The Fixer

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.”