“Breaking that promise of yours already, kitten?” Bodie asked.

“No,” I said. “You’re going to watch Ivy’s back, and I’m getting a ride home.”

CHAPTER 33

As I climbed into the passenger seat of Henry Marquette’s car, his eyes met mine. The last time he’d seen me, I’d been covered in John Thomas’s blood.

The last time I’d seen him, he’d been stripping off his own shirt for me to wear.

Henry didn’t ask me if I was okay. Instead, he gave me a sardonic look. “Had I realized the position of getaway driver was a permanent one, I would have brushed up on my defensive-driving technique.”

I shrugged. “At least this time the car is yours.”

“Let that be a lesson to me,” Henry said as he pulled into traffic. “Never steal a car for a terrifying girl.”

In my memory, I could see Henry’s hands covering mine, washing the blood from them in the spray.

“Care to share what, precisely, we are getting away from?” Henry asked.

“Sorry,” I retorted. “That information is classified.”

Henry snorted. “If you were any other girl, I would think you were joking.”

“If I were any other girl,” I replied, “I would be.”

An expression I couldn’t quite read crossed Henry’s face. “Based on where I picked you up, I take it that Ivy is assisting the First Lady with something?”

“A press conference,” I said. “I’m guessing Georgia wants to send a message.”

Georgia Nolan was honey-sweet, Southern, and formidable in the extreme. I could imagine the kind of message she would want to send to her husband’s attackers. The United States does not negotiate with terrorists. We do not fear them. Two days ago, the president’s words had fallen flat, but now my eyes stung just thinking about them. The war on terror is one we will win.

Georgia wasn’t the type to back down from a fight.

Neither am I, I thought, and I focused on my fight. “I went down to the police station this morning,” I told Henry. “The detectives asked a lot of questions about Asher.”

Henry didn’t need me to spell it out for him. “Asher fought with John Thomas that morning.”

“And apparently, something brought Asher back to campus that afternoon.”

Henry processed that information in a heartbeat. “There are a lot of people at Hardwicke who might have had reason to want John Thomas dead.”

That was Henry’s way of saying that Asher didn’t do this—but someone did.

“Say you had motive,” I told Henry, thinking out loud. “Say that John Thomas had hurt you, say that he was threatening you or blackmailing you or that he knew something that you didn’t want other people to know . . .” I thought of John Thomas, claiming that he’d accessed Hardwicke’s medical records. I thought of the way he’d taken pictures of Emilia and Anna Hayden and who knew how many other girls. “If you knew that Asher had punched John Thomas, you’d know that the police would consider Asher a major suspect.”

“Especially,” Henry added, “if you could lure him back to the school. I take it you’ve spoken with Asher?”

“No,” I said, steeling myself for his reaction. “Ivy made me promise I wouldn’t.”

I expected Henry to snap, the way he had the last time Ivy had told me to stay out of something. Instead, he just raised an eyebrow. “Did she make you promise that I wouldn’t?” he asked.

“No,” I replied, catching on quickly. “As a matter of fact, she did not.”

I might have been a person who kept her word—but I was also the type to look for loopholes.

Henry waited until he got to another red light and then he picked up his phone, set it to speaker, and called Asher.

No answer. Instead, we got Asher’s voice mail. “You’ve reached Asher Rhodes. I’m off being interrogated for crimes I didn’t commit, but if you leave your name and number, I will get back to you as soon as possible.”

“At least he hasn’t lost his sense of humor,” I said.

Henry wasn’t amused. “Asher would have a sense of humor on the way to the gallows.” Henry dialed another number. This one went to voice mail, too.

“Hello! You have reached the magnificent sister of Asher. She is unavailable at the moment, quite possibly because she has realized I reprogrammed her voice mail and is off planning my imminent—”

A call came in, and Henry answered, cutting off the voice mail. “Emilia. Is Asher—”