The Six: Complete Series (9 page)

His hands were bloody and torn up from the pounding and tearing at the walls. Lila grabbed his arm and pulled it toward her. He was strong but exhausted. With all the power she still had left, Lila got him away from the door.

“You have to stop this,” she said.

“I can’t,” he said. “I have to get back to them.”

She moved him back to the wall. “I know. I want to get back, too, but you have to calm down or you won’t make it.”

As soon as his back hit the wall, Dennis shut his eyes and his knees began to buckle.

“Help!” she shouted. No one moved to assist him as he began to collapse to the ground. Her muscles were weak and couldn’t support his falling body. She caught him a foot from the floor but not before he knocked his head against the wall.

“Shit,” she muttered. She felt the back of his head and there was a small trickle of blood. A slap to his cheek didn’t rouse him, but he was still breathing.

“He’s fine,” Marie said from her outpost. “He hasn’t eaten all day. Just leave him alone.”

Lila stripped off her hoodie and bundled it up into a makeshift pillow. She moved Dennis into the most comfortable contortion his awkward sitting position would allow and placed the make-shift velour pillow behind his head.

“What should we do?” she said.

Marie shook her head. “Just let him be.”

The lines on his face had deepened and his eyes were a pale gray. She moved herself closer to him and gently put her hand on his arm to test the waters. When he didn’t pull away, she wrapped her hand over his. All she could think of was his poor wife sitting alone with that baby, not knowing where her husband went and how badly he wanted to get back to her.

Simon sat in his corner with a strange detachment. His hands shook but there was a satisfied smirk on his face. “Simon?” Lila asked quietly.

“Yeah. What’s up?” he said. The tone of his voice was of a disinterested high schooler.

It was what Milo was like when she first came in. He was broken and hiding it best he could, which wasn’t well.

“It’s okay,” she said, “You don’t have to act like nothing happened.”

He shrugged. “I’m fine. Nothing
did
happen. I’m fine.”

Milo looked over in betrayal. “Bullshit nothing happened.”

“Nothing happened.” Simon turned his body so he faced the wall and not the prying eyes of Milo, who had perked up for the first time in hours.

“You have blood all over your shirt.”

Simon covered the shirt sleeves with his hands. “Stop it!”

“Milo, please,” Lila said.

Milo moved closer to Simon. He crawled over to where the hunched over Simon sat, and got right in his ear. “Tell them what happened.”

Simon shook his head. “Nothing. Happened.”

Milo bit his lip hard and looked out at the rest of the captors; frustration was burrowing under his skin. “Just tell them.”

“You tell them!” Simon said. “If you want them to know so badly, then you tell them.”

Lila began to move closer to Milo to try to get him to stop what he was doing. There was something about Simon that annoyed him on a deep level and he couldn’t help himself. Milo didn’t know what his words would do to this fragile group.

“What are you talking about?” Benjamin asked.

Marie stepped out of the shadows. “Please. Tell us.”

Lila sent a pleading look towards Milo in an attempt to get him to stop speaking.

He had told her everything the day after she was brought in. It was an excruciating story. He’d blown up the wrong car. It was a mistake. He had the blood of six people on his hands and to be brought back to the same dark room, alone, broke him.

“Milo, don’t,” she said.

It was useless. Milo had a manic energy that had been absent for the last week. “Check out your chest. See that scar?”

Benjamin and Marie did as they were told and looked down their shirts at the scar. “Yeah, what is that?” Marie asked.

“They did surgery on you, on all of us. It’s this thing around your heart. It kills you. I mean,
they
kill you with it.”

“Shit,” muttered Benjamin. “Why? Why would they do that?”

Milo shrugged. “Who knows. I just know that if you don’t do what they tell you to do, they flip a switch and you’re dead. That’s what they told me and I believe it.”

Benjamin pointed at Simon. “Where did they take him?”

Simon looked up for a brief moment with tears in his eyes. If he wanted to speak, no words came out of his mouth. He spun his body around, faced the wall and covered his ears with his hands.

Milo didn’t stop. Like an excited storyteller he continued. “They make you do some f’d up shit. This one guy had to push some other guy in front of a subway. He came back but when they took him again, that was it. I never saw him again.”

“God damn...” Benjamin whispered.

“What did they make you do?” Marie asked.

Milo’s lips were pursed. He wasn’t going to say it. All that bravado, and he wasn’t going to say it. Lila knew what he’d done; and it took everything in her heart to not be horrified at what that boy, mere feet away from her, was capable of.

“It doesn’t matter what I did.”

“Yes. It does,” Marie said.

The light above them flickered and sputtered. Milo choked out the words, “They made me do it.”

Lila squeezed Dennis’ hand. He wasn’t unconscious, and the part of his mind that was aware of what was happening grew tenser with each of Milo’s words.

“What? What did they make you do?” Marie shouted. It was the first time her voice had been raised above a reasonable tone since they’d been brought together.

Milo’s cheeks had turned a deep red as he struggled to get the words out of his mouth. “They told me it was supposed to be random. I just had to pick a car...”

“Who?”

He picked at his arm and squeezed his fists hard. “It wasn’t my fault....” His voice trailed off as the emotion took over. Milo buried his head in his hood and turned away from the horrified Marie.

She didn’t have to say a word. Marie’s eyes said it all. She couldn’t even look at Milo or, subsequently, Simon.

Benjamin stepped forward. “They made you...”

Milo nodded.

Silence.

Footsteps banged down the hallway. There was a high-pitched voice that mumbled from behind the door as the locks were unlatched one by one.

“Is it food? Do you think it’s food?” Lila said quietly. A small man had brought them bread and bits of meat and cheese each day. Her stomach rumbled just at the thought of something to eat. Two weeks ago she was a strict vegan and drank only coconut water and Red Bull. Now she was happy to get stale bread and processed bologna.

“It’s too soon,” Milo said. “It’s not food. They’re getting—” He didn’t have to finish his sentence.

They were coming back for one of them. There were four that hadn’t been recruited. The door opened up just a crack and the nasty woman with the stark blonde hair looked in at the group. She clutched her hip pocket as she slipped inside and her eyes scanned the room to make sure no one was going to leap from behind the door and attack her.

No one so much as lifted a finger as the woman walked inside. She strolled over to Simon whose glassy eyes glared at the wall in front of him. The woman placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

“Good work, Mr. Archer. I couldn’t have done it better myself.” A reptilian smile crawled across her surgically tightened face. He flinched as her long fingernails dug into his skin.

Lila bit her tongue to keep from crying. She’d hidden from this woman every time she had walked in. The goal was to be invisible. Her heart dropped as the woman’s eye darted from Simon’s shaking body right to her.

“No,” she whispered as the woman began to walk towards her. As she got closer, her two henchmen followed behind.

“Lila,” the woman said, “come with us.”

“Please, no,” she whispered again.

One of the men grabbed her arm and attempted to hoist her to her feet. She pulled back and briefly got out of their grip but was restrained moments later. Their fingers wrapped around her arms so tightly she could feel the bruises form as they pulled her from Dennis’ side.

“Help!” she screamed. “Milo, please...” He kept his head down and ignored her pleas. They weren’t a team—it was every person for himself. Being conspicuous would mean certain death.

She was alone.

Years of watching
Law and Order
had trained her for this moment. There was no “bad cop” routine that would faze her. She knew that she couldn’t let them see her as weak or vulnerable. She needed to be ready for anything and maybe then they would know they couldn’t push her around.

On TV, when the suspects panicked, the people with power pounced all over them. They were like sharks, swimming around prey and waiting for the moment to attack. The blonde woman sat across from her with her hands folded on the table. Her words came out in a mannered tone as she smiled politely.

The two men who flanked her, however, appeared ready to do whatever was necessary to keep the peace. All Lila needed to do was smile and nod while she was stuck in the building. Once she was out, then she could figure out how to shut this down. Cooler heads would prevail. Milo had prepared her well. If anyone could get out of this, it was she.

The woman slid a folder across the table. “Ms. Backus. We have a special job for you.”

Lila took the folder in both hands and examined it with a detached fascination. There were no words, just a photograph of the coffee shop she had been going to for years. This was the test. She looked up from it without registering a hint of recognition. “What’s the job?” she asked.

“That’s the Blue Brook coffee shop. It’s quite popular with students and stay-at-home moms. Music and nice people in there, you know?” the woman said.

Lila set the photo down. Her ex-roommate had worked there for years. She’d often stop in and beg Hannah to give her a free cup of coffee, which she always did, without question.

“I know it. What is it you want me to do?” Her voice came out borderline annoyed. The woman seemed taken aback. Even though she shook on the inside, Lila calmed her body, sat straight and forced a stern smile.

“You will burn it. To the ground.” The woman didn’t break eye contact as she settled back into her seat.

Her brain reeled. There were ways around this. She could go at night, after it was closed. “All right. That seems fine,” she said. “I will go tonight.” Lila reached to grab the photo again but the woman slapped her hand away.

“Hey!” she said.

The woman simply glared and snatched the folder away. “You will do your task during the business day.”

“But,” she said, “there will be people inside.”

Without missing a beat, she said, “Exactly.”

Her entire body tensed. “I can’t...” she began to say.

The woman ignored her. “We will take you to the location and you will have two hours to complete your task. If you do not complete your task, you will be terminated. If you attempt to contact police, you will be terminated. If you attempt to rescue anyone, you will be terminated. Is that understood?”

Lila swallowed the gnawing fear in her throat and forced the confident shell back into the light. “What if there’s a child? I can’t do that to a child...”

“No one,” she said, “is allowed to leave once you begin. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “I understand.”

Lila fell apart in the car. The partition was up and the windows were blacked out. As they sat in the parking lot, she’d tried to unlock her door so she could jump out at a stoplight, but the driver quickly noticed and put the locks back down. All she could do for the hour long drive was think about what she faced when the car finally stopped.

The driver was the kind of guy who usually ate out of the palm of her hand. Big, burly, football players made up the bulk of her friends by the time she graduated from college. The Sigma Chi frat brothers had made her an honorary member her senior year.

This man was the key to the whole operation. If they never made it to the coffee shop, then she wouldn’t need to do anything. The two of them could simply disappear and no one would ever be the wiser. Or, better yet, she could convince him to let her go and she could go back to living her life. He was the linchpin. All she needed to do was get him on her side.

She knocked on the partition with the hope that he’d be lonely enough to talk.

“Hello?” she said.

The heavy metal music played through the plastic. She tried again. “Can you hear me?”

Lila smoothed down her hair. It hadn’t been soft and straight in so long she’d forgotten what that felt like. The tiny man, whoever he was, had worked miracles on the knotted mess that weeks of damp neglect had created. She had on makeup and fake eyelashes. The man had doused her in perfume to cover up the moist moldy stench that failed to leave her skin even after a scouring scrub-down. She wiped away a nervous tear, as well as a fair amount of eyeliner.

The partition came down just a few inches. “What is it?” the driver asked.

She leaned right up to the gap and let her fingers fold over the top. “Do you think you could turn on the air conditioning back here? They gave me this jacket and I’m burning up.” She yanked at the collar and pulled it down just enough to show him a little bare skin. As hard as he tried to keep his eyes on the road, he couldn’t help but sneak a peek.

She gave her best flirty smile as she let her fingers drift over to his body. They had done her nails and now they glimmered with a sweet demure pink.

“We’re almost there,” he said. “Can you wait?”

“I really can’t,” she whispered. “I’m really hot back here.”

The driver cleared his throat. “I shouldn’t be talking to you.”

She saw his shoulder tighten as he nervously adjusted his rear view mirror. “Why not?” she said.

The more she looked at him, the more the mystique of the stern security man wore off. He was just a normal guy with a buzz-cut. He had a Coke in his cup-holder. There were CDs hanging from the visor and spare change in his ashtray. He couldn’t be happy about what he had to do tonight, either.

“I just can’t. Please, just sit back down.”

There was just enough space to fit her hand through. Her nails just reached the back of his head. She ran a few fingers across his hair. Immediately, he recoiled and shook her hand away. “What are you doing?”

“You like it?” she said.

“Sit down. Please.”

Plan B. There was always a Plan B. She moved in the backseat so she’d be in line with the rear view mirror. “Fine,” she said, “I understand.”

Underneath her leather jacket was a tank top with just enough left to the imagination to work for her. She slowly stripped off the jacket, making sure the leather slid the straps off the tank top. The pink frilly bra they’d given her showed clearly underneath the black tank top. She let the sagging strap linger on her forearm. She had done this a hundred times for stakes much lower than this.

“Why don’t we just pull over?” she said. “We can just talk, huh?”

The man glanced back and she caught him staring. She pulled her shirt down as far as she could and let her hair dangle over her shoulder. Desperation wafted from her like a pungent perfume. Every minute was precious.

“I can’t...” he said, his voice pained. “You’re very beautiful. I can’t.”

She let her fingers touch the back of his head and lightly raked her nails through his hair. He didn’t move at first. It was working. “You like that?”

His hand hovered above the partition switch. There was still a chance. She kept going. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Stop...” he muttered.

“C’mon, just talk to me.”

He slammed on the brakes and hurled her forward into the back of the seat. He pointed to a small green light blinking on the dashboard. “They’ll kill you. You realize that? They’re watching all of this. So just shut up, all right?”

She clutched her chest where the scar lay, still sore and tender. There was no escape. Even if she leapt out of the car and rolled onto the freeway, they’d know. It’d be a matter of seconds before they flipped the switch and struck her dead.

The coffee shop was on the corner, across the street from a frozen yogurt shop where all the high schoolers sat and made fun of the people crossing the street. She’d given more than one stink-eye to a bratty freshman while she gorged on a large vanilla cone drenched in sprinkles.

He had parked the car a block away, in a nondescript parking place in front of a happy couple enjoying a glass of wine. Their laughs, their carefree smiles, felt like an alternate reality. With this thing in her chest, how could she ever feel that peace again? Her entire life was held in the hands of people who didn’t care about who she was or if she lived or died.

The driver turned around with a contrite look on his face. He flung a black purse over the partition. “It’s got your stuff. What you need...”

She snatched the bag from his hands and immediately went through it. There was $20, a box of matches, a bottle filled with gasoline and a small black box coated in plastic and metal. “What is this?”

He dug into her purse and pulled out the box. “If you can’t do it manually, you can just set this baby. I made it myself.” The driver flipped it over and revealed a small keypad.

“What do I do with it?”

“Easy,” he said. “You just put in the code, it’s 12345, nothing hard, and you’ve got two minutes to get out. It’s on a timer. It’s got a twenty foot radius so it’ll take down the coffee shop for sure and you’re in the clear. I thought you might want to do this one a little hands-off, since it’s your first.”

It was like giving a first grader a calculus test. She’d never started a fire, not even lighting the candles on a birthday cake. She took the bomb back and stuffed it in the bottom of her purse. He had seemed so pleased with himself, but she couldn’t be more terrified. There was no amount of hands-off in this situation that was going to make this job any easier.

The driver glanced at his watch. “Two hours, okay? So, it’s 3:15. I’m here at 5:15. If you’re not here at 5:15, I have to call it in.”

She looked at the bag and back into his sympathetic eyes. “I can’t do this,” she said. “I don’t know what to do.”

He put out his hand and it almost got to her shoulder. All she wanted was a little comfort, even if it was the man who held her life in his hands. “You’ll be fine,” he said as his hand squeezed her shoulder.

He let it linger against her skin and fall down her arm. His fingers brushed against her hair. She sat, paralyzed. “What if I can’t do it?”

“You can.” He leaned in closer and his hand had fallen down to her wrist and it gripped her tightly.

“I don’t think I can.”

The driver tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and whispered. “They picked you because you’d done it before.”

As he sat back, she realized exactly what he meant. They knew. They knew what she’d done.

“What do you mean?”

It was impossible.

He let her arm go and pushed her gently towards the door. “Go! They don’t like waiting.”

She moved hardly an inch before turning back to him. “What are you talking about? What did they tell you?”

He looked up at a small camera installed above the rearview mirror and pointed to it. “I can’t. Please, just go,” he pleaded.

Lila grabbed the bag and slipped out the door, only getting as far as the empty parking space next to the black SUV. It drove away the second her feet hit the ground. The tires squealed as it raced down the block and rounded a corner.

She stood in the empty spot as the bag dug into her shoulder. It was warm outside, perfect pool weather. Any other day, she’d be in a deck chair at her friend’s overpriced condo complex, high on whatever she could get her hands on. She’d gotten a prescription for Vicodin from her orthopedist after she twisted her ankle, so the last few weeks had been low key and easy on her checkbook.

It was warm outside, a sunny March afternoon in the city. Lila never thought she’d miss how the sun felt on her skin. It tingled and sent a chill down her body. She took in a deep breath of real fresh air. Her lungs weren’t used to it after two weeks of chilled recycled air.

The honk of a tiny Mini Cooper snapped her out of her daze. She leapt out of the parking spot and onto the sidewalk. What clarity the fresh air had provided did not make the bag any lighter or what it contained any less daunting. She began to walk towards the Blue Brook, each step feeling like a death sentence. The closer she got, the more this became reality. There was no avoiding hurting someone. They were watching, someone was always watching. Someone was going to have to die and it would be by her hand.

The front door had been propped open and the mellow indie music wafted out onto the sidewalk. She walked towards the entrance like a prisoner headed to execution. All she wanted was for Hannah to be gone. She might be able to do this if she could separate herself from everyone. But Hannah... she couldn’t do it to her friend.

Lila got to the door and leaned over just enough to get a glance of the register. Standing at the espresso machine was Hannah, with her apron tied tight around her tiny waist.

For the last nine years, she knew that she didn’t deserve a friend like Hannah. Loyal to the end and intensely supportive, Hannah always had her back. They met at volleyball practice sophomore year. Hannah was an amazing player, MVP of the season, and Lila was barely a footnote. She only played two games before she promptly quit to focus on her short-lived music career.

Even though they had next to nothing in common, Hannah stuck around like a devoted puppy. They had a few classes together and she’d invite Lila over to study for finals and compare notes. In the classes she had with Hannah, her grades were almost straight A’s. The other classes barely rose above passing.

They never hung out much after school, except to study. Lila was too busy partying and hooking up while Hannah studied and had movie nights with her steady boyfriend, Kevin. She knew Hannah’s boyfriend hated her, he wasn’t shy about what a bad influence she was and how Hannah was better off ditching her for good.

Kevin didn’t last after senior year, but their dysfunctional friendship did. Hannah went to college nearby while Lila worked at a string of restaurant and retail jobs. They shared an apartment but hardly ever saw each other. Last she heard, Hannah was in law school and engaged.