THE LONG GAME (7 page)

“I’ll step down.” Emilia forced herself to look at Headmaster Raleigh.

“I think that would be wise,” he said quietly.

“And what about the boys in that video?” I asked. “The ones taping a girl without her consent? What about the person who’s sending these texts?”

Now that he’d gotten what he wanted out of Emilia, Headmaster Raleigh seemed less concerned
with my presence in the office. “Every effort will be made to find the origin of these texts,” the headmaster promised.

“And if I told you that John Thomas Wilcox told me that he’d sent the picture?” I asked.

Emilia was the one who answered. “It would be your word against his.” She shook her head. “He said, she said.” Robotically, she turned back to the headmaster. “If that’s all, I’d like to
do some studying before my next class.”

CHAPTER 15

I didn’t see Emilia again until World Issues. The moment Dr. Clark told us to break into groups, Emilia asked to go to the bathroom. I had two choices: stay and be interrogated by both Henry and Asher about what had happened in the headmaster’s office, or follow Emilia and risk having my head bitten off.

I chose the latter.

When I asked for permission, Dr. Clark assessed me silently.
“Off the record,” she said, “if what I’m hearing about how this situation with Emilia was handled is true, I disagree with it on every level.” She nodded to the door. “Go.”

I went.

When I got to the bathroom, Emilia was standing in front of the mirror, applying lip gloss. “Don’t worry,” she told me, an edge in her voice. “I’ll still count your favor paid in full.”

I stepped forward. “That’s
not why I’m worried.”

Emilia put the cap on her lip gloss and turned to look at me. “You don’t get to be worried about me,” she said vehemently. “You don’t even like me.”

She’d told me once that Asher was the likable twin. He was the one people trusted. She was the one who had focus. The one who did everything right.

“You weren’t drunk in that picture,” I said softly. “Were you?”

“You saw
the video.” She clamored to hide the naked emotion in her eyes.

“Yeah,” I said. “I did.”

In Raleigh’s office, when I’d thrown out the possibility that someone had slipped something into Emilia’s drink that night, she’d told me to stop.
Begged
me to stop.

It would be your word against his
, she’d said later.
He said, she said.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep from replaying John Thomas’s
leering words from earlier that day:
If you ask me, someone did Miss Priss a favor. No one should be wound that tight.

From the beginning, that picture had hit Emilia with crippling, devastating force.

“I’m not talking about this,” Emilia said, her voice taut. “You’re not talking about it.
No one
is talking about it.” She turned on the faucet and began washing her hands. “There’s nothing to
talk about.”

Yes. There is.
I didn’t say that. I didn’t get a vote about whether we talked about this or not. No one got a vote but Emilia.

“I still owe you a favor,” I said.

Emilia reached for a paper towel. “Do I look like I want a pity favor?” she asked.

“Do I look like I feel even an ounce of pity for you?” I shot back.

For the first time, Emilia allowed herself to look at me. Really
look at me. I met her stare unflinchingly.

“Fine,” she said after a moment. “You still owe me a favor. I’ll let you know when I want to collect.”

“You do that,” I told her. “And if you decide you want to collect now—I can get you back in that race.”

“The headmaster—” Emilia started to say.

“I can take care of the headmaster.”

“That picture—”

“By the time I’m done,” I said, “that picture
will win you this election.”

John Thomas.
She didn’t make the last objection out loud.

“Him,” I said, “I’ll take care of for fun.”

There was a long moment of silence, and then Emilia tossed her ponytail over her shoulder. “There’s no way you’re that good.”

I smiled. “Try me.”

CHAPTER 16

Emilia and I went back to World Issues. It took me less than a minute to get Vivvie on board. I texted Ivy that I was going to Vivvie’s place after school and bided my time until the bell rang. On the way to Vivvie’s, I made four phone calls.

The first was to Anna Hayden.

“How would you like to stick it to John Thomas Wilcox?” I asked her.

There was a brief pause. “I’m listening.”

“He took that picture of Emilia.” I couldn’t tell Anna more than that—not what I suspected about the circumstances in which that picture had been taken, not the devastating effect that even looking at it had on Emilia. But I could give Anna a moment to think about the fact that in another world, John Thomas might have been sending around pictures of her.

“The headmaster pressured Emilia into
dropping out of the race because of that picture,” I continued. “I plan to convince him that was a very bad idea.”

I told Anna what I had in mind.

“I know you probably can’t participate yourself,” I said. Anna wasn’t in the limelight as much as she would have been if her father had been president, but she was the only one of the presidential or vice presidential children who wasn’t already of
age. That attracted a certain amount of attention. “But if you could pass the word on—”

“Oh, I’ll participate,” Anna cut in, an edge in her voice. “And so will my friends. Just send me the link and tell me when.”

The next two calls went to Lindsay Li—she of the blackmailing ex-boyfriend—and Meredith Sutton.

Right as we reached Vivvie’s place, I made one final call.

The apartment Vivvie shared
with her aunt had round-the-clock security downstairs.

“How are things going?” I asked Vivvie as we reached the elevator. “With your aunt?”

“Good,” Vivvie replied with a little half smile. “She got a job at a local gallery.” Vivvie paused. “We don’t talk about my dad much,” she said quietly.

Vivvie’s father had been part of the conspiracy to murder Justice Marquette. Once things had started
to unravel, Major Bharani had “committed suicide.”

Vivvie and I both knew that he had been murdered.

“Sometimes . . .” Vivvie said, and then she trailed off.

“Sometimes,” I prompted.

Vivvie stared at our reflection in the elevator’s metal door. “Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night, and my aunt’s
just sitting in the living room, staring at nothing and cleaning her gun.”

Given the
sequence of events that had brought Priya Bharani into Vivvie’s life, I supposed a certain amount of late-night paranoia was understandable.

“On the bright side,” Vivvie commented, determined to end the conversation on a high note, “she’s got great taste, and she lets me borrow her clothes.”

The elevator came to a stop. The doors opened. Vivvie’s apartment was the only one on the floor. She
unlocked the front door, and then we got to work.

“I think the picture of Emilia was taken in a bathroom?” Vivvie caught her bottom lip between her teeth and rocked from her heels to her toes. “I’ll get some pens and paper,” she declared. “My bathroom is through there.”

While Vivvie went in search of writing supplies, I went to check out the lighting in the bathroom. Setting my bag to one side,
I lowered myself to the floor. I slumped back against the wall next to the bathtub, letting my head loll to one side.

“How’s this?” I asked Vivvie when she came in.

She stared at me for a second. “Go like this,” she told me, bending her head down and flipping her hair over in front of her face. I did as she instructed and watched through my hair as she went over to the sink and got a handful
of water. She dripped it on me.

“Now lean back,” she said.

I did.

“Eyes mostly closed,” Vivvie said. “Head a little farther to the side. Legs a little farther apart.”

Once I’d perfected the pose, Vivvie handed me a sheet of paper and a red marker. Two minutes later, she took my picture. Then we switched places, and I took hers.

“Not bad,” Vivvie said, looking at the pictures on my phone.
Each of us was slumped against the wall, our positions mimicking Emilia’s in the picture almost exactly. The sign propped up against my chest read,
DOUBLE STANDARD.

I scrolled from my picture to Vivvie’s. Her sign said simply,
I STAND WITH EMILIA.

“You’re sure you want to do this?” I asked Vivvie. She looked nearly unconscious in her picture—and just as wasted as Emilia.

Vivvie thrust out her
chin. “I’m sure.”

So was I. Five minutes later, the pictures were uploaded. Ten minutes after that, the others started trickling in.

“Vivvie?” an accented voice called out.

“In here,” Vivvie called back. She tried to look like she wasn’t up to anything and failed miserably.

Her aunt appeared in the doorway. The woman did not ask what her niece and I were doing in Vivvie’s bathroom. “I see
we have a guest,” she said instead. Her accent sounded British—and very posh. Like Vivvie, she had brown skin and black hair, though hers had a bit more natural curl. “Hello, Tess.”

“Hey, Ms. Bharani,” I said.

“Priya,” she corrected. “Please.”

“Priya.”

“I am assuming that Ivy and Bodie know you are here?” Priya asked me.

I nodded. Priya’s gaze lingered on my face for a moment. She wasn’t
the type of woman who missed much.

“I hope you’ll stay for dinner,” she said finally.

I got the sense that wasn’t a request.

By the time takeout arrived a few hours later, my picture and Vivvie’s had been joined by more than thirty others. It had started with Anna, Lindsay, and Meredith and spread from there. Their friends. Their friends’ friends.

All Hardwicke students. All girls.

I STAND
WITH EMILIA.

“What did you girls do today?” Vivvie’s aunt asked.

Vivvie and I looked at each other. “Nothing,” we chimed in unison.

Priya arched an eyebrow. “I find I doubt that very much.” She tilted her head to the side. “Vivvie, I noticed that Jacques is on duty downstairs. Since it appears we will have leftovers, perhaps you could bring him a plate?”

Vivvie’s eyes sparkled. She whispered
something to me about her aunt and the night guard having a surplus of sexual tension before bounding off to deliver the food. Once the front door clicked behind her, Vivvie’s aunt turned her attention to me.

“Ivy has been trying to get in touch with me.”

That wasn’t what I’d been expecting her to say, but the second the words left her mouth, I realized that she’d sent Vivvie out of the room
for a reason.

“I cannot give Ivy the information she seeks,” Priya continued. “You may tell her that it would not behoove either of us for certain parties to realize that she’d been making inquiries. I certainly cannot be seen answering them.”

When I’d asked Vivvie what her aunt did for a living, all Vivvie had been able to tell me was that her aunt had worked overseas. Taking in the measured
tone in Priya Bharani’s voice and the pleasant smile on her face, I doubted suddenly that she’d been working in an art gallery over there.

Priya put her hand over mine and lowered her voice. “I am grateful,” she said, “for what Ivy has done for my niece. But I cannot tell her that the group she is looking for is known by Interpol as Senza Nome. The Nameless,” Priya translated. “I cannot,” she
continued quietly, “tell her that they’ve been on various watch lists since the 1980s, or that they seem to operate primarily through infiltration—of other terrorist organizations, as well as world governments.

“I cannot speak of this—not to your sister, not to her friends at the Pentagon, not to anyone.”

Except for me.
I was a teenager. Even a cursory check would show that Vivvie and I were
friends. Vivvie’s aunt couldn’t take Ivy’s call. She couldn’t be seen talking to her, or to Adam.

But she could whisper in my ear, and I could whisper in Ivy’s.

The front door slammed, and Priya began clearing away the plates, like nothing had happened.

“So,” Vivvie said, popping back into the kitchen and grinning, “what did I miss?”

CHAPTER 17

I delivered the message. To say that Ivy and Adam weren’t pleased that Priya had made me her messenger would have been an understatement.

Bodie just rolled his eyes. “Intelligence types,” he scoffed. “When things go cloak and dagger, you can’t trust them farther than you can throw them.”

Adam gave Bodie a disgruntled look that reminded me that
Adam
was in military intelligence.

“So Vivvie’s aunt is—” I started to say.

“Vivvie’s aunt is an appraiser,” Ivy cut me off, “specializing in non-Western antiquities.”

“Retired,” Bodie clarified. “A retired
appraiser
.”

In other words: whatever Vivvie’s aunt had done overseas and whoever she’d done it for—it was classified. And that meant that there was a good chance that what she’d told me was classified, too.

“Would I be right
in assuming you have homework?” Ivy asked me.

“Really?” I said incredulously. After what I’d just told her, she expected me to trot upstairs and do my homework?

“Please, Tess.” Ivy caught my gaze and held it. “I’m sorry Priya put you in the middle of this. It won’t happen again.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that it would happen again. For as long as she was
Ivy Kendrick
, there
would always be people who saw me as a path to her. No matter how hard Ivy tried to keep me out, there would always be times when I knew things I shouldn’t.

Daniela Nicolae works for a terrorist group that specializes in infiltrating governments and other terrorist groups.
My brain didn’t stop there.
It’s not a coincidence that her time in Doctors Without Borders overlapped Walker Nolan’s. It
can’t be.

I didn’t say any of that out loud. “Were they involved?” I asked instead. “Walker Nolan and that woman they have in custody.”