The Fixer (The Fixer #1)(80)

“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.

Ivy talks to the Secret Service about Vivvie’s father. Vivvie’s father is immediately taken out of the picture. I saw the connection with hindsight. Ivy must have seen it from the beginning.

“She suspected it was a Secret Service agent, and she didn’t tell the president?” I asked.

“She didn’t tell the president because she suspected it was a Secret Service agent,” Adam replied. “The president is a difficult man to get alone, and even if she managed to pass the message along in private, she was fairly certain that the person we were looking for knew that we were digging. If Ivy met with the president and his behavior changed at all . . .” Adam shook his head. “That wasn’t a risk Ivy was willing to take.”

“What about the pardon? You weren’t surprised when I said Kostas was the one who took me, and you weren’t surprised when I said he asked for a pardon.”

Adam and Bodie were silent.

“A pardon for who? For what?” As the questions left my mouth, I became more and more certain that they knew the answers.

“He took me,” I said lowly. “Ivy is my—she’s my family, and he has her.” I felt like my body might start shaking, but my voice was steady, fierce. Like Ivy’s. “You don’t get to keep me out of this,” I said.

After a moment, Adam stood and left the room. When he came back, he had a thick file in his hand. “Ivy flew down to Arizona to look for a connection between Judge Pierce and someone in the Secret Service—or the intelligence community. She came back with detailed information about Pierce’s docket. Cases he’d heard. Cases he was scheduled to hear. Appeals.”

“She found a connection?” I knew, even as I asked the question, that the answer was yes. She was Ivy Kendrick. Of course she found the connection.

Adam handed me the file. “It’s a death penalty case. Defendant was nineteen when the crime was committed, with a history of traumatic brain injury. There’s a question about whether he was mentally competent to stand trial at all.”

I opened the file. The defendant’s name didn’t ring any bells, but when I saw his picture, my breath caught in my throat. The eyes. The set of his features.

“Kostas?” I asked.

“His son,” Bodie confirmed. “From what we can tell, Kostas didn’t even know the kid existed until the mother came to him for help with legal fees.”

I thought of Kostas saying that Vivvie’s father had no honor. I thought of the way he’d spoken of people who killed for money, or for power. I’d wondered what he had killed for, and now I knew.

“He let me go,” I said, my throat tightening. “He wasn’t going to, but when Ivy told him I was her daughter—”

She’d asked him, one parent to another. And he’d let me go.

“Pierce was supposed to hear the son’s case?” I tried to focus on the file.

“Best as we can figure,” Bodie told me, “Pierce offered to set aside the son’s sentence if Kostas helped assassinate the chief justice. Once the deed was done, the judge failed to fulfill his end of the bargain.”

Pierce reneged, and Kostas killed him. I felt sick.

“Ivy said she had a program.” I thought of the promises she had made. “She said that if Kostas held her captive, the president might bargain.”

“He might,” Adam said after several seconds. What he didn’t say was: He also might not.

He has to, I thought. He has to. But we were talking about the president of the United States. He didn’t have to do anything.

“We need to find her.” I was back to that, back to the ticking clock and the certainty that if we didn’t find Ivy, she might not make it out of this alive.

“You need to get some sleep,” Adam corrected. He stood and walked over to me, setting a hand on my shoulder. “The president has been filled in on the situation. He wants to find Ivy as badly as we do. Everyone who could be looking for her is looking for her.”

At that, Bodie nodded at Adam and took his leave.

“Aren’t you going, too?” I asked Adam. I could accept that there might not be anything I could do. I didn’t like it. I certainly wouldn’t be able to sleep. But I could accept that a sixteen-year-old girl probably wasn’t as qualified to look for Ivy as the people who were actually looking for her.