The Fixer

“I won’t,” Ivy repeated, her voice louder this time, more final. She turned to take her leave but glanced back at me. “For what it’s worth,” she said, “you can tell Vivvie that I wouldn’t pay much attention to that article.”

Bodie had said that there were two reasons for leaking a story like that—to help Pierce’s case or to hurt him.

“Are you going to track down the source?” I asked Ivy.

I’m not having this conversation with you. I could practically see her bite back those words. Instead, she lifted her chin slightly. “Trust me, Tessie, it’s not worth checking out.”

CHAPTER 46

By the end of the week, a slew of opinion articles had come out in Pierce’s favor. In World Issues, we had to watch people debate his merits on TV.

And with each day, I became more convinced that whoever had leaked that article had done it to help Pierce’s chances, not hurt them.

It’s not worth checking out. Ivy’s words rang in my ears as I watched Henry Marquette take a seat across the courtyard at lunch. He hadn’t spoken to me once since he’d told me about his father. Asher cast a glance at me but took a seat next to Henry.

“Has Ivy found anything?” Vivvie asked me. It was just the two of us at our table—the way it had been before all this had started.

“I don’t know.” I wished I had something to tell her, but Ivy had spent the past few days locked in her office, going over files she’d brought back from Arizona. I had no idea what kind of files they were. All I knew was that she’d brought boxes of them back—and I’d barely seen her since that night in my room.

“I need to do something.” Vivvie’s voice was quiet, but it vibrated with an intensity of emotion that told me that need wasn’t an exaggeration. “I need for us to do something.”

“What?” I asked.

“Something,” Vivvie insisted. “Talk to your sister again, or set up a meeting with the First Lady, or . . . or . . . something.”

It had been four days since her father’s funeral. A week since he’d killed himself. Eleven days since she’d told me what she’d overheard.

So much had happened. And now it felt like nothing was happening. Nothing except the media practically paving Pierce’s road to a nomination with gold. Because of that article in the Post.

Because of some anonymous source.

“Okay,” I told Vivvie.

Her eyes grew round. “Okay what?”

“Okay,” I said. “I have something we can do.”

Step one: Waylay Emilia Rhodes on her way to class.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s you. Turned anyone’s twin even more delinquent than usual lately?”

I took that as a cue that I didn’t need to bother with niceties. “The day you told us that Vivvie’s dad had been fired, you mentioned that you’d heard it from a freshman whose mom works for the Washington Post.”

Emilia arched an eyebrow, waiting for me to get to the point.

I obliged. “Which freshman?”

Step two: Make nice with the freshman.

Vivvie took the lead on step two. She was better at being nice than I was. Eventually, she dropped my name, and the freshman was all too happy to call in a favor with “Uncle Carson”—the man who’d written the article—in order to put herself in Tess Kendrick’s good graces.

Word of Georgia Nolan’s impromptu visit had spread, and that only served to remind people that my sister had some very powerful friends. What money was at most schools, power was at Hardwicke. It wasn’t about who had the nicest car or the biggest house. It was about who had the best connections. Through no fault of my own, I’d edged my way back onto the A-list—a problem I’d deal with later. For now, all I needed to do was prepare for my meeting with good old Uncle Carson, who thought he was being interviewed for some kind of school project.

“What’s step three?” Vivvie asked me, just before the final bell. Dr. Clark cast a warning look at us, but a second later, the bell rang. Vivvie and I made our way into the hallway.

“Step three,” I said, “is finding some leverage.”

When the reporter met with me, he probably wouldn’t be happy to find out that I’d arranged the meeting under false pretenses. He definitely wouldn’t be in the mood to volunteer his source’s identity.

Even if he could be persuaded to do so, I could hear the First Lady saying, he would want something in return.

And that meant that I needed something the reporter wanted.

And that meant that I needed Henry Marquette.

CHAPTER 47

Henry wasn’t just ignoring me. He was avoiding me. When he saw me coming his way, he made his excuses to the group he was talking to and ducked into the boys’ bathroom.

Presumably, he thought that I would not follow him.

He obviously did not know me very well.

Henry cast a glance at the door when it opened behind him, then did a double take when he realized it was me.

“Really?” he said dryly.

I leaned back against the door, blocking his exit.

“Get out of my way, Ms. Kendrick.”

“Ms. Kendrick,” I repeated. “We’re not even on a first-name basis anymore?”

He didn’t reply. I didn’t know how much of his avoiding me was because he was angry at me for being Ivy’s sister, for trusting her, even a little, and how much of it was him being angry at himself for telling me about his father.

“Must we do this?” Henry asked, his voice painfully polite.

“I’ll get out of your way once you’ve listened to what I have to say,” I told him. “Otherwise, we can stay here and stare at each other.”

He glared at me. I offered him a lazy smile in return. He snapped.

“Talk,” he ordered crisply.

“I’ve got a plan for trying to figure out who leaked the story about Pierce.”

Henry’s face didn’t move a muscle, but he couldn’t quite squelch the flicker of interest in his eyes. “I thought the sum total of your plan was to let your sister do her job.”

Now that I knew where Henry’s feelings about Ivy came from, I couldn’t steel myself against them in the same way. Objectively, maybe Ivy had done the Marquette family a favor by making Henry’s father’s death seem like an accident, but I couldn’t expect Henry to be objective about something like that. He was the one who had to live with the secret. His father wasn’t here. His grandfather wasn’t here.