The Fixer

The story opens on sixteen-year-old Tess Kendrick, who has been quietly running her grandfather's Montana horse ranch while hiding his worsening cognitive decline. At school, Tess has dropped all extracurriculars and barely maintained attendance to prevent anyone from discovering that Gramps, the man who raised her, is losing his memory. When she corrects a teacher who has been berating a quiet student, the guidance counselor tries to call Gramps. The call goes unanswered but triggers a chain of events Tess cannot control.

Ivy Kendrick, Tess's older sister, whom she has not seen in nearly three years, arrives at the ranch. The last time Ivy visited, she invited Tess to move to Washington, DC, then left without explanation or goodbye. Now Ivy has spoken with the ranch hands and the counselor. In the kitchen, Gramps seems lucid at first, greeting Tess by her nickname "Bear," but then calls Ivy by their dead mother's name, exposing the severity of his condition. Over Tess's protests, Ivy arranges for Gramps to enter a treatment center in Boston and informs Tess she will start school in DC on Monday. Tess gives Ivy the silent treatment through the flight. At the airport she meets Bodie, Ivy's irreverent driver and personal assistant. Ivy's house is large, with a first floor devoted to her mysterious work and a second-floor apartment where they will live.

The next morning, Tess overhears Ivy arguing with Adam Keyes, a family friend who works for the Department of Defense. Adam calls bringing Tess to DC impulsive and driven by guilt, noting that a falling-out with his father complicates her presence. A phone call interrupts: Theodore Marquette, the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, has suffered a heart attack. Ivy goes into crisis mode and leaves.

At the Hardwicke School, an elite private institution whose students are the children of politicians, diplomats, and power brokers, Tess is assigned a guide named Vivvie Bharani, a friendly girl whose father is the White House physician. Through Vivvie and well-connected classmates, including valedictorian candidate Emilia Rhodes, Maya Rojas (whose mother is a White House pollster), and Di (an Icelandic ambassador's daughter), Tess learns that Ivy is a "fixer." When powerful people in Washington have problems, they go to Ivy Kendrick, and the problems disappear.

On her first day, Tess finds a crying freshman who has been coerced into taking intimate photos by older boys. Tess confiscates the ringleader's phone and threatens him with legal consequences. The freshman turns out to be Anna Hayden, the vice president's daughter, and Anna's gratitude cements Tess's unwanted reputation as a student fixer. The ringleader, John Thomas Wilcox, whose father is a powerful congressman, becomes an ongoing antagonist. Meanwhile, Emilia's twin brother Asher Rhodes, a charismatic troublemaker who climbs the school chapel roof because people look smaller from up high, inserts himself into Tess's life despite her resistance.

Events accelerate when Justice Marquette dies from complications during surgery, as announced by Vivvie's father, Major Bharani, on live television. Vivvie goes rigid in her seat. At the funeral, Tess watches Henry Marquette, the justice's biracial teenage grandson, serve as a pallbearer. William Keyes, Adam's imposing father, intercepts Ivy at the service to unsettle her. Afterward, Tess sees Major Bharani hiss at Vivvie not to embarrass him before switching to a polished demeanor in front of others.

When Vivvie misses days of school, Tess goes to her house and discovers a bruise on Vivvie's collarbone. On a walk, Vivvie confesses that the morning before Justice Marquette's fatal surgery, she overheard her father practicing the press statement announcing the justice's death before the operation even took place. She also heard him on a disposable phone reading what sounded like an account number. Vivvie believes her father killed the justice and begs Tess to help find proof. Asher overhears and insists on joining them.

Emilia restores the deleted call log on the phone. When Tess dials the second of two numbers, a man answers and says the caller will receive their money upon "my nomination." Tess later recognizes the voice during a video conference between Ivy and Judge Edmund Pierce, a federal appeals court judge from Arizona whom the president is considering for the Supreme Court vacancy. The person who promised Vivvie's father payment is the very person who may be nominated. That night Vivvie arrives at Ivy's door with a fat lip and a swollen eye; her father discovered the phone was missing and became violent. Tess and Vivvie tell Ivy everything. Ivy is furious Tess did not come to her sooner but takes immediate action, having the Secret Service remove Bharani from the White House and arranging for Vivvie to live with an aunt.

Tess discovers a photograph in the headmaster's office linking six men: William Keyes, Pierce, Bharani, the headmaster, Congressman Wilcox, and President Nolan. It was taken at a Camp David retreat organized by Keyes, meaning Keyes brought Pierce and Bharani together. Keyes retaliates against Ivy's investigation by having Bodie detained on fabricated charges and calling Social Services for Tess, a warning demonstrating his reach. Ivy reveals she once worked for Keyes and hints that a third conspirator exists beyond Pierce and Bharani.

The crisis deepens. Bharani is found dead of an apparent suicide. Tess, devastated, inadvertently reveals the conspiracy to Henry, who shares his own secret: His father did not die in an accident but killed himself, and Ivy staged the cover-up, which is why Henry distrusts fixers. Henry arranges a meeting with a Washington Post reporter and tells the reporter everything, hoping to draw out the hidden conspirator. At a state dinner at the White House, Ivy finds Tess and reveals the reporter has been found murdered. She rushes Tess out and, on the tarmac before putting her on a plane to Boston, reveals a shattering truth: Ivy is not Tess's sister but her mother. She was seventeen when she had Tess, and her parents raised Tess as their own.

In Boston, Tess visits Gramps, who confirms on a lucid day that he always knew. News breaks that Pierce has also been found dead. Then a man disguised as an orderly kidnaps Tess from outside Gramps's room. She wakes bound to a chair in a basement. Her captor is Damien Kostas, a Secret Service agent who has been in the background throughout the story. Kostas killed Bharani, Pierce, and the reporter. His motive: Pierce had promised to fix a legal situation involving Kostas's son in exchange for help assassinating the chief justice, then reneged. Now Kostas wants Ivy to secure a pardon for his son and uses Tess as leverage.

Ivy arrives alone and offers herself as a more valuable hostage. She tells Kostas that Tess is her daughter, appealing to him as a parent. Kostas releases Tess. Ivy says she loves her, instructs Tess to find Adam and Bodie, and has Kostas sedate Tess before she can protest. Tess wakes in a DC alley. At Adam's apartment, she finds a photo of a young Ivy and Adam and asks if he is her father. He does not deny it but says Ivy should have that conversation.

The president refuses to negotiate. Tess devises an alternate plan and goes to William Keyes, threatening that a DNA test proving Adam is her father would derail Keyes's political ambitions. Keyes corrects her: Adam met Ivy after Tess was born. Tess's father was Keyes's younger son Tommy, who enlisted in the military and died. Recognizing Tess as his only grandchild, Keyes secures a pardon from Arizona's governor in exchange for weekly dinners, a trust fund, and Tess adding Keyes to her last name.

Kostas takes Ivy and a bomb to the Washington Monument. When word of the pardon reaches him, he releases Ivy and surrenders unarmed, only to be shot dead by an unidentified shooter, ensuring he can never testify. Ivy is eventually released from government seclusion. That night she confesses everything to Tess: She loved Tommy Keyes, let her parents raise Tess at seventeen, and stopped calling not to protect Tess but to protect herself from the pain. Tess tells Ivy she does not know what Ivy is to her yet, but all she needs right now is for Ivy to be alive.

In the final scene, Ivy stares at photographs of the dead conspirators, questioning why an unarmed, surrendering man was shot. A notebook contains a list of suspects; Tess glimpses William Keyes's name before Ivy closes it. The next day at school, William Keyes arrives in a limousine, publicly claiming Tess as his granddaughter. Tess, aware that her new grandfather's name sits on Ivy's suspect list, settles into the car and accepts the bargain she struck to save the person she loves most.