Betrayal at the House in the Woods

Curve Ball

I didn't reply straight away to see what else he or the others would say.

"We know you're still in town, Eira, and we just want to talk," Jessy added.

"Took you long enough," I replied.

Richy sent his favourite thinking emoji. "We figured we should give you time first."

"Well, we didn't think you'd stay," Cleo added.

I snorted. "You hoped you've scared me away."

"If you put it like that..." Richy replied. "It makes it sound like we're the bad guys."

I raised my eyebrows in disbelief. "You ARE the bad guys."

I wondered how much of my investigations they knew of. I didn't know whether they hadn't mentioned anything because they didn't know, pretended to not know, or just didn't want to say anything about it.

"What do you want to talk about, exactly?" I added.

"Our point of view. We're not the bad guys, Eira," Jessy replied.

That's exactly what the bad guys would say...

"Okay, but only if everything goes on my terms."

Richy, Jessy, and Cleo were typing at the same time. I wondered where the others were. Jessy's message came up first.

"Done."

Richy deleted his message and typed some more. "Wait, what are the terms?"

Typical. Jessy seemed to be the naive one while Richy was always careful.

"I'll tell you when and where."

"That's fine by me," Richy replied, agreed by the others.

"And who can come," I added.

Richy put another thinking emoji. "Um, you mean, from this group or also additional?"

"Yes," I replied shortly.

Richy put a groaning emoji. "Can't we at least know who they are?"

I thought for a bit before answering. "Maybe. I'll be in touch."

"No police please. And we'll check for any recording devices," Cleo added.

After Richy's catchphrase, "Adios", everyone went offline without saying anything.

I looked up towards Lilly's house but there was no sign of Hannah. Another message came in.

"Hey."

It was Richy again, but this time privately.

I stared at it for a while, not so sure whether to reply or not. It was funny how betrayed you felt just by a-week-old friendships. I couldn't even begin to imagine how Hannah would've felt.

Were they trying to sweettalk me out of this case? Or were they going to threaten me instead?

"Hey back at ya," I finally replied, justifying by thinking that it might be helpful, even though I knew full well what my real reasons were.

Richy was typing and deleting for a while before saying, "I know this is hard to take, but I'm really sorry for what happened."

Sweettalk was definitely more of his style than threatening, or at least, he wasn't the confrontational type. If he threatened, he probably did it anonymously... or planned to not look like him. Speaking from experience...

"What happened... you made it sound like it was something bad that no one could have had control over."

Silence. No typing or deleting for a while. I couldn't be sure whether he was just thinking of what to say or whether he was interrupted so he hadn't read it. Not long after, I could see he was typing again.