Influencer (Influencing Trilogy Book 2)

by Daniel Hurst

  I don’t know what day it is and therefore I have no way of knowing how much time has passed since the yacht went up in flames, which is stressing me out because I am worried that my mum will think I was on it at the time.

  I need to contact her. I need to tell her what happened.

  I need to tell her that I’m alive.

  But I don’t really know what happened. I don’t know why the yacht exploded and I don’t know why I was the only one who was spared. I don’t know why the man standing by the window called me and told me to get off the yacht just like I don’t know why the man sitting opposite me is holding a gun and won’t let me out of his sight.

  Most of all I don’t know why somebody would want to kill everybody at the party, including Ryan and Mason and those poor competition winners from Oklahoma who were just trying to have a good time. I have lost my boyfriend, I have lost my best friend and the whole world probably thinks I’m dead.

  I need answers. I need to grieve for what I have lost. I need to let my mum know that I’m still here. And I need one more thing, even though I have no idea how I am going to get it.

  I need revenge. Because there’s no way that what happened on that yacht was an accident. The fact that I’m being held at gunpoint is enough to tell me that.

  ‘Michael please, tell me what is going on’ I say to the man by the window, hoping that by using his name I might have more luck getting him to talk. I have a feeling the guy opposite me with the gun is a man of few words and so I won’t bother wasting my time there.

  I hear Michael’s footsteps behind my chair and know he is making his way over to me. I stiffen a little, as if to prepare myself in case he suddenly grabs me again, but really I know there isn’t much I can do right now. That gun is still trained on me and I seriously doubt it is going to be moved anytime soon.

  Michael steps in front of me but doesn’t stop until he is standing by the bookcase on the other side of the room. He runs his fingers along the spines of several books while his other hand holds the bottle of beer that he has almost finished.

  The sight of liquid is a reminder of how thirsty I am and I know part of the reason my head is throbbing right now is because I’m dehydrated.

  ‘Can I have a drink?’ I ask, trying a simpler request after my previous two went unanswered.

  Michael stops tracing his finger along the edges of the books and turns to look at me. Then he walks out of the room and while I hope he has gone for water I also prepare myself for the disappointment that he might simply be getting himself another beer.

  While he is gone, I look back at the man opposite me and decide to see if I am right about his lack of conversation skills.

  ‘Is he your boss?’ I ask him, and I notice a flicker of emotion in his face.

  It is easy to spot because he has been otherwise expressionless for the whole time I have been sitting with him.

  ‘He got me the beer, so what do you think’ he says and a smug grin forms on his face, even though I can tell he is trying to hold it in.

  But it’s an awkward grin. Whilst the grin on Michael’s face when he told me that he hadn’t saved me revealed a deep-rooted confidence, this grin appears unnatural, like that of a cocky young upstart who is projecting confidence rather than possessing it.

  Take the gun out of his hand and this guy wouldn’t be that intimidating at all.

  Okay, so he is taller than Michael and I can see from the size of his arms that he works out, but something about Michael’s manner tells me that he is the more dangerous of the two. They make an odd pair and if I had to guess, I’d say their relationship is purely for business, born out of necessity rather than of any other kind of bond.

  A thought comes into my foggy mind. Maybe I can try and play them off against each other? Maybe that’s my only hope of getting out of this situation.

  I know I need to stay strong and come up with a strategy. Even though my heart aches for the loss of Ryan and Mason I know that I have to keep it together if I’m going to have any chance of surviving this. They wanted to get me off that yacht for a reason and though Michael smugly told me that he wasn’t saving me when he had done so, there has to be a good reason for them keeping me alive. Which means that even though they have a gun on me now, they don’t actually want to use it. If they kill me now, then that will make everything they have done so far pointless.

  The phone call. Pulling me from the ocean. Taking me to this house.

  Whatever they did to the person who should be living here.

  I can see a few family photos on the walls around the room but none of them contain the two men who are with me right now. So I guess those people in the photos went the same way as everybody on that yacht.

  But they spared me. What I need to know is why am I so special? Why am I still alive when so many other people have already died? But maybe those answers aren’t vital to me right now. Maybe the only thing that I should be focusing on is getting out of here. Then I can start looking for some answers. I suspect they will be a lot easier to find when I’m the one holding a gun instead of staring down the barrel of one.

  ‘You’re not the boss. He’s getting you to keep watch while he goes about his business’ I say to the man, doubling down on my strategy of driving to generate some conflict between the two of them. Even if that doesn’t work then I might at least learn a little bit more about them. Lord knows they aren’t exactly forthcoming with information.

  I see the man sit up straighter in his chair and reposition the gun in his lap. I know I’ve made a valid point. He’s the watchdog while the alpha dog is in the kitchen draining another beer.

  ‘What do you care’ he says to me, trying to match the intensity of my stare with one of his own. ‘Either way you’re screwed.’

  ‘That might be so. But if I’m going to die then I want it to be at the hands of a real man. Not some pussy with a gun who thinks he’s in charge when he actually isn’t.’

  I know it’s risky to challenge the manhood of a guy holding me at gunpoint but I can’t think of any other way to make this situation better. They’ve insinuated that I’m going to die soon anyway so I might as well try something. And my odds of success are surely better when there’s only one of them in the room rather than two.

  ‘Say that again and see what happens’ he challenges me, raising the gun higher so the barrel is now level with my head.

  It takes all my strength to remind myself that they want me alive in the short term. Hopefully he is just bluffing as he aims the deadly weapon between my eyes.

  ‘Quit being a bitch. You’re holding a girl hostage and you need a gun. Does that sound like something a real man would do.’

  My captor suddenly stands up from his chair and steps quickly towards me, jamming the barrel of the gun into my forehead and making me wish that I hadn’t said anything at all.

  But as I close my eyes and wait for him to pull the trigger, I suddenly hear the gun drop to the floor and the sound of somebody struggling to breathe.

  I open my eyes to see the man still standing over me except this time he has blood pouring from the side of a large wound in his neck. As he struggles to contain the flow, he stumbles across the room before crashing into the wall and bleeding out in the corner, right in front of the guitar that is propped up over there.

  Then I notice Michael standing nearby with the jagged edge of a broken beer bottle in his hand and I don’t need to ask any more questions about who is the boss here. It’s clear he is the one in charge and he wasn’t lying when he told me he hadn’t saved me from the yacht.

  From the look on his face, and the blood-stained glass in his hand, I’m in just as much danger here as I was when I was standing on a yacht full of explosives.

  #JustTheTwoOfUs

  Michael Wright

  I always did work better alone. I didn’t ask for a partner and I don’t need a partner. Especially not one that thinks he’s the one in charge here.

  I wasn’t planning on ki
lling him, but things change. Now he’s lying in a pool of blood in the corner of the room and I’ve got to look after Emily on my own. It won’t be too difficult though. She hasn’t said a word since I killed the man right in front of her and any hopes that she harboured about talking her way out of this situation likely left her the moment she saw what I am capable of.

  I definitely have her undivided attention now.

  I place the broken bottle down on the shelf beside the books and take a seat in the wicker chair that has just been vacated by my former colleague. Emily avoids eye contact with me and I enjoy the brief period of silence before our inevitable conversation must begin.

  There’s only so much I can tell her about the situation she finds herself in because there’s only so much that I know. Ignorance is often bliss in this world and most of the time it’s better not to ask about things that you might not like the answers to.

  I don’t know why I was told to get her off that yacht and I presume that’s because I don’t need to know. I hadn’t ignored Emily’s questions to torment her. I had ignored them because I didn’t want her to discover that there are some parts of this plan about which I am as clueless as she is. Then she may not have respected my authority as much. But I have no doubt that she does now.

  Nothing gets respect quicker than a show of strength.

  ‘You should be grateful’ I say to her when I feel like I have stretched the period of silence out long enough. ‘You could have been on that yacht with the rest of them when it went up in flames yet here you are, alive and well.’

  Emily raises her eyes from the floor to meet mine and I can tell she doesn’t see it that way.

  ‘I lost my boyfriend and my best friend’ she says, her voice shaking.

  ‘True. But you could have lost your life. Somebody wants you alive. Be grateful for that.’

  ‘Who wants me alive?’ she asks but I shake my head to tell her that that is a pointless question to ask. So she tries another one. ‘Why did they kill all those people?’

  Now that is one question that I can answer.

  ‘Consequences’ I say, resting my arms on the edges of the wicker chair and feeling that it is actually a lot more comfortable than it looked.

  ‘What does that mean?’ she asks me, and I let out a deep sigh, thinking it might just be easier to throw her back into her dark room rather than talk it out with her.

  ‘Come on, you know what I mean’ I tell her. ‘You might act like a dumb influencer but we both know there’s a lot more to you than that.’

  She goes quiet again and if there is something more she wants to say then she doesn’t offer it at this time.

  ‘Look. If it were up to me then I’d kill you just as easily as I did my old friend there in the corner’ I say, waving a dismissive hand in the direction of the bloodied corpse nearby. ‘But it isn’t. I have been told to bring you here and keep you here until the morning. That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘And what happens then?’ she asks me, her gaze drifting to the dead body before quickly averting to something less frightening. ‘Is someone else coming here?’

  ‘Maybe’ I tell her, deliberately being irritating.

  ‘Who?’ she demands to know.

  Her face is conveying how afraid she is to know the answer, but she can’t not ask.

  But I can choose not to tell.

  ‘That’s enough talking for one day’ I say, standing up from the chair and pointing to the doorway of the dark bedroom where we kept her the first night she stayed here. ‘Let’s go.’

  She doesn’t move for a moment, but I don’t have to wait long for her to comply. She slowly gets to her feet and walks back to the bedroom. As she steps through the doorway and, as I reach for the door handle to lock her in, she turns and asks me for another glass of water. I tell her that I will bring her one shortly.

  Then I close the door and lock it.

  Alone again. Just how I like it. Now there is just the small matter of getting rid of the dead body before our visitor tomorrow. I don’t think he will be too mad about the fact that I killed my colleague, but he probably wouldn’t appreciate being greeted by the sight of the body just lying in the corner.

  I walk over to the corpse and think about the best way of getting it outside. I want to dump it in the sea but getting it to the ocean will be the tricky part. There’s so much blood and I know that simply lifting the body up and putting it over my shoulder will get me completely covered in it too. I need something to put it in.

  I leave the body for the time being and walk into the kitchen, resisting the urge to get another beer from the fridge until my task is complete. I pass the wooden table and the counter full of utensils and open the back door that leads out into an area of thick green foliage. The island is small and the land that isn’t taken up by the self-built house is overrun with long grass and palm trees.

  I see the small wooden outhouse nestled between two trees and walk through the tall foliage that leads to its open doorway. There is a small boat inside that looks like it hasn’t been used in years and is probably long past being seaworthy. Several fishing rods are propped up against the timber walls and three large fish-hooks hang from rusty nails. There are all sorts of trays filled with all sizes of nuts and bolts and several small tools sit on a thick wooden counter, a sign that the former owner of the house enjoyed a little DIY. But then again if he chose to live so far from the rest of the world then he could hardly just call up a handyman if he needed something repaired.

  I pick up a wrench and feel the weight of it in my hand. It looks like a good tool but not one that can help me shift the dead body from out of the house by the morning. Nothing in here can.

  I sigh as I realise that the only way of doing it is going to involve getting my hands dirty.

  I leave the outhouse and trudge back towards the main lodgings, feeling the searing heat of the midday sun high above my head. Another beer would definitely go down well right about now but I know that if I sit down and sink another one then it will only delay the task I have ahead of me.

  I march back through the house and open the front door, before lifting up the dead body and lugging it out onto the small strip of sand that lines the deep blue ocean. I drop the body into the motorboat that I purchased in Miami shortly before heading out here and start up the engine. I won’t go out too far but I need to put enough distance between the body and the island to prevent it from just washing back up on the shore again in a few hours’ time.

  I steer the boat out across the calm waters until the island is a safe distance away, then I kill the motor and reach down for the corpse at my feet. Doing my best not to strain my back as I lift it, I roll the body over the edge of the boat and watch it slip through the surface, quickly disappearing down into the depths.

  As burial places go it’s not a bad one. Better to be laid to rest in the Caribbean Sea than some rain-swept graveyard with a load of other unlucky souls. Personally I would prefer to be cremated when I die but I guess it doesn’t really matter. Burnt or buried. Either way you’re gone, so who cares what happens to you next.

  I re-start the engine and guide the boat back towards the island. I remember that Emily asked me for a glass of water just before I closed the door on her and so I should probably take her one when I get back. Or I could just get myself a beer and read one of those books. She’ll be dead soon enough anyway.

  A little dehydration should be the least of her worries right now.

  #Prisoner

  Emily Bennett

  I’m back in the darkness and there’s no way out. Since I was thrown back in here, I’ve spent most of the time feeling my way around the room for anything that might help me escape, but all I can feel is hard wooden walls and the springy mattress.

  I don’t expect I will be allowed out of here again today, especially after the first time resulted in a man being brutally murdered right in front of me. Michael is clearly a psychopath, but the scary thing is that it doesn’t
even seem like he is the one in charge. He told me that he is watching me until tomorrow morning. Watching me until somebody else gets here.

  But who?

  Maybe this is the person responsible for killing all those people on the yacht. If that’s the case, then I’m in serious trouble. Maybe it would have been better to die on that boat than to face whatever torture is coming for me in the morning. But who could it be? Michael wouldn’t give me a name but I’m not sure if that’s because he doesn’t know or if he is just teasing me by withholding the information.

  He did say one thing though that makes me think this is something to do with what happened two months ago. When I asked him why all those people died on the yacht, he told me that it was because of “consequences.” That makes me think about the text message Mason received last week.

  Watch your back. Revenge is sweet.

  I dismissed it at the time because I thought it was somebody playing a prank or even just some online hater who had found her number and was simply trolling her. But now she is dead, and I am locked in this room and it is clear that I had been wrong. That text message had been a warning of what was about to happen. Now Mason has gone and I am very close to going with her.

  I can’t deny it any longer. Not now so many things have happened. The text message. The explosion. The “consequences” comment. This has to be happening because of what Mason and I did to Sebastian earlier this year.

  We should have known it would never be this easy to get away from him. Even in death he has found a way to get his revenge because that’s how powerful he is. He was easily the craziest guy I have ever met but he was also the smartest. He must have had insurance policies for what happened to him. He must have told others to carry on his work even after he was gone. I have no idea how many employees he actually had.