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.”
Kostas lowered the gun. He knelt down in front of me and took out a knife. My breath caught in my throat. He brought the knife to my legs and cut the bindings between my ankles. As he walked behind me to do the same thing to my wrists, my eyes found Ivy’s.
She has a plan, I told myself. She’s not going to stay here. She’s not going to risk her life . . .
But as her lips curved slightly upward in a soft, sad smile, I knew—there was no trick. No trap. No plan. This was a trade. Ivy for me.
“No,” I said, louder this time. “No, Ivy. You can’t.”
I was four years old again, throwing up at my parents’ funeral. I was lying against Ivy’s chest as she carried me up the stairs. I was patting her wet cheek as she handed me away.
I was walking into the room she’d saved for me in her house. The room she’d never decorated, never used, her favorite room in the house—
Kostas finished cutting my bindings. I lunged from the chair, falling to the ground on limbs that weren’t ready to support my body yet. Ivy was beside me in an instant. She knelt next to me, her hands on my shoulders.
“You’re the kid,” she said. “I’m the adult.”
You’re my kid. She didn’t say it this time, but I heard it all the same. I saw it in her eyes.
“I love you, Tessie. When you get out of here, go to Adam. He’ll take care of you, okay? Bodie, too.”
That sounded too much like good-bye.
“You do what they say,” Ivy told me. “Exactly what they say.”
“I’m not leaving you here.” My eyes stung with tears. My face was warm with them. Breathing hurt. Looking at her hurt.
“I’m sorry,” Ivy told me. “About everything. I’m sorry for never being what you needed. I’m sorry for doing it all wrong. I’m sorry for lying to you, and I’m sorry for telling you the way I did. I’m so sorry, baby, and I love you, and you are leaving.”
She’d never called me baby before.
No. This wasn’t happening. I wasn’t leaving. She wasn’t crying. I wasn’t crying. This wasn’t—