JackMidsummer - 6 Years Ago
The plastic cracked once, twice, ten times before the phone’s receiver shattered. Wires and its other electrical components popped out at strange angles. Still, I continued to throttle it against the edge of my desk.
Every phone call I received from Franklin Barrett made me angry, but this one tipped me over the edge.
It wasn’t enough that he used my camp to launder his money, or as a personal hunting ground for him and his perverted clients.
I had just discovered–or rather, been informed–that he’d pulled the strings to get Nicholas on my staff team.
When I’d interviewed him back in June, Nick had seemed like an ideal candidate. Plenty of experience with watercrafts, had his boating licence, and had grown up sailing with his father. But then again, of course he’d been perfect. Franklin never would have sent him here if he wasn’t.
And now, I was finding out that I didn’t have a choice but to keep him. Nor did I have a choice but to make sure he was the one who showed Franklin’s poor, stupid wife around when she turned up here in the next two hours.
“Thanks for the head’s up, Frank,” I muttered to myself as I dropped the phone and sagged back into my office chair.
Then again, Franklin’s instructions had been clear.
Make sure his wife didn’t actually see Toni.
Make sure Nick was the one to tour Diane around.
And make sure to take photos. Franklin Barrett wanted me hiding in the bushes like some fucking stalker, taking photos of his wife.
So, I did it. And emailed him the photos the very next day.
A week later, when he called again, this time with a demand that I change Nick’s schedule so that he taught the eleven o’clock advanced sailing class, the one Toni and her friends were in, I did that, too.
And when I had the audacity to ask him why, he’d laughed in that condescending way he always did and said, “Don’t sweat it, Walker, just do as you’re told. ”
I did that, too. But not without paying closer attention to what Nick was doing.
To all the times he winked at Toni, or singled her out during those programs, pouring attention and compliments on her.
Or noticing the day he held her back after class.
I was there, quietly watching from the corner of the paddle shed, listening to Xavier, Brennon and Cole argue about leaving her behind, about leaving her alone with Nick.
I watched as Nick manipulated and gaslit the girl.
All while wondering how much of his actions were part of her father’s plans.
Not long after midsummer, after yet another phone call from Franklin, I realized just how much. On the phone, Franklin advised me that he was sending someone to collect his daughter. If he succeeded, my own plans, so carefully crafted, would fail. I knew I had to act.
I needed Toni at Agonde, her presence here, my role in her life, was the only leverage I had over her father, and if that leverage disappeared, so would any chance of my freedom.
So the next day, after lunch, I pulled Toni into my office and sat her down.
She chewed her lip nervously, as I put on my sternest face, and said, “Toni, your friends and I are a bit concerned about something that happened after your sailing class yesterday…”
She was horrified, her cheeks burned pink with embarrassment, but when she left my office, even though I’d directed her back to her cabin, I followed her at a distance out to the woods and the low ropes course.
As she beat Nick’s head in with a rock, hitting him again and again until his blood coated her tank top, I couldn’t help but be impressed by her viciousness.
Then, she ran, leaving his dead body lying in the dirt.
Or what I’d thought was a dead body. When Nick groaned and rolled over, his eyes were open, staring right at me, and he mouthed help.
It was the last thing he ever did as the metallic crack of a gun cocked behind him, followed by a thin snap, as the bullet pierced his skull.
Terrified, I looked up and across the woods to the source of the sound, only to see a young man, who looked frighteningly like Toni, unscrewing a silencer from a handgun.
We watched each other for a few seconds. Then, the boy shrugged and walked away.
And I never said a word, not to anyone. After all, in that single afternoon I’d held on to my leverage and gotten rid of Franklin’s little spy. Two strokes in the win column for Jack Walker.