I tried not to think about the fact that there were probably just as many reasons to want a Supreme Court justice dead.
There were two numbers on the phone’s call log. I couldn’t stop the gears in my mind from turning. One of the numbers had belonged to the man I’d talked to. And the other?
That one was a giant question mark.
“For the next two weeks, you and your partner will be playing the role of the president.” Dr. Clark began handing out an outline of our assignment. “You’ll be researching candidates, putting forth your own nominee. Think of it like March Madness, but instead of putting together a bracket, you have your eye on the prize, and instead of winning a championship, the appointee instantly becomes one of the most powerful individuals in our country.”
I took the sheet someone passed me and stared down at it. There were dozens of names on this list: possible nominees to research.
“Mr. Marquette.” Dr. Clark lowered her voice as she came to Henry. “If you would prefer an alternative assignment . . .”
“No,” Henry said, his posture almost supernaturally straight, his face giving nothing away. “This will be fine.”
“You know something,” Vivvie said the second we settled in the back corner of the room to “brainstorm” for our project. “I know you know something. You have that look on your face.”
I tried to think of a way to catch Vivvie up to speed without hurting her. That way didn’t exist.
“There were two numbers on the phone.” I stuck to the facts, as bare-bones as I could make them. “We called both of them.”
“We?” Vivvie leaned toward me, her eyes wide and panicked. “Who’s we?”
Her voice carried. Several other students—and Dr. Clark—turned to look our way. Vivvie lowered her voice again. “Who’s we?”
I broke it to her that Asher had overheard her—and that his twin had been the one to retrieve the call log for us. Vivvie weathered that blow, pressing her lips together and bowing her head.
“What happened when you called the number?” she asked quietly, looking up at me through impossibly long lashes. She must have known, from the expression on my face, that the answer wasn’t good. She gripped the paper in her hands so hard I thought she might tear it.
“The first number was disconnected,” I said, pitching my voice as low as I could.
“And the second?”
I told Vivvie what the person who’d answered had said, verbatim.
“So we’re dealing with what? A person who’s hoping to get the nomination himself? Or someone who has a candidate in mind?” Vivvie stared down at the paper in her hands—the list of names.
“How are we doing here, girls?” Dr. Clark came to stand beside us.
Vivvie forced herself to snap out of it. She smiled brightly, an expression so sweet it could make your teeth ache, and so utterly artificial that I wanted to cry. “We got distracted,” she said, sounding like a copy of a copy of the happy, chattering girl I’d met that first day. “But, hey, procrastination is the mother of invention, right?”
Dr. Clark bit back a grin. “I believe that’s necessity,” she said, studying Vivvie a bit more closely. “Are you sure you’re okay, Vivvie?”
“Great,” Vivvie replied forcefully. It hurt me just to hear her say it.
“In that case,” Dr. Clark said, “I’m going to suggest you two switch partners. Procrastination, I am afraid, is the mother of nothing but more procrastination.”
Before I could object, Dr. Clark had steered Vivvie in the direction of a new partner and brought someone else back to work with me.
“Do you two know each other?” Dr. Clark asked.
Henry Marquette looked about as happy with this development as I was. “We’ve met.”
CHAPTER 27
Partnering with Henry Marquette on a project devoted to choosing a replacement for his grandfather, while harboring suspicions that his grandfather had been murdered so that he could be replaced, was not what one would call a highlight of my day.
I was pretty sure it wasn’t the highlight of Henry’s day, either.
“So we’re in agreement,” he said, his voice crisp. “I’ll take the top half of the list. You take the bottom.”
Your grandfather’s death was planned. I said that silently, because I couldn’t say it out loud. There were at least two people involved. Maybe three. My mind went to the other number on the phone—the one that had already been disconnected.
“I know you and Asher are up to something.” Henry’s words snapped me back to the moment. “Emilia, too, God help us all.”
He said Emilia’s name the way one might reference a force of nature—a tsunami, perhaps, or a hurricane.
“I don’t know what you’re doing.” Henry gave me a look. “I’m fairly certain that I don’t want to know.”
He really, really didn’t.
“If this is the part where you warn me away from your friends,” I told him, putting on my best poker face, “why don’t we just skip straight to you making veiled comments about my sister, and me telling you that I’m not her.”
Henry stared at me, a detached observer taking mental notes on my features for later reference. I had no idea what was going on inside his head.
“Actually,” he said finally, “this is the part where I tell you that you don’t want to be anything like your sister.” The bell rang as he gathered his books. “Take it from someone who knows.”
Vivvie caught up to me outside of the classroom. “What did you say to Henry Marquette?” she asked, unable to keep the note of urgency from her tone. I pulled her into the girls’ restroom and checked the stalls. Empty.
“I didn’t say anything. Not about your father, not about what we found.”
It took Vivvie a moment to absorb that information. “Sorry. I just . . . you two were working together . . . and . . .”
“Breathe, Vivvie.”
She leaned back against the bathroom door. “Maybe you misunderstood,” she said quietly. “Whatever you heard the person on the phone say, maybe you misunderstood. Maybe I misunderstood. Maybe none of this is what it looks like.”
She sounded so hopeful, so desperately hopeful that my body ached with the force of that hope. I knew what it was like to want so badly to be able to believe something into being true.