Influencer (Influencing Trilogy Book 2)

by Daniel Hurst

  That meant no bodies. No displaced floorboards. And no empty beer bottles, which I had been sure to collect from the kitchen and throw into the ocean during the night.

  After I had done all that then there had only been one more thing to deal with. It was the last sign that anybody had ever been here at all.

  The motorboat.

  Now I knew there was no way I could drag it into the jungle myself and there was definitely no way that I could bury it in the sand and so the only other option to hide it had been out at sea. But I couldn’t just leave it bobbing around out there and risk this person arriving and finding it unoccupied and so I had made a plan to put the boat where nobody would ever find it again.

  At the bottom of the ocean.

  I had managed to get the boat off the beach by wading out with it and once it was out on the water, I had swum back to shore to find something that I could use to weigh it down. Luckily, the beach was full of such things.

  Rocks. Dozens of them.

  There was no way I would be able to swim out with any big ones but there were plenty of smaller ones lying on the sand and so I had made several trips back and forth between the beach and the floating boat, depositing rocks into the bobbing vessel each time.

  It had taken a lot more rocks than I had initially expected but eventually the boat had been weighed down enough to start taking on water and it had only taken a few more bite-sized rocks after that to see it off below the surface.

  By the time that was done, I had seen the tiniest speck of light on the horizon, so I rushed back to shore, utterly exhausted and in desperate need of some warmth. Thankfully, the rising sun is now giving me some heat but there is still no time for rest.

  I took one last look around the outside of the beach house and decide that I have done everything that I can. Now there is nothing left to do but squeeze myself into the crawl space, replace the grate in its slot and wait for the person to arrive.

  It only takes a minute to manoeuvre myself out of the warm sunlight and back in the dark, dank crawl space, lying on my stomach and peering out through the holes of the grate.

  My heart is racing as I waited. Part of me just wants them to get here and leave again so I can rush into the outhouse and drag the small boat out, rowing myself away from here once and for all. But the other part of me is worrying about who this person might be and how long they will spend on this island looking for me.

  I seriously doubt that they will think to look under the house. But every minute I spend in this crawl space seems to eat away at the confidence I had felt out in the sunlight and by the time I hear the sound of a boat’s engine approaching the island I feel positively terrified again.

  I suddenly regret my decision to stay here and see who is coming to get me. I should have gone when I had the chance. Now it is too late.

  They are here.

  And I am trapped.

  The engine cuts out and then there is silence. I can’t see the boat from where I am, so I need whoever drove it here to walk around the back of the beach house if I am going to see them.

  After a couple of painstaking minutes with no noise around me, I suddenly hear the sound of heavy footsteps above my head. They are in the house. They are looking around.

  They are looking for me.

  I don’t move a single muscle as the footprints move above me but eventually, they stop. Now I just have to wait for them to walk around the outside of the house. Then I will know who it is. Then perhaps I will have the upper hand.

  I hear someone walking through long grass. I am fairly certain it must be the grass that leads to the outhouse, which I can see from my hiding place.

  I hold my breath as I wait for the figure to come into view.

  Then finally I see him.

  He is a tall man, in a white shirt and black chinos. He has dark hair, but I can’t see his face because he has his back to me. He walks slowly, but it isn’t the pace of an unconfident man. He seems assured and in control, even though he has no idea that at this moment in time I am actually the one in control.

  He disappears into the outhouse and I allow myself a couple of breaths before he steps outside again. But as soon as he does, I feel all the oxygen evaporate from the air around me and I realise that I am certainly not the one in control here.

  It is clear to me now that I have never been in control at all.

  #GuessWho

  Sebastian Sawyer

  Oh Emily where are you? I don’t have time for these silly games. I know you are here somewhere. And I’m sure that you have seen me by now. So why don’t you just come out and we can talk it over, like adults. We used to be friends at one time. But then you tried to kill me and so I guess it’s better if you stay hidden after all. Because you won’t like what I have in store for you when I do finally get my hands on you.

  I put my hands on my hips as I look at the beach house in front of me. There was no sign of anybody inside it, just like there had been no sign of anybody in the outhouse behind me. This isn’t what I was expecting at all. There should have been three people here. Two of them were the men that I paid and the other one was the ex-employee who tried to poison me earlier this year. Yet here I am, standing alone, without so much as a hello or a handshake to signal my arrival.

  This is all rather disappointing.

  I’ve gone to a lot of trouble in the last few months to stay hidden and wait for my chance for revenge. It’s not easy just to stay in the shadows while you watch the people that plotted your death having so much fun out in the real world. But that is what I have done.

  I have stayed hidden and watched Emily and Mason living their lives through PhoGlo. I have seen the exotic locations where they have been. I have seen the business opportunities that have come their way. I have even seen how they routinely reminded their followers that “dreams come true” and “hard work pays off.”

  Funny, and there was me thinking that I was the reason for their success.

  But I didn’t react to any of this. I didn’t go after them. I didn’t get the justice that I was well within my rights to demand. Instead I just monitored them while also monitoring my former business colleague Ivan. After all, I had told him that he was to get me this justice, in the event of my death, and I wanted to see if he was a man of his word.

  To my surprise he has been. He contacted a Japanese assassin and gave her the names of my eight influencer employees, several of whom had betrayed me. He told her to make sure everyone on that list was dealt with and I had felt a sense of pride in my old Russian friend.

  But there is just one problem. I am not actually dead. And if there is justice to be done, I want to be the one to deliver it.

  I had been planning to contact Ivan and tell him that I am still alive and that he should call off his assassin so that I can do the killing instead. But then I had discovered what she was planning, and it truly was a thing of beauty.

  She was going to blow up a yacht with all eight of the influencers on board, killing every single one of them in one fell swoop. It was such a good idea that even I couldn’t stand in the way of it. So, I resisted the urge to tell Ivan that I am still alive and instead I allowed his assassin to plant the bomb on board.

  I was happy that the influencers who had betrayed me were going to die a horrific death. Even Mason, who had once been my favourite one, right up until the moment she shot dead one of my most loyal employees in her hotel room in London.

  But there was one influencer who deserved worse than the fiery fate that awaited her on board that yacht. It was Emily, the young woman who believed that she had successfully murdered me back in Manchester just a few months ago. There was no way that I could let her get away with it that easily. I was happy to let the others die in that way but not her.

  Because I didn’t want her to die thinking that she had beaten me.

  I wanted her to die knowing that she had failed. I wanted her to die knowing that I am still alive. Most of all, I wanted her to die at my
hand and my hand only.

  Just because I was ‘dead’ it didn’t mean that I didn’t have resources and so I got the same computer hacker who delivered me Ivan’s encrypted emails to get me the phone number of Miss Bennett so that I could have someone call her and tell her to get off that yacht just in time.

  She could have easily ignored me. But she thought she was doing what was best for her loved ones, just like she always had, and so she jumped off.

  My men had picked her up and brought her back here and had told me that they were awaiting my arrival. It had all gone to plan. Everyone was dead but Emily, and I had come here today to put her out of her misery too.

  Except now I am here and there is no sign of her. There is no sign of anybody at all.

  No boat.

  No prisoner in a locked room.

  Nothing.

  I suspect it is just the way Emily wants it to look.

  This makes me smile and I hope she can see my face right now. Because I know she is here. I have no doubt about that. Because while she has clearly gone to great lengths to cover up whatever happened here last night there is one thing that she has forgotten to cover up.

  Her footprints, all over the beach. The same footprints that I walked over on my way up to the house.

  Nice try Emily, but I know you have been here and judging by how fresh the footprints are, I know that if you have left this island then it was only a short time ago.

  Of course, there is a chance that she is still here somewhere. If so then I imagine she is hiding somewhere in the jungle to the side of the outhouse, peering out at me from behind a palm tree, trying to figure out how the hell I am still alive.

  I’d love to sit down with her and fill her in on all of that, but I suspect the time for talking between us is over. She will never know how I survived her little attempt on my life. Which is a shame because if she did then she would know that she really isn’t half as clever as she thinks she is.

  Putting a poisonous substance into my whiskey might have seemed like a good idea to her but, in reality, it was nothing other than a minor irritation to me. As soon as she had left my hotel room that day, I had gone to take another drink, but I knew something was wrong the second the liquid passed my lips.

  I’m a whiskey connoisseur, so quite how she expected me not to notice the change in taste after she had added antifreeze to it was beyond me. I had spat it out immediately and then simply poured the bottle down the sink. Twenty minutes later the bellboy had delivered me a new bottle and I was good to go again.

  I could have just had Emily killed shortly afterwards and carried on with my day but when I found out that Mason and three other influencers were also working against me, then I knew I had some serious dissatisfaction in my ranks. Therefore I had decided to give them all what they wanted and just let it look like I was dead.

  I planned to do my ‘dying’ back in LA but then Emily had gone and got me trapped in my hotel room and so, without much choice, I had asked the receptionist to bring me a girl up from the crowd outside. This would be my witness and after a rather pleasant time between the sheets with this young woman, I had ‘collapsed’ to the floor and did my best impression of being a dead body.

  I knew she would call for an ambulance, so I had already informed my hackers back at the LA office to intercept the call when she did. They played their part and so, instead of an actual team of paramedics arriving at the hotel to check on my perfectly healthy body, I was actually taken away in a body bag carried by two men who were on my payroll.

  Having a witness in that room meant that the word leaked out that I was dead and so Emily and Mason thought they had won. But they were wrong. I didn’t get to where I was by being the stupid victim. They severely underestimated me. I was the king. They should have known it wasn’t going to be that easy to get me off my throne.

  I make my way back to the beach house and across the sand down towards my boat. I smile again at the myriad of footprints all over the beach and the thought of Emily rushing around out here trying to make it look like everything was normal.

  I have no idea how she managed to take down the two men that I hired to keep an eye on her but she is a resourceful young woman and I suspect they underestimated her, even though I told them not to.

  No loss. I will find Emily, wherever she is, and then I will have my revenge. This is just a temporary delay. I hope she enjoys what little time she has left. Because I will find her and as soon as she has registered the fact that I am still alive then I will kill her.

  Then I will get back to work on building my next team of influencers. Because I still have plans for world domination. I wouldn’t let something as simple as my death get in the way of that.

  #SeenAGhost

  Emily Bennett

  This can’t be real. I must be hallucinating. It must be all the stress of the last few days. The explosion. Losing Ryan. Losing Mason. Being locked in a dark room. Held at gunpoint. Killing Michael. All of it. No wonder I am not seeing things clearly.

  But as much as I wish that what I am seeing is just an apparition, I am afraid that it is real. The man who has come here isn’t some mysterious figure. He is a man I had once known well. It is Sebastian, the man I thought I had killed.

  It doesn’t matter that he has dyed his blonde hair black or that he has lost some of the muscle that was on his frame when I met him. I still recognise him. That confident swagger. Those piercing blue eyes. That smug sense of self satisfaction.

  I don’t know how this is possible. I poisoned him. He left that hotel room in a body bag. That poor girl who he had called up to his room witnessed him die. He was gone forever.

  But now he is back.

  This can’t be happening.

  It’s been at least half an hour since I heard Sebastian sail away from the island, but I am still in the crawl space, hiding in the dark, dank shadows beneath the beach house. I know it is safe to come out now that he is gone but I still can’t bring myself to do it. Because nothing feels safe anymore if Sebastian is back in the world.

  All the psychological wounds that he caused during the six months that he reigned over me earlier in the year have been ripped open again today. I had put it all behind me. The fear. The torment. The things I did. I had moved on with my life. Grown my career on my own. Built new relationships. Found love. I am thriving without him and the world is a safer place without him in it.

  But now he is back and it suddenly feels like I am back at square one again. Except this time I am completely alone. All the other influencers he hired are dead. I don’t have Mason to help me anymore. I don’t have anyone. The whole world thinks I am dead, even my poor mother. And I can’t even tell them that I’m okay now because I know that Sebastian is out there, watching me, waiting to make his move. If I go home, then my mum will be in danger.

  But what if Sebastian thinks I am dead too? Maybe he thinks those two men just killed me, dumped my body in the sea and left the island. If he thinks I am dead, then he won’t look for me. But that means I have to stay dead. No going home. No talking to the media. No posting anything on PhoGlo, telling my millions of followers that I am actually okay after all.

  If I want to keep myself and my mum safe from Sebastian until I can figure out a plan, then my life in the real world will have to reflect my time in this crawl space. I will have to stay hidden, in the shadows, only coming out when I know that nobody else is watching me.

  The thought of a life like that fills me with dread. Because it’s the complete opposite of the life I have been living this year. I am used to sharing everything online. Getting people to notice me. Getting people to follow me. But now Sebastian is out there, I need to leave all that behind. Because if he gets one sign that I am still alive then it is over. If he doesn’t kill me first, then he will kill my mum. I did try and poison him after all. I imagine his desire for revenge is pretty strong.

  I feel like crying into the floor beneath me, but if the tears start flowing then they
will never stop. I need to get out of here. I need to get back into the sunlight.

  I reach towards the grate with one of my shaking hands and give it a push. It falls out, dropping to the ground feebly, offering no resistance. That’s exactly how I felt when I saw Sebastian today. Weak. Feeble. Pathetic. It was as if all the air had been sucked off the island and I was suddenly in a vacuum, with no one but him.

  I crawl out of my hiding place and feel the warm rays of sun on the top of my head as I scramble to my feet. I look down to the beach, to make sure Sebastian has definitely gone. The coast is clear, literally. But it’s only a small victory. Just because he isn’t here right now doesn’t mean that he isn’t going to find me again someday. He has so much power at his disposal. I was stupid for thinking that I could beat him so easily.

  As I stumble through the long grass towards the outhouse, where the boat sits that will help me finally leave this place behind, I think about why Sebastian wanted me to be here.

  I assume now that it was him behind that phone call, telling me to get off the yacht. I hadn’t known it at the time, but that call saved my life. Barely five seconds after I got off the yacht, it had gone up in flames. But why? If he wanted me dead, then why not leave me on board? Why not let me perish with the rest of his former employees? Why save me from that fate only to bring me to this island and kill me here?

  I stop walking, a thought suddenly springing into my brain as optimistic as the one small cloud in the sky overhead that thinks it has the power to block out the sun in the otherwise clear blue sky. Maybe he doesn’t want me dead at all? Maybe he wasn’t coming here to kill me? Maybe he has another plan for me?

  But that doesn’t make sense either. I tried to kill him. I thought I had actually been successful. Why wouldn’t he want to kill me? I couldn’t blame him for that.

  I start walking again but my brain is in overdrive, running through all the possible reasons why Sebastian might have brought me here. But as I reach the outhouse and prepare to step inside, I realise what the most likely option is.