I held on—like a person dangling from the edge of a skyscraper, like a drowning man reaching for a hand to pull him to shore.
The press couldn’t get close. The Capitol loomed in the background. The SWAT team, the FBI . . . I didn’t know who else was there, trying to talk Ivy’s captor into releasing her, into not setting off the bomb.
If it had been just her, if it hadn’t been public, would they have just let her die? Would they have swept it under the rug, covered it up? It hurt to ask myself the question. It hurt even more to know that the answer was almost certainly yes.
“John!” the woman on the screen addressed the station’s news anchor excitedly. “Something is happening. Something is definitely happening.”
Far away, behind the blockade, there was movement. Guns were raised. A door was opening. I couldn’t make out the features on anyone’s face.
My phone buzzed, alerting me to arrival of a new text. It’s done. WK. William Keyes.
I stopped breathing. I stopped blinking. I stopped thinking. I stopped hoping.
All I could do was sit there as the reporter continued yelling at the camera, telling us that someone was coming out.
“We have confirmation that the hostage is female,” the reporter was saying. “I’m hearing unconfirmed reports that there’s a bomb strapped to her chest.”
I couldn’t see. I couldn’t tell what was happening. There was a flurry of movement on-screen.
“I don’t see her,” I said, wheezing the words out. “I don’t see her.”
If the others responded, I didn’t hear them. My ears rang. Suddenly, I was on my feet, but I didn’t remember standing.
“The hostage is safe,” the reporter said suddenly. “I repeat, John, we are hearing reports that the bomb has been disarmed and the hostage is safe.”
My body didn’t relax. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t risk believing what she was telling me—then the camera panned. It zoomed in, and just for a moment, I saw her. Ivy.
The shot was grainy. All I could make out was her hair, a hint of her features, but the way she moved, the way she stood—it was Ivy.
I sank back into the sofa. It’s done, the text had said. Kostas had gotten what he wanted. He’d let Ivy go. Not because of the president, or the hostage negotiators, or the SWAT team, or the FBI.
Because somehow he’d gotten word that his son had been pardoned.
Because of William Keyes.
Because of me.
“They’ve got her.” Vivvie said the words slowly, as if she didn’t quite believe them. “She’s okay.”
Part of me still didn’t believe it. Part of me wouldn’t believe it was really over until Ivy was here, with me.
“The hostage-taker is coming out,” the reporter said suddenly. “I repeat, the hostage-taker is coming out.”
I never saw Kostas take that first step out into the open, his hands up. The view was blocked from the cameras. I never saw him give himself up.
But I did hear the shot that rang out a second later.
I heard the screams, the chaos.
I heard confirmation that the hostage-taker was dead.
CHAPTER 64
The FBI—or the Secret Service or Homeland Security or the White House, I wasn’t really sure on the details—kept Ivy in seclusion for nearly twenty-four hours. They must have allowed her access to a computer, because her insurance policy didn’t rear its head, but they didn’t let her near a phone.
I knew this because I knew, in the pit of my stomach, that if she’d had a phone, she would have called me.
I got a call from Bodie instead. Ivy really was okay. Kostas really was dead—shot with an exploding round before anyone had a chance to see his face. The number of people who knew his real identity could be counted on two hands—and that was why they hadn’t released Ivy right away.
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.