The Fixer (15 page)

“Tess?”

I sat up in bed. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark, but once they did, I could make out the outline of Vivvie’s body in the doorway.

“You okay?” I asked. What a stupid question. Of course she wasn’t okay.

“Can I . . .” Vivvie trailed off. She had a blanket draped over her shoulders.

“Can you what?”

Vivvie hovered in the doorway, like there was some kind of barrier physically keeping her out. “I just . . .
I don’t want to be alone
.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

I propped myself up on my elbows. “Do you want to sleep in here?” My bed was big enough for both of us. “It’s okay,” I said when she didn’t move. “There’s plenty of room.”

Vivvie shuffled to my bed. She climbed up on it, lying on top of the covers, still wrapped in her own blanket.

She wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to be alone.

Vivvie’s eye was black the next morning. There was no way she could go to school, and there was no way I was leaving her alone with Ivy. My sister fixed problems
for a living
. I couldn’t help thinking that if I left Vivvie here, I might come back to find her gone. Boarding school, maybe. Someplace safe. Someplace out of the way.

I lent Vivvie a set of clothes. When she went to shower, I went in search of Ivy. Downstairs, my sister had a cup of coffee in her hand and a phone pressed to her ear. I seriously doubted she’d slept the night before. “You owe me,” she was telling the person on the other end of the phone line. “We won’t go into the
how
and the
why
. Suffice it to say, you will get me what I need.” A sharp smile cut across her features.

It wasn’t a friendly smile.

“I knew we’d see eye to eye,” she said. “Tell Caroline hello for me.” Without waiting for a response, Ivy hung up. She turned, saw me, and studied me for a moment, cataloging my expression, the dark circles under my eyes. “How did you sleep?”

“Better than you.”

Ivy put her phone in her back pocket and herded me into the kitchen, where she poured herself another cup of coffee, then poured me a glass of milk.

“I’d prefer the coffee,” I said.

She gave me a look. “And I would have preferred it if you’d come to me.”

So we’re doing this now
. The night before, she hadn’t yelled at me. She hadn’t dragged me over the coals.

“I did come to you,” I said.

“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.”