CHAPTER 69
Two days later, I got an invitation to dine at the White House. I hadn’t said a word to Ivy about my suspicions. The president was a friend. I couldn’t ask her to investigate the possibility that he’d arranged his own shooting until I was sure.
Sure that there was something to investigate.
Sure that it was worth it.
So I accepted Georgia Nolan’s invitation to brunch, and I went to the White House, uncertain what I expected to find there.
Something to tell me I’m not crazy. Or, better yet—something that would tell me I was wrong.
I’d had forty-eight hours to think about Dr. Clark telling me that the Nolan administration was corrupt. She’d convinced Henry that the president was the fourth player in the conspiracy to kill Justice Marquette. The one who’d brought the other men together. The one who’d walked away scot-free.
Over the past two days, I’d found myself wondering if that was true.
The president’s doctor, Dr. Clark’s voice whispered in my memory as I took my seat opposite Georgia Nolan. A Secret Service agent on the president’s detail. That doesn’t strike me as a coincidence.
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.