The Fixer

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“Don’t give me that, Tess.” Ivy set her coffee down on the counter, a little harder than necessary. “The second Vivvie told you what she’d overheard, you should have come to me. What were you thinking?”

  I was thinking that Vivvie had confided in me, not Ivy. I was thinking that if I told Ivy—if I told anyone—Vivvie might take it all back.

  “I promised I’d help her figure out what was going on.” I stared at the rim of my glass. “I keep my promises.”

  “And I don’t,” Ivy said softly. She turned away from me. I could see the tension in her shoulders, her back. “That’s what this about? You’re punishing me?”

  For leaving me in Montana three years ago. For cutting me out. For never telling me why.

  “This wasn’t about you,” I insisted.

  “The hell it wasn’t.” She turned back around. “Do you have any idea what could have happened? To Vivvie? To you, calling that number?”

  “You told me I could come to you,” I said lowly. “With anything.” I swallowed. “So I came to you. Maybe not the way you would have wanted me to, maybe not as soon as you wanted me to, but, Ivy, I came to you.”

  Those words hung in the air between us.

  “Have you talked to the president yet?” I asked.

  “I’m not discussing this with you.” Ivy crossed to my side of the counter and stood directly in front of me, too close for comfort. “You have no part in this. Is that clear?”

  Crystal.

  Ivy wasn’t done yet. “You can’t tell anyone what you told me, Tess. Neither can Vivvie. Until we’ve got a handle on it, until we know exactly who’s involved, we can’t risk drawing attention to either one of you.”

  “Who’s involved?” I repeated. “You think it wasn’t just Judge Pierce and Vivvie’s dad. You think there might be someone else.” I paused. “The other number on the phone . . .”

  Vivvie’s father had made sure that Justice Marquette didn’t leave the hospital alive. Pierce had paid him—or was going to pay him—to do it. What did that leave?

  “The heart attack,” I said, thinking out loud. “For the plan to work, they had to get Justice Marquette into surgery to begin with.”

  “I’m not doing this with you, Tess.” Ivy caught my chin in her hand and forced my eyes to hers. “If there’s something to be found here, I promise you that I will find it. I will keep you safe. I will keep Vivvie safe. I will make this okay. But I need you to stay out of it.”

  “Have you told the president?” I asked again.

  “What part of ‘I’m not doing this with you’ was unclear?”

  “You haven’t told him, have you?” What was I supposed to read into that? “Vivvie’s father is the president’s doctor,” I said sharply. “Don’t you think he has a right to know the man might have homicidal tendencies?”

  “I spoke with the Secret Service.” Ivy clipped her words. “Major Bharani is no longer assigned to the White House.”

  The set of her jaw told me that was all she was going to say. When Ivy shut the door on something, it stayed shut.

  “What’s going to happen to Vivvie?” I asked. That, at least, she might tell me.

  Ivy’s face softened slightly. Her hand dropped to her side. “I’m working on it.”

  “Working on what?” Vivvie appeared in the doorway. Her hair was wet, her face a mottle of bruises, but she held her head back, her shoulders out.

  “Just the girl I wanted to see.” Ivy offered her a far friendlier look than the ones she’d been giving me. “If you’re up to it, I have a couple of questions for you.”

  Vivvie’s eyes flickered briefly over to mine. “I’m up to it.”

  “Tess?” Ivy arched an eyebrow in my direction. It took me a moment to realize that she was waiting for me to leave.

  “But—”

  “Theresa.” Ivy didn’t raise her voice, but the use of my full name spoke volumes.

  “Go,” Vivvie told me.

  “If you want me to stay . . . ,” I started to say.

  “It’s fine,” Vivvie said quietly. “Just go.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Vivvie wouldn’t tell me much about what she and Ivy had talked about. “Your sister’s just trying to establish a timeline,” Vivvie said when I asked her. “How my father got involved, when he got involved, how he and Pierce know each other, if they know each other.”

  “And?” I said.

  “And,” Vivvie hedged, “I answered her questions.”

  She wouldn’t say anything else. My sister wanted me out of this. Ivy Kendrick excelled at getting what she wanted.

  That night, Vivvie slept in my room again. The next morning, I woke up alone. She’s probably just downstairs, I told myself. I threw on clothes. No Vivvie in the living room. No Vivvie in the kitchen, the foyer . . .

  “She’s not here.”

  I turned toward the sound of Bodie’s voice. “ ‘She’ as in Ivy, or ‘she’ as in Vivvie?”

  Bodie took in the expression on my face. “Your sister’s out,” he said, hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. “Little Viv’s gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  Bodie held up his hands in a mea culpa. “Bad choice of words. She’s fine. She’s just not here.”

  “Where is she?” I asked flatly.

  “Viv’s in good hands, kiddo,” Bodie said. “Scout’s honor.”

  In other words: this was need-to-know, and I didn’t.

  “Where’s Ivy?” I asked. She’d found someplace to stash Vivvie and left Bodie to break the news to me.

  “She and Captain Pentagon had an errand to run.” Bodie’s answer was cryptic. I tried to figure out what kind of “errand” Adam and Ivy might be running this early in the morning, but came up empty.

  “Catch.” Bodie tossed his cell phone at me. I caught it. “Number’s already cued up. If you’re worried about Little V, call it.”

  I took that to mean that Bodie would rather clue me in on Vivvie’s location than Ivy’s. I stored that fact away for future reference, then made the call.

  Vivvie answered. “I’m fine,” she said, instead of hello. “Ivy didn’t want me to wake you.”

  What Ivy wanted, Ivy got.

  “Where are you?” I asked Vivvie. “What did Ivy do?”

  “She found someplace for me to go.”

  Vivvie had an aunt. Her father’s younger sister. Vivvie had never even met the woman until this morning. Now she was living with her.

  Courtesy of Ivy.

  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Bodie made an attempt at levity as he pulled past the Hardwicke gates to drop me off. “For that matter, you might want to stay away from about ninety percent of the things I would do, too.”

  Vivvie wasn’t coming back to school until Monday—time for her bruises to heal, and time for her to get to know the relative Ivy had summoned up out of nowhere, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

  I didn’t have the option of staying home from school another day. My sister wanted me out of the way. She wanted me safe. And as it so happened, Hardwicke was more secure than most consulates.

  Bodie pulled up to the curb. I was out of the car before he could impart any more words of wisdom. He rolled down his window. “Hey, kid?”

  I turned back to look at him. His lips parted in a smile, but there was a serious glint in his dark eyes. “Mum’s the word.”

  In other words: Don’t tell anyone about Vivvie’s dad. Or Judge Pierce. Or Justice Marquette.

  Unfortunately, anyone hunted me down before my first class.

  “What happened?” Asher asked, falling into step beside me. “Where were you yesterday? Where was Vivvie?” When I didn’t reply immediately, Asher tried another tack. “True or false: you’re going to tell me what happened.”

  “False,” I said.

  He gave me a morose look and lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “The correct answer was true.”

  Asher sounded like he was joking, but my gut told
me he wasn’t. This wasn’t some lark to him. It was personal, and if I tried to shut him out, he would do something about it.

  Like tell Henry.

  Mum’s the word.

  “Short version?” I told Asher as we approached the classroom. “My sister knows. About Vivvie, about the phone, about everything.”

  “And the long version?” Asher asked.

  “Vivvie’s father found out about the phone.” That much I could tell him without compromising Ivy’s investigation—whatever that investigation entailed. “She showed up at my place two nights ago with a fat lip and the beginning of a black eye.”

  “Is she—”

  “She’s going to be fine,” I said. “Physically. But Vivvie and I are done. Out of it. Off the case.” I entered the classroom with Asher on my heels. I could feel him getting ready to pounce—another question I couldn’t answer, another look that told me he knew I was holding back. Then Asher’s eyes landed on Henry, sitting near the front of the room, his head bowed over a book.

  Asher wouldn’t keep asking questions in earshot of his best friend.

  I slid into the seat next to Henry, all too aware that Asher knew exactly what I was doing.

  “True or false,” he whispered into the back of my head as he took the seat behind me. “We aren’t done talking about this.”

  I could almost hear him thinking that of all the people in the world who Henry Marquette might trust to find out what had happened to his grandfather, my sister wasn’t near the top of the list.

  In fact, it was a good bet that Ivy wasn’t on that list at all.

  CHAPTER 32

  “I assume you’ve made progress with your half of the assignment?” Henry Marquette sat opposite me in World Issues, a thick file folder open on the table between us. Clearly, he’d done his half of the assignment.

  “You know what they say about assumptions,” I said.

  Henry quirked an eyebrow at me. “Tell me, Kendrick, what do they say about assumptions?”

  “It’s Tess.”

  “Is that your way of telling me that you did not screen the candidates on your half of the list?” Henry asked me. “Tess.”

  “Actually,” I said. “I looked into them.” He didn’t need to know what exactly I’d looked for—or why I’d been looking.

  “And?”

  And there’s reason to think Judge Pierce paid to have your grandfather killed.

  “And,” I said, “I wasn’t really that impressed.”

  Henry’s lips ticked slightly upward. “I get the sense that you might be a hard girl to impress.”

  That almost sounded like a compliment.

  Henry seemed to realize that, too. “In all likelihood,” he said abruptly, thumbing through the file he’d compiled and tearing his eyes away from mine, “we’re looking for someone on the court of appeals—DC circuit is most likely, but I wouldn’t rule any of the others out.”

  My mind went immediately to Judge Pierce. Was he on the court of appeals?

  Ivy told me to stay out of it, I thought. But she could hardly blame me for doing a school assignment, now, could she? As Henry briefly outlined the credentials of his top couple of candidates, I pulled Pierce’s information up on my laptop. I stared at the photograph that popped up. He was balding, in his early fifties. He stared back at me from the screen: deep-set eyes, solemn expression, a face you could trust.

  You’ll get your money when I get my nomination.

  I forced my eyes away from the photo and read. Pierce had a seat on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Prior to that, he’d served as the attorney general for the state of Arizona.

  “Pierce.” Asher came up behind me and peered over my shoulder. “An interesting choice, to be sure.”

  I forced my face to stay perfectly neutral. Asher was clearly fishing for information—and not about the assignment. I closed the window.

  “Don’t you have your own project to be working on?” Henry asked Asher mildly.

  “Indeed I do,” Asher replied, his eyes still on me. “Sadly, however, my partner is absent. Woe be to the Asher who is forced to work on his own.”

  “I mourn for you,” Henry said dryly.

  “So what do we know about Pierce?” Asher ignored Henry’s sarcastic tone and helped himself to the chair next to mine. He leaned over, plunking his elbows down on my desk.

  “Nothing,” I said, reaching for one of the papers in Henry’s file.

  Asher gave me a look. “Somehow, I find myself doubting that’s true.”

  I felt Henry’s eyes on us then. I gave Asher a look.

  “Vivvie Bharani has been absent for over a week.” Emilia didn’t bother with a hello. She slid into the seat next to Henry’s. “Last year, she was the only person in our grade other than me to have perfect attendance. Am I the only one who finds that strange?”

  “Is that an expression of concern?” Asher asked his twin, arching an eyebrow at her.

  “I can be concerned,” Emilia told him, sounding almost insulted. “I’m a very empathetic person.”

  Asher and Henry exchanged a glance over her head. Clearly, empathy had never been Emilia’s strong suit.

  “I heard Vivvie’s father got fired,” Emilia continued bluntly.

  I darted a glance at Asher.

  “And where might you have heard that?” he asked.

  “From a freshman whose mom works at the Washington Post.”

  The idea of people knowing that Vivvie’s father had lost his position at the White House made me queasy.

  “I mean, technically, he wasn’t fired,” Emilia clarified. “He was reassigned. But precision of language has never been the gossip mill’s forte, and I guess anything’s a pretty big step down after the White House.”

  Henry stood up abruptly. “Whatever position her father has or does not have, can we agree that has little to nothing to do with Vivvie?”

  Emilia blanched as if he’d slapped her. “I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Why would I?” Henry replied. His voice was calm, but I could see the tension in his neck. He had to have noticed the timing: Vivvie’s dad getting demoted shortly after operating on his grandfather.

  Henry came around to my side of the table and slammed a piece of paper down in front of me. “My choice for nominee.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned and stalked toward the front of the room. I heard him ask Dr. Clark for permission to go to the bathroom.

  Emilia shot Asher a bewildered look. “What was that?”

  I moved to follow Henry. At my Montana high school, teachers guarded bathroom passes like they were the keys to the proverbial kingdom, but Hardwicke didn’t even have passes. Dr. Clark just let me go.

  I caught up to Henry just as he reached the bathroom door.

  “Can I help you?” he asked without turning around.

  I didn’t reply immediately. Henry stood there, perfectly comfortable with the silence, until I broke it. “Thank you,” I said. “For standing up for Vivvie.”

  Henry looked distinctly uncomfortable with my thanks. “It is possible,” he admitted, his voice taut, “that I know what it is like to have your family be the featured story on Hardwicke’s gossip circuit.”

  If what we suspected was true, if it got out, Henry and Vivvie wouldn’t just be the subject of gossip at Hardwicke. Their families would be front-page news.

  “It is also possible,” Henry continued, his back still to me, “that I suspect you might have had something to do with Vivvie’s father’s demotion.”

  Henry was connecting the dots—too much, too fast. How? “Not everything is my fault,” I told him.

  “Believe it or not, that wasn’t meant as criticism.” Henry turned to face me. “My mother breakfasts at the Roosevelt Hotel.” He waited for those words to register, but they meant nothing to me. “She thought she saw Vivvie there. This morning.”

  It took me a moment to read between the lines. If Henry’s mother had seen Vivvie, she’d seen Vivvie
’s bruises.

  “I knew something was wrong. At the wake.” Henry’s jaw tightened. “I just didn’t know what.”

  He’d seen Vivvie break down. Maybe he’d noticed her absence since.

  “I knew something was wrong,” he said again, “and I did nothing. I was so focused on my own grief—”

  “Pretty sure that at a wake for a loved one, you’re allowed to be focused on your own grief,” I told him.

  I could feel him rejecting that logic. She was a classmate. She’d needed help. He’d missed it. Henry Marquette wasn’t a forgiving person—especially of himself.

  “It is possible,” Henry said, his voice still sounding oddly formal, “that I might have misjudged you, Tess.”

  He knew Vivvie’s dad was abusive. He thought I’d helped her. He thought I was the reason her father was no longer the president’s doctor.

  That’s not even the half of it. I couldn’t tell him. It made me angry that I wanted to. It chafed that I cared that he’d misjudged me—and, more than anything, I could feel guilt nipping at my heels, ready to devour me whole for keeping the truth from him, for forcing his best friend to keep it from him.

  “It’s possible,” I told him sharply, pushing down the mess of emotions churning in my gut and pulling back from the boy who’d caused them, “that I don’t really care whether you misjudge me or not.”

  CHAPTER 33

  That night, Ivy left me to my own devices. It was like she thought that by avoiding me, she could somehow make me magically forget everything I already knew about Justice Marquette’s death.

  Fat chance of that happening.

  Hardwicke was a small school. There were fewer than a hundred kids in my entire grade. I couldn’t turn around without seeing Henry. Vivvie’s empty seat in English class the next morning was just another reminder.

  I dredged my way from English to physics and from physics to Speaking of Words, trying not to think about the big questions.

  Who did the second number on the disposable cell belong to?

  Why hadn’t Ivy gone straight to the president with our suspicions?

  “Tess.” The Speaking of Words teacher zeroed in on me within moments of the bell’s ringing. “Do you have something prepared for us?”