Georgia Nolan. The First Lady.

I tried to reconcile the fact that she was here with the reality that we were in the middle of a media blitz about the hospital bombing. This wasn’t the time for the First Lady to be taking a stroll through the National Mall.

She’s here to see Keyes. Why?

I turned and walked toward the Lincoln Memorial, coming to stand at the base of the steps, looking out at my paternal grandfather and the First Lady. Her Secret Service detail was standing a discreet distance away. She and Keyes stood several feet apart, neither looking at the other as they spoke.

What could have possessed her to come here to talk to him? And if he’d planned to meet her, why bring me along?

I didn’t get answers to those questions. Three minutes after Georgia had arrived, she was gone.

CHAPTER 12

I arrived back at Ivy’s house to see flashing lights. I was out of the car before Keyes could order me to stay put. I pushed past the police cruiser in the driveway.

“Ivy?” I called out her name a second before I laid eyes on her. She was wearing a navy blazer, her light brown hair clipped neatly back from her face.

“I assure you,” Ivy was telling an officer, the very picture of composure, “everything is fine.” She saw me approach. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to see to my daughter.”

Having dispatched the police officer, she ushered me into the house.

“What happened?” I asked her, my voice low.

“As far as the police are concerned,” Ivy said, “nothing. The alarm went off quite by accident.”

“What really happened?” I countered.

I could see Ivy weighing her choices. Ultimately, she must have decided I could handle the truth. “There was a break-in. They tossed my office but didn’t find what they were looking for.”

I didn’t question why Ivy had sent the police away. If someone had broken through her security, she wouldn’t want that to get out.

“What were they looking for?” I asked.

Ivy glanced toward the door, as if she could see through it. “Leverage.”

William Keyes waited for the police to leave before he approached the house.

“Wait upstairs,” Ivy told me.

She didn’t ask where I’d been when she’d arrived home. I wondered if the kingmaker would point out that if I hadn’t gone with him, I might have been here when someone broke in. And then I wondered if she would counter that it seemed awfully coincidental that he’d gotten me out of the house right before someone had broken in and torn her office apart.

Looking for something. Something to do with Walker Nolan. My mind was jumbled as I ascended the spiral staircase. I paused at the top but heard nothing.

Keyes met with Georgia Nolan. The president’s son knew this terrorist attack was going to happen. People are asking questions.

The thoughts came rapid fire, one on the heel of another, until Ivy appeared upstairs. Her gaze faltered for a moment when it landed on me.

“Is this the part where you get mad at me for the things I can’t tell you, or the part where I remind you that you can’t trust William Keyes?” There was no edge in Ivy’s voice, no hint of anger or exasperation.

She sounded tired.

There were so many things I wanted to say to her. I wanted to tell her that she could trust me, that all keeping me in the dark accomplished was pushing me further away. I wanted to say that it wasn’t fair that she got to protect me, but I was expected to just sit back and let her, as Keyes had put it, play with fire.

I wanted to tell her that she wasn’t allowed to do this to me again. But she was tired, and she was here, and she was in one piece.

“This is the part where I do my homework,” I said softly, “and you order takeout, and we both pretend that everything is fine.”

CHAPTER 13

The next morning, things at Hardwicke were back to normal—more or less.

“Don’t look now,” Asher whispered. “But I believe you’re being paged.”

Vivvie immediately turned to look. Stealth wasn’t her strong suit. “I’d say that’s more of a beckoning,” she told Asher after a moment’s deliberation.

“A summoning, perhaps?” Asher countered, wiggling his eyebrows.

On the other side of the Hut, Emilia Rhodes narrowed her eyes at me and crooked her finger. Asher was right. I had been summoned. With one last glance at Asher and Vivvie, I gritted my teeth and went to see what Emilia wanted.

“We’re polling strong with the robotics club and the jazz band.” Maya Rojas ran her fingers along the tip of her straw as I took a seat at their table. “I can deliver the girls’ basketball team, and Tess having nominated you seems to be carrying some weight with freshman females.”