The Fixer (21 page)

“Downstairs,” Emilia replied. “East corridor.”

I started walking before she even finished talking. Henry and Asher followed. When I got to the bathroom, there was no one else inside. I’d expected to find Vivvie in one of the stalls, but she was just sitting on the floor.

“Vivvie.” I knelt down next to her.

“Sorry,” she said roughly. “I’m sorry. I’m fine.”

“What’s wrong?”

“You weren’t in the courtyard,” Vivvie said. “It’s stupid. I came to find you, and you weren’t in the courtyard, and—”

“Breathe.”

Vivvie breathed. Then she thrust something toward me. It took me a second to realize it was a newspaper, and another after that to realize that she wanted me to take it.

I took it. Slowly, I unfolded it. Then I understood instantly why Vivvie had come.

PIERCE FRONT-RUNNER FOR SUPREME COURT
, the headline declared. My mind whirred. This wasn’t an op-ed piece, and it wasn’t some two-bit newspaper. This was the front page of the
Washington Post
.

There was a knock at the door.

“Everything okay in there?” Asher called. “I ask in the most unobtrusive possible way!”

I looked down at the paper in my hand.

“You can show him,” Vivvie told me, pushing herself to her feet. “He’s going to see it anyway. Everyone’s going to see it.”

I reached out and squeezed Vivvie’s shoulder, and then we made our way out into the hall. Asher was standing next to the door. Henry was behind him. Wordlessly, I held up the article.

PIERCE FRONT-RUNNER FOR SUPREME COURT
. The headline was just as disturbing the second time, but not as disturbing as the subheading.
Sources say the president is moving toward nomination at an unprecedented rate.

“What sources?” Henry asked the question before I could. I had no answers. All I could do was move a step closer to Vivvie and take her hand in mine.

Her father had died on Friday. She’d just buried him—and now the
Washington Post
was announcing that some anonymous source had gone on record saying that the president was preparing to nominate the man who’d hired her father to commit murder.

“They can’t do this.” Vivvie found her voice again, her hand squeezing mine until it hurt. “Tess, the president can’t nominate Pierce. He can’t.” She pulled her hand away from mine and stepped back. “What if they killed him, Tess? What
if Pierce and whoever he’s working with killed my father, just like they killed . . .”

Vivvie’s eyes darted to Henry’s. Her words dried up, and the two of them were suddenly caught up in the kind of staring contest that nobody wins. Neither one could look away.

“Henry.” Vivvie swallowed. “I . . .”

“I know,” Henry said softly. “About my grandfather. About your father.”

Vivvie flinched. She waited for him to lash out.

“You could have kept quiet.” Henry was so focused on Vivvie that I felt like I was eavesdropping, like neither Asher nor I had any place in this moment. “You didn’t,” Henry continued, his voice just as soft. “You spoke up.”

Vivvie’s eyes filled with tears.

Henry reached out and laid a gentle hand on her arm. “I owe you for that.”

“I’m sorr—”

“Don’t.” Henry’s voice was implacable. “Don’t apologize. Not now, not ever, not to me.” He turned back to me. “We need to know if the article is true.”

Was the president really on the verge of nominating Pierce? And if he was—what did that mean?

The president was at the gala. The president is in the picture. The president has the power to see this nomination through.

“Maybe Ivy knows something,” I said, turning the situation over in my mind, trying to come at it from a different angle. “She won’t give me details, but I can ask.”

“Right.” Henry’s voice went cold. “Because talking to your sister will make everything better.”

Vivvie looked from Henry to me. “Tess?”

Vivvie trusted Ivy—and she
needed
to trust someone.

“Henry,” I bit out. “A word?”

We retreated slightly from the group. “Vivvie’s been through hell, and right now, Ivy is the one person she is counting on to make this right.” I willed Henry to hear me. “You can’t take that away from her.”

“Vivvie didn’t come to your sister for help on this.” Henry’s tone was unapologetic. “When she saw that article in the paper, she came to
you
.”

I swallowed, trying not to feel the weight of that. “She trusts Ivy.”

“Maybe she shouldn’t.”

I took a step closer to him. “This isn’t about whatever unforgivable sin my sister committed to get on your bad side—”

Henry closed what little space remained between us. “My father didn’t die in a car accident.” Henry lowered his voice, whispering those words directly into my right ear, his lips brushing against the side of my face as he did. “He killed himself, and my grandfather hired your sister to cover it up.”

I froze. I’d read articles about Henry’s dad’s death. His
accident
.

“Your sister staged the wreck,” Henry continued. “She greased the right palms, and she put out the right story. My mother doesn’t know.” Henry was still so close that I could feel his breath against the side of my face. “I wasn’t supposed to know, either. But I do, Tess.
I know
.”

I thought about what it must have been like to carry a secret like that, to watch his family mourning his father, knowing that the man had taken his own life.

“I get up every day, and I lie to everyone I care about in this world. I don’t get to be angry. I don’t get to ask why. I’m complicit. She made me complicit.”

He had a problem
, I’d said to Ivy, of Theo Marquette.
You fixed it.
Her reply had been
Something like that
.

“I told you,” Henry said, taking a step back. “Fixers are experts at covering things up. Your sister’s practically an artist.”

Vivvie’s father’s suicide hadn’t made the papers.

“Whatever Ivy did,” I said, my throat tightening around the words until I thought I wouldn’t be able to get them out, “your grandfather was the one who hired her to do it.”

How could he hate Ivy and not the old man?

Because it’s easier. Because he’d just lost his father. Because he needed someone to blame.

“My grandfather and I never discussed it,” Henry said tersely. “And now we never will.”

CHAPTER 42

I made it through the rest of my classes like a sleepwalker drifting blindly down a hall. My mind was a mess, tangled with questions I didn’t want to ask and thoughts I couldn’t banish.

The photo. The gala. The president moving toward nominating Pierce. Ivy.

Five minutes into my last class, I was called to the headmaster’s office. If I’d done anything to deserve his attention, I wasn’t sure what it was. I half prepared myself for this to be another round of John Thomas Wilcox Tries to Get Tess’s Locker Searched, but I couldn’t bring myself to really care about John Thomas or Headmaster Raleigh or my continued enrollment at Hardwicke.

“Tess, dear.” Mrs. Perkins greeted me with a smile. “They’re waiting for you. Go right on in.”

They?
I barely had time to process that before the door to the headmaster’s office opened, and Headmaster Raleigh stepped out. “Tess,” he said. “Excellent.”

Excellent?
That wasn’t exactly a response I’d ever provoked from the man.

“Come in, come in,” he said. The moment I stepped into his office, I realized why the headmaster had changed his tune.

“Tess.” Georgia Nolan greeted me with a kiss on the cheek. I stiffened. In the corner of the room, a Secret Service agent looked on, his expressionless face never wavering. “I am sorry for surprising you,” Georgia continued, “but I was scheduled to meet with Headmaster Raleigh about the upcoming Hardwicke auction, and I wanted to check in and see how you were doing.” She squeezed my arm. “You had a bit of an upset last week.”

I cast a glance at the headmaster, who seemed altogether pleased with himself for being able to accommodate the First Lady’s request. He probably would have tied me up with a little bow if he’d thought there was a chance of ingratiating himself further.

“I’m fine,” I said, turning my attention back to Georgia. She clucked her tongue.

“You really do resemble your sister,” she said. “Ivy all over again, don’t you think?” she asked the headmaster.

“Certainly.” The slight strain in the headmaster’s voice told me that he wasn’t quite as fond of the resemblance as the First Lady was.

“Would you mind giving us a moment, Chester?” Georgia had a way of issuing requests, sweet as honey, but rhetorical nonetheless. The headmaster was out of the room before he knew it. Georgia nodded to the Secret Service agent, and he positioned himself just outside the door.

Georgia shut it, leaving the two of us alone.

“How are you really, Tess?” she asked once it was just us. “Ivy told me that Vivvie Bharani is a friend of yours. I can only imagine what she’s going through.”

I didn’t want to talk about Vivvie, but Georgia looked content to stand there indefinitely until I said something. “They buried her father this morning.”

“I regret not being able to attend.” Georgia studied me for a moment. “Ivy indicated that Ms. Bharani and her father were having some problems before his death?”

Why do you want to know?
I caught those words in the filter between my brain and my mouth. When she realized that I wasn’t going to respond, Georgia let out a light, airy sigh, then leaned back against the headmaster’s desk. “I know when I’m being kept in the dark, Tess,” she said. “Quite frankly, there’s not much that goes on in Washington that I don’t know.”

The president is rarely the most powerful person in Washington.
Standing across from Georgia Nolan, I suddenly found myself wondering where she stood in that hierarchy.

“I know your sister flew out to Arizona this weekend. I understand she’s due back today. What I don’t know is what, precisely, she is doing there.” Georgia’s Southern drawl softened every word she said, but there was no mistaking the thread of steel underneath. “In the past week, it’s become perfectly clear that William Keyes is pushing for Pierce’s nomination. Hard. William’s calling in a lot of chips on this one. I have known the man for a very long time, Tess. He excels at getting what he wants. And when he doesn’t get it, well, let us say that the man holds a grudge.” She clicked her nails lightly
along the surface of the desk. “If Ivy is in Arizona looking for information to discredit Pierce, it would be in everyone’s best interest if I were prepared to deal with the fallout. Believe me when I say that I can deal with William Keyes if and only if I am forewarned.”

She wanted to know what was going on, why Ivy was in Arizona, what Ivy was looking for. I felt the pull to tell her what I knew, but resisted.

“Your husband asked Ivy to dig for skeletons in Pierce’s closet,” I said instead. “I’d guess that’s why she’s in Arizona.”

“Would you?” Georgia mused.

“Ivy’s very thorough.”

“Thorough,” Georgia repeated. “And that’s why she had Major Bharani removed from duty at the White House when she discovered the altercation with his daughter. Because she’s thorough.”

Georgia didn’t
sound
skeptical, but I knew suddenly, studying her warm hazel eyes, that she was. The First Lady knew Ivy well enough to know that there was something else going on here.

The question was: Did she know what that something else was?

The president was there when Vivvie’s dad and Judge Pierce met
, I thought.
The president was at the gala.
And the First Lady had said that there wasn’t much that went on in Washington that she didn’t know.

“Your sister isn’t the type to ask for help, Tess.” Georgia pushed off the desk and began slowly pacing the room, her hands clasped in front of her body, like a bride carrying a bouquet. “Our
Ivy is, I’m afraid, better at solving other people’s problems than allowing them to assist with her own.”

That had the ring of truth to it. Ivy had swooped into my life and taken charge in an instant, but she’d always shut me out of her own.

“I would like, very much,” Georgia continued, “to know if your sister requires my help now.”

If whatever Ivy discovered in Arizona led her somehow to the third party involved in the chief justice’s murder—if that third party was either of the men I suspected—Ivy would need all the help she could get.

But one of those men was Georgia Nolan’s husband.

“Is it true, what they said in the
Post
?” I asked. Georgia had been pumping me for information. Turnaround was fair play. “Is your husband really getting ready to nominate Pierce?”

Georgia waved away the question with one hand. “Peter would hardly move on anything until he hears back from Ivy. You mustn’t believe everything you read, Tess.”

“So the reporter’s sources were wrong?” I asked. That wasn’t what she’d said—not exactly—and I knew it.

“I’d be willing to bet his source, singular, is nothing more than an intern looking to forge some connections, and quite frankly, Tess, it isn’t worth my time to track it down. The reporter is unlikely to reveal his source, and even if he could be persuaded to do so, he would want something in return.” Georgia returned to stand directly in front of me. “In politics, Tess dear, you’re rarely given something for nothing.”

I wondered if she knew those words sounded like a warning.

I wondered if she meant them that way.

“Well,” Georgia said, seeming to realize that she wasn’t going to get anything else out of me. “Thank you for speaking with me, Tess. It has been illuminating. And I do hope you know that when I inquired about your well-being, I meant it. Ivy is not much older than my own sons, and I’ve grown to care about her very much. You matter to her, and that matters to me.”

Even with everything else going on, it hurt to hear that I mattered to Ivy. Turning away from Georgia before she could see the effect her words had on me, I took a few steps toward the far wall. My eyes landed on the picture behind the headmaster’s desk, and in the split second that followed, I knew that I wouldn’t get an opportunity like this again.