“I’m going to be okay,” I said. I meant it. I almost meant it.
“If I thought I would not be murdered on the spot,” the kingmaker said, coming toward me, “I would turn you over my knee for going back into that building.”
I wasn’t sure if Keyes was concerned about being murdered by Adam or Ivy or me. Beside me, Adam glowered.
I felt a grin tug at the edges of my lips. “You sound like my grandfather,” I said. “My other grandfather.”
William Keyes had never liked being reminded that Gramps had raised me and loved me and made me the person I was, but this time, he seemed to take the reference in stride.
“You’re a horrible girl,” Keyes said, coming to stand right in front of me. “A reckless, stupid, irresponsible, horrible girl. And I . . .”
He looked at Adam, then back at me.
“I could be a better man,” he said hoarsely. “For you.”
CHAPTER 65
The hospital didn’t hold me. I was released into Ivy’s custody. The first thing I did was ask about Henry. She knew me well enough to know I wouldn’t back down. And—apparently—the hospital staff knew her well enough not to turn us away from the ICU.
Henry’s mother was standing in the hallway, her back to the wall, her fist pressed to her mouth, her face crumbling around it. My throat and stomach constricted.
“Tessie,” Ivy said softly, but I was already off running.
“Is he . . .” I asked Henry’s mother. I couldn’t get further into the question than that. Pamela Abellard-Marquette looked up. It took her a moment to register my presence, to look at me, instead of through me.
Her entire body shuddered as she bit back a sob.
“He’s going to be okay.” The words undid her, even as she tried to pull herself together. “He’s out of surgery, and they say . . .”
Ivy came and rested a hand on Henry’s mother’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Pam said. “I can’t fall apart right now. I know that, and Henry’s going to be fine. He’ll need physical therapy, but he’ll be fine, and I don’t know why I’m crying like this—”
Another sob racked her body.
I know. I knew why she was crying like she’d lost him. Because in the hours since Hardwicke had been taken over, she’d been down that road again and again. Grief was like a set of stacking dolls, and the woman in front of me had lost her husband. She’d lost the father-in-law who’d been her rock in the wake of that loss. She had a daughter who woke up screaming at night, terrified that Henry or her mother might be next.
Pam shook her head and pulled herself to her full height. She forced her breath to even out but couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down her face. She was as strong a woman as I’d ever seen. And she was broken.
Life had broken her.
And still, she stood. She carried on. Standing there, looking at her, I saw so much of Henry. I saw that she would do anything to protect her children. I saw that she would be horrified by the idea of Henry carrying the weight of the world to protect her.
“Can I see him?” I asked.
“Tess.” Ivy said my name in a way that meant no, with a side of stop asking.
“He saved me,” I told Pam. “He took that bullet for me.”
He betrayed me.
Pam must have heard something in my voice because she looked at Ivy. “It’s fine,” she said. “I’m not sure he’ll be awake,” she told me. “But you can go in.”
I slipped into the room and left Ivy with Pam. Hopefully, between the two of them, they could hold the nurses off long enough for me to say what needed to be said.
To do what needed to be done.
I stood beside Henry’s bed, looking down at him. Tubes covered his face. As I stood there, he opened his eyes. I saw the moment he registered my presence and the moment he remembered everything that had passed between us.
Everything he’d done.
“You used me to try to get to Ivy’s files,” I said quietly. “You let them make you a terrorist.”
Henry closed his eyes, his face taut beneath the tubing, then opened them again. He forced himself to listen, to hear this.
“If you’d told me about Dr. Clark days ago, if you’d told me what you knew, we could have stopped it. The takeover, the executions—we could have told someone, and we could have stopped it.”
Henry stared at me. His green eyes were familiar. Too familiar. I didn’t want to feel what I felt when I looked at him, when he looked at me.
“I don’t forgive you,” I said, my voice low. “I understand how they got to you. I understand what it must have been like when they told you there was a fourth conspirator. I know you didn’t mean for any of this to happen.” Henry hadn’t known that Senza Nome would take over the school. He hadn’t known there would be guns or men or bodies. Dr. Clark had convinced him, the way she’d tried to convince me, that they were the good guys. “I know you would take it back if you could. I know you took a bullet for me.” I stared at him, at those green eyes. “But I do not forgive you.”
The expression on his face told me that Henry Marquette didn’t expect forgiveness.
“You’re going to do something for me,” I told him.
He gave a slight nod under the tubes.
“I want your word, Henry Marquette,” I said, my voice shaking. “Whatever I ask, you’ll give.”
He nodded again, slower this time, his face never leaving mine.
I bent down, until my mouth was very close to his ear. And then I told him my request: “Don’t tell anyone what happened in there. Don’t confess.”
Henry jerked back, but there was nowhere for him to go.
“You gave me your word,” I said. “I don’t forgive you. But you’re not going to confess.”
It was written on his face that he’d planned to. He would surrender himself to justice without another thought.
“Your family doesn’t deserve that,” I said, my thoughts going to his mother, to the sister who woke up screaming at night. “The mercenaries are dead, or they’re gone with Daniela. She swore to me that you’ll be safe, that you’re out, that you’ll never hear from Senza Nome again.” That was the one thing I’d asked of her, in exchange for the deal I’d brokered with Ivy. “Dr. Clark won’t breathe a word to the police about your involvement. The headmaster knew, but he’s gone, and Henry? I haven’t told.”
Now it was my turn to close my eyes.
“I didn’t tell the FBI. I didn’t tell Ivy.” I forced my lids open. “Did anyone else know? Any other students?”
Henry didn’t want to answer. I waited. And eventually, he spoke a single word around the tubing in his mouth, choking it out. “No.”
No, he hadn’t told anyone.
No, I couldn’t make him live with this guilt.
“You gave me your word,” I told him, my voice rough. “You know, and I know, but what we know doesn’t leave this room. Not when you give your statement. Not ever.”
Henry had been vulnerable. He’d been angry and powerless and alone, and Senza Nome had found him. They’d told him a truth he should have heard from me.
“I’m not doing this for you,” I told Henry. “I’m doing it for Asher and for Vivvie and Emilia and everyone at that school who will never be the same.” I pressed my lips together. “I’m doing it for your mom, and for Thalia, and for me.”
I didn’t forgive him. But he was Henry. And for the briefest of moments, he’d been mine.
“I’m doing this,” I said, “for a boy I used to know.”
A boy who’d been lied to. A boy who’d lost too much. A boy who had wanted justice. A boy who’d believed he was protecting the people he loved.
“This secret stays with us,” I said, trailing my fingers over his jaw one last time. “But, Henry? You and I are done.”
CHAPTER 66
Of all the things I expected to see when I exited Henry’s hospital room, the First Lady wasn’t high on the list.
Geor
gia Nolan was talking quietly to Ivy until she saw me. She murmured something to Ivy, then hung back as I approached.
“You okay?” Ivy asked.
I nodded. I wanted to mean it.
Ivy smoothed a hand over my hair. “If you’re up for it,” she said, “there’s one more person who wants to talk to you.”
The president of the United States was awake, aware, and fully vested with the power of his office. He was also still confined to a hospital bed. Unlike Henry, President Nolan was free of tubes. Beneath his hair, I could make out a long line of stitches that cut across the side of his head. The collar of his shirt revealed an expertly wrapped bandage underneath.
His shoulder? His chest? I tried not to imagine the bullet hitting the president.
I tried not to think about Henry and the moment he’d taken a bullet for me.
I forced my gaze up to the president’s face. His wife went to stand beside him, and that was the only cue that President Nolan needed to start speaking.
“I understand this country owes you a great debt,” the president told me. For someone who’d been in a coma, his voice was steady and strong. “I also understand that in my official capacity in this office, I can neither know the truth of what happened today, nor express my thanks for any role you may have played in it.”
If it wasn’t for me, Hardwicke might still be under terrorist control.
“The vice president will be resigning tomorrow,” President Nolan said, reminding me that if it wasn’t for the vice president’s actions, Daniela Nicolae might still be in federal custody, too. “He’ll cite family reasons. I suspect he and Marjorie will be anxious to take Anna home to New Hampshire.”
I’d spent enough time on the periphery of the political game to read between the lines of the president’s words. The vice president hadn’t resigned for family reasons, and he almost certainly hadn’t chosen to do so.
They’d forced his hand because he’d authorized Daniela’s release.
The vice president knew, I thought, thinking back to Anna’s father’s demeanor in that hallway. He knew this was how it would end.
The official story might be that Daniela Nicolae’s loyalties had flipped, that she’d died working for our country, but the president almost certainly knew the truth. He knew that Daniela was still a part of Senza Nome. That she was still out there, still pregnant. He won’t acknowledge that he knows. Officially, he can’t know.
But he did know. And given that he believed the baby she was carrying to be his granddaughter, I had to wonder if he was already unofficially looking for Daniela Nicolae, for that child.
“I don’t have to tell you,” the president said, “how important it is that you . . .”
“Keep my mouth closed?” I got the feeling that the president of the United States wasn’t used to being interrupted. “I know what I have to do,” I told the president. “And I know how to keep a secret.”
I was starting to believe that was what our country ran on—secret upon secret upon secret.
“There will be a press conference,” the president told me. “In addition to the occupation of Hardwicke, I will also address the attack on my life.” A shadow flickered over the president’s features. I wondered if he was flashing back to the moment he’d been shot, the feel of the bullet as it had entered his chest. “Thanks to the hard work of a trusted few,” the president told me, shooting a brief look in Ivy’s direction, “the shooter was apprehended less than an hour ago.”
The shooter. As in the person who’d taken aim at the president and pulled the trigger.
“Unfortunately,” the president continued, “the shooter resisted.”
Resisted. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up the moment the president said the word.
“He’s dead,” I said, reading between the lines again.
“We’ve been able to connect the shooter, financially, to the same people responsible for the death of John Thomas Wilcox and the hostile takeover of the Hardwicke School.”
Suddenly, I felt less like the president and I were having a conversation, and more like he was issuing a statement. This was the press release he would be giving shortly. This was the whole ordeal, wrapped up with a neat little bow.
My stomach twisted sharply. “The assassination attempt—that wasn’t Senza Nome,” I said. “Daniela, Dr. Clark, Mrs. Perkins . . . they all maintained the organization had nothing to do with the attempt on your life.”
The attack on President Nolan might have disturbed one plan, but it gave us an opening for another. I could hear Mrs. Perkins, could remember the way that when I’d said that Senza Nome had claimed responsibility for the attack, her response had been, Did we? Did we really?
“People like this,” Georgia said, her voice full of compassion, “organizations like this—they get inside your head, Tess. They tell you what they want you to believe.”
I knew that. But I also knew that Mrs. Perkins hadn’t been concerned with making me believe anything, other than the fact that she could and would execute the entire student population of Hardwicke, one by one, if I didn’t do as she asked.
“Tess, darling, it’s over.” The First Lady rested her hand lightly on the president’s shoulder. The president winced.
“Your shoulder,” I said softly. Like Henry, the president had been shot in the shoulder.
A muscle in the president’s jaw tensed slightly, but he didn’t allow himself to close his eyes. “It’s fine,” he said. “I’m fine—grateful for my life. I’m ready to heal and to lead this country as they do the same.”
“The bullet,” the First Lady said softly, trailing her hand lightly over her husband’s stitches, “did less damage than the fall.”
“Apparently,” the president joked, taking his wife’s hand in his own, “my head is not as hard as I’ve been led to believe.”
There was something intimate in the exchange between the two of them, something that made it easy to see how America had fallen in love with this first couple on the election trail.
Ivy put a hand on my shoulder. “We should go,” she said.
President Nolan turned his attention back to Ivy, back to me. “Get some rest,” he ordered. “And this time, Tess?” He smiled. “Try to stay out of trouble.”
CHAPTER 67
Hot water beat against my body. I closed my eyes and stepped farther into the spray. This shower was the only thing standing between me and Ivy.
I’d risked my life.
I’d lied to her.
And we both knew that given the same circumstances, I would do it again.
Eventually, the hot water ran cold. I turned off the spray and stepped out of the shower, wrapping a towel around my body. I slipped on an oversized T-shirt.
Ivy was waiting for me in my room. With her hair wet from her own shower, I could see the resemblance between us. She was dressed nearly identically, in an oversized USAF T-shirt—one of Adam’s.
It was two in the morning. I shouldn’t have even been vertical. And all I could think about was how different Ivy’s life might have been, if it weren’t for me.
Ivy picked up the brush on my nightstand. She sat on the edge of the bed. I sat on the floor. Wordlessly, she began brushing my hair. As she worked her way through the tangles, I felt my throat tighten.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the headmaster. I saw Matt Benning. I saw Henry, drowning in tubes. I heard John Thomas Wilcox’s gasping last words.
I couldn’t close my eyes anymore.
I didn’t realize that Ivy had stopped brushing until she lowered herself to the floor and sat beside me. I remembered leaning into Adam and crying into his chest. I didn’t have any tears left for Ivy.
I pulled my legs to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. It took me a few seconds to realize that beside me, Ivy had done the exact same thing.
“Did Adam give you my message?” I asked her.
I’d asked Adam to tell Ivy that I forgave her, to tell her that I was s
orry for what I’d had to do. I’d asked him to tell her that I was my mother’s daughter.
“He did,” Ivy said, the volume and tone in her voice an exact match for mine: soft and hoarse and hesitant.
Ivy and I had lost so many years together that sometimes it felt like neither one of us knew how to just be in the other’s presence.
“I meant it,” I told Ivy. “I’m tired of being angry with you. I’m tired of holding on to old hurts.”
“I know I hurt you—again and again. But, Tessie, hurting you is the last thing I ever wanted to do. I never meant—”
“It’s okay,” I said.
She shook her head. “No. It’s not.”
“What you did—when I was born, when Mom and Dad died, when you left me in Montana—it’s okay.”
Twenty-four hours ago, those words would have been unfathomable to me. But I’d walked back into Hardwicke not knowing if I would walk out. I’d chosen to do so, and if I could choose to do that, I could choose to change things with Ivy.
I could choose to stop expecting her to hurt me again.
“I lied to you your whole life, Tessie. I don’t expect you to forgive that.”
I straightened my legs and leaned my head onto her shoulder. I closed my eyes. “We’re all liars sometimes,” I said.
I heard her suck in a ragged breath.
“Do you forgive me?” I asked, murmuring the words into her shoulder. “For going back in there? For lying to you? For not being the kind of daughter you want?”
Ivy took me gently by the shoulders. “You are exactly the kind of daughter I want.” A lump rose in my throat as she continued, “You always have been.”
CHAPTER 68
The next morning, I woke up in Ivy’s bed. I watched her sleep, remembering the last time the two of us had shared a bed. You’d just been held hostage, I told Ivy silently. I’d bargained for your release. The symmetry between that situation and the one we’d found ourselves in the day before did not escape me.
Every family had their traditions.
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