The Long Game (The Fixer #2)(70)

For some reason, Senza Nome had believed the kingmaker might have some level of expertise in the kind of money transfers that couldn’t be traced.

“That would be a risk,” Keyes said. “It might mean opening myself up to scrutiny I would rather avoid.”

I didn’t ask him to do this for me. I didn’t say please. The kingmaker would have been the first one to tell me: A Keyes doesn’t beg.

“Does it bother you at all,” Adam asked his father, his voice carefully, dangerously neutral, “to think of someone else’s child in danger?”

I studied the old man’s face in response to that question. It bothers him more than he wants to admit.

“You’ll do it?” I asked quietly.

He stood. “I will.” He looked at Ivy. “When it comes to getting the vice president to release a known terrorist, however,” he continued, “you’re on your own.”

Keyes let himself out of the conference room, and twenty seconds later, I heard him let himself out the front door.

“What aren’t you telling us, Tess?” Ivy’s question took me off guard, just as she’d meant it to.

Ivy Kendrick had a sixth sense for when she was only getting half of the story.

“They had another request,” I said. “For you.”

Still not the whole story. As much as I can give you. As much as you can know.

I kept those thoughts from my face as best I could, pushing back against the black hole of emotion rising up inside me—the desolation, the knife twist of guilt, the white-hot fear at the thing I couldn’t and wouldn’t tell her.

The thing they had asked—demanded—of me.

“They want your files,” I said, sticking to what I could tell Ivy. “The program that releases your client’s secrets if you go offline. They want it, they want your client list—they want everything.”

“How do they even know about the program?” Bodie asked.

My insides twisted as I tried not to think about the fact that Henry had known about the program.

They just asked for money at first. Then information.

Henry had asked me to access Ivy’s files.

Before that, on the day that someone had broken into Ivy’s office, Henry had volunteered to drop me off.

“Senza Nome has eyes and ears everywhere,” I said.

“You can’t give them the program,” Adam told Ivy softly. “If that information got out, it would be devastating. Dangerous. For this country and for you.”

Ivy wasn’t looking at Adam. She was looking at me.

“They have Vivvie,” I told her.

Ivy didn’t flinch, but I saw the moment my words landed.

“They have Henry.”

She didn’t know what Henry had done, what he was. She knew the Henry I’d known—and that boy was worth fighting for.

“There might be a version of my files that I could give them,” Ivy said. “Enough secrets for them to think it was the real thing, not enough to do more damage than I can fix.”

Adam clamped his jaw down in a way that told me he wasn’t happy with the idea of giving the terrorists anything. My stomach twisted for a different reason.

“Whatever you give them,” I told Ivy, “make sure they think it’s real. Pretend it’s my life that depends on it.”

Ivy stood and came to stand behind me. She ran a hand lightly over my head, assuring herself that I was still here, that I was fine.

She’d do what I’d asked of her. I had to trust that—because ultimately, my life did depend on it.

That was what had made this homecoming so impossible. That was why it hurt to be here with Ivy, why I couldn’t bring myself to drink the last of my hot chocolate.

Of all of Mrs. Perkins’s demands, the last one was the only one I couldn’t tell Ivy.

After I’d done what they’d sent me out here to do, if I wanted my friends and classmates to live, I had to do one last thing.

I had to go back.





CHAPTER 56

Two hours and twenty-two minutes.

Ivy had gone to talk to the vice president. Adam had gotten an appointment with the secretary of state to see what wheels she could grease with respect to the release of foreign prisoners. Bodie was working on Ivy’s files. And I was waiting—for the kingmaker to make good on his word, for the next stage of the plan to go into effect.

The doorbell rang. Bodie answered it with a gun.

“I come in peace!” Asher announced on the front porch. “Your friendly neighborhood rogue, recently suspected of murder!”

Bodie lowered the gun.

“Tess,” he yelled, “you have company.”

As I came to stand face-to-face with Asher, I didn’t question the fact that in the midst of a terrorist attack, he was making jokes. Humor was Asher’s first, best, and last line of defense against the world.

I met his eyes, and that defense crumbled. Even Asher couldn’t manage a smile now.

“Emilia saved me,” I told him. I was aware, on some level, that my face was wet, but it took me longer to realize that I was crying. I told Emilia’s twin about the way she’d walked out into the line of fire, her head held high.

“It would take more than mere terrorists,” Asher said, “to keep my sister down.” He choked slightly on the words but kept talking. “I think we both know she’s probably composing a college essay about the whole experience in her head as we speak.”