The Long Game (The Fixer #2)(21)

Ivy turned back to me. “Adam doesn’t ask me for much.” She turned me back toward the mirror and began working her fingers through my hair.

Don’t. A voice inside me objected—an unwanted reflex. Don’t touch me. Don’t pretend like this is something we do.

That was a knee-jerk reaction. No matter how far Ivy and I had come, I could never quiet the part of me that had wanted her in my life so badly for so long, without even knowing that she was my mother. I couldn’t shut myself off from the Tess who’d grown up on the ranch with Gramps, the one who would have given anything to hear from Ivy more than three times a year.

That part of me had been disappointed again and again.

Ivy pulled two chunks of hair out of my face and into a twist at the nape of my neck and then stepped back. She’d noticed the way I’d stiffened at her touch.

I didn’t enjoy hurting Ivy, any more than she enjoyed hurting me.

“You’re not going tonight?” I asked, trying to pretend that neither one of us had the power to hurt the other.

“No,” Ivy replied, clipping the word. “I have work to do.”

Work. I spent three seconds wishing that Bodie had been able to promise me that Ivy wasn’t looking into Senza Nome and another three wondering what she’d already found.

“I hope I’m not interrupting.”

Ivy and I turned in unison. Adam stood in the door to my room, dressed in his most formal uniform. Silver buttons gleamed against his dark blue jacket. His bowtie was Air Force blue; an assortment of medals and insignia decorated his lapel.

“You’re right on time,” Ivy told him.

“May I?” Adam asked, tearing his eyes from Ivy and approaching me. My gaze went to a box in his hand. Jewelry. He withdrew a pair of pearls.

“Knock yourself out,” I told him, unsure why the words felt so heavy in my throat.

He fastened the pearls around my neck. “They were my mother’s.”

My grandmother’s.

“Ivy!” Bodie’s voice broke into my thoughts. “You’re going to want to get down here!”

Adam and Ivy shared a split-second gaze before making a break for the stairs. I followed, cursing the dress for slowing me down. By the time I made it downstairs, Adam and Ivy were staring at an electronic tablet. I approached with caution, ready to be rebuffed.

Neither one of them pushed me away.

Craning my head, I took in the website that held their attention. My brain couldn’t process the words on the page, because it was focused wholly and entirely on the picture.

Daniela Nicolae.

She was wearing a gray jumpsuit. Her hands were cuffed in front of her body. There were dark circles under her eyes. Her head was held high. Her stomach bulged against the fabric of the jumpsuit.

My mouth fell open as I processed that bulge.

The terrorist—the woman Walker Nolan had approached Ivy about, the one I suspected he might be involved with—was pregnant.





CHAPTER 20

This is coming out. As I stepped out of Adam’s car, Ivy’s words from earlier that week came back to me. My job is to make sure it doesn’t come out until after the polls close next Tuesday.

The terrorist responsible for the hospital attack was pregnant. And there was a possibility—maybe a good one, based on Ivy’s reaction to that picture—that she was pregnant with Walker Nolan’s child.

That wasn’t just a bombshell. That was nuclear.

Adam murmured something to the valet and then came around to my side of the car. He offered me his arm.

We’re really doing this, I thought as I took his arm. Coming here, pretending everything is fine.

Neither Adam nor Ivy had said anything to confirm what I suspected. That Daniela Nicolae was pregnant—and that someone had leaked a photo geared at publicizing that fact—was undeniable. But the idea that the baby might be Walker Nolan’s?

That was nothing but conjecture on my part. A worst-case scenario.

Anything bad that can happen will. That was Murphy’s Law. I was beginning to suspect that in Ivy’s line of business, it was fact.

“Deep breath,” Adam advised me. A moment later, we walked up a marble staircase and through a set of double doors.

Rows of circular tables stretched the length of the ballroom. Marble columns lined the walls. Massive red velvet curtains were gathered and tied back at each corner. Adam said something about the building being a renovated opera house.

I barely heard a word.

Anything bad that can happen will.

“Tess, my dear, you look lovely.” William Keyes zeroed in on Adam and me with military precision. He pressed a kiss to my cheek, then turned to Adam. “It’s good to see you, son.”

“I’m not here for you.” My uncle’s voice was as terse as I’d ever heard it. When Ivy had been held hostage, Adam had asked his father for help. William Keyes had refused. If I hadn’t revealed myself as his granddaughter, if I hadn’t made the kingmaker a deal, Ivy might have died—and William Keyes wouldn’t have lifted a hand to stop it.

Adam would never forgive him for that.

“You’re here for your brother,” Keyes acknowledged, putting a hand on Adam’s shoulder, then one on mine. “We all are.”

Adam remained stiff under his father’s touch.