The Long Game (The Fixer #2)(52)

That wasn’t a life that Adam—or Ivy—had wanted for me.

The fact that I was here, that Ivy had sent me to a man she despised for protection, told me just how serious the current situation was.

Ivy is going after Congressman Wilcox. She’s going to try to prove he’s in bed with Senza Nome. The terrorists won’t take the loss of an asset lying down.

“Whatever mess Ivy has found herself in,” William Keyes said, all too discerning, “I can promise it won’t touch you here.”

He would protect me. Ivy trusted that, even if she didn’t trust him.

“Your friend Asher is now enjoying the benefits of an excellent defense attorney.” Keyes said those words casually, but Adam’s warning echoed in my head.

Favors from a man like William Keyes always come at a price.

I turned to face the man head-on. “What do you want?”

He assessed the way I was standing, the expression on my face. “You’ve been talking to Adam,” he concluded. “Is it so hard to believe I might want to help you, Tess? That I might want nothing in return?”

I would have liked to believe that. I would have liked to believe that the words he’d just said to me were more than a move in a game of conversational chess.

“In this town, people always want something in return,” I said. I met my grandfather’s eyes. “You taught me that.”

The kingmaker rocked back on his heels, his hazel eyes sharp on mine. “Very well,” he said after a moment. “I want you to tell me why you’re here. I want you to tell me exactly what Ivy has gotten herself into.”

“Why would you care?” I asked, giving myself time to process the question. “Less than two months ago, you were perfectly happy to let Ivy die.”

If that barb hit its target, the kingmaker gave no visible indication of it. “I care because what she does affects you. I care,” he said, “because when Ivy Kendrick’s heroics inevitably set the world on fire, I’m going to be the one dousing the flames.”

William Keyes. Kingmaker. The one who makes things happen behind the scenes. It didn’t surprise me that he kept close tabs on Ivy—or that information about what she was doing was the price he was exacting for the favor I’d asked of him.

“Ivy has connected Congressman Wilcox to the terrorists.” I gave him that information in trade for what he’d done for Asher. “I don’t know the details, but I’d guess she’s out there building a case against Wilcox, preparing to bring him down.”

“What about the woman?” Keyes asked, his gaze strangely intense. “Daniela Nicolae. Was Wilcox her contact?” The kingmaker took a step toward me. “What does the vice president intend to do with the terrorist carrying Walker Nolan’s child?”

That question sent a chill down my spine. My grandfather keeping tabs on Ivy made sense. His interest in Daniela Nicolae did not.

If you trust me, Tess, Adam’s voice whispered in my memory, don’t trust him.

“Why do you want to know?” The words got caught in my throat.

“Information is power, Theresa. You can never know ahead of time which pieces will be worth the most.”

What could my grandfather possibly stand to gain from knowing what the vice president intended to do with a terrorist whose organization had been implicated in the attempt on the president’s life?

Did you know that the term kingmaker was first used to refer to the role the Earl of Warwick played in the struggle between Lancaster and York? I stared at William Keyes as I remembered his lecture on what happened to weak and strategically impotent rulers. Warwick deposed not one but two kings.

“Where are they keeping her?” Keyes pressed again. “The woman carrying Walker Nolan’s son.”

We are in your government, your law enforcement, your military. William Keyes was a man who believed in building alliances. He despised President Nolan. And now the president was in a coma.

“Daughter,” I heard myself say. I never missed a beat in the conversation, though my mind was whirring.

“Excuse me?”

“On the video they released of Daniela naming Walker as the father of her baby, she said that Walker was her father. It’s a girl.”

“What does it matter,” Keyes countered, his voice rising in volume, his words snapping out like a whip, “if the child is a boy or a girl? What has Ivy said about the mother? What is this group’s endgame with her? What is their endgame with Walker Nolan?”

The full intensity of William Keyes’s stare was a powerful thing. I felt like he was thumbing through my innermost thoughts like they were nothing more than index cards.

I wondered what would happen if he didn’t like what he saw there.

“There’s a theory,” I said, matching the intensity of the kingmaker’s stare with my own, “that Daniela has been emotionally compromised, that her own people may have come to see her as a liability.” I held his gaze and wondered how much of Tommy—and how much of himself—he saw in me. “And now you’re asking me where she’s being kept, what the government intends to do with her.” My throat was dry, but I didn’t back down. “Why do you want to know?”

I waited for him to hear what I was really asking. I waited for him to tell me that he wasn’t working with Senza Nome, that he had no interest in dethroning kings.