A week later, Brynn managed to wrangle her presidential personnel dust-up story into something good. Well, printable anyhow. The scope of it was narrower than Grace would have liked as it mostly focused on the president’s assistant, but it was another step toward the truth.

To celebrate, she’d agreed to meet Corey for a lunch-hour pedicure. Brynn had already been at work for six hours and she was looking at another six at minimum, but this was about as much self-care as she allowed herself. She didn’t allow hot men to pick her up at coffee shops, sadly—which she’d been regretting. Life in this administration was such a drag.

She waved to the security guard on her way out and started the trek to the salon. It was a gorgeous November day, crisp and sunny. It was still strange the weather could be nice when the world was so screwed up.

At the salon, Corey was chatting with the receptionist, but at the jingle of the bell on the door, she gestured grandly at Brynn. “Here comes Woodward! Or are you Bernstein?”

Everyone in the place was watching, and recognition flashed on several faces. That increasingly happened these days, which was part of why Brynn had turned into a hermit. She needed to stop going on television, but every time another story of hers dropped, the requests poured in. Her editors liked it when she took them, and her mom kept reminding her she needed to make this moment last, to turn it into a career. It wasn’t that Mom was wrong—her mother was rarely wrong—but the adulation felt misplaced. It wasn’t why Brynn was doing this.

Brynn turned to the tray of nail polish bottles on the counter to hide her blush. “I prefer Nellie Bly.” Except she was too big a coward to do any proto-gonzo journalism or get herself committed to a mental institution to chase a story. She had limits.

“Maybe you’ll have to settle for being Brynn Allen.” Corey made it sound flashy, aural jazz hands.

Brynn had never felt less flashy in her life. “Hmm.”

“Can I talk you into a facial? Or a manicure? You look all shadowed.”

“Then I’ll have to live all shadowed. I only have time for toes.” Waiting for them to dry was going to be a close thing as it was.

When they were settled in the chairs with their feet soaking, Corey asked, “So is it more helpful to talk politics or should we pretend we’re on the alternate earth timeline where we can care about other things because we’re not about to die?”

“The latter. Tell me what’s happening on TV.”

“Well, the late-night wars are continuing, but the interesting part is…” Corey was one of the pop culture critics at the Chronicle. She wrote reviews, morning after episode summaries, and long-form analytical pieces. She’d had one last month about the evolution of women in business in entertainment that had been quite brilliant as well an excellent excuse to watch 9 to 5 gifs for an hour.

She told Brynn about the machinations in late night, the For Your Consideration movie screeners she’d been working through, and reality TV feuds, and Brynn could feel the knots in her shoulders relax if not release.

They’d been friends since a summer internship at the Chronicle what felt like three lifetimes ago. Corey was funny, smart, and loyal; she wrote incredibly fast and she was a great editor. She knew seemingly everyone inside the Beltway, but she wasn’t political and she wasn’t looking for a quote. She could turn that part of herself off. There was no way Brynn would have gotten through this with as much of herself intact as she had without Corey.

Who was now regarding her skeptically. “Are you listening to me?”

“Uh, no.”

“Distracted and you’re not even staring at your phone? That’s a first. I was saying you ought to tell me the identity of your sources. As, like, a stop-gap.”

“Against what?”

“Extortion.”

Everyone with half a brain knew Brynn had a major, secret, high-level source. They didn’t know it was Hadley Ellis Darlington, the Assistant Attorney General. Hadley, or Lee to her intimates, was fifteen years older than Brynn. Their moms had roomed together at Mount Holyoke; Lee’s had started having kids right away and supporting her husband’s career as the highest profile trial attorney in Manhattan, while Brynn’s had gone to work at newspapers and only remembered to have a baby when she was forty. But despite the gap in their ages, Lee had babysat Brynn during shared family summers on Nantucket and they’d maintained a sisterly relationship.

Lee was rich, that was the main thing people needed to know about her. The money was in her vaguely-Northeast, all-prep-school accent. It was in the tasteful, beautiful cuts of her cashmere suits. It was in her jewelry, her perfume, and her education—and there was no doubt that in addition to having dough, Lee was smart. She’d been an excellent Supreme Court clerk, an excellent US Attorney, and now an excellent Assistant Attorney General. But she was working for this president, and he infuriated her. She thought he was dumb and she thought he didn’t respect the law and she thought he was tacky—tacky above all.

So she’d started complaining and then leaking everything she could to Brynn, but Lee felt bad about it. Every meeting, every call, every set of documents was about Lee’s performance of frustration and guilt, and it was slowly draining Brynn to work with her even if the material was important. Brynn would love to hash it out with someone, but she couldn’t.

“How would that even work?” Brynn asked. “You’ve been watching too many thrillers.”

“That’s my job. And I’m saying someone should know your secrets in case you get disappeared.”

Brynn shook her head and then said to the woman painting her toes, “I’m sorry, my friend is highly suggestible and loves political thrillers.”

Julie, according to her nametag, looked up. “I don’t know, based on those articles you’ve been writing—”

“See, everyone knows who you are!” Corey sang out.

“—she might have a point.”

Not really, but all the same: “I bet you hear lots of good stuff here.”

Julie gave a smug smile. She didn’t say anything, but that was further evidence she might know a great deal.

“Maybe I ought to leave you one of my cards,” Brynn said. “Just in case. Call any time.”

Once Brynn was polished and had her top coat, she stood in the lobby with her feet under the blue light nail dryer. The clock was running down on the time she had blocked out for this, so she was checking her email and voicemail. What she wanted was one quiet news day. Maybe two for variety.

Next to her, but flipping through People instead of her inbox, Corey asked, “Are you headed back to the office?”

“Of course. You?”

“I have a screening.”

Brynn glanced outside. Clouds had swept in, and it was starting to—

She grabbed Corey’s arm. “There he is. The hottest guy in the world.” The only notable development in her personal life since before the Orange Menace had announced he was running for president had been meeting that guy a week ago.

“Drew Orlov?” Corey asked, peering out the window. “Yeah, he’s pretty cute.”

“Wait, that’s Drew Orlov?”

“Yeah, he works at MTL. He’s a beat reporter on the Hill.”

“I know.” At the very least, Brynn knew his name. She just hadn’t known the face that went with it.

Brynn’s ears were ringing. He hadn’t been hitting on her…which, of course. Of course he hadn’t been. He’d known exactly who she was, which meant he’d come over because he wanted something. Something like a lead.

“I’ll be back.” Without waiting for a reply, she marched outside. “Drew! Drew!”

The man in question was several storefronts down. At her shouts, he froze and slowly turned around. That probably wasn’t guilt on his face, but as he walked back toward her, his posture was stiff.

Catching him should have felt triumphant, but Brynn was suddenly, painfully aware that she was standing on the sidewalk barefoot with cotton balls between her toes.

He looked her over. Frustratingly, he was even more attractive than she’d remembered. “So we do meet again.”

“You’re a reporter? You’re Drew Orlov?” She was almost shivering with frustration—though that was also probably the fact the sidewalk was chilly. But how stupid, how foolish she’d been, and what a fucking mercenary this guy was.

His inscrutable expression went hard. “I never said I wasn’t.”

He hadn’t said much at all. “Are you stalking me?”

“No.” He lifted the dry-cleaning bag slung over his shoulder. “This meeting was entirely accidental, I swear. I was picking up my shirts.”

“The same way you just happened to show up at The Coffee Bar and then at my table?”

He grimaced, which was her point. Everything about this was gross.

She went on. “Did you go there because you thought I’d be getting files from Deep Throat? Do you think I’m dumb?”

Three seconds ticked by. “I don’t think you’re dumb,” he ground out.

“Only glaringly unprofessional? I have a breaking headline especially for you: I’m going to kick your ass every news cycle. I am better at this than you are, and I work harder than you do. I’m not some entitled pretty boy. Get used to losing.”

With as much dignity possible given that she was still trying not to smudge her pedicure, Brynn swished away.

Inside, Corey stood gaping. “Woodward and Bernstein don’t have a patch on you.”

“Damn straight.” Not only that, she intended to keep the promise she’d made.

* * *

Drew waited in a wide hallway immediately off the Senate chamber. This press conference was delayed. Since this wasn’t anywhere close to Drew’s first one, he didn’t expect it to begin on time, but he’d taken a bet it would start within a half hour. Drew hated to lose; the Majority Leader could give him this one thing.

Everyone in the gaggle was glued to an electronic device: drafting copy, emailing with their editors or sources, or—if you were the guy next to Drew—updating a fantasy football line-up.

A dead senator glared out of an ornate gold frame at them. Maybe he disapproved of all the technology, though he didn’t look like a dude who’d ever approved of anything; perhaps he hated the mint green wall he hung on.

There was a commotion, and finally the Majority Leader arrived. Several aides trailed him, one of whom was chatting companionably with Brynn Allen. Drew swallowed a curse, which wouldn’t have been audible over the shuffling of bags and the clicking of recorders anyway.

It wasn’t logical, but Drew felt kind of like a dick seeing her again. Last week on Conn Ave, she’d been justifiably pissed at and wary of him. Okay, so he’d looked like a stalker…which he had sort of been, but only the first time they’d met. Their second encounter had been unplanned and uncomfortable—and that was before she’d seen straight through him. Was he that transparent? Had his plan been that dumb?

Allen’s eyes shifted to Drew, rolled skyward briefly, and then her attention returned to Will Cormier, the senator’s press secretary and a real douche. Cormier laughed at something she said, which had probably been funny. She was funny.

The worst part was she’d made good on her threat, penning a series of small and mid-sized articles on every aspect of the current administration’s wars on facts, institutions, and career civil servants. The pieces were replete with little scooplets, juicy quotes, taut ledes, and ironic closing lines. They were plain old good.

He’d had a decent week too…writing about congressional procedure, trying to shine light on administration fuckups that would hurt the little guy. The kinds of stories Allen probably didn’t care about at all.

For her part, though, she’d even named-checked him on This Week in Washington, saying Drew had helped her “clarify some things.” Except the moderator and panelists hadn’t known who he was, which had resulted in a series of texts from Steven asking why the deans of the DC press corps were unfamiliar with his work and how precisely he’d helped a rival reporter.

He’d responded, I’m not journalistic royalty, and I pissed her off, but it’d felt hollow, petulant. He was right, she was wrong, and he didn’t want to feel bad about it.

“Good afternoon.” The Majority Leader folded his hands on the podium, his expression slightly bored, slightly pissed off. “You have my statement on the omnibus, right? So let’s get to the questions. You there.” He pointed to Angela Morales, who’d been covering the Hill for twenty years but whose name he’d clearly never bothered to learn. “What do you want to know?”

It was obvious why the people of Tennessee had for decades returned this man to Congress.

Allen gave Cormier another warm smile and joined the rest of the reporters. Drew could see her notebook page was half-filled. She’d clearly been in a one-on-one with the senator, and now she was going to compare what he’d said to her privately with what he was going to say to the proles.

Drew pushed the thought aside and dutifully transcribed answers on the contortions the leadership was going through to finally, finally pass the budget they should have gotten done in September. It was now crammed full of various small initiatives meant to attract Republican votes from the right and the center—all of which would screw their voters—but no one knew if it could pass.

The bill was an overloaded ship trying to make port in a shallow harbor, and the clock was ticking on the second continuing resolution that was keeping the government open. Hey, only the American people would be crushed if it didn’t happen—no biggie.

Again and again the reporters tried to get answers from him, and the Majority Leader barked out replies: he refused to discuss the president’s attitude toward the negotiation in detail (“he just wants us to get it done”); no, the Leader didn’t plan to take committee chairmanships away from recalcitrant members (“not at this time, anyhow”); but yes, they would consider another continuing resolution if they couldn’t get the budget done (“but we will”).

Drew thrust his hand into the air, and the senator finally flicked a finger in his direction. He wanted to ask about the human costs of the budget negotiations, but he knew that wasn’t the story Steven wanted. So instead, he said, “We’re hearing some members of the House, the so-called Liberty Caucus, say they won’t vote for a budget until it zeroes out funding for the special prosecutor. In the Senate—”

“I’ll stop you there. As I was saying to this young lady—what’s your name again?” The senator’s question was directed at Allen.

She looked up, her expression serene. “Brynn Allen.”

“Right. As I was telling her, these unsourced quotes you read in the media today, I mean who knows where they come from. Maybe it’s all some over-heated reporter’s fantasies.”

Drew had been prepared for some version of this, so he immediately went for a follow-up. “I’ve personally spoken to three members of the Liberty Caucus who’ve said cutting money from the special prosecutor is necessary if the omnibus is going to get their votes.” The House was generally more supportive of the president and therefore more interested in shutting the investigation down, while more moderate Republican senators wouldn’t mind if the president disappeared tomorrow, and thus they didn’t like this plan.

“If the House decided to eliminate funding for the special prosecutor, would the Senate follow suit?” Drew asked.

“I won’t address hypotheticals like that.”

Then why were they having this press conference? “Sir, given—”

“I’m not answering any more questions from you,” the Majority Leader snapped. “Who’s next? Yeah, go ahead.”

“The war of words over the budget has been getting hotter.” Allen was up now, because she still had more questions after her private audience. “The Minority Leader just released a statement saying his whip count indicates you don’t have the votes. He also called you the weakest Republican Leader since Leverett Saltonstall. Do you have a response?”

“Is that so?” The old bastard smiled—a chilling sight. “I’m surprised he can spell Leverett Saltonstall.”

That was it. That would be the lede in every article written about this press conference, and Allen had gotten it out of him. Drew glared at his recorder.

The next five minutes were uneventful. The Majority Leader successfully evaded every question lobbed at him, and it was over with as little fanfare as it had begun. What a waste of a few hours.

After the senator and his staff flitted off and the press began to leave, Allen gave Drew a sidelong look and then laughed at whatever expression was on his face. “You really need a good cop to pair with your bad cop act.”

Who was this woman? “Is that how you do it?”

“No. I, like a maverick detective, prefer to work alone. I do appreciate you trying to pin him down on the deficit reduction, though. I had a go in his office, and he wasn’t going to talk about it.”

He flipped his notebook closed and put it and his recorder in his bag. Was she trying to throw him a little crumb from her interview? He didn’t want it. “Why didn’t you ask him about the Minority Leader’s quote then too?”

“Because the press release dropped during the scrum.”

That was what he got for not checking his email. “You’d softened him up during your first thing. He wouldn’t have told his joke to anyone else in the room.” He bit that last part off, but he meant it. She might also be spoiled and she definitely had this job because of her mother, but she did it well.

She fluttered her eyelashes. “Are you trying to compliment me? I guess I’ll take it over the stalking.”

“It wasn’t stalking, and besides, I said I was sorry.”

“You didn’t actually.”

The rest of the press had gone, so there was only a Capitol Police officer guarding the door to the Senate floor, an empty podium, Drew, and Allen. Her words echoed off the fancy tiled floor and the vaulted ceiling. This was probably how sources felt when he asked them to give something up they hadn’t offered and didn’t want to.

It felt, it turned out, like shit.

Drew glanced down. Allen had on black dress shoes of some kind, pointy toed ones, and a shiver of…something went through him at the knowledge that under the patent leather, her toe nails were eggplant purple.

Damnit, now he was thinking about the woman’s toes rather than getting past this and back into what he needed to be doing today, starting with an apology.

He looked up into her gray-blue eyes. “I’m sorry I was creeping your Insta and assumed you’d be meeting Deep Throat.”

After a moment, she nodded. “You should be. I did know who you were, at least I knew your name, at The Coffee Bar. I just didn’t recognize you.”

“Well, this is me.”

“I see.”

The moment stretched out between them, quiet and aware. He had any number of regrets over how he’d handled this, including that he’d ever thought she looked like a bug and that the most interesting woman he’d met in months would be happy to crush him under her heel.

Her phone buzzed, though it had been buzzing more or less constantly as they’d talked, but she dug it out and scowled.

He wanted to ask if it was Deep Throat—except they weren’t friends and they weren’t going to be—but based on her expression, it was probably a source, or many sources, or an editor, or a needy boyfriend.

His own email notification sounded, as if to insist that he was also busy and important.

“It’s got to slow down someday, right?” she muttered.

“Or we’ll explode.”

“Maybe that’s why MTL hasn’t been hustling? Trying to conserve your energy?” She offered her quip with a wry smile, though she continued to read her email.

“Gray ladies can still hustle, we’re just a little creaky while we do it.”

“‘Creaky’ is a pretty mild descriptor for your social media game, but hey, now we all get to write explainers on Leverett Saltonstall, so you’re welcome for that.”

The truth was Steven would probably love the clickbait. “Hmm, I don’t think I’m grateful, but he wouldn’t have given me that quote. You did well.” Because he was pissy he hadn’t gotten a private audience, he added, “Or he knows your mom.”

Allen’s head snapped up and her mouth twisted. “Yeah.” As she whipped away, she added something that sounded like “asshole.”

Which he probably was.