The Blood Between Us

by Zac Brewer

  “I guess.” Shaking my head, I said, “That was before I was sure she was trying to pick up my parents’ research herself. Plus, it was easier to not think about it all out west. Here, every day involves Grace in some way. Here, I can’t seem to let it go, and the suspicious questions are just getting worse. What happened to that girl, Marissa, after she pissed Grace off? She had to go to the hospital from a lab accident. Then there’s this secret work Grace is doing to continue our dad’s research. And her attitude about my returning to Wills, pitting everyone against me? You might not have put those guys up to beating the crap out of me, but someone did. The evidence is all just supporting the same hypothesis.”

  “Look. Maybe those things were all accidents, or those assholes were just assholes. And maybe she really is continuing your father’s work to honor his memory. Have you thought about that? Whatever you think about your sister, she’s actually pretty brilliant. If she can do the stuff your dad was doing, why shouldn’t she? Maybe all the nefarious stuff is in your head.”

  “Maybe.” It was so difficult to believe. Things happened for a reason. Didn’t they?

  He sighed as he stood up. “Look, I need to get back to the job. Maybe we could hang out later or something?”

  I nodded. Talking to Josh had always made me feel at least a little better. I was relieved to know that hadn’t changed since we’d kissed. “Sure. Let’s get off campus tomorrow after my chemistry test, head into town and find something to do. I could use a break from this place.”

  “Sounds good. Is this the tub explosion you’ve been going on about?”

  “Yeah. It’s gonna kick ass.” The corner of my mouth lifted in a smile. Goddamn, I loved chemistry.

  “See you tomorrow, man.” Josh slipped his headphones back on and pressed a button on the board. “You’re listening to Josh here at WILS. This next number by the Plain White T’s goes out to Karen from Tre, who’s really, really sorry about the other night.”

  The day had finally arrived. Mr. Meadows had gotten special clearance from the headmaster, the dean, and Coach Taryn. At no other school would “blowing shit up” qualify as a graded science project for a class. But then again, MythBusters made a lot of money blowing shit up in the name of science, so I guessed this was real-world training. And to be fair, we weren’t really doing this experiment in class. We were doing it on the soccer field. Hence why we had to bring Coach Taryn on board.

  The entire chemistry class, along with a few staff members, a representative from the school paper, and even Josh, who had managed to convince the radio station manager to let him do a live remote from the scene, lined the edges of the field. We were joined by members of the local fire department and EMTs, just in case. All were gathered to see the most amazing science experiment to hit the Wills Institute in many years—probably since my father had been a student. Either that or they were hoping someone would fail miserably, and they would be able to say that they had witnessed it firsthand. Naturally, Caroline and I were up first.

  Our cast iron bathtub sat in the center of the field. Caroline was taking measurements to make sure that everyone would be standing far enough away so that they wouldn’t be hit by any shrapnel. I sat on the side of the field going over the calculations for the experiment one last time. Too little potassium and we’d just get a fizzle, not an explosion—or a weak explosion like we’d gotten with the trash can. Too much, and someone could get hurt.

  Caroline came up to me from behind, and her voice startled me out of counting when she spoke. “It looks like as long as no one passes the goal lines, they should be fine.”

  “Damn it.” I started erasing the equation I’d been writing down. “Now I have to start all over.”

  Caroline grinned sheepishly. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” I knew I was a little bit on edge. It wasn’t her fault. “You just surprised me, that’s all.”

  She put a hand on my shoulder. “Hey, you’ve done those calculations a zillion times. We’re good. Don’t worry.”

  I dropped my pencil onto the notebook. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  Caroline smiled down at me. “So, let’s go blow up a bathtub, shall we?”

  I stood up, and we both headed to the back of the truck that Mr. Meadows had used to transport all of the supplies to the field. “I’ll grab the water buckets; you can get the potassium, okay?”

  “Sounds like a plan.” She picked up the jar filled with mineral oil and what looked like a silver stick of butter. I reached for two five-gallon buckets of water. “Besides, the potassium’s lighter.”

  I shook my head and chuckled. “Shut up.”

  We reached the center of the field and I started to pour the water into the tub. Caroline set about placing the potassium into the triggering mechanism that she had designed. We had to make sure that the chemical wouldn’t be exposed to the air or the water until everyone was at a safe distance, as potassium reacts with both. And while my father had taught me about chemistry, Caroline was the engineering mind on our team.

  With everything in place, we were ready to go. I gave a brief presentation to the crowd about what they could expect to see and what exactly would be happening during the reaction, then I turned to my partner and asked her to do the honors.

  Caroline reached for the remote that controlled the triggering mechanism, and that’s when I saw it.

  Caroline began to count backward. “Three.”

  The label on the potassium jar wasn’t all the way centered. It looked like it had been removed and put back on—like there was another label underneath it.

  The crowd counted with her.

  “Two.”

  “One.”

  I dove at Caroline as her finger squeezed the trigger. The metal dropped into the tub.

  I yelled, “Everybody get down!”

  Time slowed as the mystery chemical was released from the clamps holding it in place. The silvery stick dropped into the pool of water with a splash. But before the droplets had time to settle back into the tub, an orange ball of flame began to grow from within the ripples.

  The reaction was far more violent than what we had planned, which wasn’t surprising, considering that all of our calculations were based on a different element. The bathtub was destroyed, just like Caroline and I had wanted. But the damage was far worse than we could have ever imagined.

  Shards of hot metal and sparks flew through the air, hurtling toward the crowd of people. Screams were drowned out by the explosion. My body struck Caroline’s and we tumbled to the ground. We landed with a thud, knocking the wind from my lungs. It felt like several minutes before I was able to breathe again, but in reality it was probably less than a second. The sudden intake of air into my lungs brought time back to its normal speed. Droplets of water and mud mixed with shards of broken and melted iron rained down from the sky. The air burned as I heaved in and out. I saw faces streaked with blood where students had been cut by shrapnel. Josh was pressing his right hand to a large gash on his forehead. I looked around from on top of Caroline at the crowd of people. At least I had managed to get her out of the way.

  I could see the firefighters spring into action. Chemical extinguishers were already being sprayed onto the soccer field. The EMTs were treating people for their injuries. I looked down and asked Caroline if she was okay. That’s when I saw the blood.

  She moaned loudly as I rolled her over. A large chunk of metal was sticking out of her shoulder. I’d pushed her right toward the explosion when I’d tackled her. “What the hell?”

  Her words were forced and, from the look on her face when she spoke, painful.

  “Don’t talk.” I brushed a bloody lock of hair from her face. “Someone switched the labels. I don’t know who or why, but I’m going to find out. You just lie here and I’ll get help.”

  I screamed for the paramedics to come help, and I watched as they loaded her into the ambulance. I didn’t even notice the cut on my cheek until one of them started working on m
e.

  My head was in a fog. All I could think of was getting to that bottle. Someone had switched the labels, and I had a pretty good idea of who it was.

  After returning from the hospital later that evening, I knocked hard on Grace’s door. Fury and vengeance and all sorts of dark things were boiling up from within me and I planned to unleash them on my adoptive sister without regret.

  There was no answer, so I tried the knob. To my surprise, the door swung open with ease. Lying on the floor was Grace, her eyes closed. My heart raced to see her. “Grace? Are you okay?”

  I hurried to her side and knelt down, pressing my fingers to her jugular. Her pulse was steady. What had happened? Had she passed out? She couldn’t have been there long, or else surely her roommate or somebody would have found her.

  I tried to scoop her into my arms, but the next thing I knew, a rag was pressed against my nose and mouth. A hand pressed it to me and in my shock, I inhaled the sickeningly sweet stench deeply. My head swam as nausea overtook me. Then my extremities began to go numb. Soon after, my vision and hearing failed as I fell into forced unconsciousness. My final thought before falling into that nowhere space was, Chloroform. Someone used chloroform on me.

  CHAPTER 15

  BINDING ENERGY:

  The amount of energy that holds the protons and neutrons in the nucleus of an atom together

  I don’t know how long I was out, but when I came to, I was sitting up, my head leaning back against a familiar surface, my hands still numb, but behind my back. I pulled, but my wrists seemed to be bound with something. Rolling my head to the left, I realized that I was sitting in the driver’s seat of Maggie. The windows were foggy and it was dark outside. To my right sat Grace. She was unconscious, but starting to come to. I’d just opened my mouth to speak to her when I felt something cold and sharp against my neck. A voice, familiar, but still too far away in my mind’s fog to fully recognize, growled into my ear. “Sit forward. And don’t try anything.”

  I didn’t know what other weapons he might have, whether he had accomplices or not, even what exactly was going on. So I sat forward and focused on my breathing, trying to get enough oxygen in my bloodstream to counteract the effects of the chloroform. At my wrists, I felt a small pull, heard a click, and realized that whatever had been tying my hands together—zip strips, I was betting—had been cut. My hands were still numb. Maybe from the chloroform. Maybe from sitting back against them for a time. All I knew was that I desperately wanted to shake them and get the blood moving again. But I didn’t dare. Whoever had me—had us—meant business. I remained with my forehead on the steering wheel, my head turned toward my sister, asking too many questions to myself that I didn’t have answers to. Who was this guy? What did he want? How on earth were we going to get free?

  Grace’s eyelids fluttered open and she blinked in my general direction. I couldn’t be certain that she could make me out through the chemical fog, but I hoped so. I wanted to tell her to hold still, to breathe calmly and deeply, that everything would be okay. She would’ve called me out on that last one. I had no evidence that anything was going to be okay. I just didn’t want her to be as scared as I was.

  The shape in the backseat slid behind Grace and pushed her forward. In that same gruff voice, he said, “Stay sitting forward. Don’t try anything. I have a knife, and I will slit your throat.”

  As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I recognized the face of the man who was snipping the zip strips that held Grace’s wrists. For a moment, shock filled me. Even if I’d known what to say, I couldn’t form words.

  All this time, I thought the person texting me had been Julian, knowing that he was as capable as anyone of tormenting me. For a moment, before I saw the man’s face, I’d thought maybe Julian had figured out a way to get his hands on my parents’ estate. Viktor’s money might be going to Wills, but with Grace and me out of the way, our parents’ money could end up going to him.

  Only . . . it wasn’t Julian sitting in Maggie’s backseat.

  It was Quinn.

  As Grace’s mind cleared, she looked at me, confused and frightened. I shook my head, but just barely, enough to tell her not to move, to do as he said until we figured out exactly what he wanted and how to get out of this situation without either of us getting hurt. Quinn gripped my hair and pulled me back until I was sitting upright in the seat. I winced but made no sound. The blade was at my throat again, Quinn’s voice in my ear. “Oh, how I have waited for this moment, Adrien. It wasn’t easy, you know. Living with you for days—sleeping in the same room. Apparently there was just nothing that would prove enough to make you kill Grace. I thought I had you pegged. But you proved to be a challenge.”

  He pressed the blade into my skin, and I felt my blood seep down my neck. It wasn’t a deep cut, but it was enough to show me he meant business. “The thing about killing siblings is that if they die separately, it looks suspicious. Don’t you think? So I started thinking about a way to do you both in together. A suicide pact would never be believed. You despise each other. A pact like that only works if both parties agree to it.”

  He was crazy. He had to be. None of this made any sense.

  “Murder-suicide might have worked, but you just wouldn’t cooperate.” It sounded ridiculous. Like he thought he had perfectly logical reasoning and we were the ones being the problem. “Since you do all that you can to stay apart, I had to come up with something else. Something people would believe. A reason for you to be together. Same place. Same time. An accident.”

  He sounded so pleased with himself. “I’ll tell the authorities that you blamed Grace for the accident at the soccer field. I came along to try to stop him from doing anything stupid, officers, but he wouldn’t listen to reason. Adrien dragged Grace into his car. They argued. It got heated. Adrien lost control of the car. I jumped out just before it went over the drop-off.”

  “What if we survive?” As I spoke, he pressed the knife in deeper. Pain lit up the side of my face, my shoulder, my neck.

  “You won’t. Not according to physics. Neither of you will be wearing restraints. I’ve melted the locking mechanisms on the front doors. It’s over seven hundred and fifty feet from the cliff to the bottom. I estimate a ninety-nine point seven percent chance of death.”

  “But . . . why? It makes no sense. Why kill us?” As I spoke, clarity returned at last to Grace’s features. She looked scared. So was I. At last, we had something in common.

  “I’d say money, but that would only partly be true. Let’s just say it’s complicated. Family matters usually are.” He spoke the last words hotly into my ear.

  “Family? What are you talking about?”

  “Congratulations, children. It’s a boy!” He cackled wildly, and as he did, he pressed the blade hard to my throat. As far as I could tell, the skin didn’t split, but the pressure hurt. “It seems your father and my mother had quite the torrid affair several years ago. But when she told him the news of her pregnancy, he broke off all contact. My mother was threatened that if she ever told anyone who my father was, she’d regret it. Well, she did regret it, even with her sealed lips. You grew up with a trust fund. I grew up on a steady diet of ramen noodles and government cheese. It was bad enough knowing that I had a half sister out there, but learning that your father had adopted you, Adrien, when he didn’t want anything to do with me . . . that really drove things home.

  “My mother was a very fragile woman. Was. That’s the operative word here.” He grew quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again, it was from some far-off space, where only unstable psychotics ever visited. “We used to drive by your house. Sometimes she’d park the car and we’d sit outside, watching the lights inside turn off and on. She’d tell me stories about my father, and about the things she’d seen him do for my brother and sister. Birthday parties, trips to the zoo. It was her idea to get revenge. We deserved a little peace, a little happiness. So she taught me how to pick locks, and one day, she rang the doorbell. Your mother answered
. Your father wasn’t far behind. But the argument that ensued was just a distraction. I met my mom back at the car, after switching the labels in their lab.”

  My heart raced. “You son of a—”

  Quinn pressed the knife in again, cutting off my words. “I thought revenge would be enough to bring her back to me, but it wasn’t. She took her life three years ago. And that’s when I began planning again. It worked out beautifully, volunteering at the hospital, and overhearing Viktor say that he was working to bring you home, Adrien. I was all too happy to help out with a few text messages, but that was even before I started following Grace. Oh, how the pieces came together.” Quinn chuckled softly. “I wanted to see you feel the pain of losing your parents, Adrien. To suffer like I did. Before I took your lives.”

  He reached over and tugged Grace’s hair hard. “In many ways, you and I are the closest relatives left in our happy little family, sis. And now, someone has to pay. I lost my mother because of our father’s cruel, heartless actions. Now you’ll both die.”

  Grace spoke up, her voice quivering some. “The autopsy. They’ll detect the chloroform. You won’t get away with it.”

  Quinn clicked his tongue. “You should have taken the forensics class. We learned that chloroform leaves the system relatively quickly after the person inhales oxygen for a while. There won’t be a trace of it left by the time you go over the cliff.”

  I set my jaw. My shoulder was killing me. “And what makes you think I’ll drive?”

  “Because if you don’t do exactly as I say, she’ll drown in her own blood.” Reaching around the seat, Quinn stabbed Grace in the lung and twisted the blade. Grace coughed up blood and immediately started to gasp for air.

  Quinn looked at me then, his features sharp in the light from Maggie’s dashboard. “She can die quick or she can suffer. It’s up to you, brother.”