The Six: Complete Series (6 page)

He genuinely didn’t think it would work, but there she was. Brianna had his jacket perched on her shoulders and followed his directions. Instantly, she merged with the rest of the crowd, indistinguishable amongst the other gleaming dancers.

Simon felt his pants pocket to make sure the pills were still there. He patted them down and grabbed his bottle of beer. She was waiting for him.

He bought her three drinks and didn’t so much as mention her father the entire time. Simon asked her about everything but him. They talked about her hobbies, her dog, what she was studying in school. More than once she gushed that he was the first person who wasn’t trying to become a lobbyist or an intern by getting into her pants.

“I have no interest in politics. At all,” he said. She was beautiful and smiled at everything he said. He put his hand out to touch hers, and she didn’t pull away from him. Her long, beautiful fingers gently raked over his and, just for a moment, he forgot what he’d have to do next.

“Where’d you come from? You don’t sound like you’re from California,” she said.

“My mom’s from Texas. I grew up there, ’till I was in high school.”

“Texas,” she said. “I helped my dad out down there for some fundraiser. I fell off a horse!” She laughed until she snorted. The thoughts popped back in. She had no idea what was going to happen. Her laughter broke his heart.

“It’s a nice place.” This was going nowhere. Any second she was going to be whisked away by an aggressive alpha male, and he’d be left with no recourse.

“So—” she began.

He leaned in and gestured towards his jacket pocket. “I’ve got some stuff. You know... if you want to take anything.”

Her bodyguard hadn’t looked over in a few minutes. He seemed content watching the baseball game playing on the big screen above the bar. “Wait, what?” she said.

He snapped his eyes away from the bodyguard. If they’d mic’d her, there would be no reason to arouse suspicion unnecessarily. “I brought some E and some Vicodin. If you wanted to take one and we could, I don’t know, dance or something.”

She looked all around where they were sitting.

“What are you doing?”

“I’ve been at this long enough,” she said, “to know when those assholes with cameras are looking. I don’t need this in online tomorrow, no offense.”

“None taken.”

“I don’t see any,” she said. “I think we’re in the clear.”

The music seemed to swell around them and, for the first time all night, there were no leering eyes watching the celebrity and her substandard date. “You’re beautiful,” he said.

She leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered.

This was going to be the last time she liked him. After she took those pills, she would be shaking and scared just like he was in Edwin’s basement. She’d hate him and hate herself for trusting him. Right now she believed those words and this promise.

Selfishly, he turned to her and kissed her back.

After seducing the victim, allowing them to get themselves caught is not hard. Edwin spent weeks building trust. Each day he had a new movie poster to show off or a new issue of
Playboy
that Simon could look through after-school. Whatever it took to lure a fifteen year old in, he did. It didn’t take long before Simon was voluntarily going over to this man’s house to hang out. A lonely kid with no friends and no life was the perfect prey, and Edwin took advantage the moment his parents weren’t looking.

She melted into him as they kissed. Already loosened up by the three Bloody Marys in her system, she ran her hands up and down his thigh. He knew he should make her stop, but everything about her was so soft and sweet. He let his fingers trail down her sweeping neck and get caught in her hair.

Simon shut his eyes and tried to imagine that this was happening for real. This wasn’t a plan or a ploy, he wasn’t a pawn, and she wasn’t the victim. He was just a regular guy, and she was a regular girl. He could have been happy, in his regular life, with a girl like this. How he prayed he could just go back.

She whispered in his ear, “You ready?”

Every time he thought about running and telling her to get far away from the mad men behind the curtain, he felt the phantom flutters in his chest.

“Yup.”

She grabbed his hand, and they began to make their way through the peeping crowds. Everyone looked over to see what lucky sod had gotten the governor’s daughter for night. Brianna took them past the dancers and through the couple making out in the back. They ended up walking down the hallway next to the bathrooms. There was a long line of girls clutching their purses, patiently waiting for their turn. All eyes were on the couple as they slipped past them.

The hallway was directly across from the makeshift kitchen where one lonely teenager washed the dozens of glasses that got sent back his way. His sad eyes only briefly glanced over at them before he went back to his work.

In the back of the club, the layers of walls and people muffled the music. The hint of the bass and the hum of the vocals was all that got through. There was little talking back here, except for the odd girl on her phone as she waited for the restroom. The gentle sound of the dishwasher running and the whirr of the refrigerator was their soundtrack.

“I haven’t done this is in a while,” she said. “My dad made me stay clean for the election.”

“The election hasn’t happened, yet.”

She shrugged. “Close enough. So, whatcha got?”

He reached into the suit pocket and pulled out the small bottle Eduardo had handed him. “Got an ecstasy and a Vicodin and this one,” he pulled out the blue pill, “is something my buddy gave me. I’m not sure what it is.” He knew what it was, and he knew she would take it the moment he shrouded it in mystery.

“Is it good? Did he say it was good?” Brianna eyed the pill in his hand like a child in a toy store.

“Yup,” he said with reluctance, “he said it was great.”

She snatched the blue pill from his hand and popped it in her mouth. His stomach churned as she grabbed a discarded bottle of water from a nearby table and let the pill run down her throat. She was just a kid, a stupid twenty-one year old kid, who didn’t know any better. All the guilt and anger from the last ten years rose through his skin. How could someone, how could
he
, be that stupid? It wasn’t hard to be so evil and it made him sick.

Brianna grabbed his arm and looked up at him with a dazed glow. “You going to take it too, right?”

“Of course.” He grabbed the dummy rufie and let it simmer in his mouth. It was sugar and it dissolved on his tongue immediately.

With each blink, Brianna’s eyes got heavier and her movements became more labored and jerky. She grabbed his arm to keep herself upright. “I’m getting real dizzy. Are you getting dizzy?”

She tried to take a step, but her legs wobbled like a baby deer. “Whoops!” she said with a laugh as she nearly wiped out in front of the bathroom line. Simon grabbed her around the waist and hoisted her back to a standing position.

As they passed by the line of girls waiting for the bathroom, one looked over in concern. “Is she all right?”

“She’s fine. Just a little tipsy. No worries.”

The girl didn’t look away. She kept staring. “She doesn’t look tipsy. Is she sick or something?”

Brianna’s head leaned against his body, and he could feel her start to go limp. There didn’t need to be any interest aroused by questions from random club girls. He needed her out of the club and into the car. “She’s fine. Mind your own business, all right?”

She rolled her eyes. “Jesus. I was just trying to help.”

Brianna was barely awake and muttering nonsense. He found the nearest empty seat and dumped her into it. They needed to get out and fast. With every second that passed, they were generating more attention. Any moment, one of the photographers would be here to take Brianna’s photo and have a ready-made item for the next news cycle. If he were exposed online, they would terminate him then and there.

Eduardo said he’d be here. Just a phone call away, he said. With the phone to his ear, he grabbed Brianna’s purse and went through it for anything that could be traced back.

The phone rang.

Her keys. iPhone. Credit cards. He left them all on the table with a napkin draped over them.

“Answer the damn phone,” he muttered.

Another ring.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a sturdy figure walking towards them. “Shit.” Someone was coming for them, and he was going to be left out to dry. There was no explaining this away. Brianna was barely conscious, and he had all her personal items out on the table. If he wasn’t going to rape and kidnap her, then he was robbing her, and he was sure the police didn’t care which scenario played out.

Brianna patted his leg and smiled. “Mm, this is good. Right, Simon? It’s good for you?”

The phone rang one last time. There was a click and then the call ended.

He had to trust Eduardo. He grabbed Brianna by the hand and brought her to her feet. “Hey, you want to get out of here?” he said.

She looked up at him with her eyes half shut. “Yeah!” she shouted.

“Follow me. Let’s go for a ride.”

It sent chills to realize he’d just said the exact words Edwin used to lure him into his car that day.

He didn’t look back to see if the bodyguard was following them. To get shot down by an agent now, would be a relief. Simon pushed her forward and towards the side door where he had come in.

“Hey!” There was a hand on his shoulder that yanked him back. He waited for the gun to be pressed against his back while the sirens blasted outside. Instead, it was just a college kid in an Izod shirt and beer on his breath.

“I don’t have time for this, buddy.” Simon pulled away from the valiant hero. The guy was flanked by his equally incoherent girlfriend and her friends.

His girlfriend ducked under his arm and stood within inches of Simon’s face. “We saw you.”

“Saw me what?” he asked.

A girl from the back chimed in, “You gave her something! What’d you give her?”

Two other girls ganged up and starting shouting “What’d you give her?” with voices that bordered on being louder than the music. Passing people kept looking over at the commotion and a small crowd began to form in front of the side door. Brianna was slumped over in the booth, and Simon’s cradling hand was the only thing keeping her from falling to the floor.

The guy started to sloppily walk forward and show off his heroic nature to the girls. He was just a kid who could have been threatening a few drinks back. “Leave her alone, bro.”

He lurched towards Simon’s arm but got his leg caught in a chair. “Get him!” one of the girls said as she tried to push him forward. Even with his injured hand, Simon knew a solid punch would cause enough chaos to let them slip out. There wasn’t an ounce of guilt as he made contact with the kid’s chin and sent him flying onto a table. The boy rolled off and onto the floor. He attempted to get up, but his girlfriend was too busy petting his injured head for him to begin the second round.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to play out. At least six people saw him with Brianna, and now there was a guy bleeding on the floor. Even if he got out of this, there was no way there wouldn’t be ten police cars in the parking lot before they left.

He pulled Brianna up to her feet and led her towards the back alley.

There was nothing out there but broken bottles and burnt light bulbs. No car, no Eduardo. Brianna’s feet slipped as they stood against the door and she almost fell to the ground. At the last moment, he grabbed her before she slipped face first into a puddle of what he hoped was beer.

“I feel sick,” she said as she peeled away to the wall to throw up. He let her go. He let her fall to the ground, and he didn’t care.

They were supposed to be here. They promised.

“Shit,” he said. His entire body went numb as he stood out in the open air with a ticking time bomb in his chest. “Where are you?” he cried.

The door to the side alley swung open, and the injured man and a new group of liquored up tough guys came out to join him. The boy was hunched over and stood tall like an angry grizzly. “You want a fight, bro?” the largest of the group said as he sauntered forward.

This was the right way, the only way. He could run, but Brianna would be there, without him. He would have failed. Those people didn’t care how hard he’d tried. He had to finish.

“I don’t want to fight you. Just go back inside, okay?” Simon backed away from the looming behemoth.

The guy threw a punch that Simon dodged, but another one came right after. It hit him in the side of the head and knocked him off balance. Simon jumped back upright and went for the man’s head and connected somewhere between his neck and his ear.

“What the fuck was that?” he said with a laugh as he geared up and clipped Simon right on the side of the head. His brain rattled, and he fell to the ground.

In the distance, he could hear the revving of a car and crunch of the tires against the gravel of the alley. There were guys standing all around him. The main one had hovered over and turned to his buddies to plan their next step. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Brianna being tended to by three other girls who petted her hair and tried to wake her up.

“She’s passed out!” screamed one of the girls.

The boy grimaced. “You think it’s funny? You think messing with girls is cool?”

Simon shook his head. “I didn’t do anything to her.”

“Bullshit.” The guy pulled his foot back and kicked Simon in the stomach. He yelped in pain and braced himself for the next hit.

“Bring her inside,” the guy said as he waved his friends to join in on the beat-down. There was another kick to his stomach and he could barely breathe, much less argue.

The tires pulled up alongside the group. The headlights shown right in the guys’ eyes, and they backed off briefly for a respite from the glare. He couldn’t see who was in the car, but he had to assume it was Eduardo or whatever crony of his who was taking his time with his side of the bargain.