Mistress

Chapter 37

I ride the Triumph back to the capital, taking an unusual route toward K Street in case someone is following me. The capital is sweltering today, and it’s so bright you have to squint. It makes it more challenging to look around for people watching you, following you, hunting you.

I feel a measure of relief and comfort as I push through the revolving door of the ground-level offices of Capital Beat. The chaos of the street noise is immediately replaced with the hushed urgency of a newsroom. The Beat is small, taking up only the ground floor of the four-story building I inherited, but I’ve packed it with a maze of cubicles-enough to accommodate the staff who keep the business running.

An unfamiliar face greets me at the front desk. She must be the new receptionist I haven’t been in to meet yet. “May I help you, sir?” she asks politely.

A head pops up from within the maze, and the advertising layout coordinator, Shari-in the newspaper business known as the “dummy”-breaks into a grin.

“Hey!” she says, more loudly than necessary. “Look who decided to grace us with an appearance!”

Immediately, five other heads pop up from different cubicles and shout greetings.

“You guys look like prairie dogs when you do that,” I retort.

“It’s an act we’re perfecting,” says Shari. “We’re hoping someday we’ll be good enough to hide on the lawn of the West Wing and blend in with the native fauna.” She looks furtively around, makes a few rodentlike noises, and disappears back into her cubicle.

I sigh. It’s good to be here.

We don’t print any publications on paper, but the newsroom still smells like ink. We get all the major papers, and someone reads them thoroughly every day. And the ink smell is mild compared to the smell of hot computer parts. So the aroma is a combination of hot plastic, dust, and damp newspapers. I think it smells like hard, honest work.

The office is pretty quiet. Most stories are filed remotely these days. The few employees I pass on the way back to my office look pretty much like you’d expect DC journalists to look. Lean and hungry, but sleep-deprived and stressed-out. Blue jeans, moccasins, no color coordination, zero fashion sense. Just like me.

The newsroom is divided into sections. The department editors-politics, grapevine, opinions and features, and photography-have large cubes surrounded by tall walls. Around each editor, the staff writers for each department have tiny cubicles, small enough for you to be able to touch both sides when you’re sitting down. The writers are usually out news-gathering, anyway. No sense in making them too comfortable at the office.

The copy editors all sit in a row down the far left-hand side of the room, their enormous monitors displaying the soon-to-be-published stories in huge type. The sales department-the only department that actually receives visitors at this location-is the most visible and most comfortable. There’s a reception and greeting area immediately to the right of the entrance in front of well-appointed cubicles furnished with large screens for displaying online advertising at each station.

I reach the large cubicle of Ashley Brook Clark, who runs the politics department and shares White House duties with me, and poke my head in. I’d called ahead and asked her the big question.

She spins on her chair and looks up at me. “Never heard of it,” she says. “Operation Delano, you said?”

“Right.”

“Don’t know it. Want me to cast a net?”

“I’m not sure. I think I like you in one piece, Ashley Brook.”

She draws back. “It’s that serious?”

I tap the side of her cubicle. “I’ll get back to you.”

My office is in the back, the only one with actual walls, though they’re all clear glass, so there’s not much privacy, anyway. The door reads BENJAMIN CASPER, EDITOR. I don’t need a title with “chief” or “executive” in it. At least an “editor” sounds like he works for a living. Of course, since Diana…well, one of the perks of owning the business is that I can count on Ashley Brook to run it for me while I’m away. I’ll need that perk for now.

Everyone wants to talk to me about the plane crash-my phone exploded with e-mails and texts after the news leaked out-but I brush them off because I’m tired, and it’s only a fraction of the story of my life over the last week.

I called ahead and had my secretary buy me some shirts, pants, underwear, and toiletries-on the company card, of course, which means on my dime-so I could stay mobile. I pick up a set and head for the bathroom.

When I turned this place into a newsroom, I blew out the walls in both bathrooms and added showers, a feature that suits the lifestyles of employees with irregular hours. Good for me now, because I need a hot shower. I’m going to wash up, change, and get the hell out of this office before whoever’s chasing me finds me here and shoots up the place. I’m radioactive right now.

When I’m done, I feel better, refreshed, and I wish like hell I could put my feet up in my office and snooze.

The buzzer on my intercom cries out. It’s the new person up front. Our last receptionist would just turn and yell back to me across the entire space.

I’m not sure I even remember how to use this thing, but I push a button and say, “Yes?”

“Mr. Casper?”

Who else would it be? “Yes.”

“Someone named Anne Brennan to see you,” she says. “She says it’s urgent.”

Anne Brennan is Diana’s best friend.

“Send her back,” I say.