The Six: Complete Series Read online

  He hung his head as he walked out and gave Eduardo a brief nod before waving him out of the room. “You may go. He’ll be ready shortly.”

  Eduardo nodded and left the room dutifully.

  Rick circled the shaking Simon who cradled his arms to keep from collapsing completely. “Are you all right?” Rick asked as he eyed his client’s physique.

  Simon swallowed the terror in his throat and nodded. His eyes betrayed him and filled with tears that he quickly wiped off his face. “I’m fine.”

  “You must be so hungry,” he said.

  “I don’t need anything.”

  “You need your strength.” Rick went to his corner and came back with a small muffin wrapped neatly in a napkin.

  Simon pushed it away. It was another trick. The muffin had to be laced with arsenic or neurotransmitters. “No, thank you.”

  Rick gestured them towards him again. “I understand you don’t trust me. I wouldn’t trust me either, but,” he said as he moved in closer, “I’m just like you.”

  He wanted so badly to believe him. There was something different about this man. The others had a flippant confidence and a blind sense of purpose. This man looked him in the eye when he spoke.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. He couldn’t let his guard down.

  Rick draped a smock around Simon’s neck and snapped it closed. “I had a salon in Los Angeles.” He pulled out a set of scissors and snapped them together twice. The blades gleamed like they were brand new. “They took me. I was locking up the store and, the next thing I knew, I was here.”

  Simon tipped his head away from the incoming scissors. “Don’t. Please.”

  Rick stopped and clutched them to his chest. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

  “What am I doing here?” Simon asked.

  “I need to prepare you,” he said. “That’s what I do.” He brought the scissors up once again and once again Simon pulled away. There were a hundred ways to kill someone with those scissors, and he wasn’t about to give the man the opportunity to test them out.

  “I don’t have a lot of time,” Rick pleaded, “please.”

  “What happens,” Simon asked, “if you don’t finish?”

  Rick’s eyes quickly darted down to his chest and then back up. “Please put your head up.”

  Simon sat still. A test. One snip and they’d be back on even ground.

  “Do you work for them?”

  “Well,” he said, “I suppose I do but not by choice. Not like that thug out there. They bring in poor souls like you and make me fix you up so don’t look like you’ve had the world beaten out of you.”

  “How long have you been here?” Simon asked.

  “I suppose it’s been just about a year, now. I’m not entirely sure. Do you know what day it is today?”

  “I don’t know. It was October last I remember.”

  Rick breathed a regretful sigh. “Little over a year and a half then. They got me on Valentine’s Day. Terrible day to miss, eh?”

  Simon shrugged. “I guess so.” He spun around and saw Rick with a razor in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other. “Did they give you...” he gestured towards his chest and at the device they’d implanted there.

  He grabbed the scissors and positioned Simon’s head forward. “Yes,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper, “they did.”

  It took just under twenty minutes for Rick to turn his captive client into a man worthy of seducing American royalty. Simon looked in the mirror at someone that he had only seen in magazines. His hair was spiked up, his stubble was gone and Rick had given him a suit that fit him almost perfectly. It was disconcerting to look at his face in the mirror and see a man that he’d never seen before.

  “My work is done,” Rick said. He went to the wall to press the buzzer next to the door.

  “Wait,” Simon said.

  “What?” Rick’s hand hovered over the button. “Something wrong?”

  Simon stuffed his shaking hands into the shallow pockets of the suit. “Do people ever come back? I mean, do you ever see them again?”

  Rick shook his head. “A few. Not many.”

  “How many?” He didn’t want to hear the answer but the question still came out.

  “Not many. Please, just do what they ask. There are too many heroes that come through here.”

  He looked at himself in the mirror one last time and tried to separate the cashier and obedient son from the man with the expensive tie and dress shoes. A different man was about to walk out that door. The old Simon was dead. He nodded at Rick, and the buzzer went off.

  “Why are you doing this?” Simon asked.

  They passed another series of cars on the freeway. All the windows in the car were blacked-out to the point that he could hardly see outside. Eduardo had played his iPod the whole time and varied between hip hop and metal; but played at an oddly quiet volume. That is, except when Simon began to bother him, then it got cranked up to 11.

  The whites of Eduardo’s knuckles showed through his clenched hands. He pushed on the gas, and they sailed through a small patch of traffic. “I said, shut up.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” Simon said. “Just let me out. I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

  For an instant, he felt like he’d made a connection. The music stayed low and Eduardo’s eyes stared straight ahead, unblinking.

  “Please? I promise. I’ll just go back home, and no one will know about any of this.”

  Simon’s heart sank as his driver’s hands went down to the volume control. Without a word, the metal music was as loud as the speakers could handle.

  All he could do, was wait.

  Eduardo brought him to the back entrance of the Alibi club. The SUV had thick, impenetrable windows, and he couldn’t see anything through them. There was a partition between the driver’s and passenger’s seats. He was blind to how they’d gotten there. Even if he could get the police involved, he had no idea where the others were being held. The soundproof windows kept out the pumping bass and squealing girls that were yards from their car as they pulled to a stop.

  “We’re here,” Eduardo said.

  Simon could see the long line of girls who shivered outside in the mild California autumn air in their miniskirts and tank tops. They huddled close together with their arms interlocked as they laughed at private jokes between them. This was a world he knew nothing about. Even with expensive clothes, they would sniff him out. Brianna was a party girl. She would have ten guys around her before he had a chance to say a word.

  Eduardo handed back a small bottle and shook it to show off the contents. “There are a few things in here you can use. Blue one’s your standard rufie—little conspicuous but does the trick. Red one’s ecstasy and she seems like a girl who’d be all for that, if you know what I mean. White one is Vicodin that we laced with a little something special. She’ll be eating out of your palm if you give her that one.”

  He snatched the bottle and stuffed it in his jacket pocket. “She’s not going to take a pill from a stranger. What kind of idiot would do that?”

  “Lots of them, kid. You’d be surprised. Just be slick about it, all right? There’s also a dummy pill in there of each one—got a D on it. Lots of chicks won’t take something if you don’t do it too. They want to ride the same high, you know?”

  He was out of his depths. He’d barely drunk alcohol, only smoked one cigarette before, and that was on a dare in the sixth grade. She would never believe him.

  Eduardo dug a phone out of the glove compartment and handed it back as well. “So my number’s the only one in this thing. I’ve got her bodyguard, but you got to tell me when you’re leaving. I’m only gettin’ one chance with him, all right?”

  “Just you? How are you going to take him down?”

  He smiled. “Don’t worry about that. You just text me and I’ll be on him. You take the girl to the side alley, and there’ll be a car. They’ll take you to the place, all right?”

&n
bsp; “What place?” His voice was already shaking.

  “You’ll see. Getting her in the car is the hard part. Worry about that first, all right?”

  He gripped the seat in a futile attempt to gain some composure. “Is she here, yet?”

  Eduardo pointed to a girl standing in the front of the line all by herself. She stood straight like a model on the runway. Brianna wore a tight purple dress and six inch heels. There was a group of girls standing behind her and laughing, but she didn’t seem to be a part of them. She tugged on a strand of her meticulously sprayed and curled hair. This was the kind of girl that had ignored and laughed at him ever since the second grade. The Briannas of his world didn’t think twice about him.

  Behind the bush they were parked next to, he made out the shapes of a few men with cameras longer than his arm. They snapped photos at a near constant speed.

  “What about those guys?” he said as he pointed to them.

  “Don’t worry about ’em. Get the girl, all right?”

  He gripped the door handle tightly as Brianna moved inches closer to the door. Even with no one around her, she exuded a kind of confidence he’d never had.

  “You going to go or not?”

  He pointed at the line that wrapped around the block. “How am I supposed to get in?”

  “Around the side there will be a door propped open for you. She’s going in now. You better get in there.”

  The moment his feet hit the ground, it was going to begin. He grabbed the back of the seat and got halfway out before he yanked his body back in. “I can’t do this,” he pleaded.

  Eduardo pulled something from his pocket and propped it against the side of his seat. It only took Simon a second to realize it was a gun. “Go, or I will kill you right here.”

  Simon slipped out of the car and slammed the door behind him. Brianna was there, yards in front of him. As he walked around the front, he heard the fluttering snaps of the paparazzi's cameras. “Eh, move it,” they said.

  He squeezed through a tightly packed group of girls in line to get to the other side of the building. There was a door propped open by a cinder block. They were watching him, wherever they were. He did what he was told and forced himself through the small opening.

  The entire club was packed. There were sweaty dress shirts and polyester tube tops in every corner. The moment he walked in, a drunken college kid with a glass full of beer slammed into him. Not two seconds later a girl grinding with another frat guy bumped into him. It sent him falling against a table filled with empty beer bottles.

  He pushed through each dancer and drinker to get to the front door. The moment she got inside there would a hoard of guys trying to buy her drinks. If he wasn’t the first one she saw, the night could be lost. It wouldn’t take long until he was dead on the dance floor.

  People knew that she was coming inside. They waited at the door with their phones out, ready to snap a photo of the governor’s daughter with a drink in her hand.

  He crossed in front of two glowing iPhones and snagged a full drink off the table behind the distracted amateur paparazzi.

  There was a small space between the dance floor and the door that had been left unguarded. It would be her only route from the entrance to the bar. He planted himself right in her path.

  Brianna walked in with her head held high. She was tall, almost six feet in heels. Not once did she blink as the camera phones snapped photos of her. She didn’t smile or feign to look their way.

  “Excuse me,” she said as she passed by Simon.

  Three guys at the bar, all dressed in overpriced suits and with their hair slicked back, turned around to watch her walk by. One jumped off his stool with a full drink in hand and gave his buddies a knowing glance. Brianna was already heading towards the dance floor, and her new friend was hot on her tail.

  Simon hadn’t so much as moved from his spot at the tail end of the bar since she had walked inside. He knew they were watching him. There had to be spies in the club that made sure he didn’t try to escape. They must be waiting, with their finger on the button, and ready to kill him once he failed.

  The man caught up with her at the edge of the dance floor. Simon could only see bits of their interaction over the sea of people moving all around him. The man moved in close, and his hand grazed her arm. She smiled and took the drink. He moved in closer and his hand disappeared down her back.

  “Shit,” Simon muttered. He had to get to her before this man got any further. The dance floor and every other inch of the club was filled with people drunk on their fourth margarita. They weren’t cognizant of how much space they were taking up with their flailing dance moves. He dodged dancers with animated arms, and tables filled with mountains of empty glasses to get back to her.

  Simon got trapped somewhere between a pack of sorority girls and Brianna. The man had his hand wrapped around her waist. She smiled at him and let her fingers walk down his chest.

  Simon inched closer to them. “Please,” he pleaded to one of the girls, “let me through.” He couldn’t hold back the terror in his voice. When the girls didn’t relent, he pushed through them. They yelped as he squeezed in through a small opening in their circle and knocked one their purses to the ground.

  Brianna and her new friend were in the corner. His hand was down her back and resting inches above the hem of her dress. It crept lower and lower. Simon pushed through an oblivious couple who were making out by the bar. "Move!" As he turned the corner, he saw the man's fingers creep under Brianna's skirt. She pulled away and slapped his hand.

  Simon moved closer as Brianna stepped back with a look of disgust. She pushed the man away, but he moved in even closer. His hand fiddled at the end of her shirt before disappearing upwards. Her eyes grew wide as she turned her body away from him. Simon moved in.

  “Hey!” he said.

  The man looked up with a smile. “Yeah?” His hand had found their way back to his own pockets, but he was still too close to her. “What do you want?”

  “It’s okay.” Her voice was barely audible over the music. With her shoulders slumped, she looked like a little girl lost in the mall.

  Simon tore off his suit jacket and handed it to her. “Here. You look cold.” She grabbed the jet black jacket that Rick had been tailoring all week while he had been unconscious in some lab recovering from surgery. She draped it over her shoulders.

  “Thank you,” she said with a smile.

  The man hadn’t left. He stood with a clenched jaw and his arms crossed. “Thanks, bud. I think I’ve got it covered here, though.”

  Simon looked back at Brianna. “You know this guy?”

  She shook her head.

  “That’s what I thought,” he said. Simon straightened his back and used all of his six foot height to tower over the pampered college boy who didn’t know any better. In another world, he would have left without his jacket or his pride. Today, he had to win this fight.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a man sorely out of place. He was easily in his late-thirties, and his shirt was rumpled and had been buttoned off-kilter. He maneuvered around the table and behind the college boy. The red blinking light above his camera gave him away immediately.

  “Hey,” Simon said. “There’s a camera guy behind ya’. How about you just go away and stop embarrassing yourself, all right?”

  “Bullshit,” he said. “I don’t give a crap. Move.” He barreled forward and made sure his heavy shoe made contact with Simon’s shin. Even momentarily incapacitated, Simon was able to grab hold of the man’s sleeve and yank him back.

  “I don’t think so.” He brought his arm back and readied himself for the second punch of his life. Hopefully, he thought, this goes better than the last one. His knuckles made contact with the man’s jaw. The force of impact ran through his body, and he felt at least one of his fingers break. The man fell onto a chair and brought the two to the ground.

  There wasn’t time to nurse his hand. He turned to Brianna and pointed tow
ards the back of the club. “Run! I’ll meet you!”

  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.”