4. IVY
4
IVY
Daniel? So, it was true, then. My mom’s ex, Steve, did lie about his name, just like Detective Mitchell suspected, and it was actually Daniel ?
They dated for two years! Who lies about their real name for two freaking years?
Married men maybe. When Mom discovered he was married, did she know he’d lied about his name, too?
Oh my God.
A cascade of revelations began to weave their way through my chaotic thoughts. The first of which was…
“You’re Bob,” I realized. “It was you all along.” The guy who’d catfished me online, having enough personal knowledge about my father and my desperate need to get money for my Grams’s medical care, and lured me to that parking garage with the intent of killing me.
I swear, the musty air grew a hell of a lot thicker, and that dim light from the single overhead fluorescent decided now was the perfect time to flicker. Like I needed the warning that this situation was about to be filed in the folder labeled Royally Screwed .
And because the hairs on my arms weren’t raised enough from the chill and nerves, my eyes decided to sweep over the concrete floor. More specifically, the mosaics of stains on the surface—a twisted artwork of darks and lights that spoke of the horrors unleashed down here, erased with industrial cleaners.
Concealing the truth of what happened in this room.
Who the hell was Steve? I mean, Daniel. And why did the name Daniel sound so familiar? My mind raced, trying to figure out what was going on.
And then it hit me.
Daniel . That was the name of Grayson’s boss, a leader in the CIA—the very organization who’d ordered my death.
So, my mom’s ex-boyfriend was actually CIA?
Even if he was…
“Why?” I asked with a tremble to my voice. “Why did you try to kill me?”
Or more urgently, why was he currently trying to kill me? Again .
And didn’t the CIA target guilty people? Not innocent civilians? I suppose he could believe the evidence against me was real, but I’d been targeted before that evidence came to light.
At least…I thought so. Maybe the evidence was in play all along? But he’d been dating Mom for two years. Surely, he, a CIA operative, would know I was actually innocent, would he not?
Daniel walked to the far side of the room and spoke to one of my captors, who had been in the back of the van with me, then turned his head over his shoulder and said with a little too much glee, “Romantically?”
No.
“I never said Grayson and I were in a relationship,” I insisted.
Daniel put his hands in his pockets and fixed his gaze with mine as he walked back over. “You don’t have to; it’s written all over your face.”
“Leave Grayson out of this.”
He tsked. “Well, I can’t very well do that now, can I?”
I swallowed, a fresh wave of dread rocketing through my limbs.
You need to find a way to escape, Ivy.
I pulled on my handcuffs. The left one dug into my wrist hard enough to scrape the bone, but my right hand, it was looser.
Could I…
I pulled slightly, the handcuff inching up above my hand a millimeter. I’d have to take this slow and steady to not get caught, but maybe I could get my wrist out and make a run for it. The only way to do that, though, was to either hope the men would leave me alone—which, based on their body language, they had no intention of doing—or keep Daniel talking.
“Why?” Tears flowed down my cheeks, my jaw trembling. I didn’t even try to hide it, either. It was better to make him think I was too emotionally devastated to fight back. “Why did you try and kill me?”
Daniel looked at his watch casually, then mumbled to his soldiers, “Give us a few minutes.”
They marched up the staircase and left me alone with a man my mom had once said she wanted to marry, who’d now tried to kill me—let me count the times.
The parking garage was attempt number one. Number two was when he sent Grayson to end me—I’d come back to that bucket of questions in a minute—and when that didn’t work, he’d sent that team to snatch me from Hunter’s place for time number three. All of it for what goddamned motive?
“Is this revenge?” I asked.
Daniel looked at me with ambivalence. “Tell me you’re not that naive, Ivy.”
How dare he stand there and act like I was a child for not understanding his repeated attempts on my life.
My hand inched another fraction of a millimeter through the cuff, the skin peeling off with a burn.
“When Mom found out you were married,” I continued. “Is that why you did this? To get back at her?” I couldn’t remember—had Mom broken up with him or the other way around? Either way, that didn’t add up. I’d been catfished long before that. The catfishing and the trap for my death were set in motion a while ago.
“You should have just stopped asking questions,” he chided, squatting in front of me again. “Didn’t you ever hear the expression, curiosity killed the cat ?”
What questions? “I never asked anything about your relationship with my mom, because I didn’t give a crap about your relationship with her.”
“That’s not true; you had a big problem with it.”
Was he seriously taking satisfaction in that fact?
“So, this is about revenge,” I snarled.
“This has nothing to do with revenge against your mom.”
“The handcuffs chaining me to this pole disagree.”
He pursed his lips.
Poor little killer, growing impatient.
But at least the handcuff was approaching the widest part of my hand now. If I could just get it past this bone, I could make a run for it.
“This could’ve all been prevented,” he chided. “But you had to keep poking around about your father’s death.”
The muscles around my lungs constricted, threatening to cut off all my air.
My father committed suicide. It was tragic, but it had been investigated thoroughly by detectives and ruled a suicide. Not only did all the evidence support it—with the gun at his side, no other fingerprints on it, the one bullet to the temple—but also my father had been making comments leading up to his death, where he seemed to be saying goodbye to his family members.
Deep down, I’d always questioned it, but I was written off as a heartbroken daughter, unable to accept he’d chosen to leave me.
But looking at Daniel now, that doubt exploded into an all-out realization.
Dad hadn’t killed himself after all…
“ You killed him.” The bile in my throat threatened to spew everywhere, and when Daniel didn’t deny it, my disorganized thoughts crashed into each other, trying to replay everything I thought I knew to see if it fit into this new sinister revelation.
First and foremost, Dad had been murdered.
I only had a second to hold on to that before my heart realized the real reason he was no longer with me. A motive as heartbreaking as it was old-fashioned and simple.
“This was nothing more than a love triangle,” I realized. “That’s why my dad is dead!”
Daniel’s chest vibrated with laughter, and he had the cruelty to smile. “You still don’t get it, do you?”
I clenched my jaw, trying to swallow back my tears. How could he be so flippant about my father’s death? So many questions started to crash together, but at the moment, I desperately needed to understand why. If it wasn’t because Steve/Daniel loved Mom and worried Dad would fight for her or win her back, then why?
“Enlighten me.”
“Your father wasn’t the man you thought he was.”
“If you say so.”
This man had snuffed out Dad’s life, and now he had the audacity to stand before me and attempt to tarnish the memory of the honorable, life-saving man who’d raised me. Rage and grief battled within me, each fighting for dominance. I wanted to scream, to lash out, but shock held me in place, my mind reeling as it tried to reconcile what the hell was happening.
If the CIA had a hand in my father’s death, then they must’ve thought my father was a dangerous criminal, too. Why?
“You’re just like him,” he snarled. “ He wouldn’t shut his mouth, either, and look where it got him.”
A cold shiver raced through me, settling like ice in my gut. Dad wouldn’t shut his mouth ?
That didn’t sound like a reason the CIA would eliminate someone. It sounded more like…like Daniel was trying to cover someone’s ass. Based on his creepy behavior, probably his own.
Which meant Dad’s death wasn’t a CIA operation; it was cold-blooded murder. I pushed aside the nausea that extra revelation created and wondered, Why? Why would Daniel, a CIA leader who would undoubtedly be expected to follow the law, participate in something like that?
“What happened, Daniel? Did he stumble onto you kidnapping another woman like this? Had to eliminate the witness?”
“I’m in the CIA. I’m not a lowlife criminal.”
“The CIA doesn’t eliminate people for running their mouth.”
His shoulders pulled back, making him look as if he was bracing for a fight.
“Your father,” he spat, “was warned. When he stumbled onto those weapons, he was warned to keep his mouth shut.”
Weapons? “What the hell are you talking about?”
And what did he mean, keep his mouth shut ? If Dad was killed for talking , that was proof to me that his death was dirty. And it was becoming clear that the man at the center of it was Daniel.
“How do you think they’re getting all those guns into the city undetected?” he asked.
The condescension in his tone pissed me off. This was my father’s killer, and he was chiding me for not knowing how the logistics behind a weapon smuggling ring worked.
“What vehicles can move around the city without being stopped? Ever? What can race through the city, from one location to the next, without risk of police interference? See, I’m not sure if you know this.” He stood, glancing at his watch— again —while his steps echoed in the cold concrete tomb. “But there are certain neighborhoods where it is quite difficult to move weapons in and out. They’re closely watched, and standard vehicles often fall prey to being searched. But you know what doesn’t get searched?” He paused his steps. “A fire truck.”
“Dad found weapons hidden,” I whispered in shock, more to myself than to him.
The truth settled over me like a shroud, thick and suffocating, while my mind reeled, trying to process the implications. A dull ache spread through my chest, radiating outward as the pieces fell into place. Dad had uncovered something he was never meant to see—a dangerous secret that must’ve cost him everything.
“And again, he was warned. But did he listen? No. He went to police. As you can imagine, that created quite a wrinkle for the leader of that weapons ring. In retaliation, they attempted to abduct the one person they knew he’d do anything to protect.”
My lungs clenched as if the air had been sucked from the room. A memory from when I was thirteen years old. A car screeching to a stop. Screaming and shoving. A red scar on a forearm.
“They tried to take me.” My voice was barely above a whisper.
“That shut him up,” Daniel said. “For a while, at least. But wouldn’t you know it? Eventually, the trucks stopped getting searched. Police moved on to other cases, and the guys came back. Moving more weapons, and now, they added drugs to the mix. Your father and his damn morality…” Daniel shook his head. “If he’d have just kept his mouth shut, he’d still be alive. But what does he go and do?”
Daniel looked down at me, probably the same way he looked down on my father.
“Becomes an informant to the FBI,” Daniel said.
If that was true, wouldn’t the Feds have shared that information with local police? Especially when I kept bugging Detective Mitchell? He would have told me if he knew, right? Yes. I was fairly confident he would have, so maybe the FBI withheld it, thinking that kind of intelligence could endanger an informant’s family. Or endanger their case.
Jesus . I thought back to how stressed my father had been in the time leading up to his death. No wonder. He uncovered a massive weapons and drug ring running through his city, with no way out.
“Is that why you dated my mother? To keep an eye on my father?”
Daniel looked at his watch again. “Did he honestly think Vosch wouldn’t keep a close eye on him?”
“That’s a yes,” I said. That’s why he love-bombed my mom so strongly, she thought he was her soulmate when, in reality, he was a spy for Vosch. And then, “You killed him.”
“He got himself killed.”
“Is that what you tell yourself?” I asked. “That your hands are clean?”
“I’m not the one who sets the rules; I obey them.”
My handcuff moved to the bridge of my thumb knuckle.
“Why?” Why did Daniel get into bed with criminals? “Money?”
When his face darkened, I could see there was something more.
“You have a family,” I realized. A wife, at least, based on my mom’s shocking discovery. Probably kids, then, too. All of them would be vulnerable if Daniel didn’t comply with Vosch, wouldn’t they?
This opened another series of questions—like how long Daniel had been in bed with Vosch, among others—but right now, the more pressing question was, what would he do with me?
Kill me, obviously. He had already attempted it before, and this time, he wouldn’t have bothered explaining his motives unless he planned to finish the job.
But he hadn’t yet, and while I worked on my bindings, I needed to distract him with more questions.
“After I survived the parking garage, you sent Grayson to find out my identity,” I remembered. “Why? You already knew it.”
Again, Daniel looked like I was naive for not deducing the answer myself.
“It would’ve looked suspicious if I already knew who you were. Equally suspicious if I didn’t send someone to try to find out your identity.”
“And then you sent Grayson to kill me. That was a risky move, sending someone who’d recognize me.”
“It was supposed to be dark,” Daniel said.
“Now who’s being naive?”
“Grayson has always followed through with orders in the past.”
“You really thought that even if he recognized me, he would kill me without taking a second to confirm my guilt?”
Daniel’s jaw tightened. How disgusting that he looked offended by Grayson’s pushback.
That’s what his plans were, I realized. A two-part plan. Plan A: It was pitch-black, in the middle of the night, thus Grayson would hopefully not recognize it was me. Plan B: If he did notice, he’d still follow orders like the good loyal operative he was.
“You overestimated the trust he has in you,” I accused. “You thought he’d kill me anyway, and you could convince Grayson it was a clean kill and put it all behind you. But then…” I shook my head. “He refused, and you had to cover your tracks. You had to create evidence to prove to him I was guilty. But he still didn’t believe it, because there was one variable you never factored into your master plan.” I paused. “You never factored in that he’d grow to care about me.”
Ironic, that if Daniel had just killed me in a normal way, his plan wouldn’t have unraveled like this. The deeper the hole he dug for himself, the deeper and more sophisticated he had to become to cover his tracks. All in the name of murder.
Sure, there was the weapons ring he was hiding and his clear alliance with Vosch—both serious crimes. But the gravest offense? The one that started it all? Simple, cold-blooded murder of my father.
I bet he was regretting it right now, not simply shoving me into traffic or something.
I concealed my grimace as a handcuff scraped along my bone. Almost off now. Teetering on the edge.
“When Grayson didn’t follow your latest order …” I started. I had to admit, I took more pleasure in his frustration than I expected. But somehow, the hurt over my father’s death decided to wait patiently behind getting these answers. I nodded my chin toward the staircase. “You sent those guys in to get me. All because of what? I asked detectives if they found anything new about my dad’s death? The police think my dad’s death was a suicide. What difference did it make if I asked them questions?”
He squared his shoulders.
“Here’s what you probably didn’t know,” Daniel said. “Every time you went in to talk to the detective, he might’ve said to your face it was a straightforward suicide. But only because he lacked the cold, hard evidence to prove otherwise. He probably didn’t want to get relatives’ hopes up or cause unnecessary suffering should he be wrong. But every time you poked around, you know what he’d do after you left?”
I swallowed.
“He’d make more phone calls. Order more lab work. He’d move on to other cases while he waited, but you wouldn’t let your father’s case sink to the bottom of his pile. Every time you went in, you brought it right back up to the top.”
“So, my death was to conceal your other murder,” I said.
“I didn’t kill him,” Daniel repeated, annoyed.
“If you wanted me dead so bad, why didn’t you just kill me at Hunter’s place, then? Why bring me here?”
He studied his watch again. “You know, if you had just disappeared in that explosion, all of this could’ve been avoided.”
Finally, my knuckle was almost poised to slide completely off. I kept it there, the cold metal against my flesh dangling on the precipice of life and death, terrified that if I pulled it free, a clank would give me away. I needed him to look away, to give me a few seconds to get it off and run up those stairs and out that door.
“If I died in that explosion, you think police wouldn’t have investigated?”
“Certainly,” he said. “But your death would have been labeled collateral damage on a CIA mission.”
“Not if my loved ones kept pushing the police to investigate.”
“It was a risk,” he agreed. “But at least it would have given your mother a chance.”
I snapped my head back.
“My mother?”
“If you had been the victim of an unfortunate explosion, your mom might’ve come to accept that, eventually. But now, when you vanish, she’ll never stop asking questions. She’ll never stop pushing detectives.”
My stomach roiled.
My mom’s a loose end to him. A risk to his freedom.
Oh God.
That’s why he keeps looking at his watch. That’s why he took me alive.
To lure my mother.
And she’s about to die with me.