Ivy talks to the Secret Service about Vivvie’s father. Vivvie’s father is immediately taken out of the picture. I saw the connection with hindsight. Ivy must have seen it from the beginning.

“She suspected it was a Secret Service agent, and she didn’t tell the president?” I asked.

“She didn’t tell the president because she suspected it was a Secret Service agent,” Adam replied. “The president is a difficult man to get alone, and even if she managed to pass the message along in private, she was fairly certain that the person we were looking for knew that we were digging. If Ivy met with the president and his behavior changed at all . . .” Adam shook his head. “That wasn’t a risk Ivy was willing to take.”

“What about the pardon? You weren’t surprised when I said Kostas was the one who took me, and you weren’t surprised when I said he asked for a pardon.”

Adam and Bodie were silent.

“A pardon for who? For what?” As the questions left my mouth, I became more and more certain that they knew the answers.

“He took me,” I said lowly. “Ivy is my—she’s my family, and he has her.” I felt like my body might start shaking, but my voice was steady, fierce. Like Ivy’s. “You don’t get to keep me out of this,” I said.

After a moment, Adam stood and left the room. When he came back, he had a thick file in his hand. “Ivy flew down to Arizona to look for a connection between Judge Pierce and someone in the Secret Service—or the intelligence community. She came back with detailed information about Pierce’s docket. Cases he’d heard. Cases he was scheduled to hear. Appeals.”

“She found a connection?” I knew, even as I asked the question, that the answer was yes. She was Ivy Kendrick. Of course she found the connection.

Adam handed me the file. “It’s a death penalty case. Defendant was nineteen when the crime was committed, with a history of traumatic brain injury. There’s a question about whether he was mentally competent to stand trial at all.”

I opened the file. The defendant’s name didn’t ring any bells, but when I saw his picture, my breath caught in my throat. The eyes. The set of his features.

“Kostas?” I asked.

“His son,” Bodie confirmed. “From what we can tell, Kostas didn’t even know the kid existed until the mother came to him for help with legal fees.”

I thought of Kostas saying that Vivvie’s father had no honor. I thought of the way he’d spoken of people who killed for money, or for power. I’d wondered what he had killed for, and now I knew.

“He let me go,” I said, my throat tightening. “He wasn’t going to, but when Ivy told him I was her daughter—”

She’d asked him, one parent to another. And he’d let me go.

“Pierce was supposed to hear the son’s case?” I tried to focus on the file.

“Best as we can figure,” Bodie told me, “Pierce offered to set aside the son’s sentence if Kostas helped assassinate the chief justice. Once the deed was done, the judge failed to fulfill his end of the bargain.”

Pierce reneged, and Kostas killed him. I felt sick.

“Ivy said she had a program.” I thought of the promises she had made. “She said that if Kostas held her captive, the president might bargain.”

“He might,” Adam said after several seconds. What he didn’t say was: He also might not.

He has to, I thought. He has to. But we were talking about the president of the United States. He didn’t have to do anything.

“We need to find her.” I was back to that, back to the ticking clock and the certainty that if we didn’t find Ivy, she might not make it out of this alive.

“You need to get some sleep,” Adam corrected. He stood and walked over to me, setting a hand on my shoulder. “The president has been filled in on the situation. He wants to find Ivy as badly as we do. Everyone who could be looking for her is looking for her.”

At that, Bodie nodded at Adam and took his leave.

“Aren’t you going, too?” I asked Adam. I could accept that there might not be anything I could do. I didn’t like it. I certainly wouldn’t be able to sleep. But I could accept that a sixteen-year-old girl probably wasn’t as qualified to look for Ivy as the people who were actually looking for her.

But Adam worked for the Pentagon. He could do something.

“You’re not the only one who loves her,” Adam said softly. “But I know where your sister would want me, and that’s here. With you.”

I swallowed. “You called her my sister.”

“Force of habit.” He looked like he might stop there. “She wanted to tell you, Tess. Years ago, as soon as she was set up here, as soon as she was in a position to take care of you, she wanted to tell you the truth. She wanted you here.”

“And then she changed her mind.” The words escaped my mouth before I could bite them back. Ivy was missing. She was gone, and I was so angry at her—for doing this, for leaving me.

Again.

“She stopped visiting. She barely even called.” I closed my eyes. “She never told me why. I don’t know what I did, why she left—”

“Hey,” Adam said, capturing my chin in his hand. “You didn’t do anything, Tess.”

I believed that. But the thirteen-year-old inside me couldn’t. Ivy had left me. She was my mother, and she’d chosen to leave.

She chose to stay with Kostas. I should have been grateful for that. She’d traded herself for me, she’d saved me, she loved me. But there was nothing I could do to keep from feeling like she’d thrown me away, all over again.

“Your grandfather asked her to go.” Adam’s voice broke into my thoughts. His words knocked the breath out of me. “He said she was being selfish. That being a parent wasn’t about what she wanted. That she had to think about what was best for you.” Adam cupped my face in his hand. “He sent her away, Tess, and she came back here, and something happened that convinced her he was right.”

What happened? I didn’t ask the question out loud. It didn’t matter. Gramps might have sent Ivy away, but she’d gone. She was the one who hadn’t said good-bye. She was the one who’d stopped calling.

“There was never a day, not one,” Adam said softly, “that she didn’t think about you.”