Emilia glared at him. “It’s the only face you have.”

“And what a face it is,” Asher agreed jovially. “Now, about that memory card reconstruction . . .”

“Do I even want to know where you got a burner phone?” Emilia asked. Asher opened his mouth to reply. “Don’t answer that,” she told him before swinging her attention over to me.

“Can you do it?” I asked Emilia flatly.

“Can I?” she repeated. “Yes. Girls qualify as an underserved minority if you’re applying to a STEM field.” At my blank look, she rolled her eyes. “Science, technology, engineering, math? Have you even thought about college applications?” She held up a hand. “Don’t answer that, either. I could do this. That doesn’t mean I will.”

She folded her arms over her waist. “I told you I’d owe you if and only if you agreed to keep my brother out of trouble for just a few days. Let’s do a brief accounting, shall we?” She began ticking items off on her fingers. “In the time since he’s made your acquaintance, Asher has skipped school, committed grand theft auto, and threatened to rearrange John Thomas Wilcox’s face.”

I turned to look at Asher. He hadn’t threatened John Thomas in my presence. Asher shrugged and then turned back to his twin. “Tess did get me off the chapel roof,” he volunteered helpfully.

“For which she has my undying gratitude.” Emilia’s voice was dead dry. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, some of us like to use our study period to actually study.”

She turned. Asher gestured at me to say something.

“I’ll owe you.” Those words grated, but they had the desired effect. Emilia turned back to face us.

“One favor, no questions asked, whenever and wherever I ask it of you.” Emilia gave me her sweetest smile and held out a delicate hand. “Deal?”

Gritting my teeth, I took her hand, feeling like I’d just signed on the devil’s dotted line. “Deal.”

Half an hour later, Emilia handed the phone back to me. “Voilà, and you’re welcome—in that order.”

I took the phone and pulled up the restored call log. All the ingoing and outgoing calls were linked to the same two numbers.

“Any way to tell who these numbers are registered to?” I asked.

“Unless the owner of that phone is a complete moron,” Emilia replied, “I’m guessing those numbers belong to other disposable cell phones.”

“One way to find out.” Asher plucked the phone from my grasp, and before I could stop him, he’d hit call. He switched the cell to speaker and set it on the counter.

This is a bad idea. I reached for the phone, just as a computerized voice filled the air. The number had been disconnected.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. If Vivvie’s dad had been smart, he would have destroyed this phone—not just thrown it away.

Emilia stood up and stretched slightly, like a gymnast preparing to tumble.

“Tess?” Asher nodded to the phone in my hand. “There’s still one more number.”

This is still a bad idea. But putting myself in Emilia’s debt had also been a bad idea. Letting Vivvie fish this phone out of her father’s trash had probably been a very bad idea. Not going straight to my sister with Vivvie’s accusations almost certainly was.

I brought my thumb to the phone’s keypad, scrolled down, and hit call before I could change my mind. This time, the phone rang. Once. Twice. Three times. I didn’t put it on speaker. My hand tightened around it with the fourth ring. I could feel my heart beating in my stomach.

No one is going to answer. Whoever Major Bharani was talking to on this phone, they’re long gone. That was what I told myself, right up to the point when someone picked up.

“I told you, you’ll get your money when I get my nomination.” The voice was male, deep and velvety with an American accent I couldn’t quite pinpoint. Whoever he was, he wasn’t happy. “Don’t call this number again.”

The line went dead.

“Any answer?” Emilia asked, unable to keep the curiosity from her tone.

I cradled the phone in my hand for a moment, then flipped it closed. “No.”

Asher met my eyes over his sister’s head. He wasn’t buying that answer. I didn’t expect him to.

You’ll get your money when I get my nomination. The words were burned into my brain. I’d wanted Vivvie to be wrong. I’d wanted this to be a mistake.

Clearly, however, it wasn’t.

CHAPTER 26

“The process for appointing a judge to the Supreme Court is an involved one. It starts with the president and his staff vetting candidates for the nomination. Who can they get past the Senate? Who best serves the party’s needs?” As Dr. Clark lectured, I thought of the president telling Ivy to dig for skeletons in someone’s closet.

I tried not to think of the voice on the other end of the phone line.

You’ll get your money when I get my nomination.

“Eventually, the president selects a nominee, typically one who shares his broader ideological viewpoint. Once appointed, the only way a justice can be removed from the bench is impeachment—and no justice has been so impeached since 1804. As a result, Supreme Court appointments have the potential to dramatically change our legal and political landscape for decades.”

As the class wore on, we got a brief overview of some of the biggest cases the Supreme Court had ever taken on. Voting rights. Segregation. Women’s health.

“The president’s nominee eventually goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee,” Dr. Clark continued. “During the hearings that follow, the nominee is questioned on everything from their record to their personal life. The committee then issues an assessment. A negative evaluation might send the president’s team scrambling for a new nominee. Eventually, to get a confirmation, the would-be justice will have to be confirmed by a majority vote of the Senate.”

Dr. Clark leaned back against her desk. “It probably won’t come as a surprise to most of you to hear that long before the nomination goes to the floor, lobbyists and special interest parties will already be attempting to sway votes, one way or another.”

Lobbyists. Special interest. She was speaking a language that was foreign to me, but for many of my classmates, it was their native tongue. I understood only that there were a lot of reasons for different groups to want—or not want—a person on the Supreme Court.