The Girl Who Was Supposed To Die

Cady is home and supposed to be doing homework. Her parents knock on her door and ask if they can speak with her. She feels like something is wrong as they never speak to her together like this. Once they begin talking, Cady assumes the worst and thinks they’re getting divorced. She has a slight attitude throughout the conversation. Her parents then remind her about what they do at Z-Biotech and reveal that they’ve made a discovery that the company wants to exploit. They don’t go into detail with her because they want to keep her safe, but they need her to know how dangerous their lives may be due to their decision to fight back against Z-Biotech. There have been other employees who’ve died suddenly after voicing doubts or desires to leave the company, including an entire family that died in a house explosion. Cady is scared, and her parents try and soothe her. She wishes she didn’t know anything because she can’t tell anyone and also because she doesn’t want to see her family killed. They inform her that the family will be taking martial arts lessons to help protect them, but that she needs to be diligent and watchful from now on. The chapter then ends with Cady realizing why she’s in trauma: “[B]ecause the person I love most in the world is dead” (166).

Cady is on her way to school when she realizes that she’s forgotten her phone at home: “I had just gotten off the city bus outside of Wilson High when I reached in my jacket pocket for my phone and found only my house key. Crap!” (167). Although she doesn’t want to go back, she knows that her mom has been on edge lately and might panic if she calls and Cady doesn’t answer. Cady returns home, and as she notices that the alarm isn’t going off, she feels something sweet and wet pressed against her face. Then she passes out. When she comes to, she finds herself tied to one of the kitchen chairs. She’s gagged and has a pillowcase over her head. The men hear her wake up and one goes over and smacks her. He then tells her he will shoot her if she makes noise. He takes the gag out of her mouth and asks forcefully about the whereabouts of her parents. She doesn’t know, but the man doesn’t believe her. He assaults her and asks again. Then he squeezes her arm and makes her cry out in pain. She tries to remember his voice and notes that he wears shoes she thinks are called oxblood. The man tells Cady to let them know where the information is, or she’ll end up like her dead brother. Cady doesn’t believe that her brother is dead and is horrified to think of it as a reality. The man then orders for them to bring something, and a while later they bring Max’s dead body into the room and force Cady to touch it. This is too much for Cady to deal with, and her mind shuts down.

Cady now remembers everything and cries out at the memory of her dead brother. She’s so enraged that she charges at Michael Brenner, even though she knows that Elizabeth has a gun trained on her. She breaks Brenner’s arm, but backs off when Elizabeth grabs Ty and threatens to shoot him. Cady also realizes that her mother only has a brother, not a sister. Elizabeth then reveals that she is Elizabeth Tanzir, the senior vice president of marketing for Z-Biotech. They had planned to trade Cady’s life at the cabin for the information her parents have, but her parents never responded when they told them to meet. This makes Cady sad; she imagines that her brother is dead and that her parents abandoned her. Even though the others wanted to kill Cady, Elizabeth thought she could get the information through alternative methods: “Sometimes the ends do justify the means. And in this case, our end goal is to make a lot of money” (179).

Cady notes that Ty is shifting his stance and looks away. As Elizabeth talks, he lunges for the gun, and the two tussle. Cady finds a knife and holds it to Elizabeth’s throat, forcing her to give the gun to Ty. Cady asks Elizabeth how they could kill a 3-year-old kid. Elizabeth then admits that they didn’t kill Max. They brought a chimp to the house and made Cady think that they killed Max, only it sent her into fugue state. Cady is shocked anew with the onslaught of information. Now, it seems her brother is alive. Elizabeth mentions that Kirk Nowell, the CEO, thought it would be a clever idea to use the chimp. She then explains how the company was doing poorly when they took it over, but Nowell realized they could make money with the disease and vaccine, then retire to a foreign country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the U.S. 

Ty and Cady tie up Elizabeth and Michael Brenner. Elizabeth tells them that the chimp was brought to the cabin to make it look like there were human remains so that the police would want to find Cady even more. Nowell was the one who shot Dillow because the officer asked too many questions. Ty and Cady then splint Brenner’s broken arm, and while Ty is doing so, Cady thinks about why her parents didn’t come for her: “But what if the real reason they didn’t come is even worse?” (183). Then she goes over what she knows because she feels like she’s still 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” (185). She and Ty then go to her room and try to piece things together.

Cady remembers the message her parents left at her school, about a Datsun. Her father’s first car was a Datsun. She goes onto Craigslist and searches for a Datsun, then finds a newer message. When she clicks on it, she realizes it’s the last message left from her parents. She writes down the numbers in the message and calls the phone number. When she reaches a recorded message, she recognizes her father’s voice. She leaves a message to call her at the family home and hangs up, hoping to hear from her family.