The Six: Complete Series (30 page)

He was clearly not a cop; he didn’t have the finesse of a trained professional. Instead he seemed like a dumb kid trying to get inside a nice house. David would have him killed before he got a foot inside.

“Hello?” she said quietly at first.

The man didn’t move.

“Excuse me?” she said louder. “What are you doing?”

His entire body froze at the sound of her voice. His fingers slowly moved back from the wall and he turned his head like a misbehaving puppy at his angry master. She reached her hand out as if to calm him but he turned on his heels about to run.

“Wait,” she said. “Don’t run.”

He didn’t listen. He ran and she ran after him.

The man looped around the back of the house but there was nowhere for him to go. David had the back blocked off with a ten foot high fence and one way in and out. Once he went through the gate, he’d have to be able to jump six feet just to get back out. He was trapped.

She raced to get to him before anyone else found him. “Wait!” she shouted. Her heels dug into the mud and kicked up small droplets as she got to the back yard. The man pounded against the fence and clawed at the door but he was stuck.

He turned with his hands up and his head bowed. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Irene looked all around. There was no camera in the back, at least not one he monitored very often. She beckoned him over. “Come.”

He looked at her perplexed. “Just let me. I shouldn’t have come here. I’m sorry.”

She put a finger to her lips to quiet him down. Though David wasn’t watching, this man’s shrill nervous voice surely would carry. “It’s okay,” she said. “You’re not in trouble.”

“Don’t call the cops on me. I’m sorry,” he said. He kept apologizing and she heard his voice tremble as he spoke. The man was terrified. Why was he so scared?

“I’m not going to do anything. Just... just keep your voice down, okay?”

The man pointed at the house. “Is this yours?”

“Is this my what?” she asked.

“Your house,” he said. “Do you own it?”

David wasn’t supposed to exist. He’d dropped off the face of the Earth seven years ago. On all the papers, she was the owner. “Yes,” she said as she fished for an explanation. “Why do you ask?”

He stepped closer. Gone was the doe-eyed terror. It was replaced with an accusing finger and a cell phone that began to snap her picture. “I followed you,” he said with a smirk.

“What are you talking about?”

“I was running the lecture with Victor Trayhorn. I saw your goon and the guy you made shoot him. I know this sick ass game you’re playing and I know they’re here.”

Her mind went blank as he spoke his last few words. There was no plan for this. David had made it foolproof. No one could find the cars and there were no loose ends. The panic rose through her muscles and to her face. There was no hiding the panic from him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she stammered.

“Don’t bullshit with me,” he said. “I followed your car here.”

It was then that she wanted to run. Instead, she looked at him with quiet desperation. “It wasn’t my car,” she whispered.

“Then whose was it?”

She almost said his name. Almost.

As she was about to speak the syllables, she saw his eyes go wide in surprise. There was no time to react before she felt the poke in her back. As the world faded quickly into darkness, a figure came up behind the man and got him, too. Immediately he fell to the ground in a heap.

David had seen.

Simon had had enough. Every muscle was sore from leaning against the wall. The tiny piece of concrete stuck into the side of his head and poked his cheek. All the fear had worn his system down. All he wanted now was to go outside, even if it meant going to jail. Anything was better than this.

Without a word he got up and began to walk over to the door. His gait was wobbly as he hadn’t put any weight on his feet in days. But he stumbled to the door and ran his hand along its edges.

“What are you doing?” Milo asked.

He had escaped before. Edwin Harpton was never going to let him go. If he hadn’t fought back then he would have died down there. There was always a way out.

“We have to trick them,” he said.

As he looked at their confused faces and finally saw the room from the cold light of the hanging bulb. His area had been his own but the rest of the room was stained and cluttered with days of rotten food and bits of bodily waste that hadn’t made it into the small toilet they’d installed in the corner. It was revolting. They needed to get out.

“Trick them how?” Milo said.

Marie gestured toward herself. “Simon, what are you talking about?”

“Get them to come down here. Pretend that one of us is sick. They’ll have to take us upstairs and we can get out of here.”

Milo shook his head. “It won’t work. They don’t give a shit about us.”

He was about to argue back but he saw Dennis shake in the corner. He had been looking worse every minute. His stitches were about to break and he’d already bled through sections of his shirt. Screw pretending. Someone needed to help him out.

“Screw you guys. I’m getting Dennis help.”

Milo put his hand out to protest but it was met with blind eyes. Simon pounded on the door with his fist and started to shout. “We need help! He’s dying! Please! Hurry up!”

As his voice faded away, Simon listened for the hurried footsteps behind the door. Instead there was the thud of silence of people who had abandoned them.

“See,” Milo said, “they’re not listening. Just sit down and save your energy.”

He’d had enough of Milo’s smug face. “What’s your game?”

Milo shrugged. “What are you talking about?”

“What did you have to do? I mean out there. What did they make you do?” Simon asked.

Simon stepped closer and closer towards the huddled figure in the corner. Of all of them Milo still looked fresh. After all these days he never once seemed more than surly. Never scared. He never seemed scared.

“I told you. I’ve told you, like, twenty times. I had to blow up a car.” Milo shifted around in on the floor and picked at a crack in the cement.

“Yeah, that’s pretty vague. What car? Why?”

Milo shook his head. “It was a random car. What are you getting at?”

“I had to kill a person. A person. So did Dennis. Marie did something catastrophic. And what did you have to do... get some random person? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I don’t know,” Milo said. “How am I supposed to know why they made me do that?”

Simon got a few feet away from Milo who had pressed his back firmly against the wall. This time, however, he didn’t wince like he had been doing. “Eh,” Simon said. “How’s your back?”

Milo’s eye fell to a glare. “What are you implying, Simon?”

“Boys...” Marie started to say.

Simon grabbed Milo’s shirt collar and yanked it up as hard as he could. “Show me your back.”

“No.” Milo didn’t break eye contact. They stood there at a standstill. But Simon was much stronger. He hadn’t wasted his energy taking care of anyone. They had given him all the extra food to keep up his strength. Milo wasn’t competition. With a flick of the wrist he got Milo’s body turned towards him enough to pull up the back of his shirt.

Nothing.

His back was smooth. Not a scratch.

“You seem fine to me.”

Milo pushed away from Simon’s grip. It was the defensive fighting of a man caught in the middle of his own elaborate lie. He slapped with an open hand and it landed somewhere on Simon’s neck.

He’d suspected Milo for the last few days. After that blonde woman came down and doted on him, it solidified his suspicions. The jobs that the others were given were gruesome and crafted to break each one of them down. Milo could hardly articulate what they had made him do and when he spoke the story always changed just slightly. One time he was on a highway, another time it was a dirt road. One time he blew up a car with people in it another time the people were near the car. He couldn’t keep his own lies straight.

“You were in magazines. People know who you are. Why would they have you do something so dumb?”

“I don’t know,” he shrieked as Simon’s grip of his collar tightened.

“Bullshit,” he muttered as he threw Milo against the wall. His skull smacked against the wall and he fell to the ground.

Simon watched as a trickle of blood fell just next to his eye. He was taking control. He was getting them out of here. “Tell them,” he muttered.

Milo wiped the blood from his face with the ratty sleeve of his hoodie. “What are you talking about?”

Edwin had stood in the doorway every afternoon for nineteen days. At two o’clock he would walk down the stairs with a new set of toys. One day it was a belt, another it was a piece of barbed wire he found in the backyard. He’d turn down the lights, take off his jacket and attack Simon until his arms grew tired. Edwin had tied him up to a pipe with, what he claimed, were unbreakable locks. For eighteen days he didn’t try to get out. He let that man walk down those stairs and just took it.

On the nineteenth day he found a pin. From five in the morning until 1:50 he used the small range of motion the cuffs allowed him to pick the lock. Twelve times he dropped the pin and had to contort his feet to meet the flailing fingers that were trapped six feet in the air. Finally, at 1:52, there was a click. It felt so gigantic to him that he was sure Edwin had heard.

As the cuffs loosened and slipped off his hands like melted chocolate, he knew that he didn’t just want to escape. He wanted Edwin to pay for what he did. So that is why, when Edwin came up to him with a steel baseball bat that he tossed from hand to hand, Simon let his animal instincts take over. Edwin raised the bat above his head and readied himself to break a few ribs. As he swung, Simon flung the cuffs to the ground and caught the bat milliseconds before it would have made contact. He had seven inches on Edwin and twenty pounds of muscle, atrophied and beaten muscle, but muscle nonetheless. He blacked out as he took the bat to Edwin. The next thing he remembered was sitting in the back of an ambulance with a blanket draped over his shoulders and a cup of water being forced into his shaking hands.

Simon pointed up towards the door. He’d spotted the camera the first day. It was the same sloppy surveillance system his mom had put in his room after he was found. She couldn’t bear the idea of losing him again so she kept obsessive tabs on him, especially after Dad left. “They’re watching. They’re watching this. So tell them to let us go.”

Milo shook his head. “I don’t know...”

Simon kicked him square in the ribs. Milo fell to his side and clutched his stomach. “What the fuck, man?”

“Tell them!” he shouted.

“I can’t...”

Simon kicked him again.

Marie put out a hand in protest. “Please. What is this accomplishing?”

He pointed at the cameras. “They can see us. And that’s why this asshole has been acting so weird. Was any of it true?”

Milo stayed on the ground and coughed a few wheezing breaths. “Stop,” he whimpered.

“Then tell them.”

“They won’t listen to me,” he said.

Simon pulled his foot back for another kick.

“Stop! Just stop!” he said.

“Then do it.”

Milo pushed himself up to a seated position, still clutching his undoubtedly broken rib. He winced as he adjusted himself to his usual nonchalant posture. “Why should I?”

Dennis groaned in the corner. “Milo?” He sounded more betrayed than pained.

The room seemed to tunnel in on the boy against the wall. Simon wanted to rip him apart and feed him to the wolves outside. How could he have sat here with them all these days and lied to their faces.

“Because we trusted you. Now help us.”

Milo looked around the room like he was about to get support but even Marie had stopped looking his direction. He was alone and trapped. He was defenseless against them.

His gaze shifted from doe-eyed and worried to a fixed stare. He seemed solid and had gained his strength back in an instant. “And what if I don’t?”

Simon didn’t have answer. There was no bat. There wasn’t even a stick to shake at him. The room was filled with nothing but bodies. Just as he was about to pull an answer out of thin air, the comforting sounds of footsteps echoed above them.

“You tell them something. Anything, I don’t care.”

“And what if they say no?” Milo spitted out.

“Then try harder.”

Simon stood by the door with his legs bent and his arms ready to pounce. He’d been spying on the guards as they walked in. There was always at least one, usually two. There was the guy that had driven him and another one. Both were a few inches taller than he and much stronger. However, what they had in bulk, Simon had in speed.

“When they get in here, you are going to tell them to let us go,” Simon whispered.

Milo shook his head.

Simon didn’t have time to respond. The footsteps hurried to the door and the knob turned with a frantic twist. It swung open to reveal just one guard, the driver of the SUV. As Simon went to lunge at him, he bumped into the person being tossed inside. Benjamin fell to his knees as the guard hurled him inside. “And be quiet,” he said.

The door didn’t shut right away. This was his chance. He didn’t trust Milo for a second. In the time it took Simon to get to the boy by the wall, the guard had another person by the arm. He was slumped against the guard’s shoulder and groaned.

“What the—” Milo shouted as Simon grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and yanked him to his feet. He grabbed Milo’s chin in one hand and the back of his neck in the other. His grip dug into the skin it felt good feel the kid squirm under his power. With one yank of his arms, Milo would be dead on the floor.