The Fixer

by HelenKay Dimon

  “This is your last chance to duck out.”

  He sat back in the chair again. “I’m not exactly the type to go into hiding.”

  “I’m familiar with your private life, but I’ll ignore that comment anyway.”

  He was too busy staring at the door to respond. “I’m going to regret this.”

  “True, but it will make my life less difficult.” She moved the mug around on her desk.

  There it was. The small show of concern. The senator didn’t give much away, but sometimes her voice would rise or she’d move around too much. The fact she wasn’t as sure that this was a good idea as she was saying shifted control back to him. “I’m also going to remember this moment the next time you come asking for a favor.”

  “That’s the great thing about you. You won’t.” Her fingers traced the inside of the mug’s handle. “See, I know you and the only thing bigger than your badass reputation is your sense of loyalty.”

  He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. “You’re pushing the boundaries.”

  “How do you think I got where I am today?”

  Hard work, discipline. Brains. “As you just pointed out, I helped you.”

  “Very true. Now, let me help resolve this situation.”

  CHAPTER 5

  The door opened a fraction and Sheila motioned with her hand. “Emery, please come in.”

  Emery took two steps and her gaze flew to him. She stopped. “You.”

  “Me.” Tension chocked the room. The awareness hit him with the force of a brutal punch. Something about her called to him. She wore gray dress pants and a silky-looking blouse, but her cheeks flushed and her eyes flashed with fire.

  “This is the guy.” She pointed at him as she moved closer.

  “The creepy one?” Sheila asked.

  “Okay.” He’d just about reached his limit on that view. “Maybe we could use the word mysterious?”

  “Okay, Brian,” Emery snapped back in a sarcastic tone. “Is that even your real name?”

  Never mind that he had a reason to use the fake name and that she was the one stalking him. “Since I only plan to be here for a few minutes, you should use your time wisely and ask only the questions you really need to ask.”

  She stood there, hovering by his chair with her hands balled into fists at her sides. “I see the menacing thing you do is still in place.”

  “You’re down to four minutes.” He had no idea if any time had passed, but he glanced down at his watch to make his point.

  Her shoulders fell as her mouth dropped open. “Who are you?”

  Wrong question. “Let’s do it this way. Why do you want to talk to Wren?”

  Emery looked at the senator, who nodded and gestured for Emery to take the seat next to him. “Go ahead.”

  Emery hesitated on both. “I’m just supposed to trust him?”

  Sheila nodded. “Yes.”

  That level of unconditional trust made Wren happier than he wanted to admit. “See?”

  When no one said anything else, Emery dragged the chair another foot away from his and sat down. “Fine.” She kept her attention on the senator. “I believe he knows something about Tiffany Younger.”

  “Who?” He actually had no clue who that was. He searched his memory for any recollection and came up empty. Since he rarely forgot a name or a number, that meant she’d been hunting for the wrong man the entire time. He felt a kick of regret at the thought.

  “Tiffany is my cousin.”

  He still had no idea what that had to do with him. “Okay.”

  Emery’s eyebrow lifted. “She’s missing.”

  Now she had his attention again. He knew a lot about this subject. Too much. “From the DC area?”

  Emery nodded. “It happened thirteen years ago.”

  The timing didn’t make sense, but at least it explained why the case wasn’t on his radar. “And you’re talking about it now?”

  “She’s still missing.”

  “Fair enough.” That drive for answers, the need for completion, he totally understood that. The not knowing didn’t ease with time. It compounded. The doubts lingered. The sense of security never came back. But none of that explained what this had to do with him. “You think Wren has some connection to this woman?”

  She finally looked at him. Hit him full-on with those big eyes and that haunted expression. “I think he abducted her.”

  The air punched out of him. “What?”

  She waved her hand in front of her face as if trying to wave the words away. “You heard me.”

  “You’re confused.” She also was dead fucking wrong.

  “Your boss is involved or he knows who took Tiffany. Either way, he is not innocent in this.” Emery crossed her arms in front of her. “Sorry to spring that hard truth on you, but there it is.”

  The accusation sat there. Wren weighed her words and tried to figure out how she could have gotten this information so wrong. He knew all about her job. She poured through missing-persons files all day long. She directed experts on age progression work on missing children who would now be teens. Honorable work. Difficult work.

  Scrolling through the mounds of intel Garrett had collected took a toll. Wren remembered every photo even though he tried not to focus too long on any. He’d forced his mind to remain still and not slip into old memories as he waded through the information because he knew all too well about the grief behind all those posters and pleas to find missing loved ones.

  The idea of him being a perpetrator was as big a misfire as Emery could have made. If she only knew . . . but she couldn’t.

  He didn’t rush to defend himself, though the temptation hovered right there. His heartbeat kicked up and the revving started inside him. “Where did you get Wren’s name and how are you tying it to something that happened years ago?”

  “Tiffany’s father kept files. Boxes and boxes of information he’d collected on the abduction.” Emery’s white-knuckle grip on the armrests of the chair eased as she looked back and forth between him and the senator. “When he died, I got them.”

  “Got them?” Wren doubted they just fell into her car.

  She shook her head. “That’s not important.”

  “I sense it is, but go on.” Every bit he learned about her proved just how resourceful she was. How dedicated. If she weren’t throwing around wild and baseless accusations he might have taken a minute to be impressed. Instead, he waited for more intel.

  “There is a notation about this Wren and I’ve searched everything. It took me forever to figure out it was a person.” She leaned forward as she talked. With every word she became more passionate, more intense, as if she were desperate to win them over. “I don’t know if Wren is a first name or a last name, but I’ll figure it out unless you want to save me some time and just tell me.”

  Wren knew she was headed in the wrong direction, so he poked around in what could be the right one. “When did he die?”

  “Gavin Younger? Last year.”

  A wall. Wren hated those. Now for the tougher question. “And Tiffany is—”

  “She’s never been seen again. There are no other leads.”

  He could see Emery swallow. He rarely let emotion lead him, but in that moment her frustration hit him in a rush. Her need to find answers almost pulsed off her. “I’m sorry, Emery.”

  She shifted in her chair. “If that’s true, point me toward Wren.”

  “You have a bigger problem than identity.”

  She gave him one of those men-are-so-stupid sighs. “Do you ever just talk like a normal person?”

  The senator shrugged at him. “Hey, it’s a fair question.”

  Since he had no idea what they were talking about, he kept going. Focused on Emery and willed her to listen. “I fear your basic information is incorrect.”

  Emery’s eyes narrowed. “Which part?”

  At least she was listening. He took that as a good sign. “All of it.”

  Emery looked at th
e senator. “How is this helping?”

  “Brian knows Wren better than anyone else.”

  Emery’s gaze flipped back and forth between the senator and Wren. “Your name is really Brian.”

  Sheila nodded. “Brian Jacobs.”

  He felt like he was riding a runaway train. In another second or two the thing would careen and crash. He could feel it coming. Sense the trouble closing in, but not for the reason Emery or Sheila might think. No, they were heading for disaster because he hovered on the brink of doing something really fucking dumb. Something he never did.

  “But he’s not Wren. He can’t know what his boss was doing years ago.” Emery’s arms tightened around her middle. “Wren does pay his salary after all.”

  “I’m going to let Brian answer that one,” Sheila said, then looked at Wren.

  If he didn’t end this soon the tension building in the room would suffocate them. There was an obvious, easy way to handle this. An answer he could give about knowing Wren for a long time. About background checks and other garbage that should throw Emery off. But it wouldn’t work for long. She was not one to be sidetracked.

  He’d met people like her before. All of them in a business context and all insisting they could only deal directly with Wren on a deal. In the role of Brian, he pushed back. He should do that here. Of course. That’s what made sense. That’s what would preserve his image and the ruse and . . . what had Sheila called it? The curtain.

  But he wasn’t a man who let his life be limited by what he should do.

  “Wren has never heard of Tiffany Younger.” He said the words with a bit more bite in his voice than he intended.

  Emery frowned at him. “And you know this because . . . ?”

  It was time to lie or go all in. “I do.”

  She frowned. “But how?”

  “I’m him.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Emery jumped up from the chair. With that news it was a wonder she didn’t leap right out the window. All she could do was stare at the man who sat there as if he hadn’t just spilled one of the biggest secrets in the DC metro area.

  The senator whistled. “I did not see that coming.”

  Brian or Wren or whatever his name was just shook his head. “Me either.”

  “What is this?” She couldn’t form a more coherent sentence, so she went with that one.

  He had the nerve to hold his hand up, as if he were trying to soothe her. “Settle down.”

  That tone, all smooth and cool, called out to her to punch him. She couldn’t figure out if he meant to be condescending or that was just his natural state. To be fair, she couldn’t figure out a lot of things because she could barely think.

  She’d memorized those files. She saw the word Wren written in her uncle’s heavy scrawl almost every time she closed her eyes. And now . . . this.

  “Don’t tell me to . . .” She couldn’t even finish the sentence over the frantic heartbeat thundering in her chest. She glanced at the one person in the room who might explain all of this. “Senator?”

  “It’s okay.” The senator shot her a pained expression. A mix of sympathy and a wince. “Emery, you don’t need to panic.”

  “You just told me his name was Brian.” She searched her mind for the last name the senator dropped, but her brain cells refused to function. She hoped to kick it out later because she’d need it when she searched. And she would be doing a search.

  The senator shrugged. “It usually is.”

  “Emery,” he said with a booming voice. “I am Wren. Not many people know that, and we’ll have a serious discussion about discretion and the importance of you keeping this secret, but I assure you that’s my name.”

  Her brain clicked into action again. “And I’m supposed to believe you.”

  “I promise you it’s fine,” the senator said.

  “How can you say that?” Emery felt the exact opposite of fine. Her pulse raced and the room started spinning. She had to focus on the senator’s face to keep from grabbing on to the edge of the desk or falling down.

  “I’ve known him for years.” Some of the stiffness left the senator’s shoulders. “And there are guards everywhere in this place. He wouldn’t touch you, but even if he wanted to he can’t.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he said.

  “You’re Wren.” Emery held on to the back of the chair she just abandoned. Dug her fingers into the leather. Willed her brain to catch up with the discussion so she wouldn’t feel as if she were trapped in a maze.

  “Yes.” That’s it. No explanation. Nothing.

  “You are actually him.” She needed to repeat it to make it sink in.

  His eyebrow lifted. “Still, yes.”

  “I’m supposed to believe some mysterious guy whose name scares the crap out of everyone in power in this town just walked into a coffee shop and had a chat with me yesterday.” But a part of her had to admit it made sense. He’d studied her, assessed every word. She wrote the whole strange scene off as something he was ordered to do and report back to the real Wren. Now she knew better.

  The senator’s chair creaked as she leaned back. “We’re all confused about that part of the story.”

  He nodded as he sat down in the chair next to her. “Out of character, I agree.”

  “I assure you, Emery. This is him,” the senator said, talking right over him.

  Emery had so many questions. The basic ones and the ones guaranteed to get a reaction. She’d been thinking about him, building a picture in her mind. He didn’t fit her image at all. She’d expected an older man. Someone she would look at and be able to tell if he hurt Tiffany. Not a logical assumption, of course, but she had to believe the evilness would ooze out of someone who grabbed a teen girl right off the sidewalk in broad daylight.

  Instead of getting clarity, she got young and objectively hot in a brooding, possibly dangerous way. Not her type at all and certainly not someone she could read. That left her exactly where she started when she walked into the room fifteen minutes ago. But she could ask questions. The senator’s presence might actually convince this guy to answer a few.

  “Is Wren a last name or a first name?” When her hands started to cramp from her tight grip on the chair, Emery eased her fingers open. She didn’t let go because she needed something to do with her fingers. It was either hug the chair or wrap them around his throat. Both options sounded good to her right now.

  He shook his head. “Not important.”

  Her palms slid off the chair. “How can you—”

  “Listen to me.” He shifted, not far, but enough for the room to close in a bit. “I don’t know this Tiffany and I can promise you that I’ve never kidnapped anyone . . . well, not a young girl and not in the way you suggest.”

  The spinning in her head morphed into a wild swing. She was two seconds from throwing up. “What kind of answer is that?”

  “An honest one.”

  “Which is stranger that you can imagine.” The senator’s voice sounded more stern this time. “Emery, please sit down.”

  “I trusted you.” Emery tried to keep the pleading out of her voice but a thin thread slipped in.

  “Yes, and I arranged a meeting between you and Wren, just as you asked.”

  Emery hated to admit that was true.

  “Right.” Wren shot the senator an undecipherable look. “And we’ll discuss that decision later.”

  Despite the energy pinging around the room, the senator seemed to find a reason to smile. “You two have something in common.”

  Emery bit back a snort. “Hardly.”

  “What could that possibly be?” he asked at the same time.

  “You are the one who matched my friend’s missing son to a John Doe.” She pointed first at Emery then to him. “Wren is the one who found his murderer.”

  Emery remembered every fact of the case. A college freshman killed by a fellow student after a bar fight gone terribly wrong. The kid drove for miles, probably days, to hide i
t. A horrible situation, but one where she connected the dots that led the police in one state to identify the body of what was thought to be a young homeless man found in another.

  Nothing about the case pointed to a man named Wren or a millionaire with a thing for black suits. Still, hearing he played a role made her skeptical of all of it. “Are you sure he didn’t do it?”

  “Is there anyone you don’t think I’ve killed?” His tone barely changed after being accused of a vicious crime.

  The lightness touched off her temper. Sent it spiking. “Maybe. I can’t rule you out since I don’t know you.”

  “She has you there,” the senator said.

  Emery pulled the chair back and sat down facing him. “Are you supposed to be some sort of private investigator?”

  He frowned. “Definitely not.”

  Before she could fire off another question, the senator stepped in. “He fixes things.”

  That didn’t explain anything. Emery started to wonder if everyone was talking in code. “Like clogged sinks?”

  “More like he makes the problems of companies and government, and sometimes private citizens, go away,” the senator said.

  Emery looked at Wren. For whatever reason, he was letting the senator do most of the talking. That had to be on purpose and he must have a reason because he struck her as a guy who insisted on being in control.

  She wanted him to start talking. “That’s an actual job?”

  He nodded. “A very lucrative one, yes.”

  Of course it was. He practically dripped of money. “That explains the fancy suit.”

  He glanced down at his lap. “It’s black.”

  The same color as the one he wore yesterday. Today’s tie was a slightly different shade and had a pattern. She guessed the suit was the second of fifty identical ones he had hanging in his closet. This guy just looked like the type to color code his clothes and line them up with an inch between each hanger.

  For some reason that thought made her even more cranky. “It probably cost more than my car.”

  He didn’t break eye contact. “I guess that depends on what you drive.”