Free Skandal by Lindsay Smith Page B

crusty, skin ranging from ghostly to overbaked but all of it perfectly set against their razor-edge suit collars. Anna flies around the room in her impossible heels. Coffee for this gentleman, sandwiches from the cart for that one, filing this and mailing that and typing yet another letter … She does all of it without complaint, without anything short of that smirking smile on her lips.
    “Oh, you’re from Puerto Rico? I hear it’s just lovely this time of year,” Donna continues. “How did you wind up in Washington?”
    Inside the memories, Anna’s thoughts remain a thin veneer—always on point to whatever she’s doing, utterly false, a highly effective shield. What is she trying to hide? I crawl my fingers onto the top of her desk and graze the face of a porcelain figure. It stares at me with gaudy doe eyes that offer up no more memories than what I’ve already seen. She’s not slipping files into her purse when she leaves for the night or breaking into the senator’s office. Her behavior is beyond reproach.
    None of the men in the memories look dangerous, either—not in the shifty-eyed way we’re looking for. There’s danger in their words and tone of voice, of course, but it’s the dangers of men with more money and power than sense. No foreign agents stealing documents, at least that I can tell—certainly not the kind that could rip someone’s thoughts from their mind.
    “Oh, that sounds like a gas!” Donna exclaims. “I’ve been looking for a diner near Dupont Circle…”
    “Sure, it’s good. That or the lunch counter down Pennsylvania,” Anna says.
    There—a memory frays at the corner of the past. Just one moment in time, but as she touched the desk in the memory, her thoughts looped against themselves, like she tried to patch them up and plaster them over. For just one second, the laugh track of her thought shield hiccupped, exposing itself as a lie.
    The office door bursts open and Senator Saxton charges in. “Anna, where’s my briefing packet from the Pentagon?”
    “The courier won’t bring it until you’re here,” Anna says. She turns to us with a practiced eyeroll. “He keeps forgetting I’m not authorized to handle classified documents.”
    I tense. If she doesn’t have access to classified documents, then maybe I’m mistaken—she’s not a valuable asset for a foreign spy to run. But someone’s taught her to conceal her thoughts. If she can’t steal intelligence for them, then what are they using her for?
    “Your one o’clock appointment is here,” Anna calls at the senator’s back as he retreats into his inner office, then eyes us impatiently.
    Senator Saxton backs out of his office. “Of course—I’m so sorry. Miss Conrad?” He steps up to Cindy and cradles her hand like he’s afraid a proper handshake might shatter it. “So good to meet you in person. Hello, girls.”
    This close to Donna, I can feel the moment—feel it in the crackle of psychic power over her skin, hear it in the subtle shift of her shield—when she dons a new mask to contend with someone new. I wonder if her stiff behavior toward me is just another mask. “What an honor it is to meet you, Senator Saxton.” She drops into a curtsey.
    I nod and mumble a greeting, so he won’t hear my Red Scare accent just yet.
    “Please, step into my office.” He holds open the door for us. “Anna, where are your manners? Go fetch some sandwiches for these ladies.”
    “Of course, senator,” Anna chirps, and trots out of the office.
    Once we’re inside Saxton’s inner office, Cindy locks the door and dumps out four aluminum boxes from her clutch, each of them about half the size of a cigarette box. She holds one finger up to her lips, looking right at me—presumably Donna and Saxton are already familiar with whatever ritual is about to take place. Then she walks the perimeter of the office, clicking a switch on each box and dropping one in each corner.
    A hum bubbles up from the carpet. It