by Lynn Barnes
I expected Henry to come back with a quick retort, but instead, he fell silent again.
A year before I’d arrived at Hardwicke, Henry’s father had died in a car accident—or at least that was the story most people believed. Henry had told me the truth: his father had committed suicide, and Ivy had covered it up. No one but Henry and Ivy—and now me—knew what had really happened.
She made me complicit. I could still see the anguished expression on Henry’s face when he’d said those words.
I hadn’t meant, even for a second, to make him feel like that again.
“You’re nothing like John Thomas,” I told Henry. “I know that. I’m sorry. I just—”
“Dislike being advised on how to deal with him when you’re quite capable of handling the John Thomas Wilcoxes of the world on your own?” Henry suggested.
“That,” I agreed. “But also—I wasn’t even thinking about him. I was thinking about what happened today, about the bombing.” That was as close to the truth as I could come without breaking my promise to Bodie.
I was thinking about Walker Nolan and Daniela Nicolae.
“It’s different,” Henry said softly, “for those of us who’ve lost people.”
Hardwicke was a world apart from my previous school in Montana. Anna Hayden’s Secret Service detail was a constant presence in the hallways. Closed-circuit cameras monitored the entire campus. All visitors were pre-screened. Although discreet, the school’s security officers were also armed.
Going to a school that was more secure than most government facilities had a strange effect: at Hardwicke, students were more aware of the potential for wide-scale attacks, but they’d fostered in us a deep-seated belief that it couldn’t happen here.
Some of our classmates had been shaken by today’s attack. Others, like John Thomas, had been more able to shrug it off. But Henry was right—it would always be different for people like us.
The closer you’d been to death, the easier it was to feel him breathing down your neck—and the necks of those you loved.
“I can still see Ivy with that bomb strapped to her chest.” I hadn’t told that to anyone. I turned to look out the window to keep Henry from seeing the expression on my face. “Sometimes,” I continued softly, “I wake up in the middle of the night, and for a second, I’m back in that basement with a rogue Secret Service agent.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Henry gave me tit for tat. “I’m the one who found my father.”
I didn’t turn to look at Henry. If I’d been looking at him, he wouldn’t have said the words.
“That’s what I thought about when I heard about the attack,” Henry said. “That’s what I saw. My father was just . . . lying there, on the floor. His eyes were open, but . . . empty. I wasn’t supposed to be home that weekend. None of us were. And when I found him . . .”
My eyes found their way to his, drawn by magnetic force.
“I left,” Henry said. “I just . . . I left. And I got the call a few hours later about the crash.”
The crash that Ivy staged.
Grief was like a set of stacking dolls, each subsequent trauma encompassing all of those that had come before. At four, I hadn’t known how to mourn my parents—Ivy’s parents, really. But I’d mourned them at thirteen, when Ivy had walked out of my life, and at fifteen, when Gramps had started to slide. I’d felt it again and again and again these past months.
No one had died today in the bombing. But we hadn’t known that, not at first.
Henry swallowed. I could see him locking down his emotions, hiding them, even from himself. “Tess. What I just told you—”
“Stays between us,” I said. Henry Marquette didn’t trust easily. We had that much in common. “I can keep a secret,” I said.
I was already keeping so many. What was one more?
CHAPTER 11
When we got to Ivy’s house, there was a car parked across the street. Unlike Walker’s, this vehicle fit the profile I’d come to associate with many of Ivy’s clients—dark-colored, tinted windows, driver standing just outside. I scanned the front lawn, and my eyes came to rest on the car’s owner.
William Keyes.
Henry caught my gaze and cocked his head to the side, a silent Everything okay?
I had no idea who Keyes was waiting for—Ivy or me. Either way, I gave a brisk nod. “His bark’s worse than his bite.”
Henry gave me a look. “I severely doubt that is true.”
“Either way,” I said, “William Keyes won’t do more than gnash his teeth at me.”
I was a Keyes.
“Is this the point where you ask me to steal his car as a distraction?” Henry asked, arching an eyebrow at me. “Or did you have another felony in mind?”
“Very funny,” I told him, reaching for the door.
“I could walk you in,” Henry offered, his voice softer this time.
I opened the car door. “Relax, Sir Galahad,” I told him with an eyebrow arch of my own. “I can take care of myself.”
I slammed the door and went to face the music—whatever that music might be.
“Theresa.” Keyes stood with his back to the front door. My first name had also been his late wife’s. Growing up, Ivy and Gramps had only called me by my given name when I was skating on thin ice. I didn’t know what to read into the fact that William Keyes was using it now. “Where is she?”
That was less of a question than a demand. The she in question could only be Ivy.
“Nice to see you, too,” I muttered.
“Were the circumstances different, I would happily spar with you, my dear, but this is not a game, and I am not playing. Where is Ivy?”
“I don’t know,” I said, glad, for once, that Ivy had kept me in the dark.
“You have a cell phone.” That was a statement, not a question. “Call her.” Keyes gave the order like he was God, setting down an eleventh commandment.
I folded my arms over my chest and leveled a narrow-eyed stare at him, all too similar to the look he was aiming at me. “Why?”
“Because,” he snapped back, “she’ll pick up your call.”
I wanted to refuse out of principle, but Ivy would want to know that Keyes had come to our home. And I wanted to know what exactly he was so dead set on saying to her.
I took out my phone and dialed. Ivy picked up on the third ring.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I told her. “But I’m not alone. A certain someone was waiting for me when I got home for school. Tall. Cranky. Overly fond of the Earl of Warwick.”
Keyes snatched the phone from my hand. “You will tell me what you are playing at here, Ivy.”
Those words confirmed for me that there was more going on here than I knew—and Ivy was in the thick of it all.
She won’t tell you anything, I thought in his direction.
On the other end of the phone line, Ivy must have said something to similar effect.
“I’ve heard things,” William Keyes told her, the edge in his voice making the words sound less like a statement and more like a threat.
What kind of things? I wondered.
“There are questions about the way this is being handled, and I don’t need to tell you what those questions could do to the party in the midterms.” Keyes didn’t wait for a response before he went straight for the jugular. “The youngest Nolan boy came to visit you last night. Why?”
Listening to this conversation was like watching the old man play chess. Each move was calculated for maximum effect, part of a larger plan.
Unfortunately for William Keyes, when he’d taught Ivy to play his game, he’d taught her a little too well. She wouldn’t tell him anything she didn’t want him to know. Keyes turned his back on me as he replied to whatever she’d said. I couldn’t make out his words.
Less than a minute later, he cursed and hung up the phone. When he turned back to me, his expression was perfectly controlled. He held the phone out to me. I
closed my fingers around it and then made a move of my own.
“Daniela Nicolae,” I said. A split second of surprise crossed his face before he banished it in favor of a scowl. “You said there were questions about the way this was being handled,” I continued. “I’m assuming the this in question is the bombing.”
The kingmaker’s eyes raked over me, the way they did when we played chess, assessing the extent to which I’d taken his lessons to heart.
“There is one thing on which that godforsaken mother of yours and I agree,” he said finally. “And that is that whatever is or is not happening, it’s no concern of yours.”
I expected that from Ivy and Adam. I hadn’t expected it from him.
Keyes assessed me dispassionately. “You dislike being kept out of the loop,” he said. “That, you get from me.” He strode past me. “Come along.”
I stayed glued to the spot.
William Keyes turned back toward me. “I am many things, Theresa, but I am not a man who would leave his only grandchild alone in a house like this one at a time like this. Ivy is playing with fire. I’ll not have you burned. If she cannot provide adequate security for you, I most assuredly will.”
This was why Ivy hadn’t ever wanted Keyes to know about me. He was a man who gave orders and exerted absolute control over everyone in his domain. The moment he’d found out I had his son’s blood, that domain included me.
“If you would prefer,” Keyes said, his voice silky, “I can arrange for Hayes to stay here with you until Ivy returns.” He nodded toward his driver.
Strategy. Resources. Influence. Family mattered to Keyes—but putting his man inside Ivy’s house? Having eyes on her base of operations?
That had value, too.
I decided on the lesser of two evils. “Where are we going?”
We went to the Mall. In any other city in the world, that might have involved shopping, but the National Mall wasn’t the kind with shops. Keyes and I stood, side by side, next to the Reflecting Pool. Behind us, the Lincoln Memorial loomed over the tourists below. On the far side of the Reflecting Pool, the Washington Monument cut a striking figure against a graying sky.
“The Marquette boy drove you home.” Keyes seemed to direct that observation more to the water than to me. “His mother is an Abellard, is she not?”
I decided that was a rhetorical question.
“It is important,” Keyes said contemplatively, “to make friends with the right kind of people.”
In his eyes, Henry was the right kind of people.
“Did you meet Walker Nolan when he came to visit Ivy?” Keyes queried, and my gut told me this was what he’d wanted to ask all along.
I was comfortable with silence, comfortable with letting questions go unanswered. Sometimes it was my best tool for making a person say more.
“There are times,” Keyes sighed, “when you remind me very much of my wife.”
I wasn’t going to give him any information about Ivy’s case, and he wasn’t going to share what he knew with me. But I felt like I should give him something in exchange for what he’d just said about the grandmother I’d never met.
“The minority whip’s son is running for student council.” That was as close to a peace offering as I could come. “I intend for him to lose.”
That got a small snort out of the old man. “Funny,” he said, “isn’t it, that sometimes the loser matters more than the person who wins?” He glanced up from the pool. His gaze settled on something and then he turned back to me. “Give us a moment, would you, Tess?”
Us? I turned to look at a woman standing nearby, a scarf hiding her hair, sunglasses obscuring her face. Even with the camouflage, I recognized her immediately.
Georgia Nolan. The First Lady.
I tried to reconcile the fact that she was here with the reality that we were in the middle of a media blitz about the hospital bombing. This wasn’t the time for the First Lady to be taking a stroll through the National Mall.
She’s here to see Keyes. Why?
I turned and walked toward the Lincoln Memorial, coming to stand at the base of the steps, looking out at my paternal grandfather and the First Lady. Her Secret Service detail was standing a discreet distance away. She and Keyes stood several feet apart, neither looking at the other as they spoke.
What could have possessed her to come here to talk to him? And if he’d planned to meet her, why bring me along?
I didn’t get answers to those questions. Three minutes after Georgia had arrived, she was gone.
CHAPTER 12
I arrived back at Ivy’s house to see flashing lights. I was out of the car before Keyes could order me to stay put. I pushed past the police cruiser in the driveway.
“Ivy?” I called out her name a second before I laid eyes on her. She was wearing a navy blazer, her light brown hair clipped neatly back from her face.
“I assure you,” Ivy was telling an officer, the very picture of composure, “everything is fine.” She saw me approach. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to see to my daughter.”
Having dispatched the police officer, she ushered me into the house.
“What happened?” I asked her, my voice low.
“As far as the police are concerned,” Ivy said, “nothing. The alarm went off quite by accident.”
“What really happened?” I countered.
I could see Ivy weighing her choices. Ultimately, she must have decided I could handle the truth. “There was a break-in. They tossed my office but didn’t find what they were looking for.”
I didn’t question why Ivy had sent the police away. If someone had broken through her security, she wouldn’t want that to get out.
“What were they looking for?” I asked.
Ivy glanced toward the door, as if she could see through it. “Leverage.”
William Keyes waited for the police to leave before he approached the house.
“Wait upstairs,” Ivy told me.
She didn’t ask where I’d been when she’d arrived home. I wondered if the kingmaker would point out that if I hadn’t gone with him, I might have been here when someone broke in. And then I wondered if she would counter that it seemed awfully coincidental that he’d gotten me out of the house right before someone had broken in and torn her office apart.
Looking for something. Something to do with Walker Nolan. My mind was jumbled as I ascended the spiral staircase. I paused at the top but heard nothing.
Keyes met with Georgia Nolan. The president’s son knew this terrorist attack was going to happen. People are asking questions.
The thoughts came rapid fire, one on the heel of another, until Ivy appeared upstairs. Her gaze faltered for a moment when it landed on me.
“Is this the part where you get mad at me for the things I can’t tell you, or the part where I remind you that you can’t trust William Keyes?” There was no edge in Ivy’s voice, no hint of anger or exasperation.
She sounded tired.
There were so many things I wanted to say to her. I wanted to tell her that she could trust me, that all keeping me in the dark accomplished was pushing me further away. I wanted to say that it wasn’t fair that she got to protect me, but I was expected to just sit back and let her, as Keyes had put it, play with fire.
I wanted to tell her that she wasn’t allowed to do this to me again. But she was tired, and she was here, and she was in one piece.
“This is the part where I do my homework,” I said softly, “and you order takeout, and we both pretend that everything is fine.”
CHAPTER 13
The next morning, things at Hardwicke were back to normal—more or less.
“Don’t look now,” Asher whispered. “But I believe you’re being paged.”
Vivvie immediately turned to look. Stealth wasn’t her strong suit. “I’d say that’s more of a beckoning,” she told Asher after a moment’s deliberation.
“A summoning, perhaps?” Asher countered, wiggling his eyebrows.
On the other side of the Hut, Emilia Rhodes narrowed her eyes at me and crooked her finger. Asher was right. I had been summoned. With one last glance at Asher and Vivvie, I gritted my teeth and went to see what Emilia wanted.
“We’re polling strong with the robotics club and the jazz band.” Maya Rojas ran her fingers along the tip of her straw as I took a seat at their table. “I can deliver the girls’ basketball team, and Tess having nominated you seems to be carrying some weight with freshman females.”
“But,” Emilia prompted.
“However,” Maya said, hedging slightly, “Henry is also polling well with freshman girls. And sophomore girls. And most of the junior class.”
“And John Thomas?” Emilia was undeterred.
“He’s got strong support from some of the party crowd, as well as a large contingent of freshman and sophomore boys.” Maya’s mother was a pollster who crunched numbers for the president. Apparently, Maya had picked up a thing or two about the art of polling along the way.
“We need the underclassmen,” Maya said. “They don’t know any of the candidates that well, so their votes are the most up for grabs.”
Emilia turned her attention from Maya to me. “You’re the freshman whisperer,” she said bluntly. “Any suggestions?”
First period didn’t start for another ten minutes. That was ten minutes too many.
“I’ll get back to you on that one,” I said. It was too early for this.
Emilia opened her mouth to object, but before she could push out the words, her phone buzzed on the table.
So did Maya’s.
So did mine.
There was a moment of silence and stillness at our table as we processed the fact that all over the Hut and out in the hallway, other phones were going off, too.
Maya—a three-sport athlete—was quicker on the draw than either Emilia or me. She hit a button on her phone, then sucked in a breath, and reached out to stop Emilia before she could look at hers.
“Must have been quite a night!” someone called out.
I looked down at my own phone. A picture text. I hit the screen to enlarge the picture. In it, Emilia was slumped against a bathroom wall. Her hair was plastered to her face. She was fully clothed but also fairly clearly trashed.
