The Six: Complete Series (26 page)

Come outside
.

He laughed again but this time he wasn’t quite sure.

Or they will die.

Then David hung up again. He wasn’t sure what compelled him but this time he knew. He knew he was supposed to go outside. Something inside knew this was real. Eduardo stepped out the door and walked down the stairs with a foreboding feeling. He prayed it would be the guys from work standing on the street, laughing their asses off.

Instead, he stepped on the sidewalk and there was no one. Just as he was about to turn around and head back inside, he felt a rush of air and an object collide with the back of his head. It was a split second of recognition of the pain before he fell to the ground. In bits and pieces, he recalled the ride to David’s house. There was a man in the car, a guard who was later killed because he screwed up a job. It wasn’t until later that he stayed awake, strapped to a hospital bed. David’s weird doctor friend was there administering off-brand pain medication to him in the hopes that he’d wake up from his blunt trauma.

Ever since it had been a life of driving to jobs, waiting in the car and cleaning up the mess. They hadn’t let him talk to his family in two years. David often walked in his room and reassured him that they were alright. They weren’t in the house and they weren’t abducted. All they were was monitored. He had their house bugged in ever corner. If Eduardo so much as sent them an email, then his family would be terminated. Also, he was told, if he failed in his job then they would be terminated as well. It was the only thing that got him through the day. To think his little brother would suffer because he couldn’t take it anymore hurt more than burying someone in an abandoned field.

The jobs hurt him at first. He spoke with the people in the car and commiserate with their pain. At first he could barely drive the car without tremendous guilt. He’d pull over, he’d make extensive rest stops and he’d get “lost” so the person in the backseat could buy some extra time. One of the people, this sweet young woman, couldn’t stop crying. She was terrified and he was the only person she could talk to. The woman kept talking about her baby at home and how much she missed him. It broke his heart and he made every traffic mistake he could to get out of making her do her job.

After intentionally going down three wrong freeway exits, he got a phone call. It was David.

Get her there or you’re done, too
.

It was then that he realized they knew what he was doing. At that moment he didn’t care. David had made it clear that this was a permanent assignment. Unless he somehow escaped, there was no way out. He looked back at the girl in the backseat who shook as they neared the destination. It was then he made peace with it all. His family, his fate, his life and he swerved into oncoming traffic.

It took three seconds before a pickup truck hit their left bumper and sent Edurado and the woman in a tailspin. They were quickly sideswiped by a SUV going forty miles an hour. It hurdled their car over and sent it rolling across two lanes of traffic. As the windshield cracked and the airbag burst against his face, he felt terror and freedom combined. This was his way out and even though he was scared, it was a solution.

The woman died on impact but he survived the crash. There were people all around their car immediately. So much screaming and crying on all sides of him. He struggled to stay awake as good samaritans tried to pry him from the front seat.

Since he was the “getaway car”, there was no one to pick him up. He was to be taken to a regular hospital where he could tell his story. It would take them at least an hour to get another one of the “employees” to come get him. All he had to do was stay awake long enough to get his story out.

And he did. He told everyone: the guy who pulled him onto the street, the paramedics, the nurse, the doctor. But he was injured and had extensive damage everywhere, including a major skull fracture. To the people around him, it was the ramblings of a madman. Every time he got the story going, they would pat his head and tell him to calm down. They got as far as learning his name and contacting his mother, which he begged them not to do. She never made it as far as the hospital but he got to speak to her on the phone for two glorious minutes. She couldn’t believe it was him. He could barely made out her words between the cries of joy. It was her little baby that she thought had been killed all these months.
‘I have to go see you, hijo
,” she said as she hung up the phone.

David made sure she didn’t make it. After they stole Eduardo from the hospital and rehabilitated him at their makeshift hospital, he was brought into David’s monstrous office. David sat him down and simply spun around a TV monitor. It showed a car being pulled over by the side of the road by one of his own SUV’s with a fake police light on the top. Immediately he recognized his mother’s 1993 Honda with the busted up back window. The fake cop got out of the backseat of the SUV and nervously walked towards his mother’s car. The man’s hand awkwardly rested against his hip as he tiptoed towards the Honda’s front window.

He saw his mother lean over to give the police officer her license when the man grabbed the gun strapped to his belt. It hovered between him and his mother for what felt like a lifetime. The man briefly let it drift down before he lifted it right back up and pulled the trigger.

It was a tiny pop, no louder than a champagne bottle being opened. The view was from the outside so he couldn’t see what happened to his mother except for the reaction from the man that shot her. All he did was stand there and stared. He didn’t move or even lowered the gun. He stood there frozen and terrified for almost a minute before Frederick got out of the car and dragged him back in.

David had made one of those prisoners kill his mother. They’d killed her for talking to him on the phone.

Ever since then he’d never stepped over the line.

He didn’t speak to the people in the back and he refused to get involved. They could cry and scream but he just made the music louder.

Eduardo pushed in the same heavy metal CD he listened to every time he drove. It was the CD that was in his jacket pocket when they took him in. Gone were his wallet and keys but the CD was still sitting in the inner pocket of his coat when they gave it back to him. It was from his girlfriend--a gift for his birthday. The car burst to life as he turned the volume up past all social niceties. Once the music got that loud, the people never bothered to speak.

The car whirred it’s smoky solo in the small garage David had built for his fleet of black SUV’s. He always drove the same car but needed to change the license each time. Sometimes he’d forget and be halfway down the freeway before he pulled over and changed a “1” to a “4” with a Sharpie he’d bought at the gas station.

There was the familiar snap of the door and the shuffle of the next prisoner in the back. It was hard not to hate them. He knew what they did and he always saw the results. While they lived in media silence, he had access to the news and he saw the tsunami of trauma and pain their actions caused. He had to watch families crumble at press conferences as they talked about the senseless death of their loved ones.

Through the hate, there was a tinge of sympathy. They were as trapped as he was. Even though it was their hand that shot the gun or detonated the explosion, they were as helpless as he was behind the wheel.

They stuffed in the lawyer. He hadn’t felt bad about grabbing the lawyer at all. Dennis Dimarco he felt like shit about for days afterwards but the lawyer was asking for it. He had this apartment suited for an OCD serial killer with a 24/7 maid. There wasn’t a thing left out in the place. He had one lamp, a chair and a desk. There were a few books on a shelf and a TV that had probably never been used against the wall. Besides that, it was a dark silent place. Eduardo had bolted up the steps because the guy was about to kill himself before they were going to take him. He couldn’t much blame the guy. If he had lived in a place like that, he’d want to off himself too.

Irene never told him what the lawyer’s issues were but they were bad enough to let him linger for so long in that basement. And now he had to take out a big name. Big names were usually kamikaze missions. David knew that celebrities like the former VP would have at least a bodyguard nearby. The lawyer would never make it out without being caught. Even with Eduardo’s help, he’d been taken down by an overzealous college student before he made it to the parking lot.

The lawyer scooted towards the middle of the seat with the same stunned look that Eduardo had seen fifty times. It was that look of attempting processing such a gigantic amount of information that the brain desperately is trying to filter out. The gun was in the front seat as was the envelope of phony credentials so he had that to look forward to handing over. There was something strange about this guy. It was that same vacant stare that was there when he had grabbed the lawyer from his bedroom. There hopeless and there was this. This was beyond saving and it scared the shit out of him.

Eduardo turned the music down enough to talk over it. He’d seen that look only one time before and it was in his own eyes before he merged in front of that pick-up.

“Hey man. You okay?”

The lawyer stared out on the road with unblinking eyes.

Eduardo tapped the small camera they had implanted, unbeknownst to him, on the rearview mirror. “Don’t try anything. They’re watching everything. It’s not worth it.”

He sat with his hands pressed in his lap and his lips pursed tight.

The heavy lunch he’d just finished still sat leadened in the pit of his stomach. As much as he tried to jolt a reaction out of the guy by swerving between lanes and scraping right up against massive trucks, the guy hardly blinked much less screamed.

David had removed the partition from Eduardo’s car after Dennis tried to pull a fast one on him. It was his punishment for being tricked easily. But not it left him vulnerable to the whims of desperate people.

As he made one last swooping turn which jolted the lawyer from his seat and tipped him over at 20 degree angle. He made no motion to pull himself up. The seatbelt kept him buoyed at a slight tilt, like a statue that had been knocked askew by an earthquake.

It was then he saw both of the lawyer’s hands creep from either side of his body. It was like they moved independently of the torso they were attached to. One moved towards the seatbelt and the other towards the door. They slithered to either end and snapped like a cobra devouring a small mouse.

He heard the click of the seatbelt first and the ka-chunk of the door attempting to open.

Eduardo leapt for the lock controls and pounded them down. Of all the times to forget to lock the doors.

It was too late. The lawyer had already tucked his head down and was ready to roll out of the swinging door. A gust of air rushed into the car as a row of vehicles sped past them.

“Stop!” Eduardo screamed as he made a sharp left turn into the next lane. It was just enough force to push the lawyer from the edge to a foot inside the car and force the door to close. But he was too quick. The lawyer put out his hand just in time to keep it open just an inch.

He knew he had to get the car stopped or the guy was going to jump out. If he lost a guy, then who knows what would happen to his father or his brother. There was heavy traffic in the far right lane but it didn’t matter. He needed to get this psycho in the car and in one piece.

He didn’t signal. Hell, he didn’t even look. If there was a God and he loved him even a little bit after all the shit he’d done, there would be a spot for their car. In a Hail Mary merging of lanes, Eduardo turned the car sharply to the right. He waited for the crunch of metal and explosion of glass as cars rammed into him.

Nothing.

He had gotten in the lane. He quickly looked behind him to see a small blue Honda stopped, completely stopped, in the lane behind him. There was no time to think. A miracle. That’s the only possible reason.

The lawyer still pawed at the door and tried to get his bearing.
It’s too late
, Eduardo thought as he zoomed onto the shoulder and slammed on his brakes.

He couldn’t contain the adrenaline that coursed through his body at that moment. His joints ached as he clenched the steering wheels. “What the f*ck is wrong with you?” he shouted.

The lawyer furrowed his brow. “I need to...” he pointed towards the door.

“Hell no,” Eduardo said as he slammed down the locks. Four simultaneous prison bars fell all around them.

“Please,” the man said, “just let me do this.”

“No! You’re not going to just jump out of my f*cking car. I’ve got a job to do and you’re going to do your part whether you like it or not.”

The man’s face was pale, a certain shade of pale he’d only seen on sick patients in TV shows and his eyes were like stone, lifeless and grey. Eduardo spun around the front seat and pointed towards the seat belt. “Get buckled in so we can go.”

“I...” the man started to say.

“You what?” Eduardo asked. “What do you need? You want coffee or something ‘cause we can do that but otherwise we’re on a bit of a time crunch. Now let’s go.”

He turned back around to start up the car when he felt the metallic edge of a pair of hair-trimming scissors against his throat. A brief glance at the rearview mirror revealed the lawyer perched against the back seat with the scissors held wide open.

“Shit,” Eduardo muttered as he put his hands up in surrender.

The lawyer’s head tilted side to side like a restless iguana. “Open the doors.”

“I can’t,” Eduardo said. “Don’t make me.”

He pressed the scissors in closer. “Open. The doors.”

“And then what?” he asked. “What are you going to do?”

“I can’t do this anymore,” he said. “When you took me from my home, I was at the end. I’d lived forty-six years trying to fix what was so broken and it was a fools game. The rug was pulled from under me every single goddamn time. No more. You’re going to open this door and you’re going to let me finish what you stopped.”