The Fixer

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  Adam and Bodie were still in the living room. I saw a healthy amount of caution in two sets of eyes as they turned to look at me.

  “What’s the plan?” I asked. “How are we going to get Ivy back?”

  “We’ve got people looking for her,” Adam said. “FBI, Homeland—”

  “And some less law-abiding types,” Bodie added. “I’ll head back out once . . .”

  He trailed off.

  Once you have me settled, I finished. “I’m fine. I can take care of myself. Go, do whatever you need to do. Find Ivy. He’ll kill her if he doesn’t get what he wants.”

  I realized then that they hadn’t pressed me for details—about Kostas, about what he wanted. “You weren’t surprised when I said Kostas wanted the president to pardon someone,” I said slowly. “Or when I told you that Kostas was the one who took me.”

  “Ivy suspected from pretty early on that we were looking for someone in the Secret Service or intelligence.” Adam was sitting on the couch, his hands in his lap, his gaze fixed on his hands. “We just didn’t know who.”

  “How—” I started to say.

  “Ivy went to the Secret Service,” Bodie cut in. “First thing after you and Vivvie told us everything, Ivy went to the Secret Service and asked them to bar Vivvie’s father from the White House.”

  I remembered Ivy saying something to that effect.

  Ivy talks to the Secret Service about Vivvie’s father. Vivvie’s father is immediately taken out of the picture. I saw the connection with hindsight. Ivy must have seen it from the beginning.

  “She suspected it was a Secret Service agent, and she didn’t tell the president?” I asked.

  “She didn’t tell the president because she suspected it was a Secret Service agent,” Adam replied. “The president is a difficult man to get alone, and even if she managed to pass the message along in private, she was fairly certain that the person we were looking for knew that we were digging. If Ivy met with the president and his behavior changed at all . . .” Adam shook his head. “That wasn’t a risk Ivy was willing to take.”

  “What about the pardon? You weren’t surprised when I said Kostas was the one who took me, and you weren’t surprised when I said he asked for a pardon.”

  Adam and Bodie were silent.

  “A pardon for who? For what?” As the questions left my mouth, I became more and more certain that they knew the answers.

  “He took me,” I said lowly. “Ivy is my—she’s my family, and he has her.” I felt like my body might start shaking, but my voice was steady, fierce. Like Ivy’s. “You don’t get to keep me out of this,” I said.

  After a moment, Adam stood and left the room. When he came back, he had a thick file in his hand. “Ivy flew down to Arizona to look for a connection between Judge Pierce and someone in the Secret Service—or the intelligence community. She came back with detailed information about Pierce’s docket. Cases he’d heard. Cases he was scheduled to hear. Appeals.”

  “She found a connection?” I knew, even as I asked the question, that the answer was yes. She was Ivy Kendrick. Of course she found the connection.

  Adam handed me the file. “It’s a death penalty case. Defendant was nineteen when the crime was committed, with a history of traumatic brain injury. There’s a question about whether he was mentally competent to stand trial at all.”

  I opened the file. The defendant’s name didn’t ring any bells, but when I saw his picture, my breath caught in my throat. The eyes. The set of his features.

  “Kostas?” I asked.

  “His son,” Bodie confirmed. “From what we can tell, Kostas didn’t even know the kid existed until the mother came to him for help with legal fees.”

  I thought of Kostas saying that Vivvie’s father had no honor. I thought of the way he’d spoken of people who killed for money, or for power. I’d wondered what he had killed for, and now I knew.

  “He let me go,” I said, my throat tightening. “He wasn’t going to, but when Ivy told him I was her daughter—”

  She’d asked him, one parent to another. And he’d let me go.

  “Pierce was supposed to hear the son’s case?” I tried to focus on the file.

  “Best as we can figure,” Bodie told me, “Pierce offered to set aside the son’s sentence if Kostas helped assassinate the chief justice. Once the deed was done, the judge failed to fulfill his end of the bargain.”

  Pierce reneged, and Kostas killed him. I felt sick.

  “Ivy said she had a program.” I thought of the promises she had made. “She said that if Kostas held her captive, the president might bargain.”

  “He might,” Adam said after several seconds. What he didn’t say was: He also might not.

  He has to, I thought. He has to. But we were talking about the president of the United States. He didn’t have to do anything.

  “We need to find her.” I was back to that, back to the ticking clock and the certainty that if we didn’t find Ivy, she might not make it out of this alive.

  “You need to get some sleep,” Adam corrected. He stood and walked over to me, setting a hand on my shoulder. “The president has been filled in on the situation. He wants to find Ivy as badly as we do. Everyone who could be looking for her is looking for her.”

  At that, Bodie nodded at Adam and took his leave.

  “Aren’t you going, too?” I asked Adam. I could accept that there might not be anything I could do. I didn’t like it. I certainly wouldn’t be able to sleep. But I could accept that a sixteen-year-old girl probably wasn’t as qualified to look for Ivy as the people who were actually looking for her.

  But Adam worked for the Pentagon. He could do something.

  “You’re not the only one who loves her,” Adam said softly. “But I know where your sister would want me, and that’s here. With you.”

  I swallowed. “You called her my sister.”

  “Force of habit.” He looked like he might stop there. “She wanted to tell you, Tess. Years ago, as soon as she was set up here, as soon as she was in a position to take care of you, she wanted to tell you the truth. She wanted you here.”

  “And then she changed her mind.” The words escaped my mouth before I could bite them back. Ivy was missing. She was gone, and I was so angry at her—for doing this, for leaving me.

  Again.

  “She stopped visiting. She barely even called.” I closed my eyes. “She never told me why. I don’t know what I did, why she left—”

  “Hey,” Adam said, capturing my chin in his hand. “You didn’t do anything, Tess.”

  I believed that. But the thirteen-year-old inside me couldn’t. Ivy had left me. She was my mother, and she’d chosen to leave.

  She chose to stay with Kostas. I should have been grateful for that. She’d traded herself for me, she’d saved me, she loved me. But there was nothing I could do to keep from feeling like she’d thrown me away, all over again.

  “Your grandfather asked her to go.” Adam’s voice broke into my thoughts. His words knocked the breath out of me. “He said she was being selfish. That being a parent wasn’t about what she wanted. That she had to think about what was best for you.” Adam cupped my face in his hand. “He sent her away, Tess, and she came back here, and something happened that convinced her he was right.”

  What happened? I didn’t ask the question out loud. It didn’t matter. Gramps might have sent Ivy away, but she’d gone. She was the one who hadn’t said good-bye. She was the one who’d stopped calling.

  “There was never a day, not one,” Adam said softly, “that she didn’t think about you.”

  She should have been there. I closed my eyes, more to keep them from tearing up than because I was tired. She should be here now.

  “Come on,” Adam said. “You need to rest.” He steered me toward his bedroom, toward the bed. Adam waited until I’d actually sat down on the edge of the mattress before retreating.

  Sleep never came.

  Every second, every minute
, every hour that passed was time I wouldn’t get back. Time Ivy wouldn’t get back.

  In the dead of the night, I started pacing: the bedroom, the hallway right outside, the bathroom. As I came to the living room, I paused in the doorway.

  Adam was awake. He was bent over his desk, looking at something. A note? A photograph? Whatever it was, he tucked it back into a drawer. He looked up but didn’t see me. From the expression on his face, I was willing to bet he didn’t see anything at all.

  CHAPTER 59

  The next morning, I had a visitor. Vivvie hovered in the doorway to Adam’s room. It felt like a lifetime ago that she’d stood outside the door to my room, wrapped in a blanket, wanting to come in, not wanting to ask.

  I looked down at my hands, unable to meet her eyes. My wrists were still angry and red. The raw skin looked how I felt.

  “I don’t want to be alone,” I whispered. The second those words left my mouth, Vivvie flew across the room. She hugged me like hugging was a contact sport.

  “Are you okay? Last night you sounded . . . not okay. And before that, you were just gone. Asher told me you went to the state dinner last weekend. Henry said your sister was there, and that she took you away, but we couldn’t figure out where, and you weren’t answering your phone—”

  “Vivvie.”

  Belatedly, she realized that she still had me in a death grip and relaxed her hug, her arms falling to her sides.

  “Ivy sent me away,” I said, saying Ivy’s name the way a cutter might press a blade to skin. It hurt. It was supposed to. “She did it to protect me,” I continued. That was what Ivy did. She didn’t ask me what I wanted. She didn’t give me a choice.

  She left me, and she sent me away, and she gave up her own life for mine, and it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that she could do this to me, and it wasn’t fair that I was the one who had to live with the results.

  It wasn’t fair that I was here, and she wasn’t.

  “Ivy told my aunt to get me a bodyguard,” Vivvie said, pulling me out of my thoughts. “For protection. He’s waiting in the hallway.”

  It occurred to me then to wonder how much Vivvie knew. Telling her—about Ivy, about Kostas, about what had happened to me—seemed insurmountable.

  “You don’t have to,” Vivvie said quietly. “If you’re not ready to talk about it yet, you don’t have to.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I do.” I swallowed, then pressed on. “Your father didn’t kill himself.”

  I wasn’t sure how long we were in my room, but by the time I finished, Vivvie knew everything except the truth about Ivy’s relation to me.

  “You aren’t listening!” Adam’s voice cut through the walls. He was yelling.

  For a split second, Vivvie and I sat there, frozen, and then our eyes met. I slipped off the bed and out of the room.

  Ivy was missing. Whoever Adam was talking to, whoever wasn’t listening, I had a right to hear it.

  “My answer is no.”

  I stopped just outside the door to the living room. From this angle, I could see just a hint of the person who’d just spoken.

  Adam’s father. The man who’d had Bodie hauled in for questioning, just to prove a point to Ivy.

  My answer is no. I wondered what the question was, and why those words made my stomach feel like it had been lined with lead.

  “You know,” Adam said, each word issued with quiet force, “that I would never ask you for anything, if the situation weren’t—”

  “Desperate?” his father supplied. “Believe me, Adam, I’m well aware of what you think of me. You have made it abundantly clear that you have no interest in taking your place in this family.”

  “No interest in politics,” Adam corrected.

  “You were born for this. If you retired from the military, we could have you on the road to the Senate in a matter of months. A decade from now, you could be a contender for the White House.”

  “You really think this is the time for this discussion?” Adam asked tersely.

  “You’re the one who invited me here,” William countered.

  “Because I wanted your help.” Adam said those words like the act of speaking them was physically painful. “Ivy—”

  “That girl crawled under your skin years ago.” As intense as Adam’s tone was, William’s was casual. “I’ve never understood the hold she has on you. If she’s gone, I won’t shed a tear.”

  My fingers curled themselves into fists. Without meaning to, I took a step forward. Adam’s father saw me a second before Adam did.

  “Tess,” Adam said, his voice tight. “Could you give us a minute?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Keyes said, matching Adam’s tone. “I was just leaving.”

  I beat the older man to the front door. The fact that Adam had asked him for help meant that Adam thought he could help. If William Keyes wanted to walk away from this—from his own son—he could go through me to do it.

  “Tess.” The tone in Adam’s voice told me that he wanted me out of this room, away from his father. It was a tone that, in other circumstances, I would have obeyed.

  “It’s my understanding,” I said, trying to force Keyes to look at me again, “that my sister has some kind of insurance policy. If something happens to her, a lot of very powerful people will be very unhappy. Including you.”

  A flash of something in my adversary’s eyes told me I’d guessed right on that last point.

  “Your sister always has a contingency plan,” William Keyes said, his voice perfectly modulated. “But I’m the one who taught her that.” He brushed past me and out the door.

  “Stay here,” Adam ordered as he followed.

  After a pregnant pause, Vivvie stepped into the room. “That was . . .”

  “Adam’s father,” I supplied. “He’s not Ivy’s biggest fan.”

  He could help, but he won’t. He’ll let her die. I didn’t want to imagine myself at Ivy’s funeral. I didn’t want to think about the fact that she was all I had left. I didn’t want to feel like someone had carved out my insides, like I was empty and hollow and crumbling apart.

  No. I couldn’t do this, couldn’t go down that rabbit hole. Ivy’s going to be fine. I’ll hate her forever if something happens to her. She’s going to be fine.

  I walked the length of the living room. Around the futon. Around the desk, and then I stopped, thinking of Adam sitting at the desk the night before. I tested the drawer, expecting it to be locked.

  It wasn’t.

  Inside, I found a neat line of pens, printer paper, and a photograph, tucked into the side. I gingerly pulled it out and turned it over.

  Ivy and Adam.

  Her hair was in a messy ponytail. His was buzzed close to his head. They were young. Ivy couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty.

  She had my smile, I thought, forcing myself to stare masochistically at the curve of her lips. On the heels of that crippling thought came a second one. Ivy knew Adam when she was young.

  And then I remembered Ivy’s words the day she put me on the plane: He was young, too, recently enlisted. I reached out to the desk to steady myself, my fingers digging into the wood.

  There was never a day, Adam had said, not a single one where she didn’t think of you. He’d said those words like he knew—what it was like for Ivy, thinking of me every single day.

  What if he wasn’t just talking about Ivy?

  I could see Adam in my memory, standing behind Ivy, his hand on her shoulder as she told me the truth. I could see Adam, sitting in the passenger seat of his car as he taught me to drive. I could see Adam, reading me the riot act, telling me that family doesn’t run off when things get hard.

  I could see Adam the first time he’d ever seen me, looking at me like I was something precious. Like I was a ghost.

  Vivvie came to stand behind me. “Your sister,” she said, looking at the photograph. “And Adam. They look so young.”

  That girl crawled under your skin years ago. Adam’s
father’s voice echoed through my head. I’ve never understood the hold she has on you.

  “She’s not my sister.” I was staring at the photograph—at a college-aged Ivy and a younger Adam—so I didn’t get to see the expression that crossed Vivvie’s face in response to my words. “She’s my mother. I didn’t know.” My eyes blurred with tears. I blinked them away and kept staring at the photo. “She was a teenager when she had me. She said my father was military.”

  Adam was military.

  You’re not the only one who loves her, he’d told me the night before. But I know where your sister would want me, and that’s here. With you.

  I hadn’t questioned why Ivy would want Adam with me. Adam, not Bodie, even though Bodie was the one I saw every day.

  I hadn’t questioned the way that Adam, Ivy, and Bodie all seemed so intent on keeping me away from Adam’s father.

  I thought it was because he was powerful and dangerous if crossed. But what if that wasn’t it? My father is very family-oriented. Adam had said those words in a way that wasn’t complimentary.

  “Tess?”

  It took me a moment to realize that Adam was the one who’d said my name, not Vivvie. He walked over to me and saw the photograph in my hand.

  “You and Ivy have known each other a long time,” I said, my throat tightening around the words. “Are you . . . Are you and I . . .” Say it, Tess. Just say it. “Are you my—”

  “Vivvie, your aunt is downstairs.” Adam interrupted my question. “And my father’s visit has put your bodyguard on edge.”

  With one last glance in my direction, Vivvie was out the door, leaving Adam and me alone. I stared at him, searching for similarities in our features, the way I’d looked at my own reflection, searching for Ivy.

  Adam’s hair was brown. His eyes were blue, but there was something familiar about the shape.

  “Adam.” I forced his name out. “Ivy said my father was young. She said he was in the military. You two have known each other for a very long time.” My mouth felt like cotton. My tongue felt too thick for my mouth. “When I first got here, I heard you say that Ivy shouldn’t have brought me to DC because she wasn’t on good terms with your father. You didn’t want me to meet him.” I paused, then corrected myself. “You never wanted him to meet me.”