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My lips felt dry and parched, my stomach growled from being empty. The blinds were shut tight. I had no clue as to whether it was day or night.
Then I heard the echo of footsteps coming closer to the door. The hallway outside must be tiled or wooden. There was just one set of footsteps nearing the door to this room, my jail.
I heard the key turn in the lock. An overhead light switched over the bed. My eyes immediately closed tightly from the sudden burst of light it shed.
“Well, you’re certainly a mess,” Kyzer said. “You stink, too.”
I was glad. I hoped the stench would keep him away from me. I would rather die than go through another round of his perverted torture.
“Why are you doing this to me, Kyzer? I need to know.”
“It’s simple. Suzy and I don’t believe you. You have been in touch with that asshole of a father of yours, and he owes us something. We figure if you mean shit to him at all, he’ll produce what we need in exchange for you. Trust me; your old man has the resources to find you. He has a network here in the states. That’s why he’s able to move about fairly freely. Not like poor Suzy. She constantly has to go into hiding from pricks like your step-father and boyfriend. They aren’t doing you much good right now, are they?”
“You have to believe me; he has not been in touch with me at all. You think I wouldn’t have told you by now if he had?”
“I think Daddy’s Girl still feels loyalty to the rotten bastard, that’s what I think.”
“Well, you’re wrong, Kyzer. I don’t condone what he did, or what you and Susanne are doing. I certainly wouldn’t protect him with my own life. What is it he owes you? Is it money? Maybe I can help.”
“Does it look like we’re hard up for money, here? No, it’s not money, per se. He does, however, owe us something that is going to make us a whole lot more money. I’m talking billions. The sick thing is that the bastard can’t do anything with it himself. Yet, he is prepared to let you die rather than just give it up.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I screamed.
I don’t know where I got that sudden bit of strength to scream, but I did. I was sick of this pathetic game he was playing with me. I wanted an answer.
“I’m talking about that formula,” he spat. “There is one ingredient missing. It’s useless to us and to our plans without that one missing ingredient, okay?”
“How do you know he even has it?”
“He has to. There is no one else involved. When he found out that Suzy had commissioned one of the chemists at Banion to finish developing a chemical formula that I had started for a substance to be used to create a hybrid plant, he wanted in.
"The substance was successfully tested on a prototype plant, proving out the formula. The formula on the paper you found has failed in the lab. It is incomplete. Something is missing. Who else could have tampered with it?”
“Why would my dad have reason to?” I asked.
Kyzer rolled his eyes at my inability to get with the program.
“Because, he realized that she was going to cut him out. He was not going to be part of the project. My stepmother was a married woman, with plenty of resources right within the Stanfield group to produce the plants. She needed the formula development to be done outside of my father’s company. It was to be her secret - and mine. My father had a tendency to keep an eye on her activities, until he just couldn’t anymore. Once she had the formula, she didn’t need Jack anymore. Once my father passed, production could commence.”
My skin went cold hearing him say that about his own father. My God, what kind of a monster was Kyzer?
My mind, foggy as it was, went back to that formula. Slate was to talk to the chemist in prison. His name was John Davey. I had no clue what Slate had found out, I had nothing to barter. Maybe I could bluff.
“Did you ever consider that my father didn’t know the formula had been tampered with? Did it even occur to you or your step-mommy-dearest that it could have been John Davey?”
“Who?”
Now I rolled my eyes at him to show he needed to get with the program. “The chemist who wrote the formula equation, John Davey. He’s serving time in Deep Meadow Correctional Center.”
“And you know this, how?”
“I was the one that pointed out the chemist identification number to Slate. I worked in the R & D lab at Banion. I was familiar with the identification stamps. Number 31 was John Davey’s stamp. He was convicted in all of the drug trafficking stuff that went down that summer.”
“Tell me more,” he prodded, now interested in what I had to say, or bluff.
“I need some water first.”
“Talk now, then water.”
