The Fixer (The Fixer #1)(21)

“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.