As his arm lurched back something grabbed his wrist.
It wasn’t David. Simon looked back and saw Benjamin with his arm outstretched and holding his wrist.
Simon tried to wrench it away. “Stop!” he shouted.
“Don’t do this,” Benjamin said.
All he wanted was to make him pay. The glass in his hand could do it. It would make him feel all the pain he’d caused to others. “No,” he shrieked. “Let me!”
Benjamin dug his fingers into Simon’s fist and slowly pried to the glass out of his hands. The ragged edges cut across both their skin and a line of blood beaded and dripped to the floor. Simon stayed with his foot still pressed hard against David’s chest. He’d stopped flailing underneath and his breathing had slowed to a light gasp.
“Get off of him,” Benjamin said as he pulled at Simon’s shirt. “You’re suffocating him.”
He pressed harder. “So?”
“So,” Benjamin said as he yanked him off of David and onto the floor. “Then they’ll never convict him. I want him to rot in jail. I want him to suffer for a lot longer than it takes for you to collapse his lung.”
David coughed as he clutched his chest and hoped to take a breath.
He wanted to kill him. It wasn’t good enough to let him go to trial. Edwin had barely been sentenced and he was going to be on the street before he turned fifty. “And what if he gets off?” Simon pulled against Benjamin’s hold.
“He won’t.”
“And what if he does?”
Benjamin pulled Simon in tight. “He won’t.”
Above them there was a fuss. A small team of men in uniforms gingerly walked across the charred and broken floor. “Hey!” Simon shouted. “Down here!”
A firefighter bent down and looked through the hole in the floor. “Sit tight. We’ll send a crew down there.”
They were being rescued. This was all about to end. The weight lifted off his shoulders and the sun began to shine again. It was almost over and he would be able to live his life again. He could feel the softness of his sheets and the smell of his mom’s waffles.
And then he felt the pain in his back.
He spun around to see David with the glass in his hand. The tip was drenched in blood. It took a moment for the sensation to travel from his muscles to the rest of his body. He screamed and reached out for Benjamin who stood right in front of him, his eyes still watching the firemen take inventory of their supplies. His fingers raked down Benjamin’s arm as he fell to the ground.
Benjamin grabbed him before he hit the floor. “Shit, Simon. Are you okay?”
He wasn’t sure. It hurt like hell but he was tired and his body wasn’t strong. “I don’t know,” he said through gritted teeth.
Benjamin placed him on the floor and pulled off his jacket and bunched it together. “Hold this against your side,” he said.
“Why?”
He jumped to his feet. “‘Cause I’m going to kill this motherfucker.”
David was busy attempting to scale the wall and up through the hole in the floor. Benjamin grabbed his shoes and yanked him down to the floor. There was crunch and a thud against the concrete. Benjamin lurched back and hit him in the face. And then another punch. A kick and then another thudding kick to the gut. David grunted with each blow as his body rocked side to side helplessly.
“Benjamin...” he said.
He wasn’t listening. There was a rage in his eyes that was a hundred miles away.
“Stop,” he said barely above a whisper.
He kicked and punched a half dozen more times before he stepped back and examined his work. The tip of his shoes were caked with blood and his face glistened with a layer of sweat. Benjamin backed away and ran over to Simon like nothing had just happened. “You okay?”
Simon peeked down at his shirt. There was blood but not an alarming amount. He felt okay enough to get on his feet. “Yeah,” he said. “And thanks.”
A rope unraveled from above them and landed a few feet from David’s broken body.
“You ready to go?” Benjamin asked.
Simon looked over at the fireman who gently glided down the rope and into the basement.
“Get me out of here.”
They pulled him out, closely followed by Benjamin. As they laid him on the warm grass he took in his first breath of fresh air in days. He was out. For years he had sworn he’d never get trapped again and if he did, he’d never let them break him.
The Simon that left that room was a new man.
And he was free.
The Six: Complete Series Page 29
