Poor Angel wasn’t quite sure what to think at this point. The woman she just found in the closet said she was Amelia, Coral’s friend, but the woman who had just jumped out the window to her death also claimed to be Amelia. So, which of them is telling the truth? This Amelia was tied up, so Angle picked her up and untied her hands, but not her feet. She then set her on the chair and told her not to move. “My name is Angel,” she said, “I am with the Investigators.”

“I know, Coral told me about you,” answered Amelia, “she said you are one of the triplets and a very special person.” “That was nice of her to say that,” said Angel, “for now I’m leaving your feet tied, please don’t try to loose them. I need to wait until Coral or Abigail wake up and confirm your identity. I’m not trying to be mean, just careful, please understand.” “I do understand,” said Amelia, “I won’t move.” Then she was silent for a few moments. “You should warn your friends,” she said finally, “those people are going to come and hide in this old lodge and attack your friends when they come to get us. They might all be killed!”

“It’s okay,” said Angel, “we thought about that, well, our leader did, and we set a trap for them by hiding here and attacking them as they came here to hide. They will not be doing us any harm now.” “But, but, tell your friends not to go outside,” Amelia pleaded, “they buried explosives all around the lodge and can detonate them from inside their underground base!” Angel communicated that with me right away, but the Bad Girls had already come out to help with the prisoners.

“Go back inside, now!” I called out to them. They didn’t do anything. Then Sky yelled, “Go back inside now, there’s another trap!” Wow, that was a lot louder than my yelling. Sky is like Misty, they can yell loud. Very loud. The Bad Girls turned and ran back to the lodge, but the explosions began and there were a lot of them! Most of the girls made it to safety, but not all. I communicated with Kat to come right away, we had several wounded and maybe some deaths.

Jennifer had sensed extra danger before, so she sent Kat and her Wildcats out to help us. They were already passing through the village when I communicated with Kat, so it will only take a few minutes for them to arrive. Sky and I ran over to the wounded girls to try and help them until Kat gets out here. At least, I was hoping they would only be minor wounds and not seriously wounded, or dead. Sky told the rest of the girls to stay away. While we were occupied with this, the men and women who had surrendered to us decided to pick up guns and attack once more.

But our snipers were watching carefully and saw what they were planning and they began shooting those six people and all were killed before they could fire a shot toward our girls. “Oh, I just remembered something else I heard Jameson say,” Amelia told Angel, “they had put explosives in this lodge and along the road too so they could destroy the Investigators totally.” Kat and her Wildcats were just driving up to the old lodge at that moment. I told them not to park too close to the lodge and quickly help us with the wounded.

We then helped the girls down from the bedroom, they had awakened by this time and told Angel that the other woman was indeed the real Amelia. They also told us something else, the large woman who had jumped out the window was really Ted Jameson! Now, who would think that a woman would be named Ted? Her name was actually Theodora and she figured that since some men named Theodore will use the name Ted, then she could use that name as well.

She hated the name Theodora anyway, but actually liked the name Ted and she thought it would be a good way to hide her identity. I wonder why Cristy never thought of that? She always thinks of weird things. Apparently when Cristy heard about this, she went flippedy, but more on that later. As we were getting the wounded in one of the empty vans, 2 shots were fired and two more girls fell. This time from the Wildcats. We all stopped and looked around, but none of us knew where the shots had come from. All but the snipers.

While the rest of us were looking on the ground around the trees, our snipers were looking up in those trees and finally spotted them. Charlotte and Emily shot and 2 men fell from trees, but they continued looking. Then Aoife shot another one, then another. Then all was quiet. We then finished loading our wounded into the vans and we were soon on our way out and back to the village. Sienna had contacted the Governor and he sent the federal authorities out to the village.

There were certainly a lot of them, complete with armored vehicles, SWAT teams, plus a large number of heavily armed men and women from various agencies. The girls had told us there is a long tunnel from the village store to the complex under the old house, with storage rooms along the way. Apparently it was a nuclear bomb shelter that was quite large, able to keep up to 500 people alive for a period of one year, or longer.

The idea was begun by Ted’s father. However, our main objective right now is getting out of here without any more problems. There were no explosions along the way, so that was good. Perhaps that means these people are either dead or arrested by now. We didn’t make any stops since we had to get our girls to the hospital quickly…

To Be Continued. ©2025 Steve McLeod.