She’s changed her clothes since we saw her last. She’s wearing a sleek black suit: cropped tuxedo pants and a black blazer. It isn’t exactly a burying-a-body kind of outfit. Her pacing reminds me of how she used to behave when she’d measure us at Running Course or appraise our appearances before the open house events at the academy. She held us captive, too. We haven’t forgotten that.
Leandra used to be one of us, just like us, until she was married to the headmaster. If nothing else, that means she should have been better to us. She should have found a way around thecruelty that her husband demanded. She didn’t.
Leandra glances at Imogene. “Did you burn the papers I asked you to find?” Leandra asks her. Imogene says that she did.
“What kind of papers?” I ask.
“The invoice,” Leandra says. “Bill of sale, if you will. As well as the marriage license and pictures. We need to scrub all traces of Imogene from that man’s life.”
“Imogene told us you have the name of an investor,” I say, cutting to the point. “Why didn’t you give it to us before we left?”
“I think Imogene may have misspoken,” Leandra says, casting an irritated glance in her direction. “But to be clear, I expected you girls to find Winston Weeks.”
“We want nothing to do with him,” I tell her. “We don’t trust him.”
She smiles thinly. “Either way,” she continues, “I didn’t expect you to show up here. If you would have contacted Winston like I suggested, he could have given you the information you need to find the investor. But now”—she motions around the room—“you’re here, and Imogene has murdered a man. I had to make some decisions.”
Leandra walks over to her bag, her stiletto heels clicking on the slate floor. She picks it up and brings it to the couch. She takes out a folder and sifts through the papers before holding one out to me. I’m surprised to find it’s a printed bus ticket.
She hands Sydney the entire folder. “I’ve printed five tickets to Connecticut. You’ll also find identification, fake birth certificates, and a state ID. We have templates for these things ready prior tograduation, in case your sponsor requests them. I’ve taken the liberty of changing your last names. There are also phones in the bag and a few other essentials that I could gather in time. Altogether, it should be enough to get you started.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. “Why would we go to Connecticut?”
“Because you said you wanted to end this,” she responds. “You want to take down the corporation? I’m telling you where to start.” Leandra begins to pace again.
“Innovations Academy was funded several years ago by four unnamed board members of Innovations Corporation,” she continues. “To this day, these investors are the main source of income for the school. Sales are good, but technology is expensive. In a bid to keep their involvement anonymous, the investors’ names and identifying markers are redacted from all documentation and financial disclosures. They are, in a word, secret. Even my husband doesn’t know their actual names.” She taps her red lip with her long nail. “The best way to end Innovations is to cut off their funding. And as that crumbles, the corporation will be starved of funding. It will shatter.
“I’ve been looking into the school’s financial records,” Leandra continues, “and found that one of these investors launders their donations through a private high school in Connecticut. After some digging—times and dates, locations and statements—I reason that the investor has a child there. A son, most likely. I want you to use this boy to get access to files, records, or anything else you can uncover. And if that doesn’t work,” she says, “a rotten apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. He’ll give you something we can use.”
Marcella laughs. “I doubt this boy will just hand over information that would destroy a corporation.”
“I’m sure you can be persuasive,” Leandra says. “And whatever information you find, we’ll be able to leverage it to get the investor to withdraw his support from the academy, step down from the corporation. We’ll cut off one main source of income, and then we’ll move on to the next.
“You cut off the money, you cut off the power,” she adds, smiling. “And if that doesn’t work, we’ll expose him. Because trust me, girls, if the investor is involved with Innovations Academy, he’s also involved in criminal enterprises.”
“Why not just tell the world what he’s done to us?” Brynn asks.
“Do you want the horrible truth?” Leandra asks. When Brynn nods tentatively, Leandra sighs. “We have to expose the first investor without mentioning the academy because the fact is, what these investors have done, what the corporation has done to us, is not illegal.
“We have no rights,” Leandra continues. “Creating something to abuse may be unethical, but it’s not against the law. Like the doctor told us, they followed the rules. Number one”—she holds up her finger—“only artificial girls can be created. Two, they must be over sixteen. And three … our bodies are unable to reproduce. Those are the arbitrary rules of men—a loophole in a society that lets them treat girls and women exactly how they want.”
She pauses, glancing around. “That reminds me …” She looks dead at me. “Where is the boy? Imogene said he was here.”
“Gone,” I say curtly. “He’s gone now.”
Leandra studies me a moment and then smiles. “Good,” she says, and turns away. “Now, to make the matter more pressing”—her voice drops lower—“when the professors wake in a few hours, when my husband wakes, he’ll discover that Innovations is without a doctor. They’ll want to bring in a new one immediately. A new batch of girls will be growing by next week.”
This update sends Brynn into tears, and Marcella gathers her into a hug from next to her on the couch.
“We won’t let them suffer the way we did,” Marcella says, comforting her. “We’re going to free them all.” She presses her lips together, resting her chin on the top of Brynn’s head, but I read the fear in her expression. She doesn’t want to break her promise.
“This Connecticut,” Sydney says, looking at Leandra. “How will we pay for things there? Where are we going to live? Because I’m not boarding at another school.”
“I’ll make arrangements for accommodations,” Leandra says. She reaches into the brown bag and pulls out a stack of cash. I gasp and look around at the other girls. “There’s more in there,” Leandra says, nudging the bag. “It’ll be enough to get you started.”
Leandra holds up her arm and turns her wrist to check the time on her watch. “You have to get going,” she says. “I imagine the local police will be alerted soon about the dead men at the school. Although I’m not exactly sure what my husband and the others will tell them, I’ve laid the groundwork for an explanation of your absence.”
My stomach twists as I remember the scene we left behind. “Which is?” I ask.
