Ivy ran a hand through my hair, pushing it back from my face. “I need you to pack a bag. Clothes, your school stuff, anything you might need.”

“A bag?” I caught Ivy by the arm as she moved to stand. “Ivy, what’s going on?” No answer. “Is this about the information I gave Adam?”

Ivy’s expression wavered slightly. I could see her locking down her emotions, trying to flip into fixer mode and handle me like any other problem. But she couldn’t. Ivy had a way of looking at me, like I held her heart in my hands.

“What’s going on, Ivy?”

She pulled back from my grasp and stood, crossing to my closet and pulling out a bag.

“You’re sending me away.”

No response.

“Is this because my friends and I investigated John Thomas’s death?” I asked. “Asher was in danger of being arrested. We had to do something.”

Ivy never looked up from her packing. “Stephanie Royal was the one who sent that video of Daniela to Walker Nolan and every major news outlet.”

We’d assumed—Walker had assumed—that the video of the terrorist naming him as the father of her baby had been sent by Daniela on some kind of time delay, another stage of the same attack meant to destabilize the White House.

“Where did Stephanie Royal get that video?” I asked. Ivy didn’t answer, and I thought about what I’d told Adam and amended my question. “Where did Congressman Wilcox get that video?”

From the source. If not Daniela, then the people she worked for. The answer hung in the air between us. But I needed Ivy to say it. I needed her to tell me that she was sending me away because she’d connected Congressman Wilcox to the terrorists, and things were about to get ugly.

My throat tightening, I took a step toward Ivy, and a second later, she’d latched both of her arms around me. I stiffened on reflex, but she held on tightly. After a second or two, I relaxed in her grip, my arms rising of their own volition to hold just as tight to her.

What kind of danger was Ivy in that she was sending me away?

“You have got to stop doing this to me, Tessie,” Ivy murmured.

Stop asking for answers she couldn’t give.

Stop putting myself at risk.

Stop being so much like her.

I forced myself to pull back. “I should pack.” My voice sounded dull, even to my own ears. I crossed the room and began mechanically pulling clothes off hangers.

This was the way it was, with Ivy and me. This was the way it would always be.

“The people Daniela works for ordered her to make that video.” Ivy broke the silence. She would regret telling me this. I knew that, and she knew that, but she wasn’t any better at watching me walk away than I was at being shut out. “Daniela was supposed to release the video before she was captured. She didn’t. It was her job to get close to the president’s son, to carry his child. She claims to care for Walker. Our counterterrorism experts believe her, believe that she was unable to stay emotionally uninvolved. There’s a theory that says that her own people may have come to see her as a liability.”

She couldn’t release the video, I thought, translating Ivy’s words, so Senza Nome released it for her.

That was as close to confirmation of Congressman Wilcox’s involvement with the terrorists as I was going to get.

“Where are you sending me?” I asked softly, my throat stinging and tightening around the words. I knew that Ivy loved me. I knew that she would have given her own life to keep me safe. But if she could have snapped her fingers and made me the kind of daughter who didn’t ask questions that made her a target, the kind who was less like her and nothing like me—she would have.

I couldn’t be that girl for her, any more than she could promise to stay safe for me.

“Somewhere secure,” Ivy said, answering the question I’d spoken out loud. “And,” she added, “the last place Adam and I would ever want you to be.”

CHAPTER 45

I’d been to the Keyes mansion for Sunday night dinners. I’d sat opposite the kingmaker at the antique chessboard in his study. But this was the first time I’d walked up the massive marble staircase to see the second floor.

A long hallway stretched out before us. William Keyes walked me to the end of the hall and opened a door to our left. A massive suite, complete with its own entry, sitting room, and a bedroom large enough to dwarf a king-size bed, lay sprawled out before me. Despite its size, there was something about the suite that contrasted sharply with the looming antiques and surplus of marble downstairs.