That was the moment when I started wondering what else was in his bag. I started entertaining the possibility that he might not kill me immediately. He might hurt me first.
A finger. An ear. Would he send pieces of me to Ivy? What was in those syringes? Would he anesthetize me before sending her something to show he was serious? Would he put me down like a dog if it became clear that she couldn’t do the job?
I tensed against the bindings on my wrist. The plastic cut into my skin. I ignored the biting pain and struggled harder. Blood trickled down my wrists, warm and sticky against my skin.
Slick.
I let the pain roll over me. I felt it. I clung to it. I tried to pull out of the bindings, greased up with my own blood. I tried. I tried—
“Stop.” Kostas followed the order up by picking up one of the needles.
“No,” I said. “Please, no. I won’t try anything. I won’t—”
“It’s a sedative,” he told me. “To calm you down.”
I felt panic rising up inside me like bile in the back of my throat. I don’t want to be calm. I don’t want—
Footsteps sounded outside the door. My captor straightened and slipped the sedative into his back pocket, then picked up another syringe. This one was empty.
The sight of an empty syringe shouldn’t have made me shiver, but as he crossed the room to stand next to me, I felt like someone was sliding a shard of ice up my spine.
A female voice called out three words: “I came alone.”
Ivy. My heart jumped into my throat. Ivy’s here. She came. My arms tensed against the bindings. My body lurched forward of its own accord.
Kostas pressed the needle into my neck, into a vein. I hissed slightly. “Do not move,” he told me, his voice low.
I could feel my heart beating in my throat, pulsing against the sharp, uncompromising pressure of the needle.
“I didn’t tell anyone I was coming here,” Ivy kept talking as she came around the corner. She didn’t pause at the door, didn’t hesitate when she saw the man poised with a needle at my neck. “I can get you what you want, Damien.”
“That’s far enough,” Kostas told her.
I couldn’t move my head, couldn’t so much as lean toward her.
“I’m here,” Ivy said, her voice authoritative and calm. “We can all get what we want, but not if you don’t step away from the girl.”
“I get what I want,” Kostas replied, “or I press down on this.” He indicated the needle in his hands. “She will not survive an air bubble to the heart.”
In. Out. In. Out. I forced myself to breathe. He’s going to kill me.
“I’m not armed. No one knows I’m here. I came alone.” Ivy wasn’t looking at me—only at him. “You need to let her go, and then we can talk.”
I felt Kostas tense beside me. “That wasn’t the deal.” The Secret Service agent’s free hand slid to the far side of my neck, then tightened. I couldn’t twist away from the needle. I couldn’t move. “No talking,” he told Ivy. “You get me what I want, and you get your sister back.”
I could feel my heartbeat in my neck, tensing against my skin. I could feel it, pounding back against my captor’s hold.
“I can’t summon up a presidential pardon on a whim, Kostas,” Ivy said.
“You said you had what I wanted.”
Breathe in. Breathe out. In. Out. In—
“I said I could get you what you want. And I can. But first you have to let her go.”
A low, inhuman whine reached my ears. It took me a few seconds to realize that it was me.
“If I let her go,” Kostas bit out, “I have nothing to bargain with.”
He wants to let me go. He wants to, I thought, desperation twisting in my gut, but he won’t.
Ivy took a single step forward. “You’ll have me. The president won’t bargain for my sister’s life. But he might bargain for mine.”
I realized then what she was saying. My throat tightened, my arms tensing against the bindings so hard the pain should have brought tears to my eyes. “Ivy,” I said, my voice escaping my throat in a hoarse whisper. “No.”
I could picture her, that day on the tarmac. You’re my kid. Mine, Tess.
“You’re that valuable to him?” Kostas asked Ivy, his grip on my neck tightening slightly.
Don’t, Ivy. My mouth wouldn’t form the words. Don’t do this.
“Keeping me alive is that important to his administration.” Ivy’s voice never wavered. “In my line of work, it pays to have an insurance policy. I know where the bodies are buried. I know every skeleton in every closet. If I didn’t have some method of ensuring that it was to my clients’ benefit that I stay alive, eventually someone would decide that the only way to make sure their secrets stayed buried was to bury me, too.”
Stop it, Ivy. Stop talking. I willed her to listen, willed her to stop before it was too late, but she didn’t. She wouldn’t.
“If I go off the grid, a program is initiated, and all those secrets—everything I’ve learned, everything I know, everything I’ve buried—are released. Online. To the media.”
“You worked on the president’s election campaign,” Kostas said. “You’ve worked for him since.”
“I have.”