“Fine,” I said. “I help you win this election, and then we’re even.”
Emilia’s lips parted in a small smile. “Welcome to the campaign.”
CHAPTER 4
It took Bodie less than ten minutes after he picked me up to ferret out the finer details of my day. For someone I was fairly certain had committed his share of felonies, Ivy’s driver could do an impressive soccer mom impression when it came to pumping information out of me on the way to and from school.
“I doubt ‘student council campaign manager’ was what Keyes had in mind when he told you to get more involved at school.” Bodie flashed a smile at me.
“I agreed to Sunday night dinners and allowing him to publically acknowledge me as a Keyes,” I retorted. “Field hockey and debate were never a part of the deal.”
Bodie studied me for a moment, the way he always did when the subject of William Keyes came up. “If the old man starts to make noise about it,” he said, trying to mask the fact that he was taking mental notes on my well-being for Ivy, “you can always tell him you’re taking a page from the Keyes playbook and trying your hand at calling the shots behind the scenes.”
I grimaced. The last thing I needed was for the Hardwicke populace to decide that I was some sort of kingmaker-in-the-making.
“It’s a favor for a friend,” I said. “That’s it.”
“You’re a Kendrick,” Bodie told me, taking the turn toward Ivy’s house. “Favors for friends have a way of complicating themselves.”
Bodie slowed the car as we approached the driveway. In addition to being Ivy’s chauffeur, he was also her bodyguard—and mine. With casual efficiency, he surveyed the street in front of Ivy’s house, his gaze coming to rest on a car at the curb.
Since Ivy worked out of the bottom floor of our sprawling DC home, clients came and went with a fairly high frequency, but this car didn’t fit the profile of Ivy’s typical client. Beneath the grime, the vehicle was burnt orange—and clearly used. The windows weren’t bulletproof. I doubted its owner had ever even considered hiring a driver.
I glanced over at Bodie, trying to get a read on him. Did he recognize the car?
As he pulled into the driveway, his phone buzzed. A text, almost certainly from Ivy. Bodie read the message. A second passed. He put on his best poker face, then glanced back up at me. “How would you feel about ice cream?”
Bodie kept me out all afternoon. By the time we got back to Ivy’s house, it was dark outside, and the orange car had been joined by another vehicle. This one, I recognized.
“Adam’s here,” I said.
“So he is,” Bodie replied evenly.
If I wasn’t already wondering about my newfound uncle’s presence at the house, the fact that Bodie had missed an opportunity to refer to him as “Captain Pentagon” or “Mr. America” would have tipped me off that this wasn’t just business as usual. Bodie had no shortage of nicknames for anyone—and he considered mocking by-the-books Adam Keyes to be one of life’s finer pleasures.
Ivy called Adam in. She texted Bodie and told him to keep me away from the house. As I climbed out of the car and made my way into the foyer, I turned that over in my head.
Bodie slanted his gaze toward me as he shut the front door behind us. “If I told you to go upstairs and forget about all of this, you’d end up ignoring me, so do us both a favor, kitten, and just try not to let Ivy catch you down here.”
With that advice imparted, Bodie made for Ivy’s office himself. I heard the door open and close—and then, nothing.
First Adam, now Bodie.
Whatever was going down, it had Ivy calling in the troops.
CHAPTER 5
I didn’t go upstairs. I stood in the hallway just outside of Ivy’s office, staring at the door. I could hear the murmur of voices behind it, but couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Ivy’s job—her clients, the things she did on their behalf, the lines she was willing to cross—that was a portion of her life she kept from me, as best she could.
Logically, I understood that Ivy’s line of work required a guarantee of confidentiality and discretion. I also understood—logically—that she wanted to protect me. The last time I’d been involved in one of her cases, I’d been kidnapped.
But no amount of logical understanding could mute the sharp ache in my chest that I felt staring at a closed door, knowing that Ivy was the one who’d locked me out.
Some days, it felt like my whole life had been a series of doors I’d never had a choice about closing.
Ivy had shut the door on being my mother when she’d given me to her parents to raise as their own. She’d locked that door when she’d agreed to lie to me and thrown the deadbolt for good measure when I was four years old and she’d handed me—tears streaming down her cheeks in the wake of our parents’ funeral—to Gramps.