Authors: Lynn Barnes
But if there was even a chance that my case was connected to hers, I couldn’t keep that quiet. “Congressman Wilcox is having an affair with a woman named Stephanie Royal.”
It was clear from the expression on Adam’s face
that he knew exactly who Stephanie Royal was.
“Does Congressman Wilcox have high-level security clearance?” I asked. “Could he have been the source of the media leaks about the bombing?”
Adam didn’t answer. I took that to mean that a man as powerful and resourceful as John Thomas’s father might have all
kinds
of access.
“John Thomas broke into his father’s files,” I told my uncle. “There’s
a good chance that something John Thomas saw in those files got him killed.”
“Have you mentioned any of this to Ivy?” Adam asked.
I shook my head.
“Why not?” Adam’s expression was deadly serious. He expected an answer, and he wouldn’t back down until I gave him one.
Because Ivy told me to stay away from Asher. She promised that she would take care of it, but she’s done nothing. If she knew
I was looking into John Thomas’s murder, she would have told me to stay away from that, too.
Instead of putting any of that into words, I took out my cell, called Ivy, and set the phone to speaker.
It went to voice mail.
Considering my point made, I hit
end
and turned back to Adam.
Adam was quiet for several seconds. “The vice president is attempting to move Daniela Nicolae to a classified
facility.” Adam’s words—the fact that he was telling me this—took me completely off guard. “Ivy thinks Nicolae knows something she’s not sharing about the attempt on the president’s life, and no
one trusts the vice president enough to let him remove a piece from the board. That’s where Ivy is right now. She’s working with Georgia to try to block the transfer.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I
asked, my brain whirring. “Why are you telling me anything?” Adam didn’t exactly have a history of over-sharing—particularly when it came to things like terrorists and Ivy’s line of work.
Adam caught my gaze and held it for several seconds. “Because,” he said finally, “there’s this dance that you and Ivy do, over and over again. The push and pull—it hurts you, and it hurts her, and I would give
anything to keep either of you from being hurt ever again.” He stood up. “I’ll look into the connection between Wilcox and the pundit. I’ll look into the leaks.”
This was the part where Adam told me to stay out of it. This was the part where he read me the riot act and left me under lock and key.
“Thank you,” Adam said instead, looking at me in a way that made me wonder if he was seeing my father.
“For trusting me.”
I gave a brief nod. I expected Adam to leave then, but he wasn’t done yet.
“I heard that my father is bankrolling your friend’s defense team.”
My gut told me that this was why Adam had come to see me in the first place. This was what he’d wanted to talk to me about, before I’d dropped the bombshell about the congressman.
“If you trust me, Tess,” my uncle said quietly, putting
a hand on my shoulder, “don’t trust him.” Adam gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze and then turned toward the door. “Favors from a man like William Keyes always come at a price.”
I spent hours wondering what Adam was doing with the information I’d given him. Had he managed to pass it off to Ivy? Did they think there was a connection between John Thomas’s death and the information his father had been leaking?
Had
Congressman Wilcox really been the source of those leaks?
And if he had been—where had he gotten the information? What other classified information
did he have access to?
Does he know anything about the president’s Secret Service detail?
The question took my breath away.
Could he have acquired that information? Could he have passed it on? Not just to the press—but to the terrorists?
Whenever I needed to think, I walked. Bodie didn’t stop me from leaving the house. I did a loop around the neighborhood, then another. And another. And the
entire time, I told myself I was seeing connections where there were none. Even if Congressman Wilcox was the source of the media leaks—and
that was still an
if
—that didn’t mean he was anything more than a dirty politician trying to get ahead.
Senza Nome specializes in infiltration. They have someone on the Hill. They must.
This time, when I wrapped back around to the house, I saw someone sitting
on the front porch. By streetlight, it took me a moment to recognize him.
“Henry?” I called out as I approached the front porch. “What are you doing here?”
He was sitting on the concrete steps. In all the time I’d known him, I had never once seen Henry Marquette sit on the ground. His eyes were shadowed.
“Is everything okay?” I asked him.
Henry looked up at me, his face half in shadow, his
eyes catching the streetlight. “The first time I saw you,” he said, “was at my grandfather’s funeral.”
I took a seat beside Henry, unsure where this was going, unsure why he looked like he’d been through a war zone and seen things he couldn’t unsee.
“Then afterward,” Henry continued, “at my grandfather’s wake, I found you with my sister and Asher. The three of you were skipping imaginary rocks.”
He paused. “Do you remember that?”
“Yes.” I remembered Henry looking at us like we were crazy, like he couldn’t begin to fathom running barefoot in the grass or playing pretend.
Henry swallowed, then held up one hand. As I watched, he pantomimed tossing a rock. “How was that?” His voice was rough, hoarse.
“Horrible,” I told him. “It sank straight to the bottom and didn’t skip even once.”
Henry let out a bark of laughter.
I showed him how it was done. “It’s all in the flick of the wrist.”
The edges of Henry’s lips curled up slightly. He looked down at his hands, at a “rock” that didn’t even exist. “Thalia wakes up screaming sometimes.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “First my father. Then my grandfather.” Henry’s voice hardened with resolve. “I tell her that I will never let anything
happen to her, but it’s not herself she worries about. She worries about me. About my mom.”
I remembered being Henry’s sister’s age, remembered the cloying fear that someday Gramps or Ivy might go away.
Henry reached into the bag sitting beside him. He held out a white envelope with my name scrawled across the front. I took it from him and opened it. Inside, I found a greeting card. The front
was covered in a lacy design, framing what appeared to be an elegant white wedding cake.
“From Asher,” Henry said. He rolled his eyes, but the heavy tone in his voice never changed. “Mine had a sparkly pony on it.”
I opened the card. On the inside, the words
Congratulations on Your Nuptials
had been scratched out. Above them, Asher had scrawled,
Thank You for Trying to Prove I’m Not a Homicidal
Maniac.
“If John Thomas was killed because of something he saw in his father’s files,” Henry said, his voice hoarse, “if there’s even a chance that there are powerful players involved in this, if someone like that wants Asher to take the fall . . .”
Thalia wasn’t the only Marquette afraid of losing someone.
“I made a deal with William Keyes,” I told the boy beside me. “The next time the police
question Asher, he’ll have the best defense attorneys in the country with him. We won’t
let
anything happen to him, Henry.”
“Kendrick,” Henry said, turning to look at me, a sad smile on his face. “There are some things that even you cannot fix. If the right person wants the truth about John Thomas’s death to stay buried, how are we supposed to stop them? How are we supposed to stop anything?”
I knew that Henry was thinking about his grandfather’s death, covered up as a matter of national security, about his father’s suicide, rewritten by Ivy in the blink of an eye. The first time I’d ever seen Henry, he’d stepped in front of his mother at his grandfather’s funeral. I’d recognized in him a familiar need to protect the people he loved.
He wanted to protect Asher. And Thalia. And me.
“Ivy has files,” Henry said. “The same way Congressman Wilcox does. If we could get a look at them, we might have a better idea of what we’re dealing with.”
I thought about how desperate Henry must be to want anything from Ivy. And I knew in my gut that there was no world in which Ivy would let us take even the smallest glimpse at those files. So I gave Henry something else.
“John Thomas’s father
is having an affair with the political pundit who’s been leading the crusade against the Nolan administration. Congressman Wilcox might be the source of the leaks on the Senza Nome bombing.” I paused. “He certainly benefitted from them.”
Wilcox was the
minority
whip. The president’s loss was his gain.
“Senza Nome specializes in infiltration,” I continued. “If that video of Daniela’s is to be
believed, they have operatives everywhere, including our own government.”
Henry’s jaw clenched. I could see him processing everything I’d said. “Leaking incriminating information about the president doesn’t make John Thomas’s father a terrorist.” Leave it to Henry to be the voice of reason, to play devil’s advocate. “Congressman Wilcox may be a corrupt politician, but do you know how many corrupt
politicians there are in this town? Are the president’s hands really that much cleaner?”
President Nolan had covered up Henry’s grandfather’s murder. He’d been willing to let Ivy die when she’d been held captive by a Secret Service agent on
his
detail.
“If Senza Nome does have an operative in Washington,” Henry said, “it could be anyone. And
none
of this helps us protect Asher.”
“I told Adam
about the congressman’s affair. I told him that John Thomas had accessed his father’s files. He and Ivy won’t let Asher go down for this murder—not when there’s a very good chance that this is bigger than any of us imagined.”
Henry was quiet for a very long time. “I wish,” he said finally, his head bowed, “that I could have the kind of faith in them that you do.” His voice was low and rough,
and for a moment, I had the sense that there was a depth of meaning to his words that I couldn’t begin to understand.
“Do you have faith in me?” I hadn’t meant to ask the question.
I never noticed Henry leaning toward me. I wasn’t conscious of leaning toward him. But suddenly the space between us was nearly gone.
“I have faith that you will break every rule that you have to break to do whatever
you think is right,” Henry said. I felt his breath on my face with each word. “I have faith that you won’t lie to me. That you won’t ever pretend to be something you’re not.” His eyes caught on mine—caught
in
mine, as if my gaze had swallowed his whole.
My heart beat. My lips parted slightly, my hands bracing against the concrete beneath us.
And then Henry’s words hit me.
I have faith that you
won’t lie to me. That you won’t ever pretend to be something you’re not.
I wasn’t lying to Henry. But I was pretending. I’d been pretending for weeks, ever since I’d discovered that Ivy believed the conspiracy surrounding Justice Marquette’s death wasn’t over. I hadn’t thought twice about keeping the possibility of a fourth conspirator from Henry.
I have faith that you won’t lie to me.
I swallowed,
my mouth dry. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
Henry inhaled sharply and leaned back. I felt the moment pass, like air knocked violently from my lungs.
And then I told him.
Henry stood up and began walking—away from what I’d just told him and away from me.
Halfway to the street, he came to a standstill. His fists weren’t clenched. He didn’t make a single sound. But he might as well
have been yelling.
I knew better than to approach. “Henry—” His name stuck in my throat. He didn’t give any visible sign that he’d heard me. I could see his shoulders rising and falling with heavy, jagged breaths. I tried to imagine what was going on in his head right now.
And then I wished that I hadn’t.
He’d thought that the people responsible for killing his grandfather were dead. He’d thought
that even if the world never knew what had really happened, there had been some form of justice. And now he’d found out that he’d thought wrong.
I have faith that you won’t lie to me.
“Say something,” I told him quietly. He barely moved. He made no sound except for the air making its way into and out of his lungs at an uneven pace, each breath a little sharper than the last.
He was angry.
He was hurt.
He was coming undone—but he wouldn’t fall apart. Henry Marquette didn’t fall apart. He didn’t let himself lose control—
“Henry.” I took a step toward him. “Please, just—”
“Yell at you?” Henry suggested quietly. “What is it precisely that you want me to say, Kendrick? That I wish you had done me the decency of telling me the truth weeks ago?”
He hadn’t turned to face me. Something
in the way he said the word
wish
made my stomach twist. His voice had gone rough when he said it, an audible crack in his hard-won control. “Should I tell you that I had a right to know?” Henry continued, glancing back over his shoulder at me. “That I feel as if I am right back at my father’s funeral, staring at infamous fixer Ivy
Kendrick and wondering how she could lie so effortlessly to my
mother’s face?”
Those words hit me with the force of a blow, and I knew that they were meant to.
“What else does Ivy know?” Henry asked. “Has she even looked into the possibility that someone orchestrated my grandfather’s murder?” He stared at me, into me, through me. “Has she questioned whether or not the president was involved? Someone in his administration?”
“I don’t know,” I told Henry.
That admission echoed down the driveway.
“Kendrick, what you don’t know,” Henry told me, his voice rough and barely more than a whisper, “could fill an ocean.” He looked down at the ground, the whites of his eyes standing out in contrast to his dark brown skin. “I told you that Thalia wakes up screaming at night.” He’d let me in. He was punishing himself for that now, punishing me. “She crawls
into my bed afterward. I let her sleep with me. I let her lay her head on my chest, so that she can hear my heartbeat.” His voice shook. “I tell her that we are safe, that nothing is going to happen to us.” He paused. “I lie to her. Because this world is not safe. The people who are supposed to protect us, the people we are supposed to trust—
I
know that sometimes they are the ones who do the most
harm.” He paused, and his already quiet voice got even softer. “How can I protect Thalia, or my mother, or you—from that?”