Authors: Lynn Barnes
Henry didn’t wait for an answer before he stalked off. It was just as well. I didn’t have an answer to give him.
It took me hours to get to sleep that night, and even then, the fight with Henry followed me into my dreams.
“Get up, Tessie.” In the middle of the night, a voice jarred me awake. “Theresa.” There was a note of urgency in Ivy’s voice that hit me like a splash of water to the face.
I sat up in bed. “What happened?”
Ivy ran a hand through my hair, pushing it back from my face. “I
need you to pack a bag. Clothes, your school stuff, anything you might need.”
“A bag?” I caught Ivy by the arm as she moved to stand. “Ivy, what’s going on?” No answer. “Is this about the information I gave Adam?”
Ivy’s expression wavered slightly. I could see her locking down her emotions, trying to flip into fixer mode and handle me like any other problem. But she couldn’t. Ivy had a way of
looking at me, like I held her heart in my hands.
“What’s going on, Ivy?”
She pulled back from my grasp and stood, crossing to my closet and pulling out a bag.
“You’re sending me away.”
No response.
“Is this because my friends and I investigated John Thomas’s death?” I asked. “Asher was in danger of being arrested. We had to do something.”
Ivy never looked up from her packing. “Stephanie
Royal was the one who sent that video of Daniela to Walker Nolan and every major news outlet.”
We’d assumed—
Walker
had assumed—that the video of the terrorist naming him as the father of her baby had been sent by Daniela on some kind of time delay, another stage of the same attack meant to destabilize the White House.
“Where did Stephanie Royal get that video?” I asked. Ivy didn’t answer, and
I thought about what I’d told Adam and amended my question. “Where did Congressman Wilcox get that video?”
From the source. If not Daniela, then the people she worked for
. The answer hung in the air between us. But I needed Ivy to say it. I needed her to tell me that she was sending me away because she’d connected Congressman Wilcox to the terrorists, and things were about to get ugly.
My throat
tightening, I took a step toward Ivy, and a second later, she’d latched both of her arms around me. I stiffened on reflex, but she held on tightly. After a second or two, I relaxed in her grip, my arms rising of their own volition to hold just as tight to her.
What kind of danger was Ivy in that she was sending me away?
“You have got to stop doing this to me, Tessie,” Ivy murmured.
Stop asking
for answers she couldn’t give.
Stop putting myself at risk.
Stop being so much like her.
I forced myself to pull back. “I should pack.” My voice sounded dull, even to my own ears. I crossed the room and began mechanically pulling clothes off hangers.
This was the way it was, with Ivy and me. This was the way it would always be.
“The people Daniela works for ordered her to make that video.”
Ivy broke the silence. She would regret telling me this. I knew that, and she knew that, but she wasn’t any better at watching me walk away than I was at being shut out. “Daniela was supposed to release the video before she was captured. She didn’t. It was her job to get close to the president’s son, to carry his child. She claims to care for Walker. Our counterterrorism experts believe her, believe
that she was unable to stay emotionally uninvolved. There’s a theory that says that her own people may have come to see her as a liability.”
She couldn’t release the video
, I thought, translating Ivy’s words,
so Senza Nome released it for her.
That was as close to confirmation of Congressman Wilcox’s involvement with the terrorists as I was going to get.
“Where are you sending me?” I asked
softly, my throat stinging and tightening around the words. I knew that Ivy loved me. I knew that she would have given her own life to keep me safe. But if she could have snapped her fingers and made me the kind of daughter who didn’t ask questions that
made her a target, the kind who was less like her and nothing like me—she would have.
I couldn’t be that girl for her, any more than she could
promise to stay safe for me.
“Somewhere secure,” Ivy said, answering the question I’d spoken out loud. “And,” she added, “the last place Adam and I would ever want you to be.”
I’d been to the Keyes mansion for Sunday night dinners. I’d sat opposite the kingmaker at the antique chessboard in his study. But this was the first time I’d walked up the massive marble staircase to see the second floor.
A long hallway stretched out before us. William Keyes walked me to the end of the hall and opened a door to our left. A massive suite, complete with its own entry,
sitting room, and a bedroom large enough to dwarf a king-size bed, lay sprawled out before me. Despite its size, there was something about the suite that contrasted sharply with the looming antiques and surplus of marble downstairs.
“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
are
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.”