The Long Game (The Fixer #2)(39)

I couldn’t force Emilia to let me in, so I followed her lead and focused on the facts. “John Thomas told me he’d gotten ahold of Hardwicke student files,” I said. “The kind of files that contained confidential medical information.”

“And this is the boy people are mourning,” Emilia said, her voice going hollow. “A model student. A natural leader. A wonderful friend.”

The look in Emilia’s eyes when she repeated the headmaster’s words from that morning reminded me that John Thomas hadn’t just enjoyed power. He’d enjoyed making other people feel powerless.

“We need to figure out who at this school had reason to want John Thomas dead,” I said quietly.

“Besides me, you mean?”

“Emilia—”

“Don’t handle me with kid gloves, Tess.” Emilia’s fingers curled, driving her nails into her palms. “Say what you mean.” Emilia stared at me so hard I could feel the weight of her stare on the surface of my skin.

“You weren’t the only one he took pictures of.” That much I could say without betraying any confidences—or forcing anything out of her that she wasn’t ready to give.

Emilia was silent for four or five seconds before she spoke. “If I were going to guess where one might look for people who knew John Thomas Wilcox for who and what he was,” she said quietly, “that social media experiment of yours wouldn’t be a bad place to start.”

I Stand With Emilia.

Emilia stared at me for a second longer, then turned back to the sink. “This case is going to get national attention. My parents hired a lawyer, but the kind of lawyer we can afford isn’t going to be enough.” She pressed her lips together. “He was the whip’s son, Tess, and Asher is nobody.”

I knew, in that moment, that Emilia wasn’t just talking about Asher.

“I’ll get Asher a lawyer,” I promised her. “I’ll do whatever it takes.” Emilia rinsed her hands methodically and then lifted her gaze to the mirror. At first I thought she was checking her makeup, but then I realized that she was studying her own expression—removing all hints of weakness.

“You don’t have to be okay right now,” I told her. “Whatever you’re feeling—it’s okay to feel that way.”

Emilia pushed past me. She reached for the door, then paused. “What is it you even think that I’m feeling?” she said, her voice quiet but cutting. “Am I supposed to be sad? Or maybe in shock? Maybe I’m supposed to be spiraling downward. But I’m not. I’m not sad, and I’m not in shock, and I’m not spiraling.” She glanced back at me. “You worry about my brother and finding out who wanted John Thomas dead,” she ordered. “Because I’m fine.”

In between second and third period, I called Ivy. No answer.

In between third and fourth period, I called Ivy. No answer.

At lunch, I called William Keyes. He answered. I asked him what it would take to get someone from Tyson Brewer’s firm to represent Asher. There was a pause on the other end of the line as my grandfather processed the fact that I was asking for a favor.

“Just say the word, Tess,” Keyes told me. “All you have to do is ask, and I can get your friend an entire team of defense lawyers, the best in the country, free of charge.”

Free of charge to Asher, maybe, I thought. Accepting this favor would undoubtedly cost me.

“Do it.”





CHAPTER 35

As it turned out, pinpointing which of my fellow students might have wanted John Thomas dead was significantly harder than putting the best defense lawyers in the country on retainer. Even my reputation as a fixer couldn’t loosen lips, not when it came to speaking ill of the dead.

“There’s a term that psychologists use to describe our memory of moments that surprise and shock us, the ones where we hear news that rocks us to our core.” Dr. Clark stood at the front of my last-period class, looking at us one by one.

“Flashbulb memories,” Dr. Clark said. “That’s what they call memories for large-scale, emotionally significant events. Most Americans who were in elementary school or older on November 22, 1963, can tell you exactly where they were when they heard that President Kennedy had been assassinated.” Dr. Clark let those words sink in. “The day the space shuttle Challenger exploded,” she continued, listing off another flashbulb-memory-provoking event. She swallowed. “September 11, 2001.”

These were the dates that lived forever in people’s memories—bright and detailed, forever memorialized with a kind of visceral horror. I couldn’t remember 9/11, let alone the Challenger or the day Kennedy was shot.

Monday, November 6, I thought. President Nolan. John Thomas. November 6.

“After the events of the past couple of days,” Dr. Clark said, “I’ve been asking myself what people will remember about this week, this tragedy.” She took her time with the words, each hard-won—and even harder to listen to. “Will they remember where they were when President Nolan was shot? Will they remember refreshing news pages, desperately waiting for an update on his condition? Will they remember going to the polls in record numbers, because voting was the only thing they could do? Will they remember the First Lady telling them that her husband had been put in a medically induced coma? Will they remember the look on her face as she swore on live television that President Nolan would make it through this, that he was a survivor?”