The Long Game (The Fixer #2)(84)

CHAPTER 66

Of all the things I expected to see when I exited Henry’s hospital room, the First Lady wasn’t high on the list.

Georgia Nolan was talking quietly to Ivy until she saw me. She murmured something to Ivy, then hung back as I approached.

“You okay?” Ivy asked.

I nodded. I wanted to mean it.

Ivy smoothed a hand over my hair. “If you’re up for it,” she said, “there’s one more person who wants to talk to you.”

The president of the United States was awake, aware, and fully vested with the power of his office. He was also still confined to a hospital bed. Unlike Henry, President Nolan was free of tubes. Beneath his hair, I could make out a long line of stitches that cut across the side of his head. The collar of his shirt revealed an expertly wrapped bandage underneath.

His shoulder? His chest? I tried not to imagine the bullet hitting the president.

I tried not to think about Henry and the moment he’d taken a bullet for me.

I forced my gaze up to the president’s face. His wife went to stand beside him, and that was the only cue that President Nolan needed to start speaking.

“I understand this country owes you a great debt,” the president told me. For someone who’d been in a coma, his voice was steady and strong. “I also understand that in my official capacity in this office, I can neither know the truth of what happened today, nor express my thanks for any role you may have played in it.”

If it wasn’t for me, Hardwicke might still be under terrorist control.

“The vice president will be resigning tomorrow,” President Nolan said, reminding me that if it wasn’t for the vice president’s actions, Daniela Nicolae might still be in federal custody, too. “He’ll cite family reasons. I suspect he and Marjorie will be anxious to take Anna home to New Hampshire.”

I’d spent enough time on the periphery of the political game to read between the lines of the president’s words. The vice president hadn’t resigned for family reasons, and he almost certainly hadn’t chosen to do so.

They’d forced his hand because he’d authorized Daniela’s release.

The vice president knew, I thought, thinking back to Anna’s father’s demeanor in that hallway. He knew this was how it would end.

The official story might be that Daniela Nicolae’s loyalties had flipped, that she’d died working for our country, but the president almost certainly knew the truth. He knew that Daniela was still a part of Senza Nome. That she was still out there, still pregnant. He won’t acknowledge that he knows. Officially, he can’t know.

But he did know. And given that he believed the baby she was carrying to be his granddaughter, I had to wonder if he was already unofficially looking for Daniela Nicolae, for that child.

“I don’t have to tell you,” the president said, “how important it is that you . . .”

“Keep my mouth closed?” I got the feeling that the president of the United States wasn’t used to being interrupted. “I know what I have to do,” I told the president. “And I know how to keep a secret.”

I was starting to believe that was what our country ran on—secret upon secret upon secret.

“There will be a press conference,” the president told me. “In addition to the occupation of Hardwicke, I will also address the attack on my life.” A shadow flickered over the president’s features. I wondered if he was flashing back to the moment he’d been shot, the feel of the bullet as it had entered his chest. “Thanks to the hard work of a trusted few,” the president told me, shooting a brief look in Ivy’s direction, “the shooter was apprehended less than an hour ago.”

The shooter. As in the person who’d taken aim at the president and pulled the trigger.

“Unfortunately,” the president continued, “the shooter resisted.”

Resisted. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up the moment the president said the word.

“He’s dead,” I said, reading between the lines again.

“We’ve been able to connect the shooter, financially, to the same people responsible for the death of John Thomas Wilcox and the hostile takeover of the Hardwicke School.”

Suddenly, I felt less like the president and I were having a conversation, and more like he was issuing a statement. This was the press release he would be giving shortly. This was the whole ordeal, wrapped up with a neat little bow.

My stomach twisted sharply. “The assassination attempt—that wasn’t Senza Nome,” I said. “Daniela, Dr. Clark, Mrs. Perkins . . . they all maintained the organization had nothing to do with the attempt on your life.”

The attack on President Nolan might have disturbed one plan, but it gave us an opening for another. I could hear Mrs. Perkins, could remember the way that when I’d said that Senza Nome had claimed responsibility for the attack, her response had been, Did we? Did we really?

“People like this,” Georgia said, her voice full of compassion, “organizations like this—they get inside your head, Tess. They tell you what they want you to believe.”

I knew that. But I also knew that Mrs. Perkins hadn’t been concerned with making me believe anything, other than the fact that she could and would execute the entire student population of Hardwicke, one by one, if I didn’t do as she asked.