Chapter 75
CHAPTER 75
PHIL
“You’re going to kill yourself?” Phil gaped at Jason. “Seriously?”
“If I take enough of this, and I will, I won’t wake up,” Jason said, removing a small vial filled with liquid from his pocket. “I’ll just float away, gently passing from life to death, heading straight to hell where I belong.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?” Phil asked, disturbed by Jason’s flippant nonchalance. “You don’t have to?—”
“There is no other fate for me!” Jason roared, stalking toward Phil, crouching in front of him, like a rabid beast eager to pounce.
Phil recoiled.
“I am so tired of living with this fucking guilt!” Jason said, pressing his fingers into his eyes, shaking his head as he moaned and growled. “For fifteen years, all I have thought about is what happened that night at your party and how I wished to God I could go back and … “
Phil said, “What if I … forgive you?”
Jason dropped his hands from his face. Scowling, he said, “You can’t. I don’t deserve it.”
“But—”
“Shut up …” Jason sighed, then stood, and started to pace in front of Phil, arms crossed, hugging himself. “Forgiveness won’t help.”
“I don’t think you should … hurt yourself,” Phil said, slightly surprised that he meant it, even though he was trying to keep Jason talking until he could squeeze at least one hand from the rope.
“And if I don’t then what?” Jason scoffed, walking toward the headless bodies propped against the cave walls. “I go back to being a lawyer? Yeah, right. I’ve killed four people. And, sure, they deserved to die, but I’ll go to prison. Maybe even get the death penalty.”
“Nobody has to know what you did,” Phil said.
Jason glared at him. “I know what I did. And there’s proof of my crimes.”
“Proof?”
“The villa has interior surveillance cameras,” Jason said. “I checked out the specs of the island and the villa before we came. So, I’m on video killing Alex, Chris and Mia. I think it’s appropriate, considering the video Alex made of you lying in bed with Sarah, covered in bloody sheets.”
Shock ricocheted through Phil. “Alex made that video? He told my father?— ”
“He told your father that some guy at the party made it, and he was able to convince the guy to give the video to him,” Jason said, laughing. “That was part of Alex’s plan to make your father trust him. He needed your father to think he was looking out for your best interests.”
“Son of a bitch,” Phil said, feeling the rope loosen slightly as he?—
Something scratched his arm.
Flinching, afraid he’d been injured by a bat, or some other rabid jungle animal, Phil glanced down at his right arm and?—
Sarah stared at him, then put a finger to her lips.
Phil communicated his understanding with a narrowing of his eyes before he focused on Jason again. Sarah lay prone in the dirt, unmoving, as though she was unconscious, but she was aware of everything happening. Something flared in Phil’s chest, maybe hope, possibly relief, he wasn’t sure. He just needed to keep Jason talking and distracted.
Sarah was going to make some sort of move.
Phil had seen the determination, and the hatred, in her dark gaze.
“So that’s another reason why you shouldn’t care that Alex is dead.”
“Tell me more about that,” Phil said.
“More about what?” Jason asked, pacing again, hugging himself, his movements jerky and rabbity, like a junkie coming down from a high.
“How you killed Alex,” Phil said. “You stabbed him and cut his head off and dragged his body to this cave. You did all that and no one saw you?”
“It was the middle of the night,” Jason said. “Everyone was asleep. After Alex was dead, I dragged him into the jungle and I stopped to cut his head off. I didn’t do it in the house. There was already too much blood on the rug in my room. So, I cut his head off and dragged his body into the cave, but I think I got turned around because when I came back for the head, I didn’t see it.”
Soft, supple flesh landed on Phil’s wrists, but he didn’t wince, or flinch. Sarah’s fingers, he realized. Carefully picking at the ropes binding him.
“What happened to Alex’s head?”
Jason exhaled. “Like I said, I got turned around and went down the wrong path. If you hadn’t noticed, there are no lights to guide your way in the jungle. The next morning, Grace found Alex’s head while she was out walking.”
“What?”
Jason chuckled under his breath. “She was screaming and carrying on. And no one believed her, but it was true. I went out early that morning to look for Alex’s head and I saw Grace, walking along one of the jungle paths. I was hiding in the trees, following her. Watching. And she saw Alex’s head, right there on the path where I had left it. Buzzards were eating it.”
Swallowing rancid bile, Phil focused on Jason as Sarah continued to work on the rope. “Grace didn’t see you?”
Jason shook his head. “She took off running. I figured she should be next. I got her while she was at the boat dock, waiting for a water taxi.”
Phil said, “And you brought her body back to the cave. ”
“Had to leave the head in the speed boat,” Jason said. “Carrying a dead body is carrying dead weight. It’s kind of impossible to carry the head and the body at the same time. Believe me, I tried.”
Anger and disgust coiled in Phil’s gut as he silently pleaded and prayed for Sarah to hurry and untie the ropes. He needed his hands free so he could wrap them around Jason’s neck and?—
“But, then, Sarah saw Grace’s head in the boat,” Jason said, rolling his eyes like a petulant teenager. “So when Sarah ran back to the villa, I had to drive the boat around to this little cove I’d found, where it would be out of sight.”
Frowning, Phil said, “So … Sarah didn’t see you?”
Jason shook his head. “And when she brought us back to the dock, the boat was gone and no one believed that Grace was dead. Just like when I took Alex’s head to the cave, when Grace took us to the path where she’d seen the head, it wasn’t there, so no one believed Grace when she said Alex was dead.”
“Who did you kill next?” Phil asked.
“Chris,” said Jason. “Stabbed him in the gut. Mia found him.”
“But no one believed her when she said Chris was dead?”
Jason rubbed his jaw. “By that time, it was just me and Sarah, and Mia started spilling her guts about Alex’s plan to kill you, so she didn’t take us to see Chris’s body, but I didn’t move it, because by then, what was the point?”
“Was that part of the plan?” Phil asked. “You wanted someone to find a person dead, then when they told the others, there was nobody so no one believed them? You’re a killer and a gaslighter?”
Again, Jason chuckled. “Actually, I only got the idea to do that when Grace found Alex’s head. I thought that the head should be gone if she brought everyone to see the head, which she did. I thought it was kind of ironic, you know?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know, Alex’s plan was to make you think you raped Sarah, which wasn’t true,” Jason said. “And you damn near went crazy because you couldn’t believe you’d done that. I just wanted everyone to feel like they were going crazy.”
Phil glared at Jason. “You know, you bastards made my life hell just so you could blackmail my father. You went through a lot of damn trouble. Must have been an easier way to rob my family.”
Jason dropped his head. “Wasn’t just for money. Alex had to protect me.”
“Protect you?”
“I raped Sarah.”