It wasn’t clear from his tone whether that was a compliment or a complaint.
“I haven’t surprised you yet,” I replied. “But I’m about to.”
Despite himself, the old man looked slightly intrigued. “Your sister wouldn’t approve,” he said, coming to stand closer to me. I got the feeling that he liked towering over me, that it didn’t matter that physically, I was small.
An enemy could always be made smaller.
“Ivy is being held captive by a rogue Secret Service agent,” I said, not beating around the bush. “President Nolan has received a ransom demand.”
“He won’t negotiate.” The corners of Keyes’s lips twitched. It wasn’t a smile, but it wasn’t a grimace, either.
“She’s got a bomb strapped to her chest.” I kept my voice calm but couldn’t tamp down the intensity in it. “If you can’t get the governor of Arizona to issue a pardon, she’s going to die.”
After exactly three seconds of silence, William Keyes took a seat across from me. “What makes you think I have any sway over the governor of Arizona?”
“If you don’t, you know someone who does.”
This time, he did smile. “You,” he said, lingering on the word, “are very much like your sister.”
I could hear, in those words, that he’d been fond of Ivy once. Keyes stiffened, like he’d heard the same thing and didn’t appreciate the reminder.
“Unfortunately,” he continued, leaning back in his chair, “your sister is no longer my concern. She put Nolan in office. Clearly, she prefers his judgment to mine.”
Whatever bad blood there was between Keyes and the president, the man sitting across from me would never forgive Ivy for helping Peter Nolan make it to the White House.
Luckily, I hadn’t come here to beg forgiveness.
“She’s not my sister.” I let those words sink in, knowing they weren’t what he’d expected—knowing that I wasn’t what he’d expected. “She’s my mother, and I don’t think you want anyone figuring out who my father is.”
Keyes was on his feet again in an instant. “What precisely are you trying to say, young lady?”
“I’m saying that Ivy got pregnant at seventeen. I’m saying that the man who got her pregnant was young and recently enlisted. I’m saying she hid the pregnancy and gave me to her parents to raise, and I am saying that from the moment I stepped foot in this town, Ivy has done everything she can to keep you from looking too hard at me.”
Keyes was staring at me now, as if he could see into my cells and disassemble my DNA, piece by piece.
“How long have Ivy and Adam known each other?” I asked him. I didn’t wait for an answer as I pelted him with question after question. “Did you know he’s teaching me how to drive? Or that the first time he ever saw me, he looked at me like the bottom had dropped out of his stomach?”
The old man came to stand behind the chair he’d been sitting in moments before. His hands closed over the back of it, his grip turning his knuckles white.
“Did you know,” I said slowly, “that I heard Adam tell Ivy that bringing me to DC was a mistake because she’d made an enemy of you? I heard you say that Ivy had gotten under Adam’s skin, that you had no idea how she’d done it. I have a theory.”
Keyes took a step forward. “You think Adam is your father.”
There was a ferocity in his voice when he’d said those words, like it took every ounce of determination and power he had just to choke out that one statement.
“I asked him,” I said. “He didn’t deny it. We’d need a DNA test to know for sure, but a DNA test might raise some questions.” I paused. “You’re still hoping that someday, Adam might retire from the military and go into politics.”
William Keyes had barely interacted with me, but I’d watched him. I’d heard him talking. I knew, instinctively, how to go straight for his heart.
“You have a plan for Adam,” I said, “and I doubt that I am part of that plan.”
“Are you attempting to blackmail me?” Keyes said. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought he sounded pleased.
“I prefer to think of it as a negotiation,” I said. “You want to see your son in the Oval Office someday, and I want the governor of Arizona to issue either a pardon or a permanent stay of execution for Damien Kostas’s son.”
Now that the cards were on the table, I saw how easily this could go either way. William Keyes might not give me what I wanted. Adam might not even be my father.
I needed this to work.
Ivy needed for this to work.
“When were you born?” Keyes issued the question like a demand. Those four words—and the laser-sharp focus with which he assessed my features—told me that he wasn’t dismissing my claims outright.
I can do this. I have to do this.
I told him when I was born, and then where. I told him, again, what Ivy had told me: my father was young and recently enlisted.
“Adam joined the military after college.” William’s grip on the back of the chair relaxed slightly. “He met your sister when he was home on leave. She’d just turned twenty.”
I felt like a balloon that had been scratched with a knife. There was one moment of tightness in my chest, like I might explode, and then I felt the fight drain out of me. This was supposed to be my Hail Mary pass.
This was supposed to be me saving Ivy.
Adam met Ivy after I was born. As I forced myself to process that fact, I realized that I hadn’t just thought Adam was my father, I hadn’t just believed it—I’d wanted it to be true.
If Keyes was telling me the truth, Adam couldn’t be my father. I wasn’t anything to him but Ivy’s daughter.
I stood up and turned sharply to the door.
“I suggest you sit back down.”
I stopped in my tracks but didn’t sit.
“Tess, isn’t it?” the older man said, coming around to stand in front of me. “Is that short for Tessa?”
I wondered what game he was playing.
“Theresa,” I said finally.
Keyes studied me, eyes sharp. “My late wife’s name was Theresa.”
The game had changed—but I wasn’t sure how.
“I never quite figured out how Adam and Ivy met,” William Keyes continued. “She was at Georgetown. He went to see her. I’ve wondered, over the years, if there was something romantic between them.” He paused. “I see now that there’s not. That there couldn’t be.”