The Long Game (The Fixer #2)(49)

Senza Nome specializes in infiltration. They have someone on the Hill. They must.

This time, when I wrapped back around to the house, I saw someone sitting on the front porch. By streetlight, it took me a moment to recognize him.

“Henry?” I called out as I approached the front porch. “What are you doing here?”

He was sitting on the concrete steps. In all the time I’d known him, I had never once seen Henry Marquette sit on the ground. His eyes were shadowed.

“Is everything okay?” I asked him.

Henry looked up at me, his face half in shadow, his eyes catching the streetlight. “The first time I saw you,” he said, “was at my grandfather’s funeral.”

I took a seat beside Henry, unsure where this was going, unsure why he looked like he’d been through a war zone and seen things he couldn’t unsee.

“Then afterward,” Henry continued, “at my grandfather’s wake, I found you with my sister and Asher. The three of you were skipping imaginary rocks.” He paused. “Do you remember that?”

“Yes.” I remembered Henry looking at us like we were crazy, like he couldn’t begin to fathom running barefoot in the grass or playing pretend.

Henry swallowed, then held up one hand. As I watched, he pantomimed tossing a rock. “How was that?” His voice was rough, hoarse.

“Horrible,” I told him. “It sank straight to the bottom and didn’t skip even once.”

Henry let out a bark of laughter.

I showed him how it was done. “It’s all in the flick of the wrist.”

The edges of Henry’s lips curled up slightly. He looked down at his hands, at a “rock” that didn’t even exist. “Thalia wakes up screaming sometimes.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “First my father. Then my grandfather.” Henry’s voice hardened with resolve. “I tell her that I will never let anything happen to her, but it’s not herself she worries about. She worries about me. About my mom.”

I remembered being Henry’s sister’s age, remembered the cloying fear that someday Gramps or Ivy might go away.

Henry reached into the bag sitting beside him. He held out a white envelope with my name scrawled across the front. I took it from him and opened it. Inside, I found a greeting card. The front was covered in a lacy design, framing what appeared to be an elegant white wedding cake.

“From Asher,” Henry said. He rolled his eyes, but the heavy tone in his voice never changed. “Mine had a sparkly pony on it.”

I opened the card. On the inside, the words Congratulations on Your Nuptials had been scratched out. Above them, Asher had scrawled, Thank You for Trying to Prove I’m Not a Homicidal Maniac.

“If John Thomas was killed because of something he saw in his father’s files,” Henry said, his voice hoarse, “if there’s even a chance that there are powerful players involved in this, if someone like that wants Asher to take the fall . . .”

Thalia wasn’t the only Marquette afraid of losing someone.

“I made a deal with William Keyes,” I told the boy beside me. “The next time the police question Asher, he’ll have the best defense attorneys in the country with him. We won’t let anything happen to him, Henry.”

“Kendrick,” Henry said, turning to look at me, a sad smile on his face. “There are some things that even you cannot fix. If the right person wants the truth about John Thomas’s death to stay buried, how are we supposed to stop them? How are we supposed to stop anything?”

I knew that Henry was thinking about his grandfather’s death, covered up as a matter of national security, about his father’s suicide, rewritten by Ivy in the blink of an eye. The first time I’d ever seen Henry, he’d stepped in front of his mother at his grandfather’s funeral. I’d recognized in him a familiar need to protect the people he loved.

He wanted to protect Asher. And Thalia. And me.

“Ivy has files,” Henry said. “The same way Congressman Wilcox does. If we could get a look at them, we might have a better idea of what we’re dealing with.”

I thought about how desperate Henry must be to want anything from Ivy. And I knew in my gut that there was no world in which Ivy would let us take even the smallest glimpse at those files. So I gave Henry something else.

“John Thomas’s father is having an affair with the political pundit who’s been leading the crusade against the Nolan administration. Congressman Wilcox might be the source of the leaks on the Senza Nome bombing.” I paused. “He certainly benefitted from them.”

Wilcox was the minority whip. The president’s loss was his gain.

“Senza Nome specializes in infiltration,” I continued. “If that video of Daniela’s is to be believed, they have operatives everywhere, including our own government.”

Henry’s jaw clenched. I could see him processing everything I’d said. “Leaking incriminating information about the president doesn’t make John Thomas’s father a terrorist.” Leave it to Henry to be the voice of reason, to play devil’s advocate. “Congressman Wilcox may be a corrupt politician, but do you know how many corrupt politicians there are in this town? Are the president’s hands really that much cleaner?”

President Nolan had covered up Henry’s grandfather’s murder. He’d been willing to let Ivy die when she’d been held captive by a Secret Service agent on his detail.