The Fixer (34 page)

This, Bodie had been informed, was a matter of national security.

They wanted to get their stories straight. I deeply suspected that when the dead man’s name was released, it wouldn’t be a name we recognized.

Major Bharani was dead. Judge Pierce was dead. And now so was Kostas.

There was no one left to bring to justice—and no one left to tell the story, except for Henry and Asher and Vivvie and me. The White House wanted this kept quiet.

With the guilty parties dead, I wasn’t saying a word—for Vivvie’s sake, if not my own. Something in my gut told me that Henry would do the same. He would bury this, push it into the recesses of his mind where he kept the secrets that hurt him most. The ones with the potential to hurt the people he loved.

I wondered if he’d hate Ivy for this, too.

I wondered if Ivy had ever really been the one he was mad at.

Ivy’s fine.
That was the refrain I repeated to myself, over and over again.
She’s fine. She’s fine. She’s coming home.
But no matter how many times I told myself that, I could never be more than ninety percent sure, until the moment the door to Adam’s apartment opened and I saw Ivy standing on the other side.

They must have let her wash up at some point, because she looked as polished as she had the day she came for me at the ranch. Her light brown hair was pulled into a loose French braid at the nape of her neck.

She walked like she had somewhere to be.

I stood, frozen in place. Ivy stopped a few feet away from me. I was still so angry with her. I’d been so
scared
. I’d spent years telling myself that she didn’t matter, that she couldn’t hurt me unless I let her, that we were nothing alike. But the past twenty-four hours had washed all of that away.

She was in me. She was under my skin, and there in my smile and the shape of my face, and she would
always
matter. She would
always
be able to hurt me, and there was nothing I could do, no space I could put between us to erase that.

She’s here. She’s okay. She’s here.
The words beat out a gut-wrenching rhythm in my head. Ivy’s lips trembled slightly. She took one step toward me, then another, then another, until she was right in front of me, and something in me gave. I fell—fell against her, fell into her arms, wrapping mine tightly around her. I buried my head in her shoulder.

She was shaking—or maybe I was.

But she was solid and real and
fine
. I bent, my head against her chest. She breathed in the smell of my hair. I could hear her heart beating.

“Tessie.” That was all she said, my name.

I mumbled something into her shirt.

“What?” Ivy said.

I repeated myself. “It’s Tess.”

I slept in Ivy’s room that night, curled into a tiny ball beside her on the king-size bed. In the morning, I could be mad at her. I could hate her for the secrets she’d kept, the lies she’d told—but for now, for this one night, I wasn’t letting her out of my sight.

Whatever Ivy was—both in the grand scheme of things and to me—we were family. Not just in blood, not just because she was somehow responsible for half of my DNA. We were family because I would always love her more than I hated her. Because losing her would have killed me. Because I would have done anything, made a bargain with any devil, to keep her from harm’s way.

We were family because she would have walked through fire for me.

For the longest time, we lay there, neither one of us asleep, neither of us saying a word, not even touching.

I fell asleep to the rhythm of her breaths.

Sometime later, I woke. Outside, pitch-black was giving way to the first hints of morning. I was alone in Ivy’s bed. Panic shot through me, like ice through my veins, but I forced my heart not to pound, forced my feet onto the floor. I walked through the apartment, down the spiral stairs, and through the foyer, and saw a slant of light coming from the conference room.

The door was cracked open. I pushed it inward. Ivy sat in the middle of the conference table, staring at the wall. There were three pictures hanging there: Judge Pierce, Major Bharani, and Damien Kostas.

“Ivy?” I announced my presence because she was staring at the pictures so hard that I wasn’t sure she’d marked my entrance to the room. Ivy turned to look at me. She blinked twice.

“Sometimes you look like him,” she said, a soft smile playing around the edges of her lips. “Your father.”

“You loved him.”

“I did.” She slid off the table and walked toward me. “Some days, I still do.” She tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. I let her.

“You’re not my mother.” I softened those words as much as I could. “I don’t know if I can . . . I don’t know what you are.”

Ivy met my eyes. “I’m yours.”

It hurt a little less this time. It still cut to hear I mattered to her; inside I still bled—but this time, I didn’t pull back. “Adam
said Gramps told you to go.” This wasn’t a conversation I’d ever planned on having with her—but it also wasn’t a conversation I’d believed I would ever again have the opportunity to have. “That summer, when I was thirteen, when you asked me to live with you—Adam said Gramps was the one who told you to go.”

Ivy nodded. I started to say something, but she cut me off. “He was right to tell me to go, Tess, and the rest of it? That’s not on Gramps. Not calling, not being there—that’s on me.” Ivy let out a long breath. “I couldn’t be your sister anymore, Tess, and
that
is on me. When I got back here after that visit, I threw myself into my work. I made enemies, and I told myself that you were safer if I kept my distance.”

I knew without asking who one of those enemies was. “William Keyes.”

If Ivy noticed the note of apprehension in my voice when I said that name, she gave no sign of it. “We had a disagreement. He went after someone I cared about. It didn’t end well, and I told myself that you would be safer if I stayed away.”

“You wanted to protect me.”
From my own grandfather
, I added silently.
From the man I went to in order to save you.

“I wanted to protect you,” Ivy repeated, then she closed her eyes and bowed her head slightly. “That was what I told myself. I told myself that I was doing it to protect you, but God help me, Tess, if I’m honest—with myself, with you—I think I was really protecting
me
.” When she opened her eyes again, they were full of self-directed anger and grief. Whether or not I could forgive her, she’d never forgive herself for what she was about to say. “Seeing you, talking to you,
loving
you wrecked me. You said once that I didn’t know what it felt like to feel helpless, to have other
people making my decisions—but I do, Tessie. Because I let Mom and Dad decide, I let Gramps decide, I
let
them take you—and I swore I would never let that happen to me again.”

Ivy was my age
, I thought.
She was my age when she met Tommy Keyes, my age when she got pregnant with me.
I’d known that, objectively, but somehow, I’d never thought of Ivy as young or scared or fallible. She was Ivy Kendrick. She wasn’t supposed to be any of those things.

“I guess I always thought,” Ivy said softly, “that if I was strong enough, if I was formidable enough, if I was successful enough—I could be
enough
. For you. I thought that if I became this person who could take on the world, then I could take care of you.” She shook her head—at her past self, maybe, or to snap herself out of it. “When I came to Montana that summer, Tess, I thought I was ready. I really did. I was going to give you
everything
. But Gramps called me out,
and he was right
, Tessie. I wasn’t doing it for
you
.
You
were thriving.
You
were happy. And I . . .” The words got caught in her throat, but she forced them out. “I was your sister. I was never going to be strong enough or successful enough. There was never going to be a
right time
to tell you. You were happy. And you deserved to be happy.”

I’d never heard her sound as fierce as she did saying those words.
You deserved to be happy.

“So you left me there,” I said, the emotion in my voice an echo of hers.

“I left you there, and it broke me. It
shattered me
, and I didn’t know how to go back.” Ivy was quiet for a moment, then forced herself to continue. “I left you there for you, but I stayed away for me. I have made so many mistakes, but that?” Ivy shook her
head again. “That’s the one that never goes away. I thought, when I brought you here, that I could make up for it, that I could be whatever you needed me to be.”

That was my cue to say something. I was supposed to tell her that it was all right, that I understood, or that it wasn’t ever going to be all right, and that I was never going to understand.

“Right now,” I said instead, “all I need you to be is alive.”

I knew now why she’d left. Why she’d stayed away. Eventually, we’d have to deal with that—but not tonight. After the past few days, I didn’t have it in me to
feel
anything else. I was so sick of being sideswiped by emotions. Just this once, I needed something to be neat. I needed simple. I needed to just concentrate on the fact that she was alive. She was
here
.

I can’t do this with you right now, Ivy.

“I thought Adam might be my father,” I said abruptly. As far as subject changes went, that one was effective.

“He’s not,” Ivy said immediately.

I met her eyes. “His brother was.”

Ivy froze for a moment. “Now I know what Bodie’s always talking about,” she said finally. “It
is
freaky.” I thought she’d stop there, but she didn’t. “Tommy was . . . exciting.” It took her a moment to decide on the word. “He was motion and emotion. He never stopped moving, never stopped
feeling
. He was stubborn and loyal and never once thought about the consequences of anything he did.”

“So I get that from him.” I meant that as a joke, but I couldn’t keep from thinking the words again.
I get that from him.

Ivy reached for me. I let her squeeze my shoulder, then turned to the photos tacked to the wall. “What’s all this?” Another
subject change—this one less successful than the first. Ivy’s lack of response pinged on my internal radar. “Ivy?”

I gestured to the photos on the wall.
Judge Pierce. Major Bharani. Damien Kostas.
The case was over. So why was Ivy down here, staring at pictures of these three men?

“It’s nothing,” Ivy said, standing up and moving to take the photographs from the wall.

“Right,” I said.
Nothing
wasn’t keeping Ivy up at night. “Tell me.”

Nothing good had ever come from Ivy keeping me in the dark. Maybe she was starting to see that, or maybe she was too worn down to fight me on this. She drew her hand back from the first photograph, leaving it pinned to the wall. A second later, she started to speak.

“After Kostas got word that his son had been pardoned, he let me go.” Ivy shuttered her eyes, and I knew she was thinking back to that moment. “He was coming out. He wasn’t a threat. He wasn’t armed. He was turning himself in, so why shoot?” Ivy looked down at her hands. “We’re talking trained hostage negotiators, Tess. There’s no way they should have taken that shot.”

She turned back to the wall. To the photographs.
The judge. The doctor. The Secret Service agent.
“Kostas killed Bharani when he became a liability,” Ivy said. “Kostas killed Pierce when he reneged on their deal.”

I heard what she wasn’t saying and gave life to the question myself. “So who killed Kostas?”

Who had fired that shot? A member of the SWAT team, presumably, but—

“Who killed Kostas?” Ivy repeated, interrupting my thoughts. “Or,” she added, “who gave the order?”

Ivy’s gaze went to the conference table. On it, there was a notebook, and on the notebook, there was a list.

Names.

I thought back to a conversation I’d had with Henry.
There was another number on that disposable phone
, he’d said.
That means there is at least one other person involved.

At least.

I’d thought, multiple times, that we were either looking for someone who could have poisoned Henry’s grandfather or someone who had the power to usher Pierce’s nomination through. It had never occurred to me that we might be looking for
both
.

“You think there might be someone else,” I said. Ivy neither confirmed nor denied those words. “Kostas killed Vivvie’s dad because he was becoming a liability, but once Kostas’s son was pardoned . . .”

Kostas had told me that he didn’t expect to get out of this. He’d talked about being honorable.

Kostas was a liability
, I thought, unable to keep the possibility from taking root in my mind. Maybe the Secret Service agent
had
been shot by an overzealous SWAT agent. Or maybe someone on the SWAT team had instructions to make sure Kostas didn’t leave that building alive.

The only way this plan makes any sense—the only way it could even potentially be worth the risk—is if Pierce had reason to believe he’d get the nomination
.

Kostas didn’t have the kind of power. And when I’d asked him if Pierce was the one who’d arranged this whole thing, he hadn’t replied. He’d stilled, an unreadable expression on his face.

Not because he was thinking about Pierce. Because he was thinking of someone else.

“
Pierce was made aware of my problem
,” I told Ivy. “That’s what Kostas said to me. Not that Pierce figured it out, not that Pierce masterminded the whole thing.
Pierce was made aware of my problem
.”

By who?
My mind went to the phone that Kostas had snapped in two. It was a flip phone, obviously a disposable. So who had the number? Who was calling?

My eyes traveled back to Ivy’s list. There were maybe a dozen names on it, but I only saw one.

My paternal grandfather’s.

“You said you cleared William Keyes,” I told Ivy, a feeling of dread taking up residence in my stomach. “You said Keyes was the last person who would have wanted Justice Marquette dead.”