April Henry - The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die

I’m filled with an icy clarity as I look from the man who killed my brother to the woman who brought me here. While her face is still familiar, I know for sure that she’s not my aunt. My mother has only one sibling, her brother. My uncle Joe. He lives in St. Louis.

“And who are you?”

“My name is Elizabeth Tanzir,” she says, raising her chin. “I’m Z-Biotech’s senior vice president of marketing. Quinn was your mother’s maiden name.” Now I remember where I’ve seen her before. My mom had let me borrow her car if I took her to work, and I had seen Mom talking with this woman outside the building. “We need to find your parents before they ruin everything. We offered to trade your life for the information they stole, but clearly they thought the information was more important, since they never even bothered to come to the cabin. At that point you were worthless to us.”

I don’t mean to, but I make a small noise. Something that betrays how much her words hurt. My brother is dead and my parents abandoned me to the mercy of his killers.

“But the fact that you are some kind of martial arts expert made us realize you might actually know more than you’ve told us. Maybe even more than you thought you knew.”

As she speaks, out of the corner of my eye, I see Ty slowly beginning to shift his stance. As soon as I notice it, I fasten my gaze on Elizabeth’s face so as not to give him away.

“After all, if you were just some innocent, how were you able to disable a grown man? Our chief of information technology.” Her lips pull back in disgust as she regards Brenner, who is still on his knees, cradling his broken arm. “Since force hadn’t worked with you, I suggested we try a different approach. If something inside of you had shut down rather than betray your parents, maybe it would open up again if you thought you were really helping them.” She makes a huffing sound. “But it’s clear you really don’t know anything.”

Just as the words leave her mouth, Ty grabs for her gun. Trying to keep it from him, Elizabeth swings her arm wildly. In the space of a few seconds, it points at Ty, at me, even at Brenner. Ty manages to force her hand up, up, up, and the gun goes off, sounding like a thunderclap. Bits of plaster rain down. But she still won’t let go of it.

There’s no time to take off my backpack and find my gun. My eyes sweep around the room, looking for something I can smash over her head. On the dining room table, something glints. In two strides I’m standing where the man with the oxblood shoes cut my bonds so he could force me to touch my brother’s dead hand. I snatch up the paring knife he used and run up behind Elizabeth, who is still tussling with Ty. At the touch of the blade on her neck, she freezes.

“Let Ty have the gun,” I say.

There’s a long moment where I can feel her weighing what to do.

“Better do it, Aunty Liz.” I press the knife a fraction of an inch. Her skin dimples, resists, and then finally begins to part just the tiniest bit. But it’s not until a trickle of blood snakes down her neck that she lets go.

Ty trains the gun on her.

She steps back, her arms crossed. “So if you know I’m not your aunt, you must remember everything now,” she says.

“The thing is,” I tell her, “there’s nothing to remember. My parents didn’t tell me anything. They were trying to protect me. So the only things I remember are how you tortured me. And how you killed my brother. How could you kill a three-year-old child?” I resist the urge to push the paring knife to see just how far it will go into her neck. Instead, my voice breaks. “What did Max ever do to you? Couldn’t you have just tied him up or something?”

“What are you talking about?” Ty’s hand tightens on the grip of the gun. “They killed your little brother?”

“Everything happened just the way Elizabeth said. Except she left out one little detail. When I was tied up and blindfolded, they brought me my brother’s body and made me touch it. They told me they would kill me just like they had my brother if I didn’t tell them where my parents were or where they had hidden the information. They thought it would get me to talk. Instead, it just made me go into that fugue state.”

Elizabeth’s laugh sounds like a rusty hinge. “The human mind is very suggestible. Did you ever play that game at Halloween? The one where you put your hand in a bowl of peeled grapes, but you’re told they’re eyes?”

“What?” The headache is back, full force. Why is she talking about holidays and games?

“We don’t have your brother. We never did. I have no idea if he’s dead or alive, but if he’s dead, we didn’t do it.”

“I felt his body!”

“You had a pillowcase over your head. What you felt was a chimp.”

I can’t take in what she’s saying. “What?”

“When it became clear you wouldn’t cooperate, Kirk had me bring one of our dead animal specimens here. He was sure it would break you. All it did was push you over the edge. Even when they yanked your fingernails out at the cabin, you wouldn’t say anything. And after your parents didn’t take Kirk up on a trade, well, at that point you were nothing but a nuisance.”

To who? I wonder numbly. To my parents as well as the people from Z-Biotech? I can’t pull myself together enough to ask questions. I feel dizzy. Max was dead, and now he is alive again. Or is he? Elizabeth says my parents abandoned me to the thugs from Z-Biotech. Or maybe the reason my parents didn’t come for me is because they couldn’t. Has something bad happened to them, something the Z-Biotech people don’t know about yet?

“Who’s Kirk?” Ty asks.

“Kirk Nowell. Our CEO.”

“She was tortured by the CEO for Z-Biotech?” Ty sounds incredulous.

Elizabeth shrugs. “The company was going down the tubes when we bought it. It took someone with vision to see what could be done with the raw materials. Kirk was that person. Sometimes the ends do justify the means. And in this case, our end goal is to make a lot of money.”

“How were you planning on spending it?” Ty asks. “Money’s not all that useful in jail.”

Her smile is condescending. “Do you know how many countries don’t have an extradition treaty with the United States? There are half a dozen with a low cost of living and beautiful beaches. Places where a little American money would go a long way, and where, if you bribe the right people, they are willing to look the other way.”

“So where is Kirk?” I ask. “Does he know you’re here?”

“My job was to find out what you knew and then take care of you. Make it look like you killed the boy you had tricked into helping you and afterward killed yourself.” Despite a gun and a knife pointed in her direction, Elizabeth smiles. “And Kirk will be expecting us to report back soon.”

I wish I could take back breaking Brenner’s arm. While it’s made him as compliant as a five-foot-nine toddler, he’s also nearly as weepy and whiny as one. Ty says because of all the nerves and veins that run through the joint, a broken elbow is known to be one of the most painful injuries. By the way Brenner’s behaving, I can believe it. He mostly rocks back and forth, moaning “It hurts, it hurts, it hurts,” while Ty and I take turns dealing with Elizabeth. I search her—thoroughly—but she doesn’t have any more weapons. In her purse, I find her keys, cell phone (from which I remove the battery), and a Z-Biotech ID card on a lanyard.

After a whispered conference with Ty, we decide to tie up the two of them in my parents’ room while we figure out what to do next. We can’t leave them in the living room or they’ll be in view of anyone who comes to the front door. Brenner manages to stagger to his feet and then shuffles down the hall. Elizabeth is quieter—quiet enough that I watch her closely.