The Fixer (29 page)

A phone rang. He walked back to his bag and removed a flip phone.
A disposable?
I wondered. He stared at it for a few seconds, then returned it to its place, ignoring the call.

“You said you have a problem,” I said quietly. “What is it? What do you need Ivy to fix?”

He didn’t answer. This was the man I’d met on Ivy’s front porch—quiet and still as a guard at Buckingham Palace.

“You killed Judge Pierce.” Maybe I should have stopped talking—maybe I should have just sat there and waited for him to decide whether I was going to live or die—but I
couldn’t
. “You killed the reporter.”

“The reporter was regrettable.” Kostas cast a brief glance back at me, then the phone in his bag rang again. This time, he let it ring, but still, he didn’t answer.

“What about Major Bharani?” I asked, thinking of Vivvie. “Was he
regrettable
?”

My captor’s face betrayed just a hint of surprise. That I knew that he’d killed Vivvie’s dad? That I cared?

“Your sister should have kept you out of this,” he commented, in the tone of someone who was confident that if I’d been his responsibility, he
would
have kept me out of it.

“Major Bharani had a daughter my age,” I told him.

“He hit her.”

“Are you telling me you killed one of your co-conspirators because he hit his daughter?”

“I killed him because he was becoming a liability,” Kostas replied, a hint of annoyance entering his voice. “I don’t feel bad about it because he hit his daughter. He’s a doctor who premeditatedly killed one of his patients. He was not an honorable man.”

And what do you call a Secret Service agent who murders three people to cover up the fact that he helped kill a Supreme Court justice?

“The doctor killed for money,” Kostas told me as the phone started ringing again. He picked the phone up and, with one sharp movement, snapped it between his hands.

Special Forces
, I thought dully, wondering if he could snap my neck just as quickly. Just as easily.

“You didn’t kill for money.” I repeated back what he had—essentially—told me.

I was tied to this chair. There was no way out. The only advantage I had was that my captor did not seem to want to kill me. Understanding him and playing off that might be the difference between life and death.

“I get why you killed the doctor,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even and calm. “He was a liability. So was the reporter. But what about Judge Pierce?”

No reply.

“I guess Pierce wasn’t very honorable, either.” Still nothing, so I pressed on. “What about Justice Marquette? Wasn’t he an honorable man?” No response. “Why would you get into bed with Major Bharani and Judge Pierce? It wasn’t money.”

Kostas retrieved a new disposable cell, still in the package, from his bag. He ripped the package open and began dialing the phone.

“Why would you agree to poison a good man?” I let the question hang in the air.

Kostas looked up, his face terrifyingly neutral, like I wasn’t having this one-sided conversation tied to a chair, like he wasn’t mentally preparing himself to kill me if the need arose.

“My problem,” Kostas answered abruptly. “Pierce was made aware of my problem. He was in a position to fix it.”

There was a hint of emotion in his voice when he talked about his
problem
. It wasn’t a money problem. My gut told me it wasn’t about power, either. This was a man who was tasked with protecting the life of the president. It was his
job
to take a bullet for President Nolan, and looking at him now, I could almost believe that he would have done it.

What could Pierce possibly have offered this man—what problem could Kostas possibly have—that he was willing to throw his life away for? Willing to kill for?

“Pierce came to you,” I said. “He offered to solve your problem. He arranged this whole thing.”

Kostas stilled. An expression I couldn’t quite read flitted over his features. A moment later, it was gone. “You talk too much,” he said abruptly. Without warning, he crossed the room to stand in front of me, too close for comfort.

I clamped my mouth closed.

He finished dialing, then held the disposable phone up to my ear. “Talk to your sister.”

“Ivy?” My voice cracked halfway through her name.

“Tessie?” Ivy’s voice didn’t crack. It didn’t break. But somehow, that one word was enough to tell me she was already broken.

“He has me in a basement somewhere,” I said, rushing the words out. “A big building. There’s electrical wiring to one side—”

Kostas took the phone from my ear. “You asked for proof of life,” he said. “You have twelve hours to get me what I need.”

He hung up the phone—and didn’t say another word to me for eleven hours.

CHAPTER 57

I had one hour left to live. Ivy had one hour to give Kostas what he wanted—whatever that was.

I tried talking to him, even though my throat was like sandpaper, even though he’d stopped replying hours ago. If Kostas was going to kill me, he could do it while I was speaking to him. He could watch the life go out of my body and know that
he
had no honor.

I’d moved past the denial stage of things. Now I was pissed.

“It’s my life. I’m the one who’s going to die if Ivy doesn’t solve your problem. The least you can do is tell me what it is you need her to do.”

He didn’t say a word. It was like he didn’t even hear me. Like he was steeling himself, already, to do what needed to be done.

I don’t want to die.
It was a stupid thought, a cliché one, thought by everyone who was about to die, ever.

“I don’t want to die.” I said it out loud. “I don’t want to—”

“I heard you.” Kostas broke his silence. “For what little it is worth, I don’t want for you to die, either.”

“But you will kill me.”

He didn’t reply. That silence was answer enough. He
would
kill me.

I’m no good to him dead
. I clung to that thought. If he killed me, he lost his leverage.

That was the moment when I started wondering what else was in his bag. I started entertaining the possibility that he might not kill me immediately. He might hurt me first.

A finger. An ear.
Would he send pieces of me to Ivy? What was in those syringes? Would he anesthetize me before sending her something to show he was serious? Would he put me down like a dog if it became clear that she couldn’t do the job?

I tensed against the bindings on my wrist. The plastic cut into my skin. I ignored the biting pain and struggled harder. Blood trickled down my wrists, warm and sticky against my skin.

Slick.

I let the pain roll over me. I felt it. I clung to it. I tried to pull out of the bindings, greased up with my own blood. I tried. I
tried
—

“Stop.” Kostas followed the order up by picking up one of the needles.

“No,” I said. “Please,
no
. I won’t try anything. I won’t—”

“It’s a sedative,” he told me. “To calm you down.”

I felt panic rising up inside me like bile in the back of my throat.
I don’t want to be calm. I don’t want—

Footsteps sounded outside the door. My captor straightened and slipped the sedative into his back pocket, then picked up another syringe. This one was empty.

The sight of an empty syringe shouldn’t have made me shiver, but as he crossed the room to stand next to me, I felt like someone was sliding a shard of ice up my spine.

A female voice called out three words: “I came alone.”

Ivy.
My heart jumped into my throat.
Ivy’s here. She came.
My arms tensed against the bindings. My body lurched forward of its own accord.

Kostas pressed the needle into my neck, into a vein. I hissed slightly. “Do not move,” he told me, his voice low.

I could feel my heart beating in my throat, pulsing against the sharp, uncompromising pressure of the needle.

“I didn’t tell anyone I was coming here,” Ivy kept talking as she came around the corner. She didn’t pause at the door, didn’t hesitate when she saw the man poised with a needle at my neck. “I can get you what you want, Damien.”

“That’s far enough,” Kostas told her.

I couldn’t move my head, couldn’t so much as lean toward her.

“I’m here,” Ivy said, her voice authoritative and calm. “We can all get what we want, but not if you don’t step away from the girl.”

“I get what I want,” Kostas replied, “or I press down on this.” He indicated the needle in his hands. “She will not survive an air bubble to the heart.”

In. Out. In. Out.
I forced myself to breathe.
He’s going to kill me.

“I’m not armed. No one knows I’m here. I came alone.” Ivy wasn’t looking at me—only at him. “You need to let her go, and then we can talk.”

I felt Kostas tense beside me. “That wasn’t the deal.” The Secret Service agent’s free hand slid to the far side of my neck,
then tightened. I couldn’t twist away from the needle. I couldn’t move. “No talking,” he told Ivy. “You get me what I want, and you get your sister back.”

I could feel my heartbeat in my neck, tensing against my skin. I could feel it, pounding back against my captor’s hold.

“I can’t summon up a presidential pardon on a whim, Kostas,” Ivy said.

“You said you had what I wanted.”

Breathe in. Breathe out. In. Out. In—

“I said I could get you what you want. And I can. But first you have to let her go.”

A low, inhuman whine reached my ears. It took me a few seconds to realize that it was me.

“If I let her go,” Kostas bit out, “I have nothing to bargain with.”

He wants to let me go. He
wants
to
, I thought, desperation twisting in my gut,
but he won’t.

Ivy took a single step forward. “You’ll have me. The president won’t bargain for my sister’s life. But he might bargain for mine.”

I realized then what she was saying. My throat tightened, my arms tensing against the bindings so hard the pain should have brought tears to my eyes. “Ivy,” I said, my voice escaping my throat in a hoarse whisper. “No.”

I could picture her, that day on the tarmac.
You’re my kid
.
Mine, Tess.

“You’re that valuable to him?” Kostas asked Ivy, his grip on my neck tightening slightly.

Don’t, Ivy
. My mouth wouldn’t form the words.
Don’t do this.

“Keeping me alive is that important to his administration.” Ivy’s voice never wavered. “In my line of work, it pays to have an insurance policy. I know where the bodies are buried. I know every skeleton in every closet. If I didn’t have some method of ensuring that it was to my clients’ benefit that I stay alive, eventually someone would decide that the only way to make sure their secrets stayed buried was to bury me, too.”

Stop it, Ivy. Stop talking.
I willed her to listen, willed her to stop before it was too late, but she didn’t. She
wouldn’t.

“If I go off the grid, a program is initiated, and all those secrets—everything I’ve learned, everything I know, everything I’ve buried—are released. Online. To the media.”

“You worked on the president’s election campaign,” Kostas said. “You’ve worked for him since.”

“I have.”

“You’re saying he has secrets.”

“I am.”

“You’re saying that if I hold
you
—”

“He might give you what you want,” Ivy supplied. “If you have
me
.”

I’d spent my whole life as an orphan. I’d mourned the parents I’d never even gotten the chance to know. Now Ivy was here, doing this, and I couldn’t push down the voice inside me that said that I was going to lose her, too.

I felt numb. I felt like I was lying on my back in a dark hole, and there was someone at the top, throwing dirt down on top of me. Burying me.

“You’ll stay,” Kostas ordered, his gaze sharp on Ivy’s. “Contact the president.”

“No,” Ivy replied, her voice taut. “I won’t. Not unless you let Tess go.”

That was the first time she’d said my name. My stomach twisted sharply.
Don’t do this, Ivy. You can’t—

“You do not make the rules here.” Kostas removed one hand from my neck. A second later, he had a gun aimed at Ivy. “Come here.”

“No. Me for her,” Ivy said, nodding at me. “That’s the deal.”

You’re my kid
.
Mine, Tess.

“Ivy,” I rediscovered my voice, my eyes and throat stinging, my whole body fighting against the bindings that held me in place. “No.”

“Yes,” she said fiercely. “
Me for her
,” she told the Secret Service agent again. “Otherwise, you might as well put a bullet in my head right now and say good-bye to that pardon, because without me, you don’t stand a chance.”

She was doing this. There was no talking her out of it, no going back. She was doing this.
For me.

Kostas removed the needle from my neck. I could feel a trickle of blood against my skin as he stepped back and aimed the gun at my right knee. “Come here,” he told Ivy. “Do not make me hurt her.”

“Let her go.”

He stared at her. He pulled the trigger. The bullet went into the ground, less than an inch from my foot.

Oh God.

“You come here,” Kostas repeated, his eyes narrowing. “Now. Or the next one goes in her leg, Ms. Kendrick.”

Ivy put herself between him and me. “You don’t need her,” she said. “You need me.”

“I need her to make you cooperate.”

“She’s not my sister.” Ivy looked him straight in the eye as she said those words. “She’s my daughter. I was seventeen. Too young. You know what that’s like.”

Even tied to a chair, even with Kostas aiming a gun at Ivy, even
now
—I couldn’t keep from reacting to those words. Kostas’s gaze flickered briefly toward mine. I ducked my head, pressing my lips together. What was Ivy doing? Why tell him this?
If he thought I was good leverage before . . .

“Let her go,” Ivy said, her voice wavering. “There’s no trick here. Let her go, and I will call the president. I will tell you exactly what to say, exactly how to handle this situation. But first, you have to let her go.”