The Long Game (The Fixer #2)(80)

Not Henry.

Traitor—betrayer—friend—

Please, not Henry.

His blood was on my hands. My fingers frantically searched for a bullet hole, combing his back, the weight of his body in my arms.

“Up!” one of the guards yelled at me. “Get up!”

“Or,” a voice said behind him, “you could put your weapon down.”

Priya Bharani pressed a gun to the back of his head.

The plan is working, I thought dully. We’d taken our chances that the snipers’ attention would be on the FBI and securing the perimeter, not on the “body” killed within ten feet of the Hardwicke door. Priya was a trained operative. She could move quickly and silently. The plan is working. This was the plan. I should have felt a rush of victory. Relief.

I felt numb.

The guard lowered his weapon. Holding Henry, his blood thick on my fingers, I tried to stop the bleeding and took in the sight beyond us.

Mrs. Perkins was on the ground. There was a tiny, perfect bullet hole in the side of her head. Priya’s handiwork, thanks to my distraction. Daniela had taken out one of the guards. She currently held another at gunpoint.

That just left one guard, and Dr. Clark.

The sole remaining guard trained his gun on the dead woman who’d appeared in front of him. He wouldn’t make the mistake of underestimating Priya twice.

“Before you pull the trigger,” Daniela told him lightly, “you might consider the fact that by now, that twenty million dollars has been transferred again—into one of my accounts.” She smiled. “Were you hoping to get paid for this job?”

“You—” Dr. Clark couldn’t get out more than a single word. She looked from Daniela to Priya.

“It was our understanding,” Priya told Dr. Clark, “that what your colleague wanted was a very public show. So we gave you one.”

The knife sliding across Priya’s neck. The way she’d crumpled to the ground. The blood pooling around her wasn’t hers. The blood on the knife wasn’t hers.

It wasn’t even blood.

I’d been told such sleight of hand wasn’t hard, when the act was to be observed from a distance. I’d been told that people paid attention to threats, not bodies.

I’d known the plan. I’d come up with the plan. And still, it shocked me to see Priya standing there. She’d played her part well.

The blood.

The blood on the pavement hadn’t been Priya’s—but the blood on my hands was Henry’s.

“Can you get us out of here?” the mercenary asked Daniela, his gun still trained on Vivvie’s aunt.

“I have an exit strategy.” Daniela’s lips curved up slightly. “It will require some . . . sacrifices,” she said. “Are all the men here loyal to you?”

Are you loyal to all the men here? That was what Daniela was really asking.

The mercenary stared at her for a moment. “No.”

“Well, then,” Daniela said, “perhaps what I’ll need from you won’t be so much of a sacrifice after all.”

There was a beat of silence and then the mercenary lowered his gun. “I believe I speak for the men on my team,” he told her, “when I say that we would like to be paid.”

“Congratulations.” Daniela lowered her own weapon, her eyes alight. “You now officially work for me.”





CHAPTER 63

The United States did not negotiate with terrorists. Now that Daniela had seized Hardwicke, that left her attempting to come to terms with someone else.

“You’re fine?” Ivy asked me, her voice shaking on the other end of the phone line.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You’re . . .”

“I’m fine.”

I heard Ivy suck in a breath. Even with a phone line between us, I could practically see her summoning up her composure with an uncanny level of emotional control. “You’re grounded until you’re forty.”

“We’re willing to accept those terms,” I retorted, exerting the same control of my emotions that she’d shown over hers. “All you have to do is provide transport.”

Across the table from me, Daniela tilted her head to the side, considering the phone, which I’d set to speaker.

It’s not over, Ivy. I willed her to see that. It won’t be over until we come to terms.

Daniela had taken control of Hardwicke. She was amenable to finding a peaceful solution—but that peaceful solution could not entail her going back into federal custody. The woman sitting across from me hadn’t engineered this situation. She hadn’t escalated it. But she held the reins now, and she wouldn’t hand them over until she was sure that it was in her best interest to do so.

Our prior alliance could only carry this so far.

“Transport?” Ivy repeated, after an elongated silence. “The whole world is watching. This doesn’t end with a cease-fire. This ends with a surrender. It has to.”

“A student was shot,” I said, feeling a bit like I was standing outside my body, watching myself dispassionately say those words. “He needs medical attention, Ivy.”

There was silence on Ivy’s end of the line.

“Henry needs medical attention,” I repeated, my grip on my emotions slipping finger by finger when I said Henry’s name. Please, Ivy. You’re supposed to be a miracle worker. Give me my miracle, just this once. “Daniela,” I continued, my voice remarkably steady, “needs safe transport out of the country for herself and a handful of men.”