The Fixer

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  “I’ve had a really long day,” I told her. “You?”

  The girl looked down at the ground, then walked over to the sink. She turned on the faucet and washed her hands. Again. And again.

  “I did something stupid.” Her words were almost lost to the sound of the water. She was taller than me, but bent over the sink, scrubbing at her hands like she could wash away this entire day, she looked very small. Very young.

  “How stupid?” I asked softly.

  She should have told me it was none of my business, possibly with a few colorful modifiers thrown in for emphasis. She didn’t. Instead, she turned off the faucet. The edges of her lips trembled. “The kind of stupid that involves pictures?”

  I slammed out of the girls’ bathroom. Vivvie was waiting for me.

  “Just out of curiosity,” I asked her serenely, “where is the boys’ bathroom?”

  “Down the hall and to your left,” Vivvie replied. “Why?”

  I was already striding down the hallway. “No reason.”

  If Vivvie had known me for longer than a few hours, she would have been concerned. Very concerned. I reached the boys’ bathroom, put my hand on the door, and shoved it inward.

  “Tess!” Vivvie said. I glanced back at her. She studied me for a moment and then shrugged. “Godspeed.”

  A ghost of a smile pulled at the ends of my mouth, but as I stepped into the guys’ bathroom and the door shut behind me, the expression hardened on my face. Three boys stood nearby, passing a single phone between them.

  “No, this one is my favorite. Totally this one. The expression on her face!”

  “Fresh meat, man. You should have heard her. ‘Are you sure? Do I look okay?’ ”

  Fury worked its way through my body as I sidled up behind them. The phone was passed from hand to hand, and inadvertently, they passed it to me. The third boy’s eyes registered my presence just as my hand locked around the phone. He attempted to pull it back, but I twisted. Hard.

  “What the—”

  I tucked the phone into my waistband. They all stared at me like I had just announced an intention to set myself on fire.

  “This is my phone now.” I let the weight of my words sink in. The biggest of the three boys took a threatening step toward me.

  “Yeah, right,” he scoffed. “Hand it over.”

  I hated bullies, and I’d had a very long day. I stared at him for several seconds, daring him to come closer. Somewhere inside that empty skull of his, an alarm should have been going off.

  It wasn’t.

  “That’s private property,” he grunted, towering over me. He reached for the phone, and I caught his wrist. He was bigger than me. Stronger than me. But my hands were callused, and he’d probably never worked a day in his life.

  “There are a lot of ways to castrate a bull,” I said, my words deliberate and slow. “You can band the balls off so they shrivel up and die. Or you can take a knife and slide it just so.” I demonstrated with my free hand. “I grew up on a ranch. I know a lot about castrating bulls.”

  There was a moment of stunned silence.

  “Are you threatening me?” the boy asked. His friends glanced uncomfortably at each other. In my experience, it was pretty much impossible for the male of the species to be comfortable while listening to someone reminisce about castration.

  “No,” I said, my eyes locking on to the ringleader’s. “If I were threatening you, it would sound more like this.” It took everything I had not to ball my hands into fists. “She’s fourteen. Ever heard of Andrew Stinson? That case got some press, didn’t it? If I remember correctly, they found pictures on his phone, too. And you know where you can find good old Andrew now?” I could see the wheels in the boy’s head turning. “I’ll give you a hint: it’s a registry, and it’s not for weddings.”

  I took the phone out and scrolled through the sent texts, then through the e-mails. One of the boys tried to stop me, but a strategically placed foot and a tiny bit of applied pressure gave me the space I needed.

  “You haven’t sent them to anyone,” I said. “That’s good.”

  “You psychotic little—”

  I didn’t bother listening to the coarse insults that came pouring out of his mouth.

  “I’m not psychotic,” I said. “I’m just used to dealing with creatures a lot bigger and a lot meaner than you. This is my phone now. I suggest you get a new one.”

  I turned and walked out of the bathroom.

  “You just made a very big mistake,” one of the boys yelled after me.

  I didn’t bother turning around. “That’s the only kind I make.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Bodie picked me up after school. “Body count?” he asked as we pulled past the security gate and out onto the road.

  “Very funny,” I told him.

  Bodie shrugged. “I can’t help it if I recognize your true ruthless nature.”

  I had to remind myself that he didn’t know me. He wasn’t here for me. “Because my sister is infamous fixer Ivy Kendrick?” I retorted.

  “No,” Bodie replied with a generous roll of his eyes. “Because I’m an impeccable judge of character.” He merged onto the highway and then glanced over at me. “And Ivy prefers the term consultant.”

  I would have preferred not to feel like I was the last person in the entire school—if not the DC metro area—to be clued into Ivy’s occupation. I would have preferred if she’d asked me, even once, what I wanted before she’d packed up my life and swept me across the country like it was nothing. I would have preferred that my closest living relative not treat me like a fire that needed to be put out, or a situation that needed to be handled.

  Like a job.

  “You didn’t answer my question about the body count.” Bodie prodded me out of my thoughts, like he knew no good could come from letting me stew for long.

  “No casualties,” I informed him.

  “But?”

  I looked out the window so he wouldn’t see the edges of my lips tick up as I thought about the dumbfounded look on the boys’ faces when I’d confiscated the phone. “But what?”

  The two of us rode in companionable silence until the car pulled into Ivy’s drive. Bodie cut the engine, and I reached for the door handle.

  “Wait,” Bodie ordered sharply. He sounded nothing like the man who’d lazily tweaked me about my attitude. I followed his gaze to a dark-colored sedan parked across the street.

  Bodie turned the car back on. “What are your thoughts on ice cream?” he asked, putting it in reverse.

  “Normally, I’m in favor of it,” I said, “but right now, I want you to tell me what’s going on.”

  Before Bodie could evade my question—and I was sure that was what he was going to do—the front door to Ivy’s house opened. An older man came out. He was tall with a shock of thick white hair and a face made for conveying his pleasure and displeasure from a hundred yards away.

  My hand went to the door handle again.

  “Don’t even try it, kitten,” Bodie warned. I paused but didn’t draw my hand back as I tracked the older man’s progress across the street.

  “Who is he?” I asked, finally letting my hand sink back to my side. There was something familiar about the way the old man walked, the way he stood.

  “Ask me again once you’re old enough to curse like a sailor, and maybe you’ll get an honest reply.” Bodie’s tone left no question about his distaste for the man. I was half tempted to tell him that I could curse like a sailor now, but instead, I watched the object of that distaste climb into the passenger side of the sedan and ride away.

  Apparently, Ivy wasn’t the only one with a driver—and that was when I realized who the man reminded me of.

  “Adam,” I said out loud. “That was Adam’s father, wasn’t it?”

  You were the one who told me to bring her here three years ago! The argument I’d overheard the day before echoed in my mind. Three years ago, you were on speaking terms with my father.


  Bodie didn’t tell me I was right. He didn’t tell me that Adam’s father was a powerful man. He didn’t have to.

  “You’re scary, you know that?” Bodie said. “And—I don’t care if you glare at me—you definitely get that from Ivy.”

  “What?” I asked, before I thought better of it.

  “That beyond-freaky ability to pull conclusions out of midair and sound so blasted sure of them.”

  I sounded sure because I was sure. I didn’t know how I knew, but I did. “Who is he?” I asked. “Adam’s father, what does he do?”

  Bodie fixed me with another look. “That’s need to know, and you don’t.”

  Just like I hadn’t needed to know that Ivy was a professional problem solver—or that Ivy’s “driver” was a man who was used to assessing and responding to threats.

  CHAPTER 10

  “Did I or did I not make it clear what breaking that particular confidence would mean?” Ivy’s voice—ice cold and sharp enough to draw blood—cut through the foyer. I could see her silhouette near the bay window, cell phone pressed to one ear as she paced. “I’m sure the senator would be very interested to know what you’ve been—”

  She turned to pace back the opposite direction and her eyes caught mine. She cut off midthreat. “I have to go.” She hung up the phone, and as she strode toward me, she schooled her face into a smile that almost reached her eyes.

  “Tess.” She glanced at Bodie, and a wealth of information seemed to pass between the two of them. “How was your first day?”

  I stared at her. Was I supposed to pretend I hadn’t overheard her putting the fear of God and Ivy Kendrick into the poor sod on the other end of that phone line?

  “The seven hours and forty-two minutes you spent at school,” Ivy clarified. “Good? Bad? Indifferent?”

  “I’m Ivy Kendrick’s little sister,” I replied. “How could my day have been anything but good?”

  Even a long-absent sister knew better than to take my syrupy tone at face value. “People talk,” she said, shrugging off the way I’d said her name—the way everyone said her name. “Give it a few days, and things will settle down.”

  “Is that your professional take on the situation?” I kept my voice dry and caustic. This wasn’t worth yelling over. It wasn’t even worth a heated whisper.

  “I never lied to you about what I do,” Ivy said calmly. “I just wanted to give you some time to adjust.”

  “Consider me adjusted.” I headed for the stairs. She didn’t stop me, and somehow, that was worse—worse than having to ask Vivvie to clue me in on my sister’s life, worse than the fact that the great Ivy Kendrick was acting like the stares and whispers I’d gotten all day at Hardwicke were no big deal.

  I took the steps two at a time. I made it up the stairs and into the living room, and then I froze. On the coffee table, there was a plate of cookies, slightly burnt around the edges, laid out just so.

  “I had a plan.” Ivy’s voice was soft as she followed me into the room. She kept her distance, hovering in the doorway. “I thought we’d sit. Talk. Eat cookies.”

  “You made me an afternoon snack?” I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around that.

  “It was a good plan,” Ivy defended.

  I picked up one of the cookies. Ivy took a single step forward, then paused, like I was a horse that might spook if she got too close.

  “It might have been a better plan if I’d bought the cookies,” she admitted grudgingly, eyeing the burnt cookie in my hand.

  “You don’t bake,” I inferred. I meant to stop talking, but two more words escaped my mouth. “I do.”

  “You bake?” Ivy took another small step forward. “I wouldn’t have called that one.”

  It was such a small thing—a tiny thing, really—to tell someone about myself, but the fact that I’d told Ivy anything felt like losing a protective layer of skin. I’d spent years building up my calluses. I hated that a stupid plate of burnt cookies could take them away.

  Even as I clamped down on my emotions, Ivy saw through them. “Tell me what I can do, Tess. To make this better.”

  This as in the new life she’d shoved me into without a second thought? Or this as in us?

  I couldn’t let myself wonder. “You can tell me about Adam’s father.” I wasn’t sure if I was trying to peel back one of her layers or testing her by asking for something I instinctively knew she wouldn’t want to give.

  “His name is William Keyes.” Already, that was more than I’d thought Ivy would tell me. “I used to work for him,” she continued, each word carefully measured. “We had a difference of opinion. Now I work for myself. He forgets that sometimes.”

  “What does he do?” I asked.

  “He makes things happen.” Ivy took her time with the reply, and I could almost understand how time had worn away at my grandfather’s memory, blurring the lines between my sister and me. “Political things,” Ivy continued. “He has a lot of money, and a lot of connections, and he’s gotten used to calling the shots behind the scenes.”

  I wanted to ask her why Bodie had been so adamant about my staying in the car. I wanted to ask her why Adam had thought that Ivy having made an enemy of his father meant that I would be better off in Montana. I wanted to ask her why William Keyes had come to see her.

  But wanting anything was dangerous when it came to Ivy and me. I set the cookie back down.

  “Tess?” She shot me a questioning look.

  I fixed my gaze on a spot just over her left shoulder. “I don’t want to sit. I don’t want to eat cookies. I don’t want to tell you about my day.”

  When I was thirteen, I would have given anything for this Ivy. For after-school snacks and a bedroom in this house. For the phone to ring more than three times a year. I would have poured my heart out to her. I would have asked her everything I wanted to know.

  “You can’t make this better,” I said, my throat tightening around the words. “You can’t do anything.”

  “Tessie—”

  “I’m not broken.” My voice was low. “And whatever this is, you can’t fix it. Not anymore.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The next morning, Bodie was the one who dropped me off before school. I made my way sluggishly to the Hut, wondering at the cruelty of a student coffee shop that did not sell coffee.

  “I have a job for you.” Apparently, that was the Emilia Rhodes version of hello. She’d appeared out of nowhere and waylaid me on my way to a bagel. When I didn’t reply immediately, she arched an eyebrow. Clearly, she was expecting that eyebrow arch to engender some kind of response.

  “Hello to you, too,” I muttered. I hadn’t slept well the night before, and it was too early in the day for this. I edged past her and toward the counter. She sidestepped directly into my path.

  No bagel for me.

  “You can pretend you’re not interested,” she told me, “but if you’re smart, you’ll bypass playing hard to get and jump straight to negotiations.” For all the sense that Emilia was making, she might as well have been speaking Latin.

  “I have literally no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

  Emilia pressed her lips together into an expression that was, at best, a distant cousin of a smile. “I have a problem.”

  “Yeah,” I replied under my breath. “You have several.”

  “It’s my brother,” Emilia continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “His best friend isn’t at school this week, and that means he’s bored.”

  Again, my response—or lack thereof—must have left something to be desired, because Emilia fixed me with a look.

  “When Asher gets bored, things get broken. Laws, standards of decency, occasionally bones.” She wrinkled her nose slightly. “There was an incident in his chemistry class yesterday—suffice it to say, he’s skating on thin ice with the Hardwicke administration.”

  I wondered if the incident in chemistry class had involved an explosion, but figured that asking would only encourage her to block my bag
el consumption for that much longer.

  “I’m applying to Yale next year,” Emilia continued, “and I am going to get in.” Her tone strongly implied that she’d burn anyone and anything that stood in her way. “Unfortunately, Yale has an unofficial admissions policy on twins. Most of the time, either both twins get in, or neither of them do, and my twin seems intent on getting himself expelled.” Emilia let out a huff of air, summoning her zen. “I just need someone to do damage control until Henry gets back. Three days, maybe four.”

  If I stood there long enough, she’d tell me what any of this had to do with me.

  “You’re going to make me say it again, aren’t you?” She forced a smile. “Asher is a problem.”

  I waited. “And?”

  “And,” she said, as if she were talking to someone either very young or very slow, “you fix problems.”

  “I . . . what?” My voice rose up on that last word. All around us, people were beginning to stare.

  Emilia hooked her arm through mine, like we were the best of friends. “You solve problems,” she said again. “I have a problem. Ergo . . .”

  “You have a job for me.” This conversation was starting to make so much more sense. And it was becoming that much more an after-coffee kind of endeavor. “You’re barking up the wrong tree here, Emilia.”

  “So you’re not the Tess Kendrick that Anna Hayden is swearing is a miracle worker?” Another eyebrow arch. “Anna’s not exactly sharing what the miracle was, but she’s a big fan, and she has a big mouth.”

  “Hayden,” I said out loud. “The girl I . . . helped . . . yesterday—”

  “Hayden comma Anna.” Emilia dropped my arm. “Freshman wallflower, beloved youngest daughter, and the only person at this school with a Secret Service escort?”

  I flashed back to the day before. I remembered thinking that the crying girl had looked young and scared and vulnerable and pissed. The one thing I hadn’t thought was that she looked familiar. She’d never told me her name.

  Emilia snorted. “You honestly expect me to believe that you came riding to the rescue of the vice president’s daughter with no idea of who she was?”