Influencer (Influencing Trilogy Book 2)

by Daniel Hurst

  One on one.

  Eye to eye.

  Skin to Skin.

  Au naturel.

  As the bartender puts the finishing touches on my next drink, I check my hair and makeup in the glass on the mirror behind the bar and see that everything is as it should be. But I also notice the figure approaching me from behind and I let out a sigh, ready to be hit with whatever cheap pick-up line he is about to throw at me.

  But there is no pick-up line. There isn’t even a smile. Instead the Japanese man standing beside me apologises for interrupting me before telling me that I have a call waiting and that I should follow him to the telephone now.

  I slide off my stool and shrug at the bartender who watches me follow the man out of the busy bar and into a quieter room where a diminutive woman in a kimono sits behind a desk.

  The man hands me a black receiver and I’m struck by how old school it is to be receiving a phone call in this way. But then I left my mobile in my room and, as I’m not one for being available online, I guess whoever it is on the other end had no other way of getting hold of me.

  But as I take the phone and prepare to speak, I wonder who could possibly be calling me. I haven’t told anybody that I’m here, so I have no idea how anybody could have tracked me down to this high-rise bar in one of the most over-populated cities in the world.

  I put the receiver to my ear and tentatively make myself known.

  ‘Konnichiwa’ I say, intrigued about what I might possibly hear coming back from the other end. But it’s not what I expected. The voice is male, with an Eastern European accent and I detect frustration in the few short words that I hear.

  ‘Drop the Japanese. We’ve got a problem.’

  #MoreMoneyMoreProblems

  Ivan Ilghiz

  Everything was going so well. I’d honoured my word to Sebastian and had his conspirators killed and my plan to build my own stable of influencers to take the place of those who had died on the yacht was coming along nicely.

  Until I turned on the news earlier and saw the latest report out of Bimini.

  That tiny island in The Bahamas has become the epicentre of most of the world’s journalism recently after what happened at a certain yacht party just off its coast over the weekend. The fact that I am the main reason for all of it has been keeping me operating with a smug glow every time I read the latest article or watched the most recent broadcast on the story.

  Until the update today.

  While all the reports immediately following the explosion had centred around the fact that there were no survivors from the party, there was a small but concerning development beginning to feature in several countries’ broadcasts around the world. Apparently a native of Bimini had been out swimming in the ocean at the exact time that the fireball had erupted into the night sky. It had taken him a few days but he had eventually come forward and said that he had seen a motor boat speeding away from the area with three people inside.

  Two men and a young woman.

  As the motorboat raced past not far from where the man was bobbing in the water, he said that the female seemed to be slumped against the edge of the boat, possibly unconscious, possibly dead. But there was definitely a woman in there and he thinks she may have been on the yacht.

  It is still mainly gossip and hearsay at this point and the eye-witness being interviewed was clearly a unique character, who had actually appeared to be drunk during the interview that I had seen, but it was concerning none the less.

  Nobody was supposed to have survived that blast so then why did it sound like somebody had been pulled from the water and taken away from the scene in the immediate aftermath? Who were the men operating the boat and more importantly, who is the mystery survivor?

  The chances of it being somebody from the yacht were slim. The chances of it being one of the eight influencers who I hired Anna to assassinate were even slimmer. But I don’t like doubts and uncertainties and I certainly don’t care for loose ends. If somebody made it off that yacht, then they might talk. And if one of the eight influencers made it off that yacht then I haven’t kept my word to Sebastian.

  I have to be sure.

  The first part of my plan was to make contact with Anna and I have done just that. I learnt from my dealings with Sebastian that it’s always best to keep an eye on those with whom you enter into business, so I had employed somebody of my own to keep an eye on Anna should I need to use her again.

  She is known for going off the grid after one of her jobs and I had fully expected her to do the same with her latest one considering the high-profile nature of it. But instead she had returned straight to her native Japan and by all reports has been enjoying a good chunk of the money that I had paid her for the work she carried out in The Bahamas.

  While that wasn’t a problem when I believed that all of the people on the yacht had perished by her hand, it potentially is now that there are rumours that somebody made it off the boat. She had assured me over the phone that all eight of the influencers who I had instructed her to kill had been on board the yacht when it left the island and that as the explosion had occurred only moments later, there was no way any of them could have got off before it.

  She said that these reports of another boat speeding away were not of concern and were most likely to have just been tourists, spooked by the loud explosion so left the area as quickly as they could.

  While that explanation makes some sense, I still haven’t been able to shake the feeling in my stomach that there was possibly more to it than that. I don’t doubt for a second that she sincerely believes that everybody on my list was on board the yacht at the time it went up in flames but that doesn’t mean it is necessarily true.

  If there’s a chance somebody made it off alive, then I need to know and if they were on the list then they need to be dealt with. I paid Anna three million to kill all eight, so I need to be damn sure that every single one of them is dead.

  There is a part of me that blames myself for this. When I gave Anna the names of the people who I wanted eliminated I had presumed that it would be eight individual hits in eight separate locations on eight different dates. But when she had told me that all eight of them would be attending the same party and that there was an opportunity to wipe them all out in one go then it had sounded too good to be true. What made it more appealing was the fact that hundreds of other influencers would be wiped out too, which aligned with my plan to build my own team of powerful influencers to take over social media.

  But with hindsight I see that opting for the quick fix was not the right way to go. If Anna had handled the eight influencers separately then she would have killed them in a manner that would have guaranteed no chance of survival. Luring them into a hotel room or simply pulling the trigger when they were between the crosshairs of a sniper rifle would perhaps have been preferable. Especially compared to having them all on one boat a good distance away from her where she couldn’t be witness to every single thing that was happening on board in those final moments.

  She could assure me all she wanted to that nobody could have survived, and indeed the initial news reports had backed this claim, but then this new pebble of doubt had been thrown into the mix.

  Now I just can’t be sure.

  Taking matters into my own hands, I have instructed Anna to monitor events in Bimini closely, as I will be doing, and to look out for any further reports about the mystery people in the motorboat. Everybody at that party was an attention-seeking, fame-obsessed, social media addict, so if anyone did survive the explosion, there is no way they won’t reveal themselves to the world once they have recovered from any injuries they might have sustained in the blast.

  If nobody comes forward in the coming days, then maybe it will become apparent that the story of the escaping figures in the boat from the eye-witness in the sea were nothing more than the drunken ramblings of a mad man. That would be the ideal outcome and it is probably still the most likely one at this point.

  But deep
down inside me there is still the nagging concern that a third option is at play here. That those men in the motorboat had somehow known about the blast and that the woman they were with had been saved from a terrible fate at the very last second. I don’t know how such a thing could have been possible but I’m a rational and strategic businessman, so I know how important it is to consider every single possible scenario in a situation.

  Sometimes it is the least likely scenario that ends up being the one that comes into play.

  I don’t think it is really possible that something bigger is at play here outside of what Anna and I were working on ourselves. Then again, I had never believed that my former boss, and a man as powerful as the great Sebastian Sawyer, could be taken down by the very employees who he had controlled for so long. Yet that had happened and now I am dealing with those same conniving employees. Therefore, I have to be extra careful that I don’t underestimate them like he had and end up going the same way as him.

  I have a vast fortune at my disposal, as well as one of the finest assassins in the world to deploy, but then so had Sebastian and that hadn’t been enough to defeat a small but defiant group of influencers. Now is no time for complacency. I can’t write off the resolve and cunning of someone that was clearly a hell of a lot more than just a pretty face on social media.

  I want to change the world with my own influencers. But first, I have to be certain that the old ones have been taken care of.

  #HopeIsTheBest

  Emily Bennett

  I’m lying on the lumpy mattress in the pitch black room and doing my best to keep Ryan and Mason from my mind. But every time I close my eyes, I see Ryan standing on the deck of the yacht staring at me as I prepare to jump into the sea.

  Jumping to safety while leaving him to burn alive.

  I also see Mason, lost in the music on the dancefloor with all the other partygoers.

  None of them with the slightest idea of the terrible fate that was about to befall them all.

  It’s the reason why I am doing my best not to close my eyes too often. But in this room, which is totally devoid of colour, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell when my eyes are open or shut, which means the visions of Ryan and Mason are coming to me more frequently. It’s just one of the many reasons why I need to get out of this room as quickly as possible.

  But I am forcing myself to be patient because I know that patience is one thing that is vital to the success of my plan. I’ve been lying here ever since Michael left the room having delivered the cup of water for me and, while there is no way of knowing exactly how much time has passed since then, I have remained here until I can be almost certain that the sun has set in the sky outside.

  When he entered the room to bring me the drink, I noticed that the light outside was dimming, which meant that it must have been close to dusk. I knew my plan to escape this island would have a better chance of going well if I could use the darkness of night to shroud my movements so I have stayed on the bed for what I hope has been enough time for the sun to have set beyond these walls.

  Now I am preparing to make my move and I won’t know if I have given it enough time until I am out of here and running for my life. But I can’t wait any longer. I can’t remain in this black prison with nothing but the images of Ryan and Mason playing in my mind over and over again.

  It is time to move.

  I sit up on the bed and do my best to envision the layout of the room around me from the brief glimpses that I got during the time that the door was open. The last time Michael had entered confirmed to me what I already knew. The room was small and the bare floorboards beneath my feet were matched by the same timber body of the walls and roof around it. Taking into account what I had seen when I had been taken into the other room, it seems safe to assume that whoever owned this home had built it themselves. The fact it is in the middle of nowhere only strengthened that theory.

  That gives me hope. Because if it was built by one man instead of a team of skilled construction workers then there is a good chance that it isn’t as perfect as the kind of home you find on a neighbourhood street. There could be weaknesses to exploit. Or more importantly, opportunities for escape to be found.

  The main reason I had forced myself to keep my eyes opened when Michael entered my room earlier was so I could try and spot one of those weaknesses. Fortunately, I had been able to do just that.

  As light had flooded into the room around the silhouette of my captor in the doorway, I had been able to spot two floorboards with a small but distinct gap between them. Not enough for someone to put their fingers between, and certainly not enough to allow any light in, but there was a gap all the same. What I needed was something to fit into that gap and then I could use it to help me try and loosen one of the floorboards and eventually lift it up altogether.

  It’s a long shot but, since there’s a strong possibility that this house is by the ocean, I’m guessing it may be raised off the ground to protect it from any sea water that made it this far inland during a patch of bad weather. If I’m right, then there should be an area beneath this room into which I may be able to climb.

  A crawl space. Perhaps leading to freedom. Possibly sealed off and leading to nowhere.

  But there’s only one way to find out.

  I move my right hand across the lumpy mattress, feeling for the frayed hole that I had dug into it using only my nails and a lot of effort. I dreaded to think of the damage that had been done to my cuticles from digging my fingers into the mattress and clawing a small hole in its surface, but it had been a necessary job. Because through the hole were the strong bed springs that I had felt digging into my body and I needed one of those springs to use as leverage on the floorboards.

  I wrap my fingers around the sharp, coiled spring inside the mattress and pull as hard as I can. The spring seems to stretch with my movement, and I am soon forced to concentrate my whole body weight on the area around the hole, eventually putting both hands around the spring and pulling harder.

  I hear a popping noise and the spring comes loose, almost sending me tumbling backwards off the bed and onto the floor. I freeze in position on the mattress, the spring in my hand, listening for any sign of activity on the other side of the door. I’m terrified that Michael will have heard what I just did.

  But I don’t hear any movement outside the room. Michael hasn’t come in to check on me. I think I’m okay.

  Regaining control of my heart rate, I lower myself off the bed onto the hard wooden floor and begin slowly crawling across the boards towards where I hope the small gap is. I do my best to keep myself going in a straight line, aware that if I veer off course in the dark and miss the spot then I will have to find my way back to the bed to get my bearings before starting all over again.

  I feel the rough texture of the floorboards on my hands as I keep moving, feeling for the part of the floor where two of the boards don’t completely join up. If I can slide the spring into that gap and coil it enough to form a type of lever, then perhaps I will be able to weaken one of the boards enough for me to pull it up. If it works, then I can take another one up and slide through the gap into whatever space there is underneath and hopefully crawl my way out of here.

  I know it’s a desperate plan but I don’t see any other way out of here. Besides, if it works, this won’t be my first time in a crawl space. When I was eight, my parents were renovating our house and most of the downstairs area had been ripped up, exposing the beams of the house and leaving holes on the floor before the new surfaces were put in.

  My dad had gone in to check on some of the work one weekend but stumbled and dropped his set of house keys down one of the holes. He probably should have waited for the workers to return on the Monday to retrieve them for him but instead he got little me to crawl down into the gap. I can still remember the musty smell and the sight of cobwebs as I crawled underneath and reached for my dad’s keys, while he held onto my legs and prepared to pull me back up.

&n
bsp; Neither of us ever told mum about that day because she would have probably kicked my dad out for sending me down beneath the house but it was a funny little memory that we shared with each other. For many years after that when my dad was looking for his keys, I would ask him if he had checked under the house and my mum had no idea what the pair of us were talking about.

  I miss him so much. But that day taught me that sometimes there is a whole other level of space beneath the floorboards that you are standing on, so I am hoping that today will be my second chance to venture into that dark and spider-infested world.

  If there is a crawl space under here, then I am going to get into it.

  Then I am going to get the hell off this island.

  #HopeIsTheWorst

  Liz Bennett

  I have to cling onto the hope. Because hope is all I have now.

  There are reports that a man in Bimini saw a motorboat speeding away from the scene just moments after the yacht exploded off the coast of the island. Apparently, there were two men and a woman on the boat and, while it isn’t clear who they were, there are rumours that at least one of them may have been on the yacht. This report only escalated the rumours that the explosion was suspicious and gave further strength to the conspiracy theories that suggested that all those on board had been specifically targeted.

  It is still just hearsay and there is nothing official. The eye-witness had seemed to be drunk during his interview with the journalist but that didn’t mean that what he thought he saw wasn’t true, nor that I shouldn’t hold out hope that the woman in the motorboat had been my daughter.

  Maybe she had been pulled from the water, rescued and taken away quickly to get medical attention.

  Maybe she is lying in a hospital bed now, recovering from her ordeal, unaware of her surroundings and with no way of contacting me to tell me that she is okay.