Page 61 of The Ruling Class (The Fixer #1)

If push came to shove, if the president couldn’t find Ivy before time ran out—he wasn’t going to negotiate. He was going to let Kostas blow her up.

It should have been me. I should have been the one Kostas was holding captive. Ivy should have been the one standing here with Adam, trying to find a way around the president’s hard line. It should have been me. It was supposed to be me.

“Go,” I told Adam, swallowing back the urge to say all of that out loud. “I can’t do anything, but maybe you can.”

What Adam was—or wasn’t—to me could wait.

Ivy’s the one who should be having this conversation with you , he’d said. We’ll tell you everything, I promise—

“Go,” I told Adam again, my voice sharper this time, louder.

“I’m not leaving you here alone,” he said.

“So don’t leave me alone,” I said, trying not to replay the president’s words over and over again in my mind. “I hear Vivvie has a bodyguard now.”

Vivvie’s suite at the Roosevelt Hotel was impressive. There were massive bedrooms, a sitting room, a living room, a state-of-the-art kitchen.

“What does your aunt do?” I asked Vivvie, ignoring the elephant in the room. Or maybe the elephants, plural.

“I’m not really sure,” Vivvie replied. “She works overseas. Or worked. Or …” Vivvie punctuated that sentence with a shrug.

I wondered if Vivvie was thinking, like I was, of my first day at Hardwicke, when I’d had to ask her what Ivy did for a living.

Ivy with a bomb strapped to her chest. The memory of that image came over me with no warning. It felt like someone had thrust a hand into my chest, like there was a vise around my heart. I couldn’t think, and I couldn’t breathe.

“Hey, Tess?” Vivvie said. I forced air into my lungs. Vivvie’s face was shadowed with the toll the past few weeks had taken. I wanted to push her away, but I couldn’t, because we were the same.

“Yeah?”

Vivvie reached out and grabbed my hand. “The offer about my favorite romance novel and/or horror movie,” she said, her voice hoarse with all the things neither one of us could bear to say. “It still stands.”

Adam didn’t come for me that night. I slept on the sofa, even though Vivvie offered to share her king-size bed.

It felt wrong for me to be with people when Ivy had no one but the man who might kill her for company.

It felt wrong to even be lying on the sofa when Ivy had a bomb strapped to her chest.

If I’d thought it wouldn’t raise questions, I would have slept on the cold, hard floor.

If I hadn’t gotten snatched, if I’d been more suspicious when I’d seen an orderly outside my grandfather’s room, if I’d fought back harder, if I’d been stronger—

If, if, if, then Ivy might be okay.

The next morning came and went. I couldn’t bring myself to get up.

If I hadn’t gone to the state dinner, Ivy wouldn’t have flipped out and sent me to Boston. And if I hadn’t gone to Boston, I would have been at my more-secure-than-most-consulates private school instead of outside my grandfather’s room.

If, if, if …

Vivvie tried to get me to sit up, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t take my eyes off the clock, masochistically watching the minute hand crawl along, closer and closer to Ivy’s final hours.

At some point, Vivvie went to the door. I heard murmuring, but my gaze stayed fixed on the clock.

“Tess.” I could tell by the tone in Vivvie’s voice that she’d said my name more than once.

I blinked. In addition to Vivvie’s bodyguard, we now had three other visitors: Asher, Henry, and a woman who was almost certainly Henry’s bodyguard.

Asher sat down on the sofa beside me. I couldn’t even summon the energy to shove him off the sofa.

“Vivvie told us.” Henry didn’t specify what she had told them.

If, if, if …

“I am sorry about your sister,” Henry told me. “For what it’s worth, I have to believe she has a contingency plan of some sort.”

A rush of anger went through my body, and with it, came my voice. “You’re the authority, aren’t you? On Ivy? She can’t be trusted and all that?”

“Tess.” Henry knelt next to me. “You have to know, I never would have wanted—”

“Wouldn’t you?” I sat up, then stood, all in one motion.

He could stay kneeling for all I cared. “You did this,” I told Henry.

“If you hadn’t opened your mouth with the reporter, if you hadn’t insisted on going to that state dinner, then I might have been here, in DC!

I might not have gotten taken, and Ivy would never have had to trade herself for me. You did this,” I told Henry.

Henry stood and took a step back.

“Hey!” Asher objected, but I barely heard him.

“We did this,” I said, my eyes still locked on to Henry’s. “She’s going to die. I did that. I did—”

“You were right the first time,” he said. “Blame me. If you have to blame someone, blame me.”

If, if, if …

“She didn’t even let me say good-bye.” I sounded small and broken and weak. I didn’t know how to sound any other way.

“No.” That word burst out of Vivvie with the strength of a small whirlwind.

“You don’t get to blame yourself,” she told me, her voice vibrating with emotions I recognized all too well.

“Blaming yourself is easy. Blaming other people is, too. You think that I don’t think about the fact that if I hadn’t said anything, if I’d just kept my

mouth closed, my father might still be alive?

You think it wouldn’t be easier to hate myself for that?

To hate you? To hate Ivy ? You have a choice, Tess, and you don’t get to make the easy one, because if you give up, if you can’t make it through this—what chance do I have?

” Her eyes shone with tears, but she didn’t shed them.

“You don’t get to check out. You don’t get to give in. You can’t.”

My eyes were drawn back to the clock again. How many hours did Ivy have left? “I don’t want to give up,” I said softly, “but I don’t know what else to do.”

“What would your sister do?” Asher’s question hurt, but instead of shrinking from it, I absorbed the pain. I let myself feel it, and then, I made myself use it.

What would Ivy do?

“She’d find a way to fix this,” I said, my voice hardening.

But how? If Ivy had been able to take care of the situation, she would have taken care of it when I got kidnapped.

What chance did I have, if even DC’s most prominent problem solver hadn’t been able to come up with an answer that didn’t leave her own head on the chopping block?

“I can’t change the president’s mind,” I said, thinking out loud, trying to channel Ivy, trying—in vain—to be like her, to prove that there was something of her in me. “I could try to talk to the First Lady, but I doubt I could even get a hold of her. Everyone’s out looking for Ivy.”

“What does that leave?” Henry asked quietly.

I blew out a long breath of air. “Who besides the president can issue a pardon?”

Asher raised the index finger on his right hand. “The governor of the state in question.”

I glanced at Vivvie. “I don’t suppose anyone at Hardwicke has an uncle who’s the governor of Arizona?”

She shook her head.

“What about William Keyes?” Henry asked. “My mother refers to him as the kingmaker. His support can make or break a political career. If the governor is looking to curry favor—”

“Adam already asked him to help,” I cut in. “Keyes has a grudge against Ivy. He won’t lift a finger.”

My father collects things: information, people, blackmail material. Adam’s voice echoed in my mind. He wouldn’t have asked his father for help unless he’d believed the man could actually deliver.

“In my experience,” Asher said thoughtfully, “sometimes ‘ there is no way I am doing that for you, Asher’ just means ‘ make me a better offer. ’”

I got the distinct feeling he was talking about Emilia, but set that aside. What does Keyes want? What could I possibly offer him? He’d wanted Pierce on the Supreme Court, but Pierce was dead. I racked my mind for everything I’d overheard William Keyes say in his conversation with Adam.

He wants Adam to retire from the military and run for the Senate. I rolled that over in my mind. He thinks Adam could be president someday.

Ivy had said that a kingmaker was someone with enough money and power to affect the outcome of elections, but who—for whatever reason—wasn’t a viable candidate himself.

I didn’t know why William Keyes couldn’t—or wouldn’t—run for office, but I did know that he wanted more than being the person who called the shots behind the scene.

He wanted his son to do what he couldn’t.

William Keyes wanted a legacy.

A plan began to take hold in my mind. Maybe Adam had been going about this all wrong. Maybe he shouldn’t have been asking his father for help.

Maybe he should have tried blackmail.