“Grounded?” I repeated incredulously.
Ivy pulled into the driveway. “Don’t plan on going anywhere for the next two weeks.” By the time she finished that sentence, her attention was clearly elsewhere. I followed her gaze to a dark-colored sedan across the street.
“Stay in the car,” she told me, unbuckling her seat belt.
A second later, she was standing in the driveway, and William Keyes was striding toward her, like this was his house and she was the visitor.
My hand went to the door handle. Ivy told me to stay in the car. I pulled the handle and cracked the door open. She never said I couldn’t listen from here.
William Keyes had the kind of voice that carried. “We need to talk.”
“You need to leave.” Ivy’s voice went up on the last word.
“I thought we’d reached an understanding. When the president came to you for your thoughts on Edmund Pierce, you were supposed to back him.”
Keyes wants Pierce to get the nomination. My mind raced. I thought about the photo on my phone. William Keyes had been there—wherever there was—with Pierce and Vivvie’s father. My hand curled tighter around the door handle.
“I never agreed to anything,” Ivy told the older man calmly. I wondered if she suspected him of being involved. I wondered if Adam suspected him.
“You were supposed to get your president in line.” Keyes clearly meant those words as an indictment.
“He’s your president, too,” Ivy replied.
“No,” Keyes barked out. “He is not, nor will he ever be, my president. You’re the one who put him in that office.”
“He won both the electoral college and the popular vote.”
Keyes scowled. “You got him the electoral college and the popular vote!” He balled his hands into fists. His index finger escaped, and he pointed it at Ivy. “I taught you everything I knew, I lifted you up from nothing, I treated you like a daughter, and you thanked me by putting a man I despise in the White House.”
Ivy adopted an icy countenance. “We came down on the opposite sides of a primary, William. You’re the one who told me not to come back if I left. You don’t get to come here now and ask me for favors.”
“I damn well do!” Keyes shook his fist, like he was pounding a phantom table.
A car door slammed nearby, and they turned in unison.
“The front lawn?” Georgia Nolan stopped several feet from them, flanked by Secret Service. “That’s the location you choose for this discussion? Really, William?”
For a moment, William Keyes was struck silent. His gaze lingered on Georgia. I craned my neck, trying to get a look at her face.
They know each other. It was there, in the way he looked at her. They know each other very well.
“We both know the Judiciary Committee will look more kindly on Pierce than some of his contemporaries.” Keyes recovered his voice. It was quieter than the one he’d used with Ivy, but just as authoritative.
“Thank you,” Georgia said, her tone dripping honey, “for your advice and counsel. We will certainly take that into consideration.”
That was a dismissal, as clear as if Georgia had ordered him off the lawn.
Keyes straightened his tie, then issued a parting shot. “It’s a pity about the doctor,” he said. “When a man kills himself over being removed from his position at the White House, that doesn’t look very good for the administration.”
“It is a tragedy,” Georgia said tersely. “Our thoughts are with Major Bharani’s family.”
I felt the blood rushing out of my head. My hands went numb. It’s a pity about the doctor.
“Major Bharani is dead?” Ivy said. “When?”
Neither the First Lady nor Adam’s father answered. Their eyes were locked on to each other.
Vivvie’s father is dead. He killed Justice Marquette, and now he’s dead.
Keyes finally ripped his eyes from Georgia’s and turned to Ivy. “You never did have the stomach for this business,” he told her.
Then he walked away—past her, past Georgia, past the car.
I leaned into the car door, pushing it open. One second I was inside the car, the next, I was standing beside it, separated from William Keyes by the body of the sedan and nothing else. When his eyes landed on me, they opened wider.
He hadn’t realized I was here.
Neither had the First Lady.
“Tess, dear,” Georgia started to say, but my gaze was locked on Keyes.
“How did he die?” The words came out in a whisper. Vivvie’s father killed Justice Marquette, and now he’s dead. My hand tightened around the door, like my grip was the only thing keeping me vertical.
“William,” Ivy and Georgia said in one voice, Ivy stepping toward me, Georgia toward Keyes.
Keyes looked at them, then back at me. “He put a bullet in his own head.”
CHAPTER 36
I was still standing there, my fingers digging into the metal door, when Keyes got into his car and drove off. Then Ivy was next to me, her hand on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry you had to hear that,” she said.
Vivvie’s dad was dead. He was dead. He put a bullet in his own head.
“Vivvie’s dad killed himself.” There was no filter between my brain and my mouth—only that sentence, repeated in stereo. “We did this.”
Ivy reached out and placed her own hand on the door near mine. I didn’t realize until she steadied it that both the door and my hand had been shaking.
“This is not our fault,” she told me, her voice steady. “It’s not yours. It’s not mine.”
Wasn’t it?
“He must have known,” I said, my throat clenching. “That we were on to him. That things were going to get bad.” I couldn’t stop picturing Vivvie. Smiling Vivvie, beaming at me over bagels the first day.
I couldn’t stop picturing her father, picking up that gun.
“We’ll talk about this later,” Ivy said quietly.
“Vivvie,” I said, barely hearing her. “I need to call Vivvie. She’s the one who told us about her father. She’s going to think this is her fault.”
A few feet away, Georgia Nolan turned her head slightly to one side, her eyebrows arching upward as she processed our exchange. “I get the very real sense that I am missing something here.” Georgia stepped toward us. “Did you have something to do with Major Bharani’s reassignment, Ivy?”