The Fixer (8 page)

William.
It took me a second to process the name.
As in William Keyes.

“Georgia.” Ivy gave the older woman a quelling look and then darted a meaningful glance toward me. The First Lady held Ivy’s gaze for a moment, then inclined her head slightly.

“Tess,” Georgia said, “could you give us a moment?”

When the First Lady of the United States asks you to give her a moment, you give her a moment. I went to the bathroom. When I came back, she and Ivy had finished discussing whatever they were discussing.

Georgia stood. She reached over and laid a hand on Ivy’s shoulder. “I’ll let you know which way Peter is leaning on nominees,” she told her, giving Ivy’s shoulder a squeeze. “In the meantime, do keep your ear to the ground.” Then she smiled. “And when things settle down, you and Tess
are
coming over for dinner.”

CHAPTER 16

This was what my life had become: on Tuesday, the First Lady insisted I simply
had
to dine at the White House at some point in the near future; on Wednesday, I sat by myself at lunch. Vivvie was absent. I probably could have leveraged my fledgling reputation to obtain a seat at someone else’s table, but I was used to eating lunch alone.

Solitude didn’t bother me nearly as much as the idea of cementing my status as a person to know at Hardwicke.

So I ate outside. By myself. I did the same thing the next day, when Vivvie still didn’t show up for school. And the day after that. After three days of self-segregation—and a half-dozen declined requests for “fixing”—the message was finally starting to sink in with the rest of the student body. I wasn’t a miracle worker. I wasn’t looking to make friends.

I just wanted to be left alone.

On the third day of eating lunch by myself, I got company. And not the good kind.

“If it isn’t my favorite little psychopath.” The boy whose phone I’d confiscated my first day at Hardwicke slid into the seat across from mine. A quick survey of my surroundings told me that his friends weren’t far off. In the past few days, more and more students had moved to eating lunch outside. There were three or four small groups and one larger one.

A few students cast glances our way, but Emilia Rhodes was the only one whose gaze lingered.

“I can’t help but notice you’re looking a little lonely these days.” The boy across from me smiled. It wasn’t a friendly smile. “Your fifteen minutes of high school fame over already?”

He was like a predator, going for the antelope that had been cut off from the rest of the herd. I’d threatened him, embarrassed him. He’d steered clear until it became obvious that I wasn’t going to grab at a place near the top of the Hardwicke hierarchy.

Now he’d apparently decided I was fair game.

“If you need a friend . . .” He leered at me, his eyes raking over my body in a way designed to make me feel exposed. “I can be a very good friend.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” I said. If he was looking for a reaction other than skepticism about his prowess as a “friend,” he wasn’t going to get one.

“You think you’re really something, don’t you?” He was tall and athletic, with perfect teeth and perfect hair. I wasn’t sure what bothered him more—the idea of being rejected, or the fact that in a staring contest between the two of us, we both knew he’d be the one to look away first. “Your sister’s
nothing but a political ambulance chaser,” he spat out. “The flavor of the month. To people like my father, she’s the hired help.”

He wanted me wondering who his father was.

Want away, Boy Wonder
, I thought. I wasn’t up on the
Who’s Who?
of DC, and I didn’t care to be.

“I could make things very difficult for you here.” He clearly meant that as a threat.

I snorted. “And I could have a nice chat with your father about the fact that out of all the girls at this school that you could choose to terrorize,
you
chose the vice president’s daughter.”

I had no idea who this guy’s father was. He might or might not have been the type of man who cared about the way his son treated girls. But judging from said son’s attitude about power—who had it, who didn’t—I was guessing Daddy Dearest might care quite a bit about the idea of his idiot son making enemies in high places.

For a split second, the idiot in question blanched. I stabbed my fork into my salad and started bringing the bite to my mouth. Without warning, the boy’s hand snaked out, grabbing my wrist. From a distance, the expression on his face would have looked perfectly friendly, but up close, I saw the glint in his eye.

“Fine day we’re having, isn’t it?” Asher Rhodes slipped into the seat next to mine, picked up my spoon, and stole a bite of my cupcake. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

The boy with the glint in his eye dropped my wrist. He laughed. “Just kidding around with Tess here.”

Asher snagged another bite of my cupcake. “Such a kidder, that Tess,” he said jovially. “A constant riot. Keeps me in stitches, she does.”

The boy blinked several times. “You two are . . .”

“Friends,” Asher declared. He tried for another bite of my cupcake. I blocked his hand with my fork, a little harder than necessary.

I didn’t need rescuing.

“We’re not friends,” I told Asher.

“Our bond goes far beyond friendship,” Asher agreed pleasantly. “Epics will be written. Bards will sing.” He turned back to the boy across from us. “Any interest in playing the role of the bard?”

Not surprisingly, the answer to that question was
no
. The boy made a hasty exit. He and his hangers-on retreated to a table near Emilia’s. She turned around and went back to holding court at her own table, head held high.

“John Thomas Wilcox,” Asher told me quietly. “His father’s the minority whip.”

I wasn’t sure what one was supposed to say in response to that, so I said nothing.

“I see you’re the strong and silent type,” Asher said sagely. “I never shut up, so we’re going to get along smashingly.”

“I was fine,” I told him. “You could have stayed with your friends.”

Despite his “best friend” being absent, Asher seemed to have had no shortage of companionship the past few days. He ate lunch at a different table every day, like a king spreading the wealth among his people.

“It wasn’t
you
I was worried about,” Asher returned easily. “There was murder in your eyes, and, let’s face it, John Thomas’s face is too pretty for the maiming I’m sure he so richly deserved.”

Emilia had tried to hire me to keep her brother out of trouble for a few days. I wondered if she’d figured out yet that I was the last person anyone should think was qualified for
that
job.

Trouble always had a way of finding me.

CHAPTER 17

Five minutes before the final bell cut us loose for the day, I got pulled into the headmaster’s office.

“Tess,” he said. “Can I call you Tess?”

“Knock yourself out.”

He folded his hands in front of him on the desk. “I’m afraid we’ve received some complaints.”

I waited for him to elaborate. He waited for me to say something. I was better at waiting than he was.

“Serious allegations have been made. Bullying. Blackmail. Theft.”

Again, the headmaster paused, and again, I said nothing. The only person who had reason to accuse me of theft was John Thomas Wilcox. The idea of him reporting
me
to the administration for anything was pretty rich. He must have been betting on the fact that I wouldn’t report him in return.

Unfortunately, that was a good bet. If Anna Hayden had wanted the administration involved in her situation, she would have gone to them herself.

“Now, you’re new here,” the headmaster continued. “And I believe in giving students the benefit of the doubt, but it would help us put this unfortunate business behind us if you would allow us to search your locker.”

“For what?” The cell phone? Did John Thomas really think I was stupid enough to keep it on the premises?

The fact that I’d finally broken my silence seemed to energize Headmaster Raleigh. “I’m not at liberty to share the details of the allegations. In an effort to discourage bullying, Hardwicke has an open-door policy. We encourage students to report any trouble they’re having and guarantee confidentiality during investigations.”

In theory, that might have been a good practice. In reality, it was a system ripe for abuse.

“I despise bullying,” I told the headmaster. “And bullies. You might say that’s something my sister and I have in common.”

Invoking Ivy had exactly the effect I had thought it would. Headmaster Raleigh’s jaw clenched slightly. If his last interaction with Ivy was any indication, he had a healthy amount of fear of my sister’s reach. Either she already had dirt on him, or he was afraid she’d dig some up.

The headmaster offered me a peppermint, then forced a smile. “If you would just allow me to conduct a simple search—”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think I will.”

Behind the headmaster’s desk, there was a photo. As a vein in his forehead began to throb, I counted the number of people in it: three in the back row, two in the front, one off to the side. Headmaster Raleigh was standing between a balding man in his
fifties and a slightly older man with a shock of white hair. I recognized the older man instantly.

William Keyes.

“I don’t need your permission to search your locker.” The headmaster’s tone drew my attention back in his direction. This, I inferred from the rise in volume, was supposed to be the voice of authority.

If you didn’t need my permission
, I thought,
then why did you ask for it?

“I thought Hardwicke respected the privacy of all of its students,” I said. That was what he’d told Ivy. The wealthy and politically elite sent their children here because it was secure and discreet. I had a feeling that random locker searches wouldn’t sit well with the Board of Trustees—and unless Raleigh had something more solid than a vague, anonymous complaint, it would be easy enough to make any search he conducted of my locker look random.

“Maybe you should call Ivy.” I dropped my sister’s name a second time. “I’m sure we can sort this whole locker-search thing out.”

The headmaster fidgeted with his tie like it was choking him. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”

“Neither do I.”

Raleigh and I both turned toward the doorway. Adam stood there, looking every inch his father’s son. His gaze was steady, his presence commanding. “Adam Keyes,” he introduced himself, crossing the room to shake the headmaster’s hand. “I’m here to pick up Tess.”

“Keyes, did you say?” If anything, the headmaster looked slightly paler than he had a moment before. “And what is your relation to Tess?”

Adam’s lips twisted their way into a smile that looked more like a threat. “Family friend,” he replied. “If you have any concerns about her behavior, I’d be glad to pass them along.”

“No,” the headmaster said hurriedly. “No concerns. I am sure this is just a misunderstanding.”

“I’m sure that it is.” Coming from Adam, that sounded like an order. “You ready to go, Tess?”

I stood. “Headmaster,” I said, meeting his eyes. “Always a pleasure.”

“Do I want to know what he would have found if he’d searched your locker?” Adam asked once we hit the parking lot. His brows pulled together in what was either disapproval or amusement—I couldn’t tell which.

“As far as I know, nothing.” I’d taken the battery out of John Thomas’s phone to prevent anyone from tracking it. I certainly wasn’t stupid enough to keep pilfered goods in my locker.

“So you objected on principle?” The edges of his lip twitched slightly.
Amusement.

“On the principle the person who made the anonymous complaint might also have planted something in my locker,” I corrected. Adam gave me a long, assessing look, and I shrugged. “I’ve been making friends.”

“You don’t say.” Adam didn’t sound surprised. He unlocked what I assumed to be his car. I headed for the passenger side, and he stopped me, holding out the keys. “Ivy said you wanted to learn to drive in DC.”

In the three days since my tea with Ivy, she hadn’t said a word about my request for transportation. I’d assumed she’d forgotten or decided to ignore it.

“How did you get stuck teaching me about big-city driving?” I asked Adam.

“I didn’t get stuck with it,” he corrected. “I volunteered.” He looped around to the passenger side, his strides even and brisk. “I don’t trust Bodie to hold you to the speed limit, and no one trusts Ivy behind the wheel.”

“She’s a bad driver?” It was comforting to think that my sister might be bad at
something
.

“The worst,” Adam confirmed. “She’s never actually hit another car, but there’s not a trash can, streetlight, or mailbox safe within a forty-mile radius. There’s a reason she hired a driver.”

I decided to let Adam pretend Bodie was
just
a driver and climbed into the car.

“First rule of defensive driving,” Adam told me as he directed me out of the parking lot, “watch out for the other guy. Drivers here are more aggressive than you’re used to. There’s more traffic, and that means more frustrated drivers doing stupid things to shave three minutes off their commute.”

“Watch out for the other guy,” I repeated. “Sounds like a motto for life.”

Adam’s blue eyes flicked briefly over to mine as he directed me to turn onto a major street. Once he was satisfied that I could, in fact, turn without causing my car—or any car in the near vicinity—to explode, he allowed himself to actually converse. “You don’t trust people?”

“Not to hit my car, or not to screw up my life?”

“Either.”

That seemed like more of an answer than a question, so I didn’t reply.

“How are you liking Hardwicke?” Adam tried another topic of conversation. “Setting aside any and all incidents with the headmaster.”

“It’s school,” I said. More homework, more affluent student body—but at the end of the day, high school was high school, and my goal was to make it through relatively unscathed. “It’s okay,” I amended, taking pity on Adam, who deserved
something
for taking time out of his afternoon. “My classes aren’t horrible.”