The Long Game

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  “This was your grandmother’s favorite room.” William Keyes volunteered that information as he came to stand beside me. “She redecorated it, shortly after Tommy died.”

  “Was this his room?” I hadn’t meant to ask the question. The kingmaker wasn’t expecting it.

  “No,” he said abruptly, clipping the word. “It was always a guest room. Theresa just got it in her head to give it a more . . . personal touch.” He turned to stare out an arching window set into the far wall. “I believe she was hoping that Adam might bring a girl home someday.” Keyes paused, then turned back to me. “I can forgive my son many things, but keeping you from my wife? From me?” The old man shook his head. “We could have given you the life you deserved.”

  That wasn’t a life that Adam—or Ivy—had wanted for me.

  The fact that I was here, that Ivy had sent me to a man she despised for protection, told me just how serious the current situation was.

  Ivy is going after Congressman Wilcox. She’s going to try to prove he’s in bed with Senza Nome. The terrorists won’t take the loss of an asset lying down.

  “Whatever mess Ivy has found herself in,” William Keyes said, all too discerning, “I can promise it won’t touch you here.”

  He would protect me. Ivy trusted that, even if she didn’t trust him.

  “Your friend Asher is now enjoying the benefits of an excellent defense attorney.” Keyes said those words casually, but Adam’s warning echoed in my head.

  Favors from a man like William Keyes always come at a price.

  I turned to face the man head-on. “What do you want?”

  He assessed the way I was standing, the expression on my face. “You’ve been talking to Adam,” he concluded. “Is it so hard to believe I might want to help you, Tess? That I might want nothing in return?”

  I would have liked to believe that. I would have liked to believe that the words he’d just said to me were more than a move in a game of conversational chess.

  “In this town, people always want something in return,” I said. I met my grandfather’s eyes. “You taught me that.”

  The kingmaker rocked back on his heels, his hazel eyes sharp on mine. “Very well,” he said after a moment. “I want you to tell me why you’re here. I want you to tell me exactly what Ivy has gotten herself into.”

  “Why would you care?” I asked, giving myself time to process the question. “Less than two months ago, you were perfectly happy to let Ivy die.”

  If that barb hit its target, the kingmaker gave no visible indication of it. “I care because what she does affects you. I care,” he said, “because when Ivy Kendrick’s heroics inevitably set the world on fire, I’m going to be the one dousing the flames.”

  William Keyes. Kingmaker. The one who makes things happen behind the scenes. It didn’t surprise me that he kept close tabs on Ivy—or that information about what she was doing was the price he was exacting for the favor I’d asked of him.

  “Ivy has connected Congressman Wilcox to the terrorists.” I gave him that information in trade for what he’d done for Asher. “I don’t know the details, but I’d guess she’s out there building a case against Wilcox, preparing to bring him down.”

  “What about the woman?” Keyes asked, his gaze strangely intense. “Daniela Nicolae. Was Wilcox her contact?” The kingmaker took a step toward me. “What does the vice president intend to do with the terrorist carrying Walker Nolan’s child?”

  That question sent a chill down my spine. My grandfather keeping tabs on Ivy made sense. His interest in Daniela Nicolae did not.

  If you trust me, Tess, Adam’s voice whispered in my memory, don’t trust him.

  “Why do you want to know?” The words got caught in my throat.

  “Information is power, Theresa. You can never know ahead of time which pieces will be worth the most.”

  What could my grandfather possibly stand to gain from knowing what the vice president intended to do with a terrorist whose organization had been implicated in the attempt on the president’s life?

  Did you know that the term kingmaker was first used to refer to the role the Earl of Warwick played in the struggle between Lancaster and York? I stared at William Keyes as I remembered his lecture on what happened to weak and strategically impotent rulers. Warwick deposed not one but two kings.

  “Where are they keeping her?” Keyes pressed again. “The woman carrying Walker Nolan’s son.”

  We are in your government, your law enforcement, your military. William Keyes was a man who believed in building alliances. He despised President Nolan. And now the president was in a coma.

  “Daughter,” I heard myself say. I never missed a beat in the conversation, though my mind was whirring.

  “Excuse me?”

  “On the video they released of Daniela naming Walker as the father of her baby, she said that Walker was her father. It’s a girl.”

  “What does it matter,” Keyes countered, his voice rising in volume, his words snapping out like a whip, “if the child is a boy or a girl? What has Ivy said about the mother? What is this group’s endgame with her? What is their endgame with Walker Nolan?”

  The full intensity of William Keyes’s stare was a powerful thing. I felt like he was thumbing through my innermost thoughts like they were nothing more than index cards.

  I wondered what would happen if he didn’t like what he saw there.

  “There’s a theory,” I said, matching the intensity of the kingmaker’s stare with my own, “that Daniela has been emotionally compromised, that her own people may have come to see her as a liability.” I held his gaze and wondered how much of Tommy—and how much of himself—he saw in me. “And now you’re asking me where she’s being kept, what the government intends to do with her.” My throat was dry, but I didn’t back down. “Why do you want to know?”

  I waited for him to hear what I was really asking. I waited for him to tell me that he wasn’t working with Senza Nome, that he had no interest in dethroning kings.

  His jaw clamped down, and he said nothing.

  “I shouldn’t have come here,” I said. “Ivy shouldn’t have sent me.” I grabbed my bag off the floor and went to move past him.

  “Not. Another. Step.” The kingmaker turned. “Is this what we’ve come to?” he asked me. “You fleeing my presence?”

  A Keyes doesn’t flee. A Keyes doesn’t back down from a battle. In other circumstances, I could see him telling me those words.

  “Ivy sent you here because I have the resources and the manpower to protect you.” He took a step forward. “I am also,” he said, “not inclined to indulge childish tantrums or impulsive acts the way she might.” He walked toward me. I pushed down the urge to step back. “You, my dear, are not leaving this house anytime soon.”

  “I have school on Monday,” I said.

  “And to school,” the kingmaker countered, “you will go.” The hand on my shoulder went to the side of my face. A moment later, he cupped the back of my head, his touch gentle. “I apologize,” he said, “if my questions frightened you.”

  “I’m not frightened,” I said. “I’m just wondering what you’re capable of. If there are lines you won’t cross.”

  “What must you think of me?” Keyes said, his voice soft and deadly, “to ask that question?” He ran his hand gently over the back of my head, then squeezed my shoulder. For a moment, I didn’t think he would let go.

  But he did.

  He let loose of me, and he turned and walked over to the nightstand. He picked up a picture frame, then returned to my side.

  In the picture, I could make out two young boys and their mother. Theresa Keyes. The woman I’d been named after, the woman who’d decorated this room.

  Keyes stared at the photo, stroking his thumb along the frame. “You’re right to be suspicious of me,” he said, staring at his dead wife, at the boy my dead father had been. “I have my motives. I always do. But they’re not what you think they are, Tess. There a
re lines I would not cross.”

  “Then why?” I said hoarsely. Why pump me for information about Daniela Nicolae? If you’re not with them, if you’re not one of them—why do you need to know?

  I felt something shift in the room, in him.

  “Walker Nolan is my son.” The kingmaker stared at the photograph a moment longer, then looked up. “My wife didn’t know. Adam doesn’t know. Walker doesn’t know.” The kingmaker walked over to the nightstand and set the frame gingerly back down. “No one knows,” he said. “Except for Georgia and me, and now you.”

  Georgia Nolan and William Keyes . . .

  Adam had implied that they’d been involved, before either of them were married. When Keyes had found out that Walker had come to Ivy, he’d shown up on our front porch, demanding answers.

  Demanding to know what kind of trouble Walker was in.

  He and Georgia met that day. . . .

  “You see now why I needed to know what Ivy knows about this whole sordid situation,” the kingmaker said. “That terrorist girl isn’t carrying the president’s grandchild.” His voice was rougher than I’d ever heard it. “She’s carrying mine.”

  I forced myself to process, forced my mouth to form words. “Why are you telling me this?”

  Why would he tell me a secret he’d kept for decades?

  The kingmaker’s gaze went back to the picture. “I lost Tommy,” he said. “Adam thinks me a monster. Walker will never really be mine.” His fingers tightened around the edges of the frame. “I treated Ivy like a daughter, and she chose Peter Nolan over me.” He forced himself to walk back over to the nightstand and set down the frame. “Come what may, my dear,” he said, turning back to me, “I will not lose you.”

  CHAPTER 46

  True to his word, the kingmaker didn’t allow me out of the house until he personally delivered me to school Monday morning. Headmaster Raleigh called a school-wide assembly for first period. I sat next to Vivvie and tried not to feel anything when Henry walked straight by us both.

  I tried not to think about the fact that I hadn’t heard from Ivy in twenty-four hours.

  “Did something happen that I don’t know about?” Vivvie asked. “Because you’re making this face”—Vivvie adopted a stormy countenance—“and Henry’s making that face, and—”

  Headmaster Raleigh saved me from the rest of Vivvie’s inquiry. “Starting today,” he announced, signaling the beginning of the assembly, “our new security measures will be going into full effect.” He began going through the measures: double the number of security personnel, changes to school policy on search and seizure, strict enforcement of all existing security protocol.

  I wondered if I was the only one who noticed how heavily the new security personnel were armed.

  The police still hadn’t made an arrest in the murder of John Thomas Wilcox. That left the Hardwicke administration on edge.

  John Thomas’s father is in bed with terrorists, and now John Thomas is dead, I thought. Someone at this school killed him. The Hardwicke administration should be on edge.

  “Tess.” Vivvie nudged me in the side. With a start, I realized the headmaster had stopped speaking. The assembly was over.

  As I stood to exit, my phone vibrated in my pocket. I slipped it out, reading the text I’d received. When I looked up, I saw Henry across the room, staring at me.

  “Everything okay?” Vivvie asked.

  I stuffed my phone back into my pocket. “Everything is fine.”

  According to the text, Ivy had done what Ivy Kendrick did. There was a problem. She’d solved it. Congressman Wilcox had been taken into federal custody. She’d found evidence—concrete evidence—linking him to Senza Nome.

  I pushed my way through the crowd, trying to get to Henry. Cold air hit my face the moment I left the chapel. I called Henry’s name, but he kept walking back to the main building. I caught up with him in the hallway, my face numb from even a brief encounter with the wind outside.

  “Ivy can connect Congressman Wilcox to Senza Nome.”

  Henry came to a standstill at his locker. For a moment, he twisted the dial this way and that. When the locker door popped open, he turned his head slightly toward me. I took that as encouragement—however paltry—to continue.

  “The congressman is in custody. If John Thomas’s death is connected to this somehow, Ivy won’t let anyone sweep that under the rug.”

  Henry shut his locker. He was going to turn his back on me. He was going to walk away.

  “Henry,” I said. “Look at me. Please.”

  He met my gaze head-on. Almost immediately, I wished that he hadn’t.

  Kendrick, what you don’t know could fill an ocean.

  I’d done to him what Ivy had done to his mother. I’d let him believe a lie. I had decided what he did and did not need to know.

  “Not to interrupt an incredibly tense and subtext-filled moment”—Vivvie popped up beside us—“but is anyone going to catch me up on our status vis-à-vis Project Free Asher?”

  Without another word, Henry walked away. He didn’t even say good-bye. Vivvie turned to me, wide-eyed and bewildered. My stomach twisted sharply.

  Henry wasn’t the only one I’d kept things from.

  I told Vivvie then, the way I should have told her weeks ago. I told her that there was a chance that the person who’d orchestrated Justice Marquette’s murder—and her own father’s—was still out there. Still alive.

  Vivvie blinked rapidly, her lips pressed together and forced into a smile that told me she was trying not to cry. “You knew it wasn’t over.”

  “Vivvie.” I reached out and took her arm, but she jerked out of my grasp.

  “You listened to me talk about my dad,” Vivvie said. “And you knew. You knew it wasn’t over. You’re supposed to be my friend. My best friend.” She shook her head. “And I know that I might not be yours. I know that you have Asher and Henry, and you probably have tons of friends back in Montana, but you’re my best friend. Sometimes I think you’re my only friend. I trusted you when I didn’t trust anyone, and—”

  The flow of words cut off abruptly.

  “I’m sorry,” I told Vivvie. “I thought I was protecting you. And it was just a theory.”

  A theory I’d believed from the moment I’d heard it.

  “It’s fine,” Vivvie said, her voice dull. She forced herself to smile, even as a tear broke free and started carving a path down her face. “I’m not mad.”

  Henry was angry with me. Vivvie was heartbroken.

  “I’m not mad,” she repeated. “I just—I need to go.”

  “Viv—”

  I didn’t even get her whole name out before she was gone, bolting down the hall before anyone—myself included—could see her cry. As she disappeared around the corner, a member of the security staff walked by and told me to get to class. I waited until he’d passed, then turned and walked away.

  I wanted to go after Vivvie, but I wasn’t sure I had the right to, so I did what I always did when my brain was too loud and there were no right answers to be found: I walked. I walked down the hall. I looped around and found myself standing in front of the library.

  And that was when I heard the first shot.

  CHAPTER 47

  I thought that I’d imagined it. And then there was a second shot. And a third. Gunfire. My brain searched for another explanation, even as my body told me to run. Run-run-run-run—

  I could feel my heartbeat in my throat, my entire body jarring with each beat. Blood rushed in my ears. I forced myself to move, forced myself to turn, to take a step forward—away.

  Away. Away. Run away. Run-run-run—

  I caught sight of the library door. I remembered the door opening, John Thomas’s bloody body spilling into the hall. I shook. My vision blurred. Shallow breaths burned my lungs.

  Blood. Everywhere I look, I see red. John Thomas. His body is on the ground. The walls close in around me.

  Shot. Shot. Shot.

  He�
��s bleeding. Can’t run. Can’t move. Can’t breathe. The blood—

  Hands gripped my shoulders. I lashed out, like a horse with a broken leg.

  The person holding me stumbles backward. All I can see is blood. I hear her, calling my name.

  I felt like I was watching myself from outside my body. I felt as if something else had control.

  “Tess. Tess.”

  Through the blood, her features come into focus—

  “Emilia.” I said the name and came back to myself. There was no blood. There was no body. But the gunshots were real. It took hearing another one before I was sure, and by that time, Emilia had locked a hand around my forearm.

  “We have to go,” she said. “We have to hide.”

  I let her pull me toward the library door, and then my survival instincts clicked back on. I pushed the door inward. Emilia followed. I considered barricading the door but decided that might just draw attention. If we barricaded ourselves in, the shooter would know we were here.

  I pulled Emilia through the stacks. Toward the back of the library, the lights in the stacks were motion activated on an aisle-by-aisle basis. I hunkered down between two shelves, pressing my body as flat to them as I could. Beside me, Emilia did the same. It took a minute for the lights to go off.

  Those sixty seconds were the longest in my life.

  I could hear Emilia breathing beside me, could feel her breath on my neck.

  “What’s going on?” I asked her, my voice so quiet I could barely hear the words myself.

  “We were supposed to be in class,” Emilia said, her voice nearly as low as mine, neither of them anywhere near as deafening as the sound of my own heartbeat. “I forgot something in my locker. I went back, and I saw one of the new security guards pull his gun.”

  Hardwicke had doubled the number of security personnel on campus. Heavily armed. The memory washed back over me. I’d thought—we’d all thought—that the guards were armed for our protection.