The Long Game (The Fixer #2)(88)

It shouldn’t strike you as one, either.

If President Nolan was the kind of man who could arrange to have himself shot for approval ratings, what else was he capable of? Could he have been involved with the assassination of Justice Marquette?

Brunch was served in the family dining room. The residence was different from the public face of the White House, but I couldn’t forget—even for a second—where I was.

President Nolan was out of the hospital and back to work. Ivy was off doing damage control for a famous philanthropist who had apparently gotten caught up in some not-so-philanthropic things.

It was just the First Lady and me.

How well do you know your husband? I thought, as Georgia dished out the food. If I told you what I suspect, would it shock you? Would you turn around and tell him what I’d told you?

Georgia speared a piece of fresh fruit with her fork and assessed me across the table.

“How are you doing, Tess?” she asked. “Truly?”

I considered my answer. “I’ll survive.”

“I have no doubt of it,” the First Lady replied. “Ivy is one of the strongest women I have ever met, and you, my dear, are very much your mother’s daughter.”

I am.

That was why I was here. That was why I would watch and wait and look for patterns, hints that no one else would think to see.

“I’m so glad we were able to sit down like this,” Georgia said. “I must confess, I did have an ulterior motive for asking you here today.”

I’d told the First Lady—told the president—that the terrorists had said, again and again, that they weren’t responsible for the attack on the president. Did you ask me here to figure out what I know? What I suspect?

Georgia gave me a considering look. “I understand that your grandfather may have told you certain . . . truths, shall we say?”

My heartbeat evened out. “Truths,” I repeated. “About Walker.”

That’s what this is about. That’s why you called me here.

“My Walker,” Georgia told me, “is very much like you, very much like his father.”

Had we been overheard, an observer would have assumed she was talking about the president. I knew better.

“I know my son must be struggling,” the First Lady continued. “I know that his heart is broken. But he doesn’t say much. Not to me. Not to his father.”

This time, she was referencing the president. He was the man who’d raised Walker. In the ways that counted, he was Walker’s father.

“It would hurt them,” Georgia said, “both my husband and my son, if certain truths were to come to light.”

“I know how to keep a secret,” I told Georgia.

She smiled slightly. “I suspect that you do.”

Not long ago, I’d put my life in Daniela Nicolae’s hands. I’d chosen to trust a known terrorist because Walker Nolan was her child’s father. Because family mattered. Because we were connected by blood.

Sitting there, opposite Georgia Nolan, I thought about the connections between us. She’d had an affair with my grandfather, the result of a relationship that went back decades. Georgia treated Ivy like a daughter. I was a Kendrick, and I was a Keyes, and in some twisted way, that made me hers.

“What would you say,” I asked the First Lady, my heart thudding in my chest, “if I told you that I thought there was a chance that your husband had himself shot?”

To mitigate the damage done by the Daniela Nicolae scandal. To protect himself from the fallout. To play on people’s emotions on the eve of midterm elections.

“Tess, darling,” Georgia said, “don’t be ridiculous.” She wasn’t looking at me like a threat. She wasn’t looking at me like a target. She was looking at me like a child. “The president simply is not capable of something like that.” Georgia’s tone was as polished as ever, but beneath the gentle Southern accent, I could hear a thread of sincerity.

A thread of steel.

“I’ve been married to the man for nearly forty years, Tess. I know him as well as it is possible to know anyone in this world, and I am telling you, he could no more arrange for his own shooting than he could kill our children in their sleep.”

Everything in me wanted to believe what Georgia was saying. But I couldn’t help thinking: Do you know what heroically surviving a terrorist’s bullet does to someone’s approval rating?

I couldn’t help thinking about the Supreme Court justice, murdered by the president’s doctor and an agent on the president’s detail. They could have been working for him.

“You’ve been through a very traumatic event,” Georgia told me. “It’s understandable that there would be some lingering aftereffects.” Georgia softened her voice. “Have you talked to Ivy about any of this? To Adam, or your grandfather?”

She said the words like they were a suggestion, but part of me couldn’t help wondering if they were a probe.

“Ivy knows Peter,” Georgia continued. “Almost as well as I do. She knows he is not capable of something like this.”

This time, when the First Lady said the word capable, I heard it in a different way. What if capable wasn’t a value judgment, a comment on the president’s moral compass? What if it was a statement of fact?