The Fixer

She pressed her lips to my forehead, then stood. She glanced at Kostas. “You’ll want to knock her out,” she said.

“Ivy, I—” I was going to tell her that I loved her, that I hated her, that I wasn’t leaving her, that I couldn’t, but for the second time in twenty-four hours, there was a pinch at my neck.

And everything went black.

CHAPTER 58

Something dripped onto my face. Liquid. Cold. My head tilted to one side. Another drop. Awareness hit me like a sledgehammer. My eyes flew open. The Secret Service agent. Ivy.

I scrambled backward, jamming the heels of my hands into the pavement. It took me a moment to register the fact that I was alone. Outside. Safe, I thought, choking on the realization.

Ivy wasn’t safe.

My cheeks were wet—with tears, with drizzling rain. It was dark out—nighttime. How long? I pushed myself to my feet, my heart thudding. How long was I out for?

Kostas had Ivy. And if the president didn’t give him what he wanted, he was going to kill her.

I stumbled out of the alley, pausing when I reached the street. Looking up, I could see the outline of a tall, thin building rising to a point in the distance. The Washington Monument. I was in DC.

Ivy’s not. He has her. Where does he have her? My brain wouldn’t slow down. It wouldn’t stop stacking questions, one on top of the other.

“Miss?”

I almost couldn’t hear the word over the cacophony in my head. Kostas has Ivy. She traded herself for me. I’m safe. Safe. Ivy’s not. He has Ivy—

“Miss.” A man reached out to grab my arm.

I jumped back, my hands held out in front of my body, a last line of defense against whatever might come. “Don’t.” The word that exited my mouth barely sounded human.

Calm down, I thought.

He has Ivy.

Calm down.

Have to find Adam. Have to find Bodie. He has Ivy.

Calm down.

“Are you all right?” the man asked.

I slammed the door on the rush of thoughts beating a rhythm against the inside of my skull. I took a deep breath, forcing myself to put together a coherent sentence. “Can I borrow your phone?”

Of the people I knew in DC, there was only one whose number I had memorized—Vivvie’s. I called. She answered. Words came out of my mouth—not the right ones, not enough to make sense—but somehow, she was able to tell her aunt where I was.

Her aunt was able to tell Adam.

And Adam came for me. As he ushered me into his car, I told him about Ivy, Kostas—all of it, in stilted sentences and streams of words that came too fast and blurred together. I told him everything, and when he tried to take me to the hospital, I said no. He must have decided that it wasn’t worth it to argue with me, because the doctor ended up coming to us.

Adam had a one-bedroom apartment, small and hyper-organized. After the doctor had checked me over, after I’d told Adam and then Bodie everything I knew—told them again and again until I had no more words left inside me, until there was nothing left to say—Adam steered me gently toward his bathroom. He turned on the shower, handed me a towel, and laid one of his USAF T-shirts and a pair of sweatpants out for me.

Then he left me alone.

As the shower steamed up behind me, I stood in front of the mirror. I was still wearing the cotton shift. My face was dirty. There was the beginning of a bruise on one side. I woke up in a room with concrete floors and no windows. Even now that there was no one left to tell, I couldn’t stop going over the facts. There was some kind of electrical wiring on the wall. I couldn’t stop hoping, somehow, that I’d remember something, some detail, no matter how tiny, that might tell me where Ivy was.

That might help us get her back.

Kostas is going to use Ivy to try to blackmail the president into pardoning someone. The surface of the mirror began to steam up, obscuring my face. I swiped my hand across it and stared at my reflection, like it might have the answers I was looking for.

Ivy’s eyes are brown, I thought. Mine had flecks of green, like moss amid the mud. Our faces had a similar shape to them. I had her lips, somebody else’s nose.

It doesn’t matter, I told myself. Dragging my eyes from my reflection, I undressed and stepped into the shower, letting the hot water beat against me. Get it together, Tess.

I didn’t have the luxury of falling apart. Not now. Ivy had told the rogue Secret Service agent that she had a program that started releasing her clients’ secrets if she went missing for forty-eight hours. I wasn’t sure if she’d been telling the truth or not, but either way, if the president didn’t agree to pardon somebody before that time period had elapsed, this situation was going to escalate.

I wanted to believe Kostas wouldn’t kill Ivy.

I wanted to believe that, but I didn’t.

I got out of the shower and slipped on the clothes Adam had left me. They dwarfed my body. I tied the sweatpants and doubled the waistband over, then made my way back out into the world.

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.