The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die

by Henry, April

  I’m not feeling too sympathetic.

  “We can’t just leave his arm like that,” Ty says, as we look at him. “If we don’t splint it, he could end up with nerve damage. Plus I think he’s going into shock.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” I whisper. “He wanted to kill me.”

  “We’re better than the bad guys are, remember?”

  I stop arguing with Ty and go look for the supplies he needs. From our camping stuff, I get a sleeping pad he can use to splint the arm. From the linen closet, dishtowels to tie the splint in place. And from the floor in front of the dresser, my dad’s socks, to cushion Brenner’s arm. I wonder what my parents will say when they find out their things were used to give aid and comfort to the enemy.

  I just hope they’re still alive to learn it.

  Brenner lets out a muffled scream when Ty splints his arm. My would-be killer is sweaty and pale. With his scratches, bruises, and bandages, he looks like the real victim.

  Eyes dull with pain, Brenner says, “They told me we would be rich. And that no one would die.”

  “Uh-huh.” I let my sarcasm show. He obviously abandoned that idea by the time he started dragging me out to the woods.

  Ty has Brenner lie on the floor with his feet on the bed, on the opposite side from Elizabeth. He ties one ankle and the unbroken arm to the bed frame, making sure that there isn’t any way for Elizabeth to reach Brenner or vice versa.

  Watching Ty work gives me time to think. Even though it seems that I have all the missing pieces of my memory—before and after the fugue state—I still feel like there’s something I’m missing. Some clue that I’m completely overlooking.

  I run through it again in my head. My parents are on the run from Z-Biotech with my little brother. They have proof that Z-Biotech—in particular, the two people in this room, plus Kirk Nowell—had plans to exploit the virus and the vaccine. Had plans to sell it to someone to potentially kill thousands of people.

  Ty finishes and comes over to me. Brenner’s eyes are closed, his breathing shallow and fast. Elizabeth is watching us. I want to get away from those bright blue eyes. “Do you think it’s safe to leave them alone?”

  Ty shrugs slightly. “For a while anyway.”

  “Let’s go to my room and figure out what to do next. I don’t like her watching us.”

  My bed’s not made, but at least this room isn’t as trashed as the rest of the house. I kick some discarded clothes under the bed as I pull up the orchid-colored silk comforter. Ty does a good job of pretending not to notice. Instead he looks at the walls, which feature posters for plays I’ve been in, as well as black and yellow covers of Playbills from the two times I’ve been to New York.

  “So you’re an actress?” he says.

  “I think it kind of came in handy the last few days.” I sigh as I sit down at my desk. My phone is still plugged into the charger. The last time I was here, I was doing chemistry homework. The thought seems surreal. I rub my temple. “I feel like I’m missing something. I think one of the things somebody told me when I couldn’t remember wasn’t right. Only I didn’t know enough to know that it wasn’t.”

  “That’s going to be hard to sort out,” Ty says as he sits down on the edge of my bed. “Everyone’s been lying to you or about you.”

  I run through the last two days in my mind. And then I finally realize what it is.

  “Remember when we were at the library and read that article about me?”

  “Well, that whole thing was wrong, wasn’t it? I mean, you didn’t shoot Dillow and you didn’t hurt your family,” Ty says.

  “That’s not what I’m thinking about. It’s that message it said my parents left at the school. They said I sold their car.”

  “They just said that to warn you to stay away from the house.”

  “But why make up a story about me selling a Datsun? Now that I’ve got my memory back, I know we don’t own a Datsun. My dad’s first car was a Datsun, and he used to talk about it, but they haven’t made that brand for years and years. So why would my parents make up such a weirdly specific detail? Did the reporter get it wrong?” I straighten up. “Or was it a code?” As I talk, I go to Craigslist for Portland. I click on the “cars and trucks” section. There are thousands of listings. But when I type “Datsun” in the search box, there are only twenty-two listed.

  I scan down. The third entry from the bottom is for a ’97 Datsun. It sticks out because it’s a decade newer than any of the other listings. I click. And there it is. The last desperate message from my parents.

  In its entirety, the listing reads, “’97 Datsun with 15,550 miles. Only 2 owners. Please call between 2 and 7 pm.”

  “How can a car that old have so few miles?” Ty asks.

  I don’t answer because I’m busy writing down each of the numbers mentioned in the ad: 97 15,550 2 2 7.

  He looks closer. “And how is anyone supposed to call if there’s no phone number?”

  “Because the whole ad is basically a phone number!” I tell him as I snatch up my cell phone and start pushing the numbers 971-555-0227. “My parents were trying to tell me how to contact them.” My heart is beating fast as I push the final seven. The phone rings only once, and then it switches to a recorded message. It’s a man’s voice repeating the phone number I just dialed, followed by a beep.

  But I recognize that voice.

  I start to say something, but the words get caught in my throat.

  “Dad? Daddy? It’s me, Cady. I’m okay. I hope you guys are, too. It’s, um, six p.m. Call me at our house. Okay, so, um, call back soon. And I love you.”

  I press the button to end the call. I resist the urge to dial the number again just to hear my dad’s voice.

  Will I ever hear it again?

  CHAPTER 37

  DAY 2, 7:41 P.M.

  When the phone rings, I jump. Ty and I look at each other and then lean over to check the caller ID. The display shows only “Cell Phone,” but the number listed is not the number I dialed. My heart is beating in my throat. What if it’s Kirk Nowell? With a shaking hand, I pick up the phone.

  “Hello?” I make my voice lower and gruffer.

  “Cady?” My mom sounds suspicious. “Is that you?”

  Hearing her, I melt. “Mom!”

  She’s still cautious. “What did Grandma give you for Christmas last year?” I can hear the tension in her voice.

  I’m sure Mom already knows it’s me. So why is she asking? No one but me and my parents would know the real answer to her question. Grandma herself probably wouldn’t even remember. If I tell Mom the wrong answer, she’ll know I’m under duress.

  “Queen-size pantyhose.” Mom’s mom is known for her crazy presents, usually purchased at garage sales. I take a deep breath. “Are Dad and Max okay?”

  “Basically.” Before I can ask Mom what that means, she says quickly, “You need to know that someone is pretending to be your aunt. She’s calling herself Elizabeth Quinn, but her real name is Elizabeth Tanzir.”

  “Mom, we already know about that. She’s tied up here at our house, along with Michael Brenner.”

  “Wait! What? And who’s we?”

  Ty leans in closer to hear. I pull the phone a half inch from my ear. “There’s this guy named Tyler I met in Bend. He’s helping me.”

  “Okay,” she says slowly. “Maybe you should start over again from the beginning. Tell me everything that’s happened.”

  I give her an even shorter version than the one I gave Elizabeth, only this one includes my not-so-fatal attack on Brenner, Officer Dillow, “Aunt Liz’s” double-cross, and Brenner’s broken elbow. I leave in the fugue state but skip over my missing fingernails, knowing they’ll just freak Mom out. And I end with, “And right now, they’re both tied up in your bedroom.”

  “You’d better check on them frequently,” Mom says. “Especially Elizabeth. And don’t trust anything she says.”

  “Don’t worry. She already taught me that.” I take a
deep breath. “What did you mean when you said Max and Dad were basically all right? Is something wrong?”

  Mom sighs and then falls silent. Finally she says, “Yesterday morning, your dad found the proof we needed. Z-Biotech has converted some old storage rooms in the basement. They’re raising thousands of infected field mice, but we only need a couple of dozen for legitimate research. They also have a desiccator to dry out the droppings, which basically turns them into a bioweapon. Your dad took photos of the mice and the desiccator, and then he took a sample of the desiccated droppings. He called me and told me we had to leave in a hurry. I grabbed up Max from day care and met your father in the back parking lot. But Kirk tried to stop us. Your dad ended up getting shot.” Over my gasp, she hurries to tell me the rest. “It went through his shoulder without hitting anything vital. But he’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “Why didn’t you take him to the hospital? Or go to the police?”

  “First, we wanted to make sure you were safe. We called your phone, but you didn’t pick up. We called the school, but they told us you weren’t in class. That’s when we knew things had gone wrong, and we left you that message to give you a way to contact us if you could. We bought a couple of disposable phones a few months ago in case we needed them. We didn’t realize until later that Kirk had left us messages on our old phones telling us he had you. And that he would kill you if we went to the authorities.”

  “You talked to him?” I think of his voice, so calm as he punched me in the jaw. So reasonable even when he put the gun between my eyes.

  “Just called in later to listen to the messages. He left us several and in one”—her voice breaks—“and in one … oh, Cady … it was just you screaming. He told us if we wanted to see you alive again, we had to meet you at the cabin. But by the time we heard the message, the deadline he had given us had already passed. I left your father with Max, and I took the gun and went to the cabin to try to rescue you. But instead, it was on fire. And when we heard on the radio that there were human remains…” Mom’s voice breaks.

  “It was actually a chimp, I guess, one from the lab. The same one they tried to make me think was Max.” I take a deep breath. “So we can go to the police now, right? I think the main station is downtown. Let’s meet there.”

  “Cady,” she says, and then stops. “That’s the other thing. We were in a hurry when we left. Your dad was in the back seat with Max, trying to stop the bleeding while I drove. I tossed him the first-aid kit from the glove compartment, and he was ripping open packages of bandages. He also had the sample in a vial in a bag, and we think Max must have been trying to help by opening things up. Maybe he thought it was some kind of medicine.” Her voice shakes. “Max has been exposed to the hantavirus.”

  My heart stops beating. I know what she’s going to say next.

  “We only realized it today when we found the vial uncapped in the back seat. That means we have just about a day to give Max the vaccine. Once he starts showing symptoms, there will be nothing anyone can do.”

  I try to imagine Max pale and listless, coughing up blood between violet lips. But instead I just remember him in his tub, lining up his shampoo bottles shaped like Tigger and Eeyore and Pooh, offering them drinks of bathwater from a blue plastic cup.

  And then I run through what Mom just said one more time. “What about you guys? If Max is exposed, doesn’t that mean you are, too?”

  “When the animal tests went well, people at the lab volunteered to be part of the preliminary clinical human trials before we ramped up vaccine production. So your dad and I are okay, at least as far as being exposed goes. We’re already immune. But we have to get our hands on the vaccine for Max. We can’t go back there ourselves. I’m sure our security cards have already been deactivated and our pictures are posted at the front desk.”

  “You mean you want me to go…” I let my words trail off.

  “Yes. To Z-Biotech. You can use Elizabeth’s ID to get in.”

  “Why can’t we just tell the police what happened and make them get it for us?”

  “We can’t take that chance, Cady. The window is already closing. What if Kirk decides to destroy the vaccine?” I hear the despair in my mom’s voice, how thin the edge is between her and a breakdown. “If he knew that Max had been exposed, he would do it just to punish us.”

  There must be a way that won’t involve going in the lion’s den. “Don’t you know how to make the vaccine yourself?”

  “It takes months to grow. Even the batch that’s in production now won’t be done for another week. Max has to have it by tomorrow or it will be too late.”

  I think of the guy Elizabeth told us about, the one who died on the way to his girlfriend’s funeral. Who drowned in his own blood. Then I take a deep breath.

  “What can I do?”

  CHAPTER 38

  DAY 2, 8:54 P.M.

  At Home Depot, it takes what’s left of Ty’s money plus most of what we took from Elizabeth’s purse and Brenner’s wallet to buy a janitor’s cart, cleaning supplies, an industrial-size broom, two sets of dark blue coveralls, two painter’s caps, and a yellow sign that warns in English and Spanish about wet floors.

  On our way out, I spot a pay phone. I tell the girl who answers the phone at Fast Fitness that the car that was stolen from their lot earlier in the day is now in the parking garage of the Winchester Hotel in Portland. I hang up when she starts asking questions.

  I hurry back to where Ty is unloading the cart. What we really need is a van, but what we’ve got is Elizabeth’s Avalon. We barely manage to squeeze everything in the trunk, and that’s only by folding down the back seat. It takes two tries to get the lid closed. Then, still standing in the parking lot, we pull the coveralls on over our clothes.

  Ty and I are going to be the new cleaning service for Z-Biotech. We’re hoping that Kirk Nowell is more worried about taking care of loose ends than he is about protecting his home base. According to Mom, Elizabeth’s employee ID badge should get us in the front door as well as into any of the locked rooms we need to visit. Everyone at Z-Biotech has a certain level of security, but Elizabeth’s clearance is the highest level. Her ID badge will let us into everything, from the gate around the parking lot to the front door to all the laboratory spaces. Once we’re in the building, there’s just one security guard at night, and Mom’s pretty sure he spends most of his time sitting at the front desk doing Sudoku.

  “Do you know any Spanish?” I ask Ty as I take the on-ramp for the freeway.

  “Si. Un poco.”

  I think that means, “Yes, a little.” And with his dark hair and eyes, Ty could be Hispanic.

  “Then you should be the one to talk to the security guy. But mostly in Spanish.” I remember the cleaners I’ve seen in various public bathrooms. All of them seem to have come from other, poorer countries. “My French won’t sound right.”

  I grip the steering wheel harder and straighten up. It’s hard to believe that it’s been less than two days since I returned home for my phone and walked into a nightmare. Hard to believe that I’ve known Ty for only about a day. I’m wired and tired, so tired I probably shouldn’t be driving. I take another slug of the four-shot Venti-size mocha I got from the Starbucks next to the Home Depot. We used the last of the money to buy coffees and muffins. The muffins were gone before we got back to the car.

  The industrial area where Z-Biotech is located is deserted at night. The building sits in the middle of a parking lot, which is surrounded by a tall, metal fence topped with razor wire. I hold my breath when I put Elizabeth’s ID card up to the reader in front of an automatic rolling gate, but after a second or two, it rattles open and then closes behind us. The parking lot is empty, except for a small orange pickup with silver duct tape holding up one side of the bumper. Ty nudges me and points at the white letters on the tailgate that spell out D-A-T-S-U-N. It seems like a sign. I hope it’s a good one.

  We park at the far edge of the lot, out of sight of the glass front do
or. I pull my cap low, and we get out of the car. After we load up the janitor’s cart, Ty begins to push it toward the door. At every step, the gun digs into my belly. Ty also has a gun tucked into his waistband.

  The brown plastic box of a second card reader is mounted to the left of the glass door. In the lobby, a short, round man with a bald head and a close-cropped black beard sits at a desk. He is staring down at a thin paperback, his pen poised. He hasn’t seen us yet.

  I’m the cleaner, I tell myself. My name is Ilsa. We’re here because we underbid Z-Biotech’s last janitorial service. The only way we’ll make a living is to work thirteen hours straight, seven days a week. America is not like I thought. My hands are red and rough, even though I wear the yellow rubber gloves.

  The guard doesn’t even look up until the door clicks as Ty waves Elizabeth’s ID card over the reader.

  “Hey,” he says as Ty walks in and I follow, bumping the cart over the threshold. “What are you guys doing here?” He pushes back from the desk and stands up. He’s got a belt that holds a half dozen black holsters and cases, but not, as far as I can see, one for a gun.

  “Nuevo cleaning service,” Ty says, with a sort-of Spanish accent. He hefts the broom to underline what he’s saying. I stare at the carpet, think about my cracked hands, about how I’m looking forward to going home and putting my feet up.

  The security guard still looks uncertain, but Ty is already heading back toward the hall. We’re almost all the way there when I see the man pick up the phone. And suddenly I’m no longer Ilsa. I’m Cady, and I’ve got a gun in my hand, and I’m barking, “Put down the phone!”

  The guard is as slow to react to my command as he was to decide there was something wrong with us. For a long moment I wonder what I’ll do if he actually starts punching numbers.

  But the phone finally clunks back into its cradle. The guard raises his hands. “Please don’t hurt me,” he says, his voice shaking.