The Fixer

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  CHAPTER 54

  That first day in Boston was my grandfather’s best day, like the universe had seen fit to give him clarity where I had none. The next day wasn’t as good. The day after that was worse.

  Sometimes, he knew who I was.

  Sometimes, he didn’t.

  One day, we played checkers. He won. The next day, we played chess. I won. I could almost pretend that coming to Boston had been my decision, that the fact that Bodie slept by the door and paid for our motel room with cash meant nothing.

  But.

  But then I would think about Henry and wonder if he had someone watching out for him. I would think about Vivvie and whether anyone had explained to her why I had to go.

  I didn’t let myself think about Ivy at all.

  I filled my days with chess and checkers. My nights filled themselves with nightmares and phantoms—throats slashed and bullet holes and the president and the First Lady dancing a waltz.

  On our fourth day in Boston, I was futilely attempting to assemble a full deck of cards so Gramps and I could play poker, when someone turned the television in the community room from an old Clark Gable movie to the news. I tuned it out as background noise until I heard someone say the name Edmund Pierce.

  My fingers closed around a card—the nine of spades—and my eyes shot to the television screen.

  “Supreme Court hopeful Edmund Pierce was found dead in his Phoenix home this morning.”

  Pierce’s picture stared out at me from the screen. You’ll get your money when I get my nomination. I could hear Pierce saying those words. I could see it.

  “While no official word has been released in Judge Pierce’s death, early reports suggest an aneurysm.” The news anchor on the screen had a naturally serious expression, perfect for delivering this kind of news. “Pierce was rumored to be the front-runner for President Nolan’s nomination to the Supreme Court following the death of Chief Justice Theodore Marquette earlier this month. No word from the White House yet on how this might . . .”

  Someone changed the channel, and just like that, we were back to Clark Gable. I set the card in my hand down and made for the lobby and the closest exterior door. Bodie saw me go by and followed me out.

  “Pierce is dead,” I told him, waiting until the door had slammed shut behind me and I’d sucked in a breath of fresh air to force out the words.

  Bodie narrowed his eyes. “Heart attack?” he guessed, his eyes darkening.

  “Aneurysm.”

  Bodie pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket. He took a cigarette out of the package, rolling it back and forth between the tips of his fingers.

  This is too much of a coincidence, I thought. I could tell from the look on Bodie’s face that he was thinking the same thing: in all likelihood, Pierce hadn’t died of an aneurysm any more than Justice Marquette had died because of unforeseen complications during surgery.

  “Vivvie thinks her father might have been murdered,” I said, studying Bodie’s reaction to those words.

  “Vivvie’s a smart girl,” Bodie replied. In other words, he thought she was right.

  “I need to call her,” I said. “I need to call Henry.”

  “Easy there, slugger.”

  “This isn’t a joke, Bodie.”

  He threw the cigarette down on the ground and crushed the tip underneath his toe. “I ain’t joking.”

  I knew that. “Who’s doing this?” I asked him quietly.

  “Your sister would tell you to stay out of it.”

  She’s not my sister.

  “But as far as I can tell,” Bodie continued languidly, “you’d take being told to stay out of it as an invitation to frolic gaily in a field full of it. All it, all the time. You and Ivy are too much alike.”

  I turned into the wind, determined not to flinch.

  “Who’s doing this?” Bodie repeated my question. “If you assume the good doctor’s death wasn’t a suicide—and I think, at this point, that’s a safe bet—I’d say we’re looking for someone with military training. Special Forces, most likely, possibly military intelligence.”

  Bodie’s phone rang. Ivy. I knew it was her, the way you know the protagonist of a horror movie really shouldn’t go down into that basement. Bodie took the call, then nodded at me to go back inside.

  I made my way back down the hall toward my grandfather’s room.

  I’d say we’re looking for someone with military training.

  I thought about the fact that Ivy had been at Camp David that weekend. She’d pointed out just how much I didn’t know—who’d taken the picture, who’d been standing right outside the frame.

  Who else was there the day Bharani and Pierce met? My breaths got slightly shallower. Was Adam? Adam’s father was the one who’d organized the retreat.

  Had Adam been at the Keyes Foundation gala?

  I’d say we’re looking for someone with military training. Bodie’s words dogged my every step. Special Forces, most likely, possibly military intelligence.

  Adam was Air Force. Adam worked at the Pentagon.

  No. I rounded the corner. There was an orderly outside my grandfather’s room, his arms stacked high with blankets. Adam isn’t involved. He’s not. One of the blankets tumbled off the orderly’s stack. Trying not to think about Adam—or Ivy or Pierce or any of it—I bent to pick up the blanket.

  “Here—”

  The orderly surged forward, slamming blankets into my face, cutting off the flow of air to my lungs as he pulled me tight against his body. Not an orderly.

  Not Adam. That should have been a relief—but it wasn’t. Too big to be Adam. Too tall. I struggled. Too strong. I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. The man who wasn’t an orderly was going to kill me. I was going to die, smothered to death feet away from my grandfather’s door.

  I tried to kick my heel into my captor’s shin. Then I felt a pinch in my neck.

  And then everything went black.

  CHAPTER 55

  I woke with no feeling in my wrists and a throbbing at my temples. At first, all I could see were my own feet, bound at the ankles with transparent zip ties. My shoes had been removed.

  So had my clothes.

  That realization shocked me into full and unforgiving consciousness. I was wearing some kind of loose cotton shift. The knowledge that someone must have removed my clothes—that while I’d been unconscious, hands had undressed me—made me shiver violently.

  Nausea racked my body. I lurched forward, as far as the ties that bound me to the metal chair would let me. My hair fell into my face and my stomach emptied itself onto the concrete floor. Unable to even wipe the back of my hand across my mouth, I coughed.

  Floor, I thought, fighting to pay attention to the details and using them to ground me in the here and now. Concrete floor.

  I was inside. The expanse was large—possibly a basement of some kind. No windows. There was a collection of electrical wires at one side. The space was dimly lit, but even that dim light made my head pound harder.

  The orderly drugged me. I remembered the pinch at my neck, the darkness that followed. Maybe the headache was a side effect, but that raised the question: A side effect of what?

  What had the man injected into me?

  Poison? I tried not to think about the likelihood that Judge Pierce hadn’t died of an aneurysm. I tried not to think about the fact that someone had poisoned Justice Marquette.

  Not just someone, I thought. I tried to summon up an image of the orderly, but I couldn’t. I hadn’t been paying attention. Dark hair. Tall. That was it. All I’d seen. All I knew.

  I struggled against the ties, jerking my body to one side, then the other as hard as I could. All that achieved was knocking my chair over sideways. My head hit the ground. Hard.

  I have to get out of here. Knowing that didn’t make it achievable, any more than trying to picture the orderly helped me summon up his face. He’s going to kill me. He knows what I know. He’s going to kill me.

 
Ivy had sent me out of DC, but she hadn’t sent me far enough.

  Focus. My cheek rested against the cold ground. Think. I knew, on some level, that planning wouldn’t do me any good—but what other choice did I have?

  Bodie said we were looking for someone with military training. I couldn’t think about the future. I couldn’t think about what might or might not happen to me in this basement. So I thought about the man who’d brought me here. Had there been something familiar about him?

  Think, Tess.

  I thought about everything I knew—about Pierce and Vivvie’s father and the reporter who’d gotten his throat slashed.

  The tip came from inside the West Wing, and that’s all I’m going to say.

  Inside the West Wing. Military training.

  How many people were on the president’s staff? How many of them were there at the gala the night Theo Marquette was poisoned?

  How many of them had William Keyes invited to Camp David?

  The president was there. My mind defaulted to that. I couldn’t get it to stop. The president was there. The president was there.

  But the president of the United States hadn’t slammed those blankets over my mouth. The president of the United States hadn’t slipped a needle into my neck and knocked me unconscious.

  The president was there.

  The tip came from inside the West Wing.

  We’re looking for someone with military training.

  I remembered, suddenly, the conversation I’d had with Ivy about the Camp David picture. She hadn’t just told me that she’d been there that weekend. She hadn’t just hinted that there were other people there.

  She’d asked me if I’d thought about who was standing just out of frame.

  The president was there. This time, the thought took on different meaning in my mind. The president was there, at Camp David. The president was there at the gala.

  “Who was standing just out of frame?” I said the words into the concrete, my muscles screaming in objection to the angle at which my body was held. I translated the question, ignoring the pain.

  Who was standing just a few feet away from the president?

  Who went with him—to Camp David, to the gala? Who works inside the West Wing because the president works inside the West Wing?

  Who had I overlooked?

  Who specialized in fading into the background?

  I heard the footsteps coming behind me. I renewed my struggles, but it did no good. I wasn’t going anywhere—and the steps were getting closer.

  I make it a point to learn names. Bodie’s voice was clear in my ears as my captor stepped into view.

  Who went where the president went? Who had the training to kill?

  The Secret Service agent knelt down next to me and examined my wounds. “Look what you’ve done.”

  CHAPTER 56

  Damien Kostas. I’d met him for the first time on Ivy’s front porch. He’d approached me at the state dinner. After Henry and I had talked to the reporter, we’d tried drawing out the killer. Kostas had approached me, and I hadn’t even noticed.

  Just like it hadn’t occurred to me that the president of the United States never went anywhere alone.

  Nimble fingers probed the side of my head. I winced. Kostas brushed my hair out of my face, then in one smooth motion, he righted my chair. “You should be more careful,” he told me.

  Seriously?

  My brain-to-mouth filter failed me entirely. “Seriously? You brought me here to kill me, and you think I should be more careful?”

  He straightened, assuming his full height. “Whether or not I brought you here to kill you remains to be seen.”

  I wanted to grasp at even the smallest possibility that I might get out of this alive, but I’d seen his face. I knew who he was. “I’m supposed to believe you might just let me go?” I said, my stomach roiling and my throat closing around the words as I choked them out.

  My captor was silent. He had a naturally serious expression, uncompromising and weighty. I remembered how little luck I’d had getting him to respond to me that day on Ivy’s front porch.

  “What do you want?” I asked, knowing the question was probably futile.

  He made no move to reply, walking over to a bag at the side of the room. He removed a towel and unfolded it. Then his hand disappeared back into the bag, and he set a collection of needles on the towel, one by one.

  Oh God. What were the needles for?

  “What do you want?” I asked again. I pictured him picking up a needle. Was this how torture started? Was he going to force me to tell him what I knew? Would he torture me until I told him who else knew?

  Vivvie. Henry. Ivy. No matter what he did to me, I couldn’t tell him.

  The Secret Service agent picked up one of the needles and walked toward me. I thought I might throw up again, but there was nothing left to expel from my body. Kostas took my head firmly in one hand. I tried to jerk back, but he tightened his grip, then pressed the needle into my neck.

  I gasped.

  He emptied the syringe into my body, pulled the needle out, then let go of me. I waited.

  Nothing. No blackness. No pain. No throbbing in my head.

  “It counteracts the effects of the sedative I dosed you with.” Kostas didn’t look at me as he spoke. “I may have given you a bit too much for a girl your size. You’ve been out for over twelve hours.”

  Twelve hours. I’d been missing for twelve hours. Ivy would be looking for me. Bodie would have discovered me gone within minutes of my disappearing, and my sister—my whatever-Ivy-was would be tearing Boston apart piece by piece, looking for me.

  “What do you want?” I asked a third time. My voice was higher pitched, on the verge of hysterics.

  Kostas stared at me for a moment. “I have a problem. It is my understanding that your sister specializes in problems.”

  This isn’t about what I know. This is about what Ivy does. It took me a moment longer than that to fully realize the implications. I wasn’t a liability to be disposed of. I was a hostage.

  “You want Ivy to make this go away. You want her to get you out of this, and if she doesn’t, you’ll . . .”

  Kill me.

  “No.” The response was simple and swift. “I’m not walking away from this. I don’t expect to.” He paused. “I don’t deserve to. But I have a problem, and your sister is going to fix it.”

  He’d killed three men—and helped to kill Justice Marquette. That made him a monster. The fact that he didn’t sound like one wasn’t comforting.

  Neither was the presence of the other needles on the towel.

  He doesn’t expect to walk away from this. I tried desperately to concentrate on something else. He’s not wearing a mask, because he doesn’t expect to walk away from this. He doesn’t care if I know who he is.

  That should have been a relief, but all I could think was that if Kostas had resigned himself to being caught, I was being held by a man with nothing to lose.

  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.