving her a jealous look because she’s attracting the most popular boy in the school towards her, but Kat is affronted by his behavior.“What’s the matter with you?” She exclaims when he releases her. They’re near the edge of the forest. There are several cages nearby which are housing guard dogs.“What is the matter with you?” Troy retorts. “Why are you doing t
Ryder picks up the phone in one ring.“Ryder!” Kat gasps. “Thank god you answered!”“What’s going on?”Kat quickly tells him that Troy confessed his feelings to her. Ryder listens to it all, his mood becoming grim.“Sis,” he begins. “You know the consequences of his feelings for you, right? Vincent Hawkins will not stay still. He’ll try to dig out information about you and if he discovers about our deceit, the first person he’ll target is you.”It’s the truth. Kat is an expert hacker and developer. If Vincent tries to bring them down, then Kat will be a major obstacle in his way. Not only is she skilled but she’s also Ryder’s sister. It puts her in a precarious situation indeed.“I have to keep up the ruse!” Kat claims. “Troy is a witness to Isabella’s murder. He knows who did it. If I can just make him talk!”She’s finding herself cornered. Now that Troy has confessed, her own feelings for him are complicating the plan. She wants to ask him about Isabella but if she does that, he’ll
*A while ago*The other students are chattering all around her, busy with their tasks. Kat’s senses are on alert as she scans the area. There are thick trees all around them, surrounding them with dark shadows with only the light from the firewoods illuminating everything. The students are having fun roasting marshmallows or eating the feast which they cooked.“Hey Kat, can you help me clean these dishes?”Kat looks up to find one of her classmates, Janine, standing there. She’s holding a pile of dirty dishes and is sweating a bit.“Sure!” Kat exclaims and hurries to help her.“These people sure can eat a lot!” Janine laughs. “So many dirty plates!”“Well, we did work hard to prepare it,” Kat remarks. She’s still keeping an eye out for any signs of the stalkers.“I just wanna get this over with,” Janine says. “Mira and I have many plans for tonight! She was talking about going to the river for a midnight dip but I’m not so sure about it.”“Why?” Kat asks.“I’m kinda scared,” Janine si
Kat remains still as she’s carried by one of the kidnappers. By the sounds of the footsteps, she deduces that there are two men. Are they Hector’s cronies?“The boss told us to take her to him, alive,” one of the men says. “We’ll set off for the city in a while.”“Won’t they realize that she’s missing?” the one carrying Kat asks. “They’ll search for her.”“Don’t worry. The students are busy cooking, cleaning or whatever the hell they’re doing!” He spits on the ground, scoffing. “They’ll be too late in noticing that she’s missing.”“What do we do with her?” his partner asks. “She’ll wake up soon.”“She’s young and pretty,” the other one leers. “We can have some fun with her…”“But the boss said-”“I know what he said! But he didn’t say anything about not having our own fun with this gal. Just look at her. She’s gonna be our bed warmer for tonight.”Kat memorizes their voices in her head. The one carrying her has a soft and calm tone while the other one has a gruff voice. It seems that
“Hey Charlie, you got any cigars?” The gruff one asks his partner.“I might have dropped it somewhere, Freddie,” the quiet one says. Charlie and Freddie…the names ring a bell in Kat’s head. She had taken out a list of the men who work for Hawkins family. These two might be there. This makes perfect sense, she realizes. Hector paid these two men to kill James. There’s no other explanation for it. “It’s getting late. We’re supposed to transfer the girl,” Freddie says. “We should see if she’s awake.”Kat can hear the shuffling of feet and she quickly scrambles towards the back of the door. She holds her breath and waits. The footsteps are getting closer and closer. She raises her hands as the key rattles in the door…“Woof! Woof!”Suddenly a dog leaps out of the bushes and attacks one of the men. The man named Charlie whimpers and is gnawed at by the dog while his partner is confused. Freddie takes out his gun and points at the dog but someone tackles him to the ground.The sound of a
*Flashback*The thunder is striking hard all around the city. Rain is heavily falling, blurring everything else. The traffic is bad at night and a public bus has been stuck on the road for a while, not moving at all. Troy is sitting at the back with earbuds on. He’s staring outside, but his eyes are blank. There’s no emotion in him, his heart numb and his mind racked with guilt. He’s thinking of his sister, Amelia, and of his sister-in-law or rather former sister-in-law, Scarlett. It has been almost over a year since their misfortunes and Troy can’t get them out of his mind. Amelia is still paralyzed and Scarlett is in prison for murder. However, Troy doesn’t believe it and suspects that his family has something to do with her imprisonment.He sighs out loud. There’s nothing he can do to help either of them and it frustrates him. The bus is slowly starting to move again and the traffic is clearing. Raindrops are covering the entire window with water, so he stares at the blurred ligh
Kat holds her breath as she tries to process Troy’s tale. They had assumed Elle killed James and Isabella but it turns out that Hector was the culprit all along. “Hector wanted James’s property transferred to Elle,” Troy bitterly says. “If Scarlett got the inheritance, she’ll never let him touch it. Elle, on the other hand, was docile and obedient. She’d hand over everything to him. This is why he wanted Scarlett and James out of the picture.”James anticipated this, Kat concludes. He wrote the letter and hid it in Isabella’s old house so that she could one day find it. He knew that she’ll go there.There’s no point in trying to find it now, she inwardly sighs. Hector must have gotten rid of the letter. Nevertheless, they now have a witness to Isabella’s death and they can bring Hector down.“You have to come clean to your former sister-in-law,” Kat encourages him. “If you want to free yourself from the guilt, you must tell her the truth.”“I can’t!” Troy bemoans. “My mother-”“Your
Scarlett is visibly shaken by the revelations. Her hands are clammy and her blood has gone cold. An icy silence has fallen over them following Troy’s story and the others are cautious about her reaction. Troy, who’s feeling the most guilt, is ashamed to be in her presence and he knows that she hates him. Kat is standing in a corner while Ryder is still gripping Scarlett’s palm.“I was being mean to you so that I could protect you,” Troy says, gulping. “I couldn’t bear to see what would’ve happened to you if I had told you the truth then. Hector may have tried to kill you in prison. I just-”“Stop,” Scarlett simply says. She takes a deep breath and looks up at the boy. Somewhere in her mind, she expected to hate him but there is nothing. Instead, she’s trying to find the remnants of the innocent boy who used to adore her. She still remembers how he was mistreated by his family, yet he loved her as a sister with his whole heart.“I don’t hate you, Troy,” she says. “I…I understand why yo