After I surrendered the bloodied pants, she took me home.
CHAPTER 28
“Drink this.” Ivy handed me a mug filled with warm liquid. My fingers encircled the mug, but I didn’t lift it to my lips.
Ivy hadn’t asked me to tell her about finding John Thomas. She hadn’t cross-examined me. She hadn’t called a lawyer or started acting like one herself. She’d sat in the backseat next to me on the car ride home. She’d put an arm around me when we’d arrived at the house and climbed out. She’d made this drink and slid it across the kitchen counter to me.
“Hot chocolate with a splash of coffee.” Ivy met my eyes over the mug. “Nora Kendrick’s cure for all ills.”
I’d spent most of my life thinking that Nora Kendrick was my mother. Swallowing back the rush of emotion that accompanied that thought, I lifted the mug to my lips and let the drink warm me from the inside out.
“Have you heard anything?” I asked Ivy once I’d found my voice. “About President Nolan?”
Ivy turned and began making herself a mug of hot chocolate, too. “I spoke to Georgia.” A slight hitch in her voice contradicted her outward calm. “The president is still in surgery. We won’t know how extensive the damage is until he gets out.”
People died in surgery. They died in surgery all the time.
I could see awareness of that fact in Ivy’s eyes. She’d worked on President Nolan’s campaign. Whenever he or the First Lady had problems, Ivy was their first call. Georgia treated her like a daughter.
“You haven’t asked me,” I said, offering her an out from thinking about it, from talking about it, “what I saw.”
Ivy turned back to face me, her own coffee mug held between two hands. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Did I want to talk about John Thomas’s last gasping moments? About pressing my hands to his chest, trying to staunch the flow of blood? About the moment when his eyes went empty, and his head lolled to the side?
“I hated him.” I stared down at my hot chocolate. “The boy who got killed, John Thomas Wilcox—I hated him.”
Ivy knew when to keep quiet. I filled the silence, unable to stop talking now that I’d started.
“He was a horrible person. The day I arrived at Hardwicke, he was showing off pictures of the vice president’s daughter.” I paused and let that pause do the talking about the type of photos John Thomas had taken. “She’s fourteen. He told her he liked her. He told her she was special, and then he laughed at her while he flashed those pictures around.
“This morning, he baited Asher into a fight. He told the entire school that Henry’s father was in and out of rehab before he died.” The more I talked, the faster the words came. “He texted these pictures of Emilia where she’s totally out of it to the whole school. A video, too.” I swallowed, remembering the words John Thomas had used to taunt Asher. “He said things about that night. I don’t know how much Emilia remembers. I don’t know if John Thomas assaulted her, but he enjoyed making her think that he did.”
Ivy held her expression carefully constant, but I caught a surge of anger in her eyes.
I closed mine. “An hour before he died, John Thomas told me that he’d accessed Hardwicke’s confidential medical files, that he knew who’d been treated for eating disorders and depression and—” I swallowed back the fury that still wanted to come, thinking about the way he’d singled out Vivvie. “He threatened to tell everyone the details.”
“What you’re saying,” Bodie commented from behind me, “is that the kid had enemies.”
I wondered how long he’d been standing there, how much he’d heard. I twisted in my seat.
“I’m saying that I’m one of them.” I turned back to Ivy. “I threatened him in class this morning. I told him that I would bury him.”
And now he was dead. I knew that didn’t look good. I couldn’t quit thinking about the blood, the empty look in his—
“Hey.” Ivy reached across the counter and took my hand in hers. “No amount of hating him caused this.”
I nodded, as if I could will myself into believing what she’d said. “Right before you showed up, the police started asking more pointed questions.” I met her eyes. “They’re not going to have to talk to many people to figure out that John Thomas and I didn’t get along.”
“Don’t worry,” Ivy told me. “I’ll take care of it.”
When Ivy Kendrick said she’d take care of something, she meant it.
“I tried.” My voice broke on that word. “When I saw him, I tried to save him. I screamed for help, and no one came. I called 911—”
Ivy came around to my side of the counter. She wrapped her arms around me. For once, I didn’t stiffen in her grasp. “If I could take this away,” she said, “if I could snap my fingers and go through this for you, feel it for you, I would.”
“I’m fine.” I managed to form the words, but we both knew that was a lie.
Bodie crossed in front of us, pulled a large glass out of the cabinet, and started rummaging around in the fridge. After a few minutes—and some rather questionable blender use—he put the glass in front of me. “Drink this,” he told me.
The liquid in the glass was murky brown.
I eyed Bodie warily.
“Drink,” he told me.
“Is that your hangover cure?” Ivy asked him.
Bodie ignored her. He nudged me with his foot. “Drink,” he ordered.
I took a gulp of the liquid and almost choked on it. “And the purpose of me drinking this is what exactly?” I asked, grimacing.
“Distraction,” Bodie replied. “You’re welcome.”
Before I could formulate a suitable reply, Ivy’s phone rang. She moved to answer it, then let her hand fall back to her side. I could see her thinking, Tess needs me right now.
I could also see her wanting to answer.
“Answer it,” I told her. “Take the call.”
The president was in surgery. There was no way of knowing if he’d make it out alive. Whoever was calling Ivy right now, she needed to pick up.
After a split second of hesitation, Ivy did as I said.
“Georgia. How is he?” Ivy turned and walked out of the room before I could get a sense of Georgia’s reply. After a long moment, I turned back to Bodie.
“Take another drink,” he advised.
“Very funny.” I took a gulp of my hot chocolate instead. “Do they have any idea who shot the president?” I hadn’t wanted to ask Ivy, but now that it was just Bodie and me, I couldn’t keep the question back.
Bodie didn’t respond, but his eyes betrayed the answer. Ivy had an idea, one that—if it weren’t for me—she’d be following up on right now.
“Does she think this has something to do with Senza Nome?” I asked. “The group that targeted Walker Nolan, the group Daniela Nicolae works for—does Ivy think they’re involved?”
Before Bodie could answer—or tell me to stop asking questions—Ivy walked back into the room.
“The president is out of surgery,” she said, her voice strangled. “There was a lot of damage. They don’t know if . . .” She shook her head, shaking off an unwanted rush of emotion the way a dog shakes water off its fur.
“Go,” I said, meeting Ivy’s eyes and nodding toward the door. “Whatever Georgia needs, whatever she called to ask you to do— just go.”
Ivy hesitated. She didn’t want to leave, but we both knew she couldn’t stay here, holding my hand, when the stakes were this high.
“Bodie can keep you company,” Ivy said after a moment. “I’ll drive myself.”
Ivy wasn’t known for her driving prowess—and given that we were talking about an assassination attempt, I didn’t want her out there alone.
“Don’t be stupid, Ivy. Take Bodie with you.”
She bristled. “Tessie, I’m not leaving you alone after what you’ve been through today.”
I didn’t tell Ivy my name was Tess, not Tessie. I didn’t tell her I could take care of mysel
f.
“I’ll call Vivvie,” I countered instead. “She was born to slumber party. We’ll be fine.”
Ivy was quiet for a second, maybe two, as she turned that possibility over in her head. “I love you,” she said. “More than anything. You know that, right?”
“Sure.” I didn’t want those words to affect me the way they did. I didn’t want them to mean that much. I didn’t want them to hurt.
“I mean it, Tessie. If it came down to the rest of the world or you, I would pick you every single time.”
Tears I’d kept at bay all day stung my eyes. “Be careful,” I told her, my voice fierce.
She ran her hand over my hair one last time, then turned and walked to the door, her heels clicking a steady beat against the marble floor. “I always am.”
CHAPTER 29
“I would ask if you’re okay, but at this point, that seems a little passé.” Vivvie gave me a very small smile. Seconds ticked by, and she just couldn’t help herself. “Are you okay?” she blurted out.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m okay.”
Vivvie peered at me. “Does that mean that you’re actually okay, or that you’re stoically projecting that you will be okay at some undefined point in the future?”
I bit back a smile. Vivvie was Vivvie, no matter the circumstances. “Probably the second one,” I admitted.
“You do stoic well,” Vivvie told me. “Does Stoic Tess want to talk about it or not want to talk about it?” After a second or two, she answered her own question. “Not talk about it,” she said, translating the expression on my face. “I can do that.” She paused. “Just to clarify, does it include the attack on the president? Or just . . .”
She didn’t say John Thomas’s name.
“Ivy’s out there right now, doing who knows what,” I said. Not thinking—and not talking—about the attack on the president wasn’t an option. I could only suppress so much. “She got a call from the First Lady,” I continued.
Vivvie’s eyes widened. “Did she say—”
“Ivy didn’t say what Georgia wanted. She didn’t say anything about who they think is responsible for shooting the president.”
Senza Nome. The name Priya had given the terrorist group echoed in my head, followed on its heels by Daniela Nicolae’s ominous words. The time for waiting is over.
We’d thought the video Daniela Nicolae had made was about the hospital bombing. We thought that she had failed in her mission.
Maybe we’d thought wrong.
“You’ve got that look on your face,” Vivvie told me. “The one you get when you’re thinking about something you probably shouldn’t be thinking about.”
Vivvie’s aunt had sent her out of the room before she’d passed on the message about Senza Nome. Whether I liked it or not, the less Vivvie knew, the safer she was.
On some level, I recognized that my reasoning sounded exactly like Ivy’s.
“Henry and I were talking the other day.” I felt like I needed to tell Vivvie something true, even if it wasn’t the truth I most wanted to share. “About the way that things like this hit us harder than they hit other people because of what we’ve already lost.” I paused, searching Vivvie’s dark brown eyes the way she’d searched mine earlier. “Are you okay?”
“I should be,” Vivvie offered with an uneven smile that wavered as she spoke. “I didn’t like John Thomas. I didn’t see it happen, like you did. And it’s not like I actually knew the president, but . . .” She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. “My dad was President Nolan’s doctor. He saw him every day, and I just keep thinking . . .” Vivvie’s voice got softer the more she spoke. “I just keep thinking that if my dad were alive, if he’d never gotten involved with the conspiracy, never done what he did to Justice Marquette—my dad would be there, with the president, working to save his life.”
Vivvie looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. “And then,” she continued, “I think about how if my dad were here, I’d make dinner and put it in the refrigerator so he’d have something to eat when he got home. And I think about the fact that if my dad were here, he’d be worried about me. He’d be in doctor mode one minute and dad mode the next, and he’d call me when he could and tell me that it was normal to feel grief when someone you know is killed, even if you didn’t like the person. He’d tell me that it was okay to be scared that something like that could happen at my school, and he’d tell me not to worry.” Vivvie pressed her eyes closed, and I knew that she was counting on her eyelids to hold back tears. “He’d tell me that he would never let anything bad happen to me.”
My heart twisted as she whispered those words. Vivvie was the one who’d discovered her father’s involvement in Justice Marquette’s death. When he’d found out that she knew his secret, he’d hit her.
“You miss him,” I said softly.
“I shouldn’t.” Vivvie was vehement. “I know what he was. I know what he did. I shouldn’t miss him.”
I tried to catch her gaze but failed. “He was your dad.”
Vivvie wrapped her arms around me in a strangling-tight hug. We stayed like that until she pulled back.
“So,” Vivvie said, wiping a tear roughly off her face with the back of her hand. “We’ve established that you’re not okay and that I’m not okay. Would it be weird to suggest we could be not-okay while baking cookies?”
I pushed back against the memories and buried the secrets as far in my psyche as they would go. “Cookies it is.”
CHAPTER 30
I woke up in the middle of the night. On the other side of my queen-size bed, Vivvie was out like a light. Restless and unable to even think about going back to sleep, I slipped out of bed and made my way to the door. I kept thinking about John Thomas. About his blood on my hands. About his final words.
Tell, he’d wheezed. Didn’t. And then: Tell.
What had John Thomas been trying to say?
Was he asking me to tell someone that he didn’t do something? Or was he saying that he hadn’t told?
Told what? I paced as I thought. The light wasn’t on in the living room, so it took me a moment to realize that Ivy was sitting on the sofa.
“Tess.” Ivy’s voice was hoarse. “What are you doing up?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” I said. When she didn’t reply, it occurred to me that she might have gotten news.
Bad news.
“The president—” I started to say.
“No change in his condition.” Ivy’s voice was emotionless. “They’re not sure when he’ll wake up.”
Or if he’ll wake up. My brain supplied the words that Ivy wouldn’t say.
“Vice President Hayden was sworn in as acting president.” Ivy’s tone never changed. “Senza Nome has claimed responsibility for the attack.”
I crossed the room and sat down next to her. “You’re going to see the terrorist they arrested, aren’t you?” I asked quietly. “Daniela Nicolae. You’re going to find out what she knows about the attack.”
I knew Ivy. She couldn’t make the president wake up. But she could hunt down every single person involved in this assassination attempt. Whatever she had to do to get in a room with Nicolae, to interrogate her about Senza Nome—Ivy would do it.
“Tessie—” Ivy broke off, unable to say more than my name.
I wanted to tell her that it was okay. I wanted to tell her that I understood that there were some things she couldn’t tell me. I wanted it not to matter.
But it did.
It always would, with Ivy and me.
“Do you think Walker told Daniela something without realizing it?” I asked, throwing the question out into the void. “Do you think the president’s son is the reason Senza Nome was able to pull off this attack?”
There was another long silence, just like I knew there would be. Stop it, I told myself. Stop asking. Stop pushing. Just stop—
“I don’t think Walker knew enough about his father’s security detail or Secret Service protocol to gi
ve Senza Nome the information they would have needed to make this happen.” Ivy gave me one sentence—just one.
She gave me what she could.
“Walker didn’t have that information.” I repeated what Ivy had told me, then read between the lines. “But Senza Nome would have had to get it from somewhere.”
CHAPTER 31
The next day was midterm elections. Hardwicke canceled school. Vivvie went home. There was still no official update on the president’s condition. My mind awash in what Ivy had told me, I went in for questioning in John Thomas’s murder.
“How would you describe your relationship with John Thomas Wilcox?”
Given everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, even being here, answering the detectives’ questions about John Thomas, felt surreal.
“John Thomas and I were in the same grade. We had one class together,” I said. Ivy had told me to stick to the truth but keep my answers brief. “He struck me as cruel.”
Ivy probably wasn’t pleased that I’d volunteered that information, but I didn’t see the point in pretending that I hadn’t found John Thomas reprehensible. If the police hadn’t already heard that I didn’t like the guy, they undoubtedly would soon.
“Cruel how?” the detective on the left asked.
Before I could answer, the door to the interrogation room opened and a man in an expensive suit strode in. He had the air of a person who was used to making an entrance.
“Tyson.” Ivy greeted him, a slight narrowing of her eyes my only clue that she wasn’t pleased to see him.
“Ivy,” he returned smoothly before turning to the detectives. “Brewer Tyson,” he said, introducing himself like his name held the strength of an argument in and of itself. “I’m representing Ms. Keyes.”
Without waiting for an invitation, Tyson took a seat next to Ivy.
“I was under the impression that you had not hired counsel,” one of the detectives told Ivy.
She’d discussed this with me. She had a law degree. She could serve as my guardian and my attorney—and use the fact that we hadn’t hired someone to send the message that I had nothing whatsoever to hide.
The Long Game Page 10
