Skandal by Lindsay Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

the Old Glory plaque verbatim, so I pressed my fingertip to the plaque and quoted it back to Winnie as if I was reading it.
    I learned quite an earful of unpleasant words when Winnie realized I was cheating.
    Cindy gestures toward the box. “I understand that you knew one of those men—the one who exuded the extremely strong psychic ability. He had been the contact for a double agent within the State Department.”
    I study the box’s contents: eyeglasses, a pillbox, a tiny notebook, a man’s wingtipped shoe. The possessions of the bloody, wide-eyed dead from the photographs.
    “I am your teacher and your commander, after all. So when I choose to challenge you, or not challenge you—include you or exclude you—I need you to trust that I have my reasons for it.”
    I hesitate, palms itching, nervous energy running through me. I don’t think I can trust her; not yet. But maybe, by following her orders, she’ll reveal more of what she knows about my mother. “Okay.” I like this English word: round and flexible and noncommittal. It will satisfy for now.
    “Glad to hear it.” She pulls her smile back into place. “Now—what can you tell me about these objects?”
    I reach for the shoe, but the moment my fingers close around it, blinding white pain fires through me like buckshot. I slam against the back of the couch. Static spirals around me in a whirling storm, blistering with cold. It feels like Papa and Valentin and Rostov all combined, needling through my skin, in and out. My throat is raw—my hand sizzles with electricity.
    The office is utterly silent except for the trippy record player; Cindy stares at me with white-rimmed eyes.
    “It’s been scrubbed of memories. It’s completely…” I clench and relax my hand in a fist. Is there an English word for this aggressive emptiness, like a void sucking away all thought?
    “There isn’t anything you can glean from it?”
    “I don’t think so.” I try to envision an edge to the vast nothingness I saw, stretching as far as Siberia in every direction. “Even my father and Valentin aren’t strong enough to erase so much. Whose was this?”
    Cindy checks the folder in her lap and holds up a photograph. “Your old friend, Pavel. Apparently he was running this man as a Russian agent.” She taps the folder. “He worked in the Latin American office of the State Department for five years. The FBI opened an investigation on him a month ago when a co-worker raised concerns he might be committing espionage. Turns out, he was dropping briefcases full of classified documents next to a bench on the National Mall, and Pavel was collecting them.”
    “And this is Pavel’s shoe. After he died.” Something rings inside of me, as though I am hollowed out. I didn’t truly believe the general when he told me Pavel was a powerful scrubber. But the proof is still crackling through my nerves. Could this really be my mother’s doing? Rostov demanded she build an army of psychics, and this man wasn’t one before.
    Cindy nods. “Originally, we were going to bring you to his apartment so you could search the area, try to find new leads for us, but there was an … incident.”
    I swallow. Incident. Emergency. Disaster.
    “Someone burned it down not an hour after we removed his body. We’re lucky none of the men guarding it were hurt.” Cindy’s voice doesn’t waver, but her smile does. “The other items are from other locations where we found similar bodies. The pillbox was on a woman who’d last been seen trying to enter the NATO offices in Brussels.”
    I reach for the pillbox. My pulse ricochets in my ears, anticipating another wave of bleaching noise. As my fingers circle the cold metal, white blossoms suround me. It drinks me in, swallows me into its throat of steel wool and scrapes me all the way down. The bleach rots me away, one layer of skin at a time.
    But maybe I can outlast it. If I can skim just one memory—salvage one clue—
    The woman curls around a