Page 72 of The Fix

Six Months Later

Josephine Kiss stared out at the crashing waves below, a satisfied smile tilting her lips. She lay her head back on her chair and hummed a few bars of the fifth movement of Mahler’s second, The Resurrection Symphony , being piped through the speakers of her new home.

She thought of her brother, as she did sometimes when looking over this miraculous view, and pictured him in the small cell he currently occupied.

The family business, of course, had been dissolved, and Anton was awaiting trial for a vast array of crimes.

The bank accounts associated with the organization had all been seized, though they contained little.

The business, it seemed, had already been headed toward financial ruin.

The judge had considered Anton a flight risk, and bail had been denied. Posey was certain he’d never see the light of day. He’d spend the rest of his life wondering how someone so helpless had managed to turn the tables on him.

Posey had considered remaining in her family estate but decided to sell it after all and move to this lovely, airy home overlooking the sea. She’d spent the last four months outfitting it with every accessibility feature available and modifying where necessary.

Posey’s father would approve, she thought, of a fresh start.

She’d had many years to think about what he’d meant on his deathbed when he’d told her to dance when given the chance.

She’d concluded that perhaps it wasn’t only literal, as she’d first assumed.

And as a very literal woman, Posey had had to grapple with the concept for quite some time.

Posey had no real chance of literal dancing now anyway. But this, this new beginning, this freedom, to Posey, it felt like dancing. And she didn’t plan on stopping anytime soon.

She used the tongue-drive system on her chair to turn from the window, doing a quick turn one way and then the other as the music built to a triumphant climax.

This symphony had been her father’s favorite, and she loved it too. The piece was a slow—agonizingly slow perhaps—journey, but one well worth the stunning payoff.

Posey wheeled to her desk, set up with all the latest technology.

She owed Rex Lowe some data—he’d be pleased with what she’d found.

He’d called last fall and asked if she’d like to work with him and some friends who were opening a firm in Virginia.

“Legitimate,” he’d made sure to spell out.

“By the book.” Rex was well aware that she’d participated in the family business before her accident and remained the keeper of too many secrets to count.

If the police suspected as much, too, they’d decided not to attempt to prosecute a woman who’d had most of her life stolen already.

“Why me?” she’d asked Rex when he’d extended the offer.

“You’re asking why I’d want to work with a person who used a wheelchair and a voice memo pad to bring down a criminal enterprise from within?”

Posey had only laughed. She would keep it legal. For Rex. Her rescuer. The man who’d met and surpassed her every calculated hope and expectation. And Cami and Cyrus, who had started visiting her often. Her friends. And just the thought felt like more dancing. Friends! A rush inside. A twirl.

They’d been by just yesterday, and Cami—engagement ring sparkling on her finger—had updated Posey on Hollis Barclay.

Not that Posey needed an update, as she knew well what had recently become of Hollis.

But she’d loved listening to her friend’s recounting, nonetheless, and was spellbound by Cami’s obvious mixture of satisfaction and sympathy.

Hollis had stayed in the congressional race even after the live-television murder of his mother, and the resulting media frenzy.

Hitting the floor in the fetal position and howling unceasingly had been .

.. an understandable reaction, those still pulling for him had said.

Though admittedly, the optics were less than stellar.

But then the leak happened.

As it turned out, a security camera in the corridor where Hollis had gone to speak to Rex had captured Hollis’s tirade.

No one knew how the leak of that footage happened, or who was responsible.

But it certainly did cast Hollis in a new light. His reaction to his mother’s death was suddenly being viewed quite differently. Fair or unfair, the news cycle had its latest villain.

The media giveth and the media taketh away.

The exposé of Cami’s pregnancy and Hollis’s abandonment, followed by Cyrus’s kidnapping years later, was another media circus.

Many wondered at Hollis’s mother’s role, but reportedly, Seraphina Arnoult had pled guilty to Felicia Barclay’s murder and hadn’t uttered a word since.

Hollis’s own involvement in the actual crime was unclear, but the information revealed about him ignoring his son’s plea for help and the threats and ugly insults caught on a hot mic were enough for the voters of Virginia.

Hollis had lost his race by forty points and cried through most of his concession speech.

The photo of him with snot running down his chin was on the front page of every local paper.

His life was in shambles, his political future over.

The “leak” Posey had facilitated had nothing to do with the work she did with Rex, and so she didn’t consider it breaking her word.

And if Rex and Cami suspected it was Posey—after all, Cami had divulged the content of that conversation to her, and it was how Posey had known to hack the footage—they decided not to address it.

She’d calculated a 99 percent chance the video would begin a media feeding frenzy to Hollis Barclay’s misfortune and simply couldn’t resist such odds.

Spin, twirl, take a bow.

Posey sent the email Rex was awaiting and then pressed a button to call her caregiver in, a kind young woman who lived in the guesthouse just next door.

“Helmi, will you bring that and accompany me onto the deck?”

“Of course,” Helmi said, walking to the desk and picking up the box that Cyrus had brought for her. “What is it?”

“Wait until you see,” Posey said.

Helmi accompanied her through the double door and out into the crisp spring air.

She raised her face to the sun and felt the warmth on her skin.

Sometimes—every so often—Posey thought about Tatum Devore and the unanswerable question he’d once asked her. What sings to your soul?

Then ... so long ago ... Posey hadn’t had any idea how to answer, as there was no way to measure a soul nor the song it might hear.

But she was certain of its existence now. It needed no measurement or quantification. She simply knew it was , because Posey had lost her body, but her soul had remained. And her soul was not the part of her that calculated or solved—it was the part of her that fought .

The younger woman knelt down next to Posey and slowly opened the box.

A burst of butterflies made both of them laugh, joy sweeping through Posey as the colorful creatures tickled her cheek and then swooped into the air, fluttering and dancing and rising toward the sky, freedom on their wings.