The Six: Complete Series (18 page)

He had noticed Benjamin never did much but observe. He just stood and listened. But the rest of the pieces didn’t fit in place. “Why would they need a spy?”

“Make sure we don’t rise up or try something funny. They take him out to do his ‘job’ and get all the dirt. Why is he still in here? He’s been in here almost as long as I and they don’t even look his way. If I’m not right, then why?”

As he looked at Benjamin, in his suit jacket and still coiffed hair, he couldn’t help but have questions. If Milo as right, then what were they up against?

Eduardo got them through the back exit of the school where the football field met the parking lot. It was as far away from the car as the building got. Already, in the distance, they could hear the sirens. In a few moments the administration would have the school in lockdown.

“Run,” Eduardo said. “Run like hell.”

Eduardo began to sprint towards the parking lot. Dennis’ body was running on fumes. He started to run but quickly lost the ability to go any faster than a limping walk. The driver was two hundred feet in front of him before he finally turned around.

“Hurry up!”

He tried to take a deep breath but all he got was a wheezing whistle. “I can’t.”

It wasn’t until he stopped running that he felt the stinging in his side. It was like someone had stuck a hot poker into his rib cage. He felt where it hurt and his hand came back covered with blood.

“Shit,” he muttered.

Eduardo had run back. As he got back, Dennis held out his bloody hand like a confused toddler. “Look,” he said.

“When did that happen?” Eduardo said as he pulled back at the jacket.

“I don’t know,” Dennis said. Each word he said made it hurt more.

The sirens wailed in the distance. They were getting closer. Eduardo looked all around for a better plan, but all he had was grabbing Dennis’ arm and wrapping it around his neck. “I’ve got you. Just try to help out, ’K?”

Eduardo had a tight grip on his arm and dragged him through the parking lot. The school passed by in a blur as they weaved through SUV’s and mini Coopers. He hid both of them behind a tree as a group of squealing preschoolers wandered by. The police sirens seemed right next to them as Eduardo pinned him against the side of a car door as he grabbed the keys.

His knees wobbled and Dennis reached out for anything to keep from falling. Eduardo caught him by the shirt collar before he got to the ground. “Stay up, all right? Just let me get my keys.”

He felt everything shutting down as he grasped at Eduardo’s arm. The door bolted open and he was thrown inside. The car hurtled forward as they drove from the school. The sirens became deafening soon after and then they were gone.

They’d made it.

He woke up to bright lights and the light blip of a machine. Every part of his body floated, despite the fact that he quickly found out he was belted to the bed.

There wasn’t a door to the large room he was in, which was empty except for two hospital beds. The one next to him sat empty. A sweet young woman in blue scrubs walked past him mindlessly with an IV in hand. He adjusted his body just enough to get her attention.

She smiled and then waved over at someone else. “He’s awake,” she said.

A tall man in green scrubs double-stepped to Dennis. “You give him his last round?”

She held up the IV bag she was about to administer. “Doing it now.”

“An hour and then he’s out.” He clicked a pen and jotted something down on the chart.

She nodded obediently and hung the bag on the rack with the others. The doctor walked away without so much as looking Dennis in the eye. The nurse remained behind, checking on the machines and flattening down the tape on his arm that kept the IV in. He lifted as much of his hand as he could, which ended up being the tips of his fingers which grazed against her wrist. Startled, she looked over with a patient gaze.

“Do you need something?”

He throat produced only gravelly words. “What happened?”

She looked over at the doctor who was busy in another part of the room. She fiddled with the wires on his chest as she spoke. “You were shot. Not badly, just your side, but they needed to take it out. You had a pretty bad concussion too but they didn’t do much about that. They’re taking you downstairs in a little bit.”

His head still pounded under the blindingly bright lights of the room. “Is it safe? Am I okay?”

She pursed her lips. “I don’t know. They think so. Be careful after they take you. Don’t move a lot, you’ve got some pretty major stitches.”

The doctor raised his hand to beckon his nurse over.

Before she left, she laid a hand on his arm. “You’re lucky. Stay lucky, okay?”

He rested his head on the flattened pillow they gave him and enjoyed the bit of rest they were giving him. The job was done and now he would be able to see his family.

Hannah hadn’t let the letter leave her side since she’d first read it. The whole day felt so unreal, she kept touching the piece of paper, just to remind herself that it had actually happened.

She sat in the park, on the same bench, for three hours just trying to make sense of the letter. Lila had done a lot of dumb things, but she wasn’t a liar. Her brutal honesty was what often tore them apart. That is, except for the story about the boy. She never even alluded to this accident and to what she’d done.

In the letter, Lila was adamant that Hannah would have forgiven her. She was so sure that it wouldn’t have torn them apart, but she was never able to talk about it. It hurt to think that her best friend didn’t trust her enough to tell her something so important. The Lila who kept that secret inside was a different person, even if Hannah didn’t know why she had changed.

But that was ancient history. Lila was gone and it didn’t matter anymore.

The rest of the letter was what gave her pause. There were others. Lila wasn’t the only one that was taken. Even if she was dead now, the others were still alive. She had to do something, if not for herself, then for Lila.

She had walked around the park until the sun set. She knew she should call Kyle. He was a lawyer and he would know what to do. But as she walked around, she felt the intense need to keep the news to herself. As wonderful as her fiancé could be, he’d always hated Lila. Kyle would take one look at the letter and espouse it as the rambling thoughts of a drug addict. It would Lila’s last victory, to drive a wedge between the two of them.

No. She needed to do this on her own.

At eight o’clock, she walked through the doors of the police station. She hadn’t eaten in twelve hours and she could barely form the words coming out of her mouth. As much as she had rehearsed what she would say, it came out panicked and afraid.

“Please,” she pleaded, “I need to talk to someone.”

The clerk jumped up from his desk and went around the counter to grab the hysterical girl with the crumpled letter. She wanted to be calm and collected for Lila, but she couldn’t even hold it together for the middle-aged clerk.

“Honey,” he said as he escorted her to the seats, “just stay here. I’ll get one of the officers to talk to you. Do you want water or something?”

She couldn’t even imagine how terrible she must look, based on how the man stared at her. She took a deep breath and shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m fine. Thank you,” she said in the most mannered voice she could generate.

The officer took her into a small office and locked the door behind them. He was a young man, rugged and corn-fed, with an intensity that only a new cop would have. There was a notebook in one hand and a freshly sharpened pencil in the other. Just her luck, she got the rookie ready to get his big break with the crazy girl who wandered in.

She didn’t want to get into any formalities. Hannah put the piece of paper on the desk and slid it over to him. “I need someone to help me. I don’t know what to do.”

The cop grabbed the paper and read it. As he got to the end, he could barely contain his surprise. It was a lot to take in. In just a few paragraphs Lila had confessed to murder, revealed she was dead and detailed an elaborate kidnapping plot.

“Is this real?”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course, it is.”

He sat back in his chair, overwhelmed. “I just... I need more information. If everything in here is true, then this is big. Really big.”

“Lila, the one who
wrote that, died. I found her at work. This guy took her away. He had a gun and told me not to tell anyone. But, I couldn’t keep this to myself. Those people...”

He slid over a box of tissues. “I want to help you,” he said. “Just tell me what you know.”

Dennis walked down the hallway with his hands tied behind his back. Each step was excruciating. They’d tapered off his painkillers long before they let him get up. The doctor told him he wasn’t allowed to give him anything for the pain. It was the rules, he said, the prisoners weren’t supposed to have medicine.

The nurse slipped him two pills before they left. They were buried deep in his back pocket. With each step, he could feel his stitches pulling. No matter how he contorted his body, it stung. The guards kept him on pace, walking closely behind him as they got to the door.

He stood in front of it, in all its metal glory. It was the same door he’d torn up his hands trying to open. It seemed so harmless on the other side.

They’d lied.

The blonde woman had stopped by before they released him. When he asked if they were taking him home she laughed. “Of course not,” she said. “What gave you that idea?”

They’d lied to make him kill.

How could he have been so gullible?

One of the guards slid around him and opened the door just wide enough for Dennis to walk inside. As they entered the room, one of them undid the knot that held his arms in place.

He didn’t fight this time. Dennis stood by the open unguarded door and let them slowly undo his bondage. When his hands were finally free, he walked back to his spot against the wall. There was no more will to escape or do anything but fall to the ground.

Eduardo dug into his pocket and handed Dennis a cell phone. It was large and simple, like one a parent would give to a five year old in case of emergency. He pointed the green button in the middle. “This phone only dials one number. It calls the doctor up there. It’s for if your stitches break and you start bleeding. They’re monitoring it, so don’t do anything stupid, all right?”

Dennis set the device next to him. Sitting down made the stitches stretch and pull his skin. He could barely think, much less devise an escape plan with a Fisher Price telephone. “Yeah, fine,” he said.

The guards left without acknowledging anyone else. It wasn’t until the door shut that Dennis let out a cry. He didn’t care if everyone heard it. He didn’t care if it bothered Milo and made Simon upset.

He couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d done to that man. Those kids. Christopher’s baby. “Oh, god,” he mumbled as he desperately reached into his back pocket for one of the pills.

No one looked at him. The ones who weren’t asleep went out of their way to ignore him.

As he swallowed one of the pills and let it slide down his throat, he felt alone. So truly alone that nothing hurt anymore.

BOOK 4

“Just one more question.”

Hannah had sat in the police station for three hours. The rookie that first came in still sat at the desk and was now surrounded by his opportunistic colleagues, ready to take her case. They didn’t seem to care about her or what she was going through. All they wanted was the chance to be the one to break this case.

Lila’s name had already been dragged through the mud enough since she had walked in. A pair of officers went to check out the staff room and they’d found a purse that Lila had left behind. They brought back the purse with giddy excitement but she had no idea what the big deal was.

She wanted Lila’s sacrifice to mean something. She didn’t want her friend to be the slammed by meatheads whose only goal was to nail another misunderstood woman who had been taken advantage of by controlling people.

“What is it?” she said. They’d given her plenty of water but she was starving. The shock of what had happened had begun to dull and all she wanted was to gain some distance and get back to her life.

The rookie cop dropped a photo on the table. It was of the purse from the staff room with a few items displayed in front of it. There was a water bottle filled with a little amber liquid, a lighter and a small metallic box.

He pointed to the box. “Why did your friend bring a bomb?”

She shook her head to just make she hadn’t hallucinated. “A what?”

“A bomb. We had our guys take a look at this thing and it is a remote detonated bomb. This could have taken out the whole building. Now if she is who you say she is, then why would she have this on her?”

She didn’t have an answer. Lila was annoying and self-centered but never violent. “It has to be those people that took her. They must have given it to her.”

“Maybe,” he said as he lifted his hand off the picture, “but it’s a little worrisome.”

She could feel the tears of frustration form in her chest. “I don’t know. But Lila wouldn’t hurt anyone. They must have put her up to this.”

The cop went to go comfort her but he was held back by an older detective. “Ms. Morgan, we’re not trying to accuse your friend of anything. We want to find out who did this and why. You’ve given us a lot of information and it’s taking our department a little while to process what it means. You’ll have to be patient as we sort this all out.”

“Can you find them? Those other people?” she asked.

The older man nodded. “We’ll try.”

Her phone rang again. Another missed call. She hadn’t told Kyle what was happening and her shift had been over hours ago. He was probably worried sick but she had no desire to explain anything to him right now.

As the cops spoke to each other, she looked over at a TV in the corner of the waiting room that showed the nightly news. She immediately recognized her old elementary school, the dingy Carter Elementary that she had gone to every day for nine years. Only, instead of SUVs and school buses, there were fire trucks and ambulances parked in front and panicked parents milling about.

“What happened?” she asked as she pointed towards the screen.

The man looked over at the TV. “A shooting,” he said.

“Really?” she said. “At an elementary school?”

“It was a teacher who got shot, young guy. They think it was some baseball player, Dennis something, who did it. Name sounded familiar when they said it.”

“You don’t think this has anything to do with what Lila wrote about. I mean why would someone do that?”

He shook his head. “Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

In her heart, she knew this was connected. “Can I go?”

The man looked all around. “I guess so. We’ll be in touch.”

All she wanted was to leave. She wanted home.

***

“Dennis?”

Benjamin had sat next to Dennis ever since they brought him back to make sure he didn’t die on their watch. After the guards left, he’d fallen asleep and hadn’t woken since. Every so often, Benjamin felt his pulse to make sure he was still alive.

Finally, his began to flutter open.

“Dennis, are you with us?” Benjamin asked.

Dennis groaned as he unsuccessfully tried to push himself up. “What?” he said.

“You’ve been unconscious.”

Dennis grabbed his side as he situated himself against the wall. “Yeah, well I got shot so it’s not too surprising.”

“You were--”

“Yeah. So if I want to pass out let me do it, alright?”

The doctors put Dennis into a pair of thin sweatpants and a jacket that had a spot of blood where his stitches were sewn. In the cold air of the room, he shivered and shook. while Dennis was unconscious, Benjamin took off his suit jacket and draped it over the injured man’s chest but it didn’t stop his trembling.

Dennis’ eyes were filled with anger, a different kind of anger than before he left.

“Do you need anything?” Benjamin asked.

“No,” he hissed. “Just leave me alone.”

Milo chimed in, “Dennis, don’t be a dick.”

“Milo!” Benjamin scolded. “Stop it.”

Milo slammed his hand against the floor. “No, I won’t. I’m tired of this. They gave you a goddamn phone and you’ve done nothing but sit there and wallow. I’m sick of it.”

All he wanted to was slap the entitled brat in the face.“Enough.”

Milo scoffed. “What? Are you going to tell on me?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he said.

The kid had been saying weird things for the last few days. Benjamin knew the others didn’t care for him but their neutral unfriendliness had recently taken a turn for the aggressive. Each of them constantly looked at him with a side-eye and spoke to each other in code, like he was privy to something they all wanted to know.

Dennis said, through gritted teeth, “Just shut up.”

“What’d they make you do?” Milo asked.

“I’m not talking about it,” Dennis said.

Benjamin moved his body between the two of them. “Milo, please.”

“You haven’t had to do this yet. If I want to ask him, I will.”

Dennis grabbed a pill from his back pocket. “Why do you even care?”

“I want to know.”

As Dennis swallowed the pill without so much as a sip of water, he looked over at the kid with indignation. “Alright big shot, you tell us what you did first.”

“Why should I?”

“I desperately want to know. It’s vital to our lives. Please. Regale us.”

Benjamin hated all the bickering. There was never any rest from the anger. “Just let it go,” he whispered to Dennis.

“No,” Dennis said. “I think it’s therapeutic to talk it out. Right, doc?” He looked over to Marie who was still fast asleep.

Milo slunk against the wall. “I told you guys. I blew up a car.”

“Yeah, but who was in it?”

Milo’s eye began to well up. “It doesn’t matter...”

“I got shot, you little shit, and you look fine. So if it doesn’t matter then stop talking about it,” Dennis shouted.

The room fell quiet. Milo looked like he wanted to talk but Dennis wasn’t done.

“My wife and my baby are out there and they think I abandoned them. I had to go to a room full of goddamn kids with my name on the whiteboard and--”. He didn’t seem to be able to get the rest of the words out.

“Kids?” Benjamin asked.

“They’re fine. I didn’t touch them,” Dennis said.

Milo’s brow furrowed. “They put your name up? They let you put your name where other people could see it?”

Dennis nodded.

“They dyed my hair when I went out. They said they didn’t want me to get recognized.”

“I guess I’m just special then,” Dennis said.

The phone sat next to Dennis’ hand, still untouched. Benjamin went to grab it but Dennis yanked it away. “What are you doing?”

“I just thought I--”

Dennis’ moves were sloppy and his words were slurred from taking the painkiller on an empty stomach. “Thought what? Were you going to break it?”

Again. They were doing it again. “Break it? Of course not.”

“I need it,” Dennis said as he clutched it to his chest.

Benjamin lifted his hands in surrender. “Fine! I was an engineer before law school. I thought I could see there was something in there we could use.”

“So take it apart...,” Dennis said.

Milo chimed in, “...and break it.”

Benjamin walked away, frustrated. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Sounded like it,” Milo said.

He wasn’t going to get in a screaming match with two unstable jerks. Fifteen years as an attorney had taught him how to negotiate with assholes. When things got heated, it was easier to stay out the eye of the storm and let the anxiety level fall on its own.

In the beginning, Marie had been his only ally but she had since secluded herself from the rest of the group. Her therapy skills were not as important as grieving for her niece. She made it clear that she wanted none of his help. At first she had politely declined his invitations to talk but she quickly grew angry at the very sight of him. Ever since, he’d let her be.