Race with Danger (Run for Your Life Book 1) by Pamela Beason Page B
Authors: Pamela Beason
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some words. “Just a trinket.”
That scrapbook and the flash drive I found are the only physical links I have to my family. My friend Sabrina keeps them for me in her safety deposit box. I’ve scanned all the pics from the scrapbook. I study them now and then on my computer at home to remind me what Mom and Dad and Aaron and I looked like. A lot of the pictures include people I’ve never met. Some photos look like family reunions. They give me hope that I have relatives somewhere.
Since my first six months were basically spent trying not to starve or freeze to death, it took a while before I could get to a library computer to check out the flash drive. I made sure nobody was sitting too close before I plugged the stick in. I don’t know what I was expecting—an explosion? A tidy summary explaining why my family had been eradicated?
I found nothing even remotely interesting. All that old flash drive contains are scans of accounting spreadsheets and formulas and reports, along with a couple of photos of the laboratory where my mother worked, and a half dozen pictures of what look like corporate functions, groups of people my parents worked with over the years, executives in suits and scientists in lab coats.
My mom spent a lot of her time in a lab coat. She loved her job, trying to come up with new drugs to treat diseases. She was most proud of formulating Retaxafal 44, which most people know as RT44. It pretty much saved the world after Ebola mutated into so many strains. The only negative is that RT44 causes seizures in some people. But my mom solved that problem, too, by inventing another drug called Plactate, which prevents the side effects.
Both those drugs make mountains of money for Quarrel Tayson Laboratories because, like the flu vaccine, the formula for RT44 has to change every year to block new mutations of the virus. Military troops all over the world are routinely dosed with RT44 and Plactate. So are international aid workers and basically anyone who travels a lot. I’ve had my own shots of my mom’s meds in the last two years because I compete in endurance races in remote places.
As I think now about my mom’s work, a bubble of mysterious conversation bobs to the surface of my memory.
“That’s not only unethical, it’s immoral,” I remember her saying on the phone. A pause. “Fine, I’ll take it elsewhere.” Then she hung up.
In my head, I can hear her voice perfectly, her carefully enunciated angry words. My mother spoke with a slight accent that most people assumed was from Australia or New Zealand. What was the ‘it’ she was talking about? This conversation took place only two days before the murders. I could tell she was arguing with someone at QTL. I was annoyed because that call had interrupted our discussion of a pair of designer jeans I wanted.
I never got those jeans.
I’d give anything to have those petty annoyances again. But all I have are fragments of memories and a few old photos. Now that I’m older and have some life experience under my belt, I realize there might be clues in those pictures. I hope I’m smart enough one day to realize what those clues might be.
But I look at the necklace on the table before me and think that maybe now I have this other physical connection, too. Who sent this gift to me? Is it a good omen, or a signal that my parents’ killers have found me?
Sebastian asks, “You okay?”
Pull it together, girl. You’re acting weird. “I’m just surprised. I’ve never gotten anything like this. I usually get tee shirts or baseball hats.” When I get anything, that is.
He picks up the pendant. “It’s unusual. From Tanzania? From one of your father’s relatives?”
I blink at him for a second, confused by his errors about my history. Then I shake myself back to the present: I am Tanzania Grey and my father was from Africa.
“I’ve never heard of any relatives there,” I tell him.
He hands the necklace back to me. “Then it must be
That scrapbook and the flash drive I found are the only physical links I have to my family. My friend Sabrina keeps them for me in her safety deposit box. I’ve scanned all the pics from the scrapbook. I study them now and then on my computer at home to remind me what Mom and Dad and Aaron and I looked like. A lot of the pictures include people I’ve never met. Some photos look like family reunions. They give me hope that I have relatives somewhere.
Since my first six months were basically spent trying not to starve or freeze to death, it took a while before I could get to a library computer to check out the flash drive. I made sure nobody was sitting too close before I plugged the stick in. I don’t know what I was expecting—an explosion? A tidy summary explaining why my family had been eradicated?
I found nothing even remotely interesting. All that old flash drive contains are scans of accounting spreadsheets and formulas and reports, along with a couple of photos of the laboratory where my mother worked, and a half dozen pictures of what look like corporate functions, groups of people my parents worked with over the years, executives in suits and scientists in lab coats.
My mom spent a lot of her time in a lab coat. She loved her job, trying to come up with new drugs to treat diseases. She was most proud of formulating Retaxafal 44, which most people know as RT44. It pretty much saved the world after Ebola mutated into so many strains. The only negative is that RT44 causes seizures in some people. But my mom solved that problem, too, by inventing another drug called Plactate, which prevents the side effects.
Both those drugs make mountains of money for Quarrel Tayson Laboratories because, like the flu vaccine, the formula for RT44 has to change every year to block new mutations of the virus. Military troops all over the world are routinely dosed with RT44 and Plactate. So are international aid workers and basically anyone who travels a lot. I’ve had my own shots of my mom’s meds in the last two years because I compete in endurance races in remote places.
As I think now about my mom’s work, a bubble of mysterious conversation bobs to the surface of my memory.
“That’s not only unethical, it’s immoral,” I remember her saying on the phone. A pause. “Fine, I’ll take it elsewhere.” Then she hung up.
In my head, I can hear her voice perfectly, her carefully enunciated angry words. My mother spoke with a slight accent that most people assumed was from Australia or New Zealand. What was the ‘it’ she was talking about? This conversation took place only two days before the murders. I could tell she was arguing with someone at QTL. I was annoyed because that call had interrupted our discussion of a pair of designer jeans I wanted.
I never got those jeans.
I’d give anything to have those petty annoyances again. But all I have are fragments of memories and a few old photos. Now that I’m older and have some life experience under my belt, I realize there might be clues in those pictures. I hope I’m smart enough one day to realize what those clues might be.
But I look at the necklace on the table before me and think that maybe now I have this other physical connection, too. Who sent this gift to me? Is it a good omen, or a signal that my parents’ killers have found me?
Sebastian asks, “You okay?”
Pull it together, girl. You’re acting weird. “I’m just surprised. I’ve never gotten anything like this. I usually get tee shirts or baseball hats.” When I get anything, that is.
He picks up the pendant. “It’s unusual. From Tanzania? From one of your father’s relatives?”
I blink at him for a second, confused by his errors about my history. Then I shake myself back to the present: I am Tanzania Grey and my father was from Africa.
“I’ve never heard of any relatives there,” I tell him.
He hands the necklace back to me. “Then it must be
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