Page 17 of The Ruling Class (The Fixer #1)

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.”

“Not horrible,” Adam said dryly. “That’s high praise.”

From me, it kind of was.

After several seconds of silence, Adam switched topics. “Theo Marquette’s funeral is tomorrow,” he said. He paused. “Your sister will want to be there.”

I wasn’t sure how he expected me to respond to that.

“Theo was a friend,” Adam continued. He measured his words, his calm, knowing eyes slanting toward mine. “Funerals are hard for Ivy.” There was something in the way Adam said my sister’s name—like things that hurt her hurt him.

I kept my eyes locked on the road. I didn’t have to ask why funerals were hard for Ivy. Ivy had been twenty-one when we lost our parents. Old enough to remember every last detail of the aftermath.

“Are you going to the funeral, too?” I asked Adam. He cared about my sister enough that he was here teaching me how to drive. He hurt when she hurt. I had no idea if there was anything more than friendship between them, but it seemed like a reasonable question.

Adam’s jaw clenched slightly. “It’s better that I sit this one out.”

He didn’t elaborate. I didn’t ask him to. For twenty minutes, the two of us rode in silence, except for the occasional admonition from Adam for me to watch out for the other guy and keep my eyes on the road. As we pulled up to Ivy’s house, I started to feel the weight of the silence.

“So what do you do when you’re not teaching random teenagers to navigate the big, bad streets of DC?” I asked.

I put the car in Park. Adam unbuckled his seat belt, squaring his shoulders slightly as he replied. “I work for the Department of Defense. Before I was assigned to the Pentagon, I flew for the Air Force.”

“Why the Pentagon?” I asked.

“That’s where I was assigned.” Adam stiffened, the muscles in his neck the only noticeable tell. His tone reminded me of the fight I’d overheard him having with Ivy.

Adam—whose father made things happen in DC—had gone from an assignment he enjoyed to working at the Pentagon.

“Your father wanted you in DC?” It was a stab in the dark.

“My father is very family oriented.” Adam’s voice was completely flat. He looked like a soldier standing at attention, eyes forward, never flinching. “He’s also very good at getting what he wants.”

“So is Ivy.” Those words slipped out before I’d thought them through. “Not family oriented, obviously,” I clarified. “Good at getting what she wants.”

Adam was quiet for several seconds. Finally he said, “Your sister is nothing like my father, Tess.”

I hadn’t meant to bring up Ivy.

“She would do anything for you,” Adam told me, angling his head to catch my gaze. Even blue eyes stared into mine. “You know that, right?”

“Sure.” That was what he wanted to hear.

“She won’t ask you to go to the funeral with her.” The set of Adam’s features was neutral, carefully controlled. “But I’m not going, and Bodie doesn’t do funerals. He’ll drive her there, but that’s it.” He let that sink in. “It would mean a lot if she didn’t have to go alone.”

A lot to Adam, or a lot to Ivy?

“Your father stopped by earlier this week to talk to Ivy.” I needed a subject change, and that did the trick. Adam’s jaw ticked slightly. An instant later, he wiped all trace of emotion from his face: not a hint of a smile, not a hint of a frown.

“You didn’t know,” I realized. I’d assumed that Ivy would have told him.

“Did you and my father meet?” Adam almost managed to keep his voice level, but I caught the tension underneath.

He wanted me to tell him that the answer was no.

He wanted me kept away from his father. I turned that over in my mind and thought of Bodie catching sight of William Keyes and ordering me to stay in the car.

“No,” I told Adam, noting the relief that flickered briefly across his face. “We didn’t.”