For a guy who’d met me only a handful of times, Adam did a good impression of my grandfather.
He and Bodie are Ivy’s family. I didn’t know how long they’d known each other, or what exactly there was between them. All I knew was that while I’d been in Montana with Gramps, they’d been here with her—probably for years.
Apparently, from Adam’s perspective, that made me family, too.
“I’m not supposed to yell at you,” he informed me when he hung up the phone, the muscles in his jaw taut.
“If it would make you feel better, I don’t really mind,” I offered.
Adam’s eyelid twitched. “Of course you don’t,” he said with a shake of his head. “You do realize that completely defeats the point?”
I was pretty sure there was no right answer to that question. “I was only gone for a few hours.”
Adam fixed me with a look. “This isn’t a good time for you to go off the grid—not even for a few hours.”
I thought about Ivy telling me to keep my mouth shut, about Henry pointing out that we couldn’t trust anyone—not the police, not the Justice Department, and certainly not the White House.
“Ivy hasn’t told the president or the First Lady what’s going on.” I studied Adam’s face as I said those words. “The only way any of this makes any sense is if Pierce had reason to believe that he would get the nomination.”
Adam’s poker face was even better than Henry’s. “Don’t take off again,” he ordered.
He’s not going to tell me anything. With a curt nod to acknowledge his words, I turned to go upstairs.
“This isn’t the time to jump to conclusions,” Adam called after me. His voice stopped me in my tracks. He measured his words, choosing each one carefully. “The president is rarely the most powerful person in Washington, Tess. He’s part of a system, a cog in a machine.”
“Are you saying you don’t think the president was involved?”
“I’m not saying anything,” Adam replied, “because Ivy told you to stay out of this. I am telling you to stay out of this.” The warning was clear in his voice. If he had to make me stay out of this, it wouldn’t be pleasant. “But if I was saying something, it would be that this isn’t simple. Power is currency in Washington. And you don’t always know who’s holding the cards.”
He was saying that the president wasn’t the only one we should be wary of. He might not even be the most likely suspect.
Not when there were people out there who made things happen behind the scenes.
People like Adam’s father.
That night, as I plugged my phone in to charge, I remembered the photo from the headmaster’s office. I pulled up the shots I’d taken on my phone. The first two were unusable, but the third one only had a minor glare. I zoomed in and studied the men in the photo: three in the back row, two in the front, one off to the side.
Major Bharani. Judge Pierce. The Hardwicke headmaster. William Keyes. The fifth man, I didn’t know. And the sixth—he was standing slightly off to one side. The glare obscured his face, but the way he was standing, the general shape of his features—
Familiar.
I loaded the picture onto my computer and looked up every tutorial I could find on removing glare from photos. I cloned the picture. I adjusted the shadow. I played with the filters. The end result wasn’t pretty, but it was enough for me to confirm the man’s identity.
Six men. Five I recognize. I walked through them one by one. The doctor who killed Justice Marquette. The judge who paid him to do it. The headmaster of DC’s most exclusive private school. Adam’s father, who makes things happen behind the scenes.
And standing off to the side, staring straight at the camera:
President Nolan.
CHAPTER 39
I spent the night at my computer, trying to track down anything I could about the picture—where it had been taken, when it had been taken, what the relationship was between these six men.
No matter how thoroughly I searched the internet, I couldn’t find any other connection between Judge Pierce and Vivvie’s father. They lived thousands of miles apart. They’d gone to different schools, had different occupations. They weren’t even the same age. I couldn’t find evidence of the two men ever having been in the same place.
Except for the picture.
It was easier to connect Judge Pierce to William Keyes. The two men shared an alma mater. They were both on the university’s board of regents.
In contrast, I couldn’t find any evidence of a direct link between William Keyes and Vivvie’s dad, but it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that a man who made things happen in Washington might be acquainted with all manner of White House staff.
With the president, it was the reverse—it was easy to connect him with Vivvie’s father. The man was his personal physician. But Judge Pierce? All my sleuthing could turn up was speculation about who the Nolan administration’s nominee for the Supreme Court might be. Pierce’s name was one of many—and it rarely even came up.
The only way this plan makes any sense—the only way it could even potentially be worth the risk—is if Pierce had reason to believe he’d get the nomination. That thought dogged me until I fell asleep at the keyboard.
The next morning, I printed out a copy of the picture and folded it in half, then in half again. I put it in my back pocket, then went downstairs. Ivy and Bodie were in the kitchen. Ivy had a cup of coffee in one hand and a small overnight bag in the other.
“Going somewhere?” I asked her.
“Arizona.” She downed the last of her coffee. “I hear it’s nice this time of year.”
Arizona. Judge Pierce was from Arizona. I wanted to ask what she would be doing there but knew she wouldn’t answer.
“I’m sorry to leave,” she said. “After yesterday—”
“It’s okay.”
“No,” Ivy told me. “It’s not. The way you heard about Vivvie’s dad was not okay. What Vivvie is going through right now is not okay. The fact that I’m asking you not to tell anyone about any of this is not okay. I know that, Tess, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry about yesterday, I’m sorry I got you involved in any of this.”
“Technically,” I said, “I got you involved in this.”