Page 86 of The Fixer

My answer was short. I raised my gun and my chin. “You killed my father and you tried to kill me.”

“Eliza.” Niles raised his hands, that arrogance shifting to fear.

“But you’re right, Niles. There’s been too much death. And for what you did, death would be too easy.” I lowered my gun to my side. “I’m not going to kill you. I’m not going to let them kill you either. Because you deserve to rot in jail, the very place you killed my dad to keep out of.”

The color drained from Niles’s face, his sentence hitting him before he was tried. I turned to Jet, my back to Niles, and handed him the gun.

“Call Officer Rinaldi.”

Jet gave me a tight smile and a nod, then slid his phone out of his pocket.

“You’ve got no proof!” Niles tried, voice rising against the noise on the street.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Mateo said, grinning from the trunk of a car. He had his computer on his lap, and he turned it around so Niles could see the screen. The man’s voice came out of the speakers, tinny, but there was no mistaking it was him. “Thanks to Eliza’s lovely new necklace and the cameras I placed there, there, and there, we’ve got every last word of this on video. So, ya know, I’d say you’re kinda screwed.”

“Murder,” Queenie said, ticking off on her fingers. “Attempted murder. Admitting to hiring someone for murder. Embezzling. I’m sure we can find more.”

“No. No, no, no.” Niles shook his head and he turned in a circle, then spun back to look at me. “I won’t let you.”

With that, the man ran. Ran before anyone could pull a gun, climbing the wall before he could be stopped. He jumped, his body hovering in the air before it fell the five stories to the ground.

I didn’t want to see it. Didn’t want to know what he looked like, how he landed. Didn’t want that image stuck in my head. I pressed my face into Jet’s chest, the man holding me tight as if his grip alone could end all my pain.

But it couldn’t.

I’d lost my mother. My father.

And now, I’d lost the closest thing I had to family.

I had nothing left.

22

Eliza

“Hold on just a second.” I hoisted my box onto my hip and held my phone in the crook of my neck, juggling everything as I tried to unlock the door. I was tired. Sweaty.

I could use a good bath.

But I knew in the end, everything would work out.

I shoved the box to the side of the entryway, then turned and locked the door.

“You okay?” Brooke asked once I’d heaved out a breath.

“Yes, just… trying to get everything done.”

“How’d the meetings go?”

Hesitating, I turned my gaze to the city skyline beyond the windows. “They went okay. It’s been stressful, but I think I’m just going to have to sit back and let them work.”

I’d had daily meetings with the FBI, starting from the moment Niles’s body was scooped off the sidewalk outside his apartment building and hauled away to the morgue. I’d insisted Rinaldi call them in, and I handed over the thumb drive that had cost my father his life.

They were working as fast as they could, piecing through all the data that proved Niles’s crimes.

“I’m shutting down Westbrook and Murphy,” I told my friend through a tight throat. Swallowing hard, I pushed on, “Niles had his fingers in so many places he wasn’t supposed to be. So many people lost money so he could line his pockets. And now he’s not even here to face them.”

“Oh, Eliza,” Brooke started, but I needed to get everything off my chest.