The Fixer (35 page)

Ivy flipped the notebook closed before I could get a look at the other names. “Nothing for you to worry about,” she told me, squeezing my arm again. “Let’s go back to bed.”

CHAPTER 65

A judge. The White House physician. A Secret Service agent.

Once Ivy put the thought in my head, I couldn’t keep from coming back to it. Were all the people responsible for Theodore Marquette’s death dead? And if not, who was still out there?

Judge Pierce had stood to gain a nomination.

Vivvie’s father had done it for money.

Kostas had done it for his son.

If there was someone else—someone whose role had been ushering the nomination through, someone whose calls Kostas had been avoiding—what had that person stood to gain?

I didn’t speak a word of those thoughts to Henry. Or to Vivvie. Our lives were slowly getting back to normal. That first Monday back at Hardwicke, the gossip mill ran full force. Ivy’s name had been released as the hostage. Everyone wanted the inside scoop—but I’d managed to do a pretty good job dissuading people from asking me questions.

I was, in general, pretty good at dissuading.

I knew things were dying down when a student approached me claiming that someone was sabotaging her grades. No one outside of Vivvie, Henry, and Asher knew about my role in getting Ivy released, but there was no escaping the persistent belief that if you had a problem at Hardwicke, Tess Kendrick was the person to see.

A week to the day after my last text from William Keyes, I received a second. He’d held up his end of our bargain. It was my turn to hold up mine.

“Are you okay?” Vivvie asked me, the question taking me back to the way she’d asked, over and over, my first day at Hardwicke.

“I just received a royal decree from my grandfather that he’s picking me up after school,” I said. The word
grandfather
felt foreign on my lips, like maybe I wasn’t saying it right. Gramps was my grandfather, but William Keyes? He was one of the wealthiest men in the country. He was a kingmaker, a powerful enemy, a powerful friend.

His name was on Ivy’s list.

“What exactly did you promise the old chap?” Asher fell in beside us in the hallway on our way to the exit.

“Besides a press conference announcing my existence to the world?” I asked, giving no visible clue to where my thoughts had really taken me. “Weekly dinners, giving him a say in my education, letting him set up a trust fund for me, and—” I mumbled the rest of it.

“Did you say
changing your last name
?” Asher asked.

“You said once that your sister and Keyes didn’t get along.” Now it was Henry’s turn to join the conversation. “I do hope that was an exaggeration.” The two of us weren’t friends, exactly, but we’d been
through something—he’d sat by me when I’d been waiting for news on Ivy; I was the only person he’d ever told about his father.

Sometimes, when I caught him staring at me, I thought maybe he knew my secrets, too.

“Not an exaggeration,” I told Henry. “When Ivy finds out I went to William Keyes for help, when she finds out what I promised him . . .”

That would have been an ugly conversation no matter what. But given that Ivy was still staying up nights, locked in her office, given that
she
thought there was another conspirator out there and my grandfather’s name was on her suspect list—she was going to kill me.

We hit the front corridor. Asher pushed the door open. “Ladies,” he said with a gallant half bow, “after you.”

I stepped out into the sunshine and stopped dead in my tracks. There was a limo waiting at the curb, and standing just outside the limo was William Keyes. The man the First Lady said excelled at holding a grudge. The one I’d been told was ruthless and dangerous. The one who valued family, who wanted a
legacy
.

The one who looked at me, across the pavement, with a hungry look in his eyes that told me that legacy might be me.

“Will you remember us when you’re fancy?” Asher asked me. I shoved him to one side. All around us, students were slowing to look at Keyes. It wasn’t the limo that attracted their attention. It was the man.

Asher’s sister honed in on the four of us like a missile zeroing in on its target. “That’s William Keyes,” Emilia told Asher. “What is William Keyes doing here?”

Henry, Asher, and Vivvie all darted their eyes toward me.

Asher was the one who broke the silence. “Have you met my friend?” he asked Emilia. “Tess Keyes.”

Emilia stopped dead in her tracks. Asher had spoken just loudly enough that several people overheard him. My good old buddy John Thomas Wilcox looked like he’d swallowed a worm.

Note to self
, I thought,
kill Asher
. But a second later, I had bigger things to worry about, because apparently Bodie hadn’t come by himself to pick me up today.

Ivy had come with him.

“Incoming,” Bodie coughed, and that was all the warning I had before Ivy swooped down, intercepting me before I made it to the limo and the man who was standing there.

“Tess,” Ivy said calmly.

“Yes?”

“What is Adam’s father doing here?”

I looked to Bodie, who gave me a look that said, oh so clearly, that I was on my own.

“
What is Adam’s father doing here?
” Ivy repeated.

There was no way to sugarcoat it. “Apparently, he’s giving me a ride home from school.”

We’d acquired enough of an audience that Ivy lowered her voice. “And why would William Keyes do that?”

“Because he knows,” I said. “About Tommy. About me.”

Ivy had to have suspected that was what I was going to say, but that didn’t keep her nostrils from flaring slightly the moment I said it.

“We needed a pardon.” I said the words below my breath, so low that no one but Ivy could hear them. “I did what I had to do to make sure you came home alive.”

I didn’t regret it. No matter who—or what—my paternal grandfather might be, I couldn’t regret it.

“Ivy.” William Keyes stepped forward and greeted Ivy with a cat-eating-canary smile. “You look well.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked him.

He smiled. “I’m picking my granddaughter up from school.”

Ivy forgot about keeping her voice low. “I want you to stay away from her. You have no legal standing—”

“I’ll stay away from her when she asks me to stay away from her,” William Keyes replied.

Ivy looked at me. “Theresa,” she said, her voice low. “Tess Kendrick. Tell him.”

His name was on that list. But there were other names, too.

“I gave him my word,” I said. This was the bargain I’d struck: the kingmaker’s presence in my life in exchange for saving Ivy’s.

It was a deal I would make all over again.

“In this business,” Keyes told Ivy, still looking altogether too satisfied with himself, “your word is the most valuable asset you have.”

He gestured toward the limo, and I stepped toward it.

“What’s your endgame here?” Ivy asked the man she’d once worked for. “What do you want with my daughter?”

“The same thing I’ve always wanted, dear,” William replied. “An heir.”

Unlike the rest of us, he made no move whatsoever to lower his voice. All around us, my fellow students were buzzing.

“By the way,” the man who made kings told Ivy, “her name isn’t Tess Kendrick. She’s changing it—to Tess Kendrick Keyes.” He smiled smugly. “There’ll be a lovely profile of her—and her courageous father, God rest his soul—in tomorrow’s
Post
.”

For once, Ivy was speechless.

Nearby, someone snapped a picture of the three of us on a cell phone. Keyes opened the door to the limo. With one last look at Ivy, I climbed in. My paternal grandfather climbed in beside me.

“Ivy’s going to kill me,” I said.

“You’re a Keyes,” he replied smoothly. “We excel at thinking five steps ahead. I’m sure you can handle it.”

As the limo pulled away from Hardwicke, I could see Ivy’s mind racing, looking for a way to undo this—and quite possibly plotting my immediate demise. I thought about Justice Marquette and the likelihood that there was a fourth player who’d gotten away with his part in the murder.

I thought about the fact that the person in question might be sitting beside me in this car.

And then I settled back in my seat and responded to his assertion that I could handle it. “I can try.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As always, this book would not exist without the wonderful team who helped bring it into being. First and foremost, thank you to Catherine Onder, for seeing the potential in this book and working with me to make sure it lived up to that potential. I owe you a huge debt of gratitude (as do Vivvie, Henry, and Asher—not to mention the book’s plot!). Major thanks are also due to Anne Heltzel, who helped me take this book from its first revision to its final draft. Anne’s input was invaluable (and delivered on an extremely tight timetable to boot!).

I’m blessed to have worked with my incredible agent, Elizabeth Harding, on fourteen books now. As always, Elizabeth, I am so grateful for your help and support at every step in the process. Thank you also to Ginger Clark, whose passion for this project never failed to humble me and bring a smile to my face, and to Holly Frederick and everyone else at Curtis Brown for all their hard work!

Huge thanks to the writer friends who gave me pep talks, commiseration, and occasionally food and drink in their attempt to get me through the submission, drafting, and revision of this book! Thank you to BOB for company, day in and day out, Carrie Ryan and Rachel Hawkins for Arizona adventures, and Sarah Rees Brennan, Maureen Johnson, Cassandra Clare, Josh Lewis, and Kelly Link for Cornwall! Lastly, I cannot begin to describe how grateful I am to my Oklahoma girls, Ally Carter and Rachel Vincent, for deadline closets, Panera Thursdays, brainstorming, commiseration, and moral support. I love you guys dearly!

Finally, I am grateful for the support of my family and friends. Special thanks go to Ti30, Mom, Dad, Justin, Allison, and Anthony. And to Connor, for helping to drag Aunt Jen away from the book long enough to go to the zoo.

Copyright © 2015 by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First published in the United States of America in July 2015 by Bloomsbury Children’s Books

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Barnes, Jennifer (Jennifer Lynn)

The fixer / by Jennifer Lynn Barnes.

pages cm

Summary: When her grandfather develops dementia, sixteen-year-old Tess, who has been keeping his Montana ranch going, is whisked away to Washington, DC, by a sister she barely knows and thrown into a world of politics, power, wealth, love triangles, and family secrets.

ISBN 978-1-61963-594-4 (hardcover) • ISBN 978-1-61963-595-1 (e-book)

[1. Sisters—Fiction. 2. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 3. Moving, Household—Fiction. 4. High schools—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction. 6. Wealth—Fiction. 7. Washington (D.C.)—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.B26225Fix 2015 [Fic]—dc23 2014023018

Book design by Amanda Bartlett

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