Paradise Island: Complete Edition

by DD Cooper

  “Do it,” I said. “Just keep my name out of it. There’s someone out there who wants to find me, and I don’t want to make it easy for him.”

  Jack immediately came to my side and held me in his arms. “Don’t worry,” he whispered in my ear. “I’ll protect you.”

  I hugged him back. “I know, Jack,” I said. “I know.”

  “Step away from the bones,” I heard an old man’s voice speak above me.

  Both Jack and I looked up out of the ditch we’d built, which was now several feet below ground level. We stepped away a bit, but there wasn’t much room to move.

  I looked up into the old man’s face and recognized him. It was Mr. Bottoms! And he had a pistol in his hand, pointed straight down at us.

  “Mr. Bottoms? Why are you doing this?” And then it dawned on me. “You’re Greyson Milton, aren’t you? You killed Josie Browning all those years ago.” I looked down at the bones. “And her unborn child.”

  Mr. Bottoms, or Mr. Milton shall I say, looked down into the ditch and saw the small baby bones. He looked absolutely shocked. “I am sorry for the child, but not for that whore.” His words were at once gentle and cruel. There was something evil lurking behind those eyes, and I chastised myself for never noticing it before.

  “Now get out of that ditch,” he said.

  But another figure stepped up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. She had short, shoulder-length red hair. Lucy. At first I was happy to see her but pretty soon it was clear she wasn’t here to help us. “No, father, they know too much,” she said as she looked down on me and Jack huddled together, disgust clearly visible in her eyes.

  “But, Lucy, I can’t.” The old man mumbled his words, confusion on his face. Suddenly, as Lucy took the pistol from his hands, I knew we were in trouble.

  “But I can,” she said, and gleefully pointed the pistol in our direction.

  “Wait, before you kill us, I just want to know one thing,” I said, trying to buy us some time. Jack was awfully quiet, though I saw him slowly edge his way to the shovel not too far away. If he needed time, I was going to buy him some, otherwise we’d be dead anyway.

  “What is it, Sophie? Be quick about it,” Lucy sounded more bored than anything. She just wanted to kill us and get this thing over with. The pure hatred in her eyes was unsettling.

  “I want nothing from you, Lucy, I was talking to Greyson,” I said, feeling suddenly bold. If she was going to kill me anyway, I wasn’t going to glower at her feet. The bitch deserved a lot worse. “I want to know if you killed Annie as well, or was it really a suicide?”

  Greyson looked shocked by my question. “Goodness no, I’m not a monster. She did indeed take her own life. After I...got rid of Josie...I thought my father would see the light, but he continued in his sinful ways. I never wanted to hurt anyone, and Josie was my first and last kill.”

  “But she isn’t, Mr. Milton, is she? Didn’t you come here to kill us, in order to cover up your crime?” I was feeling awfully confident for having a gun in my face.

  “No, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. I came here for the diaries and the bones, and then you’ll have nothing on me.” He looked sideways at his daughter. “Lucy, please don’t do anything you’ll regret later. God knows I’ve paid for my crime over and over, and for what? A father who didn’t even care? He drank himself to death without even trying to see his son and daughter ever again. Please don’t do this, my sweet Lucy. Nothing is worth committing such a grave sin.”

  Lucy hesitated but the gun was still squarely pointed at us.

  “They know too much, father,” she said. “They must die.”

  “No, Lucy, this is not the answer,” Greyson took the gun from her hands. “We’ll follow our original plan. No murder, just blackmail, remember,” he looked down on the bones of Josie and her unborn child. “There’s been too much death already.”

  Lucy nodded, though I could see by the look on her face that she was not happy about it at all.

  Jack was ready to use the shovel and overpower the old man, but I stopped him with a touch of my hand on his arm from behind, so they couldn’t see what was going on.

  “Wait, how do you plan on blackmailing us?” I asked both of them, truly curious what their plan was.

  Lucy looked down at me with hatred in her eyes. “Henry. I know you killed him. I went to his cottage in the woods and saw the body myself. You really should have covered your tracks better. You’re dumber than I thought you were.”

  “But how did you know where his cottage was?” As the words left my mouth it finally dawned on me on how she miraculously escaped that bomb in the boathouse. “You! You were working with him!”

  “Oh, please. Henry was just as dumb as you are, maybe even dumber if that was possible. Yeah, I put him up to the whole thing after I found out about the diaries. He was only supposed to scare you and keep you locked up to give me enough time to get the diaries from his place,” she looked down on Jack. “But of course he had to have a top notch security system with unbreakable windows.”

  I thought back on everything that had happened in the past few days. I thought back to that terrible day when Henry took me, and when I had to kill him to get away. “But the pictures. At the cabin. I thought he was a serial killer. A rapist. Was any of that true?”

  Lucy laughed and her laughter made me sick to my stomach. “Wow! Of course not. He was just some creepy photographer dude with a crush on you. Yeah, he was probably going to rape you, I promised him that much, but the other stuff? All my idea to scare the shit out of you. And I knew you wouldn’t be going to the cops because of your terrible past. God, you’re so fucking predictable, Sophie, you know that?”

  Her words hit me like razorblades. My heart ached, my mind was reeling. “But we were friends, weren’t we? Or was that all a lie as well?”

  “Of course we were friends, silly. Very good friends. But you had to stumble on those damn diaries before I did. Yes, that’s right, I planned to seduce Jack as soon as I heard he made his appearance in town, but then he had to fall in love with you. You both make me sick.”

  “You’re the sick one,” Jack said, his first words since the whole morbid affair had started.

  Lucy looked down on him and sneered. “I can still shoot your ass dead, Hollywood boy, so keep your mouth shut. The only time you should be speaking is when somebody gives you a fucking script, and you’re getting one pretty soon.”

  Jack was enraged, he stepped forward but I held him back.

  “That’s right, listen to your little girlfriend.”

  “We’re not...” I started to say.

  “Why does that not surprise me? A hot guy like that, though obviously not too bright but what hot guy is, and you still don’t shag him? You’re a bigger fool than I thought you were, Sophie.”

  “Lucy, I’ve had enough of your belligerent behavior. Let’s just get to business,” surprisingly, it was her father that said those words.

  “Fine, daddy, but you promised I could have some fun first.”

  “From the sounds of it, you’ve had more than enough.”

  “Not nearly, but if you say so. Fine, let’s get to the blackmail thingy. You killed an innocent man, his name was Henry. Shall I continue or is that enough?”

  “What proof do you have?” I said, really wondering.

  “Proof,” Lucy said, pursing her lips in a mocking way. “The dead body for one, still rotting in that burnt out cabin. How did you even manage that? Did your not-boyfriend here help you?” She laughed at the very thought of that.

  I thought about what she’d said, how Henry wasn’t actually a serial killer. Now I actually started to feel some guilt for what I had done, but at the end of the day, that’s how he presented himself to me. And he kidnapped and attacked me. And he kept me locked up, planning to do God knows what to me. No, I did not feel too much remorse for his death. He might not have been a complete monster, but he was no gentleman either.

  “No one neede
d to help me, you sick bitch,” I was surprised at the words that were coming out of my mouth, but they were true enough. I would have never thought about using such language only a few days ago, especially not against my “best friend” Lucy. But a lot had changed in just a couple of days, and if she was going to act like a crazy bitch, I was going to call her out on it.

  Lucy laughed.

  “Laugh all you want, but all the evidence that I killed him, or was even with him, is gone Lucy. What’s your plan now?”

  Lucy smiled and took out a tape recorder from her back pocket. She rewound it and I listened to my own words coming back to haunt me. “Is that enough proof for you?”

  I didn’t say anything. She had won. She had played me yet again, and that rage I felt as I stabbed Henry was beginning to come back. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply, trying to control the coming storm.

  “So what’s your plan? Let’s get this over with,” I said after I calmed down a bit.

  “Okay, glad you asked. You and Prince Charming give me pa and me all the journals and we take the bones as well, and we don’t tell on you for Henry’s murder. Everyone leaves happy, no fuss no muss. We got a deal? Oh, and maybe some money wouldn’t hurt, either. I hear Jack here is loaded.”

  “Lucy, that wasn’t our plan,” her father said, worry showing on his face. He looked like a very confused old man. He didn’t seem to know what kind of heartless harpy he had for a daughter. But then again, he was a heartless murderer himself, so what could be expected.

  “Shut up, daddy,” she said. “You’re not the one wasting your life away in that diner. What do you say Jack? Can you hook me up with a couple hundred K?”

  “Yeah, but I have a few conditions of my own,” Jack sounded more in control than I, and I wondered how he managed it. Perhaps he was acting.

  “Well, spill ‘em, we ain’t got no whole fuckin’ day all up in this joint!” Lucy did not sound like herself and I only hoped she was imitating a character from one of Jack’s movies. If she wasn’t, then she was crazier than I thought.

  “Okay,” Jack said, rolling his eyes. “Anyway. Since you two get so much out of the deal, the bones, the journal, the money, I was thinking we needed something as well. Yeah, it’s nice that you say you won’t rat out Sophie for killing that sick bastard, but I’d like a little more than your word. You two don’t seem like the most trustworthy people, if you’ll forgive me for saying.”

  “Will not,” Lucy said in an accent that I didn’t understand. Maybe a southern black woman accent? I had no idea what she was going for. Sometimes being so sheltered and behind the times had its disadvantages, or maybe in this case it was an advantage. The jury’s still out on that one.

  “Anywho, I was thinking you give us that tape you just recorded and a recording of another one, in which you say that you sent Henry after Sophie.”

  “Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.”

  “Then no money for you.”

  Lucy plucked the gun out of her father’s startled hands and pointed it straight at Jack. She moved a couple of steps closer to the pit we were in to get a better shot. “Then you’re getting a fucking bullet in the brain, pretty boy.”

  And that’s when all hell broke loose. It happened so quickly that it took my brain a couple of seconds to register what had happened. Apparently, Jack had used his shovel and hit Lucy in the legs. She fell to the side and Jack climbed up and took the gun from her and then proceeded to drop her over the edge. He gave me the gun and yelled for me to get out and make sure the old man wasn’t running away

  I held the gun at his shocked face and told him to hold still. I heard Lucy moaning in the pit.

  “You fucking bastard, you’ll pay for this!” she hissed and I saw her draw a knife from the corner of my eye. Before she had a chance to stab Jack he hit her with the shovel and she lost consciousness. Whether she was dead or not, I could not tell you, but the place he hit her on the head was oozing blood, and lots of it. Jack got up and joined me by my side. The old man looked confused and angry and tears streamed down his face, even though I told him to stand still he lowered himself down to the pit with the bones and Lucy’s unconscious body. He cradled her in his arms. “Wake up, sweetie,” he wailed. “Please wake up.”

  Jack had a remorseful look on his face. “I had no choice,” he simply said. I nodded.

  We looked down on the scene below us and a plan started to hatch itself. I looked into Jack’s eyes and in them I found my answer.

  “We’ll never be safe as long as they live,” he said softly.

  “But Jack, I don’t think I can, they...” I started to say, but I had nothing else to add. They weren’t good people. In fact, they were pretty damn horrible. It was either us or them, and I chose us.

  “They are getting what they deserve, just like Henry,” he said calmly.

  Jack tried to take the gun away from my hands but I stopped him. “I have to do this,” I simply said and he accepted my decision.

  I pointed the gun down into the pit, straight at Mr. Bottoms or Greyson Milton or whatever the hell he wanted to call himself. He looked up at me in shock. And then anger. “You wouldn’t dare,” he hissed.

  “This is for Josie Browning,” I said calmly. “And for all those pies at the diner.” I pulled the trigger. It was scary how easy it was. The bullet hit him in the chest and he bled out pretty quick. I shot him again for good measure, the ringing in my ears still not over from the first shot.

  Jack took the gun from my shaking hands, and gave me a hug. “It’s gonna be alright, shh,” he whispered and I found myself crying in his arms once more. A sound from the pit made us both look down at the same time. Lucy’s eyes were wide with horror. She picked up the shovel and yelled out “You’ll pay for this!” But before she had a chance to strike either of us, Jack put a bullet in her head and she tumbled back down and joined her father, and the bones of Josie and her unborn child. It seemed a fitting end for the ones who had tried to cover up her murder to spend an eternity resting right on top of her.

  The rest of what happened was a haze, but not one I’ll soon forget I’m sure. Jack and I spent the next several hours burying the bodies and filling up all the other holes on the property. When we were done, it was as if nothing had happened at all.

  “I should probably sand this yard, make it look nicer, or would grass be better?”

  “Sand,” I said. “Definitely sand.”

  We were mud stained and tired.

  We had buried the gun, after wiping it clean, with the bodies and the bones. I looked at the spot they were buried and couldn’t help but wonder out loud.

  “Do you think it’s right that Josie gets to spend an eternity with them? Maybe we should have moved her bones, gave her a proper burial?”

  Jack put his big arms around me and I did not push him away. I felt safe in his arms. “I think she’s at peace now, knowing that the man who killed her is dead. I think that’s enough.”

  I thought about Lucy, and the way Jack had shot her. “About Lucy, you didn’t have to do that,” I said softly.

  “Yes, I did. I’d do anything for you, Sophie. Anything.” He softly kissed my forehead and I felt safer than ever in his arms, feeling his warmth, inhaling his smell.

  “There’s only one loose end,” I finally said. “The mayor. He was here. He might wonder what happened to Lucy. And he knows she had a problem with us.”

  “You’re right,” Jack said. “I was thinking the same thing. I think I’ll clean up and go into town and have a little chat with the mayor.”

  “What kind of chat?”

  “The kind where he can’t talk after I leave.”

  The thought of any more people dying churned my stomach, but it had to be done, to keep what had just happened just between me and Jack.

  “I’ll go with you,” I said.

  “No, you should stay here and figure out what we should do with the journals. Maybe we should have buried them as well.”

  I th
ought fondly of Josie’s journals and couldn’t think of parting with them, but I knew it had to be done. Eventually. Not today. Not while Lucy and Greyson’s bodies were still fresh in the ground.

  “All of that can wait. The journals. The mayor,” I said as I took Jack’s hand and led him back to the house. By killing Lucy, he had just proved to me that he was willing to do anything for me, and that I could absolutely trust him.

  We sat down on the couch, both of us covered in mud and sweat, but nonetheless very much alive. “I’m going to tell you everything, Jack,” I said. “You’re the first person I’ve met that I genuinely trust enough to bare my whole soul to.”

  He came in closer and caressed my face with his mud stained hand. I had to laugh, and with the laughter came tears.

  “When I was a little girl, my father died...” I started to tell him my story, and while at first it was a struggle, it got easier as I went along. “So instead of jumping off that cliff I decided to actually live for once. I left Crow and that awful town behind and went as far as I could, until I ended up here. And here is where I met you, Jack, and for that I am eternally grateful.”

  “Thank you, Sophie,” he said. “I know that wasn’t easy. I want you to know everything about me as well, so I guess I’ll start at the beginning as well. When I was a kid, my mother thought it would be a good idea to enter me in show business. She was willing to do anything to make me a star, and she did do many awful things. But the worst was when she left me alone with a wealthy producer, locking the door as she left me behind. He did things to me, Sophie, that I still can’t speak about or even think about, and that’s why I’ve used drugs and alcohol since I was very young, to try to block out the memories of what happened to me in that room. I wish I could tell you that that was the only time I was left in such a room with a man such as he, but it was not. It happened again and again,” I could see tears in his eyes and in turn tears were forming in mine.

  “It’s okay, Jack, you can stop now. We were both at the mercy of our parents’ mistakes, but we don’t have to think about that anymore. WE have each other now, and no one can hurt us anymore, and what happened today is proof of that.” I gave him a hug and I could not let go. I felt so much closer to him than I have ever felt to anyone. We were both used and abused by the adults in our lives, but we were adults ourselves now, and we did not need to be victims anymore. Never again would we bow down to those who have wicked intentions. I thought about Henry. Lucy. Greyson. They all deserved what came to them. The mayor, while not a murderer, was crooked, and he deserved what was coming to him as well.