The Valentine's Date, page 6
‘Rosie… Is she… Is she…’ Kolby couldn’t finish the question.
‘Like I said – collateral damage.’ Jordan shrugged. ‘I mean, it’s not exactly a surprise, is it? If she was stupid enough to meet a guy off the internet and have her entire date plastered online, she deserved whatever happened to her.’
‘You fucking monster!’ Kolby lunged forward, his body surging with anger, but his bound limbs made it impossible to fight or even move properly. Jordan, who was half Kolby’s size and clearly not a fighter, delivered a swift kick to Kolby’s chest, sending him toppling backward.
He crashed against the floor, his shoulder brushing against Rosie’s body.
‘I don’t understand,’ he begged, his voice cracking. ‘Can you at least tell me why you’re doing this? Is it money? If it’s money, I can get you that. We can fix this. Please.’
Jordan’s bitter smile twisted his features into something almost inhuman. ‘Money?’ he spat. ‘That’s all it ever is with you, isn’t it? Money. You don’t care who you hurt.’
Kolby was shaking his head. It felt like the only part of his body he had free movement of, but it still wasn’t helping him make sense of the situation. ‘Please, Jordan, you need to talk to me. I don’t—’
‘You killed her!’ Jordan’s voice exploded with rage. Kolby flinched as if the words had cut into his flesh.
‘You killed her. You killed my baby sister,’ Jordan hissed. ‘And now you’re going to pay for what you did.’
17
Jordan was pacing the room, his feet hammering back and forth. As Kolby straightened his body up, he tried to make sense of what he’d just heard. Jordan believed he’d killed his sister? How? How was that possible? The man was sick, that much was obvious, but Kolby needed to find a way out of this. Maybe it wasn’t too late for Rosie. Maybe if he just got her help… He knew he was lying to himself, but he needed to. If he didn’t – if he allowed himself to consider that, one way or another, he was to blame for what had happened to her – he wasn’t going to have the strength to fight. And he was going to need to fight to get out of this. He could see that.
As he tried to work out exactly how much movement he had, his phone beeped repeatedly.
‘People will be looking for me,’ Kolby said, trying to stay calm. ‘You know that. I’m a public figure. People will already be looking for me. Amanda? You know her, right? She’ll be worried. Val, too, when she wakes up. She probably already has. That’s probably them messaging me now.’
A laugh cracked from Jordan’s throat as he turned around, a phone in his hand.
‘Is that what you think the messages are?’ Jordan said. He pushed his thumb down on the screen, and a corresponding beep followed on Kolby’s phone.
‘You’re messaging me?’ Kolby said. ‘Why?’
Jordan’s smile wavered, though his lips remained tight and narrowed, as if he was holding back a secret he wasn’t quite ready to share.
‘Technically, Rosie is messaging you,’ he said.
‘Rosie?’
‘Yup. This is her phone.’ He held it up. ‘She kindly gave me the passcode so I could get in. I told her I’d let her live if she did. Maybe I should feel bad, but she was stupid enough to go out with you, so of course she was stupid enough to fall for that. Besides, needs must.’
He tapped away again, and several more beeps followed from Kolby’s phone.
‘You’re making it look like she did this,’ Kolby said, feeling the air rush from his lungs. ‘What are you messaging? You won’t get away with this.’
‘But I’m not doing anything, am I?’ Jordan grinned. ‘Like I said, this is all Rosie’s doing. I mean, come on – the ridiculousness of meeting someone online and broadcasting the date is just a sign that she was clearly unhinged. And in the last couple of minutes, she’s already “confessed” at least half a dozen times to what she’s done. Here, listen to this last message.’
Jordan moved closer and knelt on the ground in front of Kolby. It was the closest he’d been to him so far, though he was still out of reach. Kolby’s heart hitched. If Jordan were just half a foot closer, he could try something. A headbutt, maybe – enough to knock him out. But Jordan clearly knew better and was keeping his distance.
‘I’m so sorry for this,’ Jordan read, his voice deliberately high pitched as he mocked a female tone. ‘But it’s the only way we can be together. Destiny brought us together. We’ll be together forever in heaven, my love. I’m sorry. Forgive me. This way, we’ll stay young and beautiful and never need to be apart.’
He stopped reading and looked up at Kolby. ‘What do you think? A bit much? I think it’s okay. It gets the point across. Though I should probably stop now. We don’t want to make things confusing when the coroners give a time of death, do we?’
Jordan shifted, moving to Rosie’s lifeless body. He picked up her hand, limp and pale where it hung off the edge of the sofa, and pressed her fingertips against the phone screen.
‘Just wiping this off and putting her fingerprints back on the screen,’ Jordan said. ‘Wouldn’t want anyone to think there was foul play.’
Kolby fought back a gag as the urge to wretch hit him.
This was insane. Jordan was insane. A murderer. And his sister had been sleeping with him.
‘Will you at least tell me why?’ Kolby said, looking at Jordan. ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘I told you—’
‘I don’t understand! Why do you think I killed her?’
He needed the answer – but more than that, he needed time. Time to figure out how he was going to get out of this alive. He wasn’t going to die like this. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to let Rosie’s friends and family think she was a killer. She deserved better than that.
‘Tell me,’ Kolby said, glancing around the room once more. ‘Tell me what happened to her. Please. I need to know. Then you can do whatever it is you have to do.’
18
Jordan didn’t respond immediately. Instead, he took a handgun from the back of his jeans and wiped the handle. So that was what he had used to kill Rosie, and if Kolby’s suspicions were right, he was going to place the gun in her hand afterwards and make it look like a murder-suicide. But fuck that. Kolby wasn’t going to let him get away with this. If only he could get the zip ties off, Jordan wouldn’t stand a chance. Hangover and drugged or not, he knew he could overpower him. But how could he get his hands free? He had done a challenge before that involved breaking himself out of zip ties, but in that situation, his hands had been tied in front of him. He’d used the momentum from swinging his hands high above his head and forcing them apart. But he already knew he couldn’t do that here. No doubt Jordan had seen the video, hence why he’d opted for this different method of restraining him.
But there had to be a way out. He looked around the room.
The fire. He could melt the zip ties.
Slowly, so as not to attract Jordan’s attention, he shuffled sideways towards the fire. He just needed to keep him talking.
‘I get that whatever you think I did, it must have been terrible, but I’d never want to hurt anyone on purpose. Especially not someone’s little sister.’ His heart throbbed as he thought about Rosie and what he had learned last night. Now her parents had lost two children because of other people. It didn’t bear thinking about, and right now, he couldn’t afford to. He focused solely on Jordan as he continued shuffling forward towards the gas heater. ‘You know how much I love my own sister. How much I love Val, don’t you?’
Jordan snorted.
‘You love yourself, Kolby. Everyone knows that.’ Kolby stopped his shuffling at the same moment as Jordan lifted his head from the gun.
He was still too far away from the fire to melt the zip ties, but he was closer and the path between him and it was free. That was something.
‘She followed me, right?’ he said, still needing to keep Jordan distracted. ‘Your sister was one of my followers. Is that why you think I’m to blame for what happened? Because she followed me?’
‘She idolised you!’ he snapped, his eyes red in the gas flame’s light. ‘She thought you walked on fucking water. And she was thirteen years old, Kolby. Thirteen years old.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t know… I don’t know what happened. Was it… did she…’ Kolby wracked his mind for something one of his followers could have done that caused their death. That was when his mind went back to the conversation he’d had with Rosie.
‘The Blackout Challenge,’ he said. ‘She did the challenge? Is that what happened, Jordan?’
It had been all over the news. Tens of people, kids in particular, died after trying the viral stunt of depriving themselves of oxygen by choking to the point they almost blacked out, purely for the rush it gave them afterwards when they came back around. Stupidly, he hadn’t realised just how dangerous it was when he’d posted his video, but as soon as the reports of children dying came in, he quickly pulled it down. Not quickly enough, apparently.
‘She just wanted to be like you. Popular. Thousands of followers,’ Jordan said. ‘Every one of your videos that she could copy, she did. She got her friends to film it.’
Kolby kept his eyes locked on Jordan as he shuffled back a little further. It wasn’t easy, making the movements slow and stable when he could barely move. But Jordan was lost in his story. He needed to make every moment count.
‘Apparently, she was going to send you the film of her waking up,’ Jordan continued. ‘She planned to have your name as the first word on her lips when she came back around. Only she never did. Her brain went too long without oxygen.’
The pain that struck Kolby wasn’t from the drugs or the blow to the head. Instead, it was for that poor girl. This time, he couldn’t stop himself from retching, but it didn’t change what he had to do. He might not deserve to live, but he wouldn’t let Rosie’s parents learn the lie Jordan wanted to tarnish her name with. He used the sound to cover another movement towards the fire.
‘Jordan, I’m—’
‘Don’t you dare say you’re sorry!’ Jordan hissed. ‘You don’t get to be sorry! You don’t get to say that. You ruined our lives. My family’s lives. Three years. That’s how long she stayed in that state. My parents wouldn’t let her go. They sold their house to move her to a facility that would keep her alive – not that you could call it that. No, she died the moment she decided she wanted to impress you.’
Tears filled Kolby’s eyes. He opened his mouth to defend himself, but what sort of defence did he have? There was nothing.
‘What was her name?’ he said instead. ‘What was your sister’s name?’
A vein pulsed on Jordan’s head, and for a moment, Kolby thought he might lash out at him, kill him there and then for daring to ask such a question. But instead, his jaw worked for a moment before he spoke.
‘Mariella,’ he said.
‘Mariella. That’s a beautiful name.’
Jordan’s expression snapped back into a snarl.
‘Don’t think you’re going to get out of this by trying to convince me that you’re sorry. No, I know you. I’ve seen you. You use people. You use your sister. Your mum. The people around you. You use them all for what you want.’
‘No, I don’t. I promise. I would never use Val and she knows that. Please, Jordan, I have never meant to cause anyone any pain. I promise.’
With one final shuffle, he moved so that he was as close to the fire as he could get. Almost instantly, he felt the heat burning the back of his arms. The zip ties were getting hot too, but they didn’t feel like they were weakening. All that was happening was that he was burning himself. This wasn’t working.
‘Do you have a photo?’ he said. He was getting desperate, he knew that, but he needed to do something. Any second now, Jordan was going to get bored with the small talk and end things, and he couldn’t let that happen until he found a way out. Yet all he could do was shuffle and swing his legs. Though maybe that could be enough. No. He focused his thoughts; it had to be enough.
‘I’d like to see a picture of her, just once, before… you know… if you have one…’ He laced his voice with as much sincerity as he could muster. ‘And you’ll tell Val I love her, right? After you’ve done what you have to do, you’ll look after her, won’t you?’
Speaking his sister’s name caused another spark to ignite in Kolby. He wasn’t going to let that monster spend another minute by Val’s side, just like he wasn’t going to let Rosie take the blame for something she didn’t do. Jordan wouldn’t get away with it, but he knew he would only get one chance.
‘Please, Jordan. Can I just see her?’ He could see the conflict on Jordan’s face as he debated what to do. ‘Once I’ve seen the photo, I’ll do what you need of me,’ Kolby said. ‘I’ll lie where you need. Let you… let you…’ He nodded towards the gun that was still in Jordan’s hand.
Finally, Jordan’s head dipped in a nod.
‘Fine. But don’t try anything.’
‘I won’t.’
Jordan took out his phone, flicking across the screen before walking towards Kolby. With every step, Kolby’s pulse ticked up another notch. If he acted too fast, Jordan would probably shoot him then and there. If Kolby left it too late, the same would likely happen. The air trembled in his lungs as he held his breath, watching and waiting until the perfect moment struck. Jordan was still staring at his phone, standing directly over him, when Kolby knew it was time to act. He leaned back, shifted all his weight through his arms, and swung his legs straight into Jordan.
19
There was no time to think. As soon as Jordan began to topple, Kolby shifted again, kicking outwards. The second strike saw Jordan fall to the ground on all fours, while with the third his feet struck the bottom of Jordan’s chin, knocking him backward. As Kolby grappled to regain his own balance, Jordan tumbled and hit his head on the carpet, dropping the gun, which slid from him and towards Kolby. A flash of confusion crossed his adversary’s face, but it was almost immediately transformed into fury. As Kolby’s eyes searched the ground for the gun, he threw his entire body across the room and landed so that he was covering the weapon. The tactic wouldn’t work for long, though. He knew that. His hands were still tied. Jordan could easily roll him off it. Having his body close to it was hardly an advantage when he had no way to grab it or fire it, but if Jordan got hold of it, it would be game over.
‘You bastard!’ Jordan screamed, clutching his chin as he tried to right himself, but Kolby didn’t give him the chance. Abandoning the idea of using the gun, Kolby leveraged himself onto his knees, then his feet, and waited in a crouched position. The moment Jordan was upright, he ran. He didn’t think about whether he might dislocate his shoulders, or cause himself a concussion as he barrelled into Jordan with everything he had. He was secondary now. Stopping Jordan was all that mattered.
As Kolby’s full weight slammed into Jordan’s stomach, he knew his sister’s boyfriend was more than just winded. Kolby felt his ribs crack beneath the force of the impact. Heard the cry of pain fly from his lungs. But a man with broken ribs could still fire a gun.
Twisting his body round, Kolby grabbed hold of Jordan and pulled him to the ground. The pair tumbled to the floor, rolling dangerously close to the gun. Jordan’s open hand landed inches from it, but Kolby yanked him away. There was no way he could let his little sister live with this monster, or worse, let her live believing that her pick of Rosie had been the reason her big brother had caused her to lose her life.
He wouldn’t do it to her. Pushing his weight onto Jordan, he pinned him to the ground. Jordan lay face down, thrashing and clawing at the floor, trying to dislodge him, but he was weakened and in pain and even at his fittest he wasn’t a fighter. All Kolby had to do was keep going. If he didn’t give up, he could come out of this alive. He knew it.
With determination pulsing through his veins, Kolby shifted, twisting his body until he was perched on Jordan’s shoulders, his heels digging into Jordan’s knees, holding him in place. With his hands still bound, Kolby manoeuvred the zip tie over Jordan’s head and yanked it tight against his throat.
As Jordan’s screams were suppressed by the pressure on his larynx, Kolby closed his eyes and let the tears run down his cheeks. There was only one way this ended, and he knew it.
20
Kolby didn’t know how long he had stayed there. Long after the thrashing had stopped. Long after his shoulders began to burn from the pain. Long after the body had turned limp beneath him, but he couldn’t let go. He had been afraid that if he let go too soon, then Val would be in danger. He would be in danger. The gun was still within reach, and he still had no way to hold it. But at some point, when he heard the sounds outside on the street. Car doors slamming, engines starting, people starting their day, as if everything hadn’t just changed.
Only then did Kolby loosen his grip and dropped to the ground beside Jordan’s limp body. The sound of his own breath reverberated in his ears as his heart continued to pound against his chest. He needed to move. He needed to call the police and check on Val and speak to Rosie’s family, and yet he couldn’t. He couldn’t face all that. Instead, he closed his eyes and felt the tears run down the side of his face. Tears for Rosie and Mariella. For their families and all they would have to endure now. He didn’t have the strength to even pull himself onto his feet, and he wasn’t sure he ever would. Val was safe now. That was what mattered the most. With that thought overwhelming all the others, he closed his eyes.
‘This is bordering on stalking, Shaz. You know this is crazy, right?’
He heard the voices outside, but they barely registered.
‘It’s not stalking. He said we could catch up. And I just want to check he’s okay. They were seriously out of it last night. And I didn’t like that mate of his at all. He was weird.’
