“I have got to be more careful,” Adam said, sitting back down. “It—it happened with Martina too. Though not a kiss. Nothing that blatant. She’s not a kook like Mabel.”

Stanley stood up.

Adam stayed seated, looking confused.

Stanley checked his watch. He knew that would be all he’d have to do. Adam wouldn’t remember that he had any news. He wouldn’t recall that Stanley had been the one to e-mail him first. With a shudder, Stanley realized that if he’d told Adam that Mabel had given him the Sissy report, Adam might well have not believed, because it was from Mabel, that it was the Sissy report. And even if Stanley had been adroit enough to hide the report’s provenance, Adam could very easily have taken it from Vera and given it to one of the national reporters. Stanley kicked himself for not having considered this earlier.

“I guess we do need to be getting back,” Adam finally said.

Stanley would give it to Vera. At some point down the road, they’d tell Adam she found it herself—from a source, any source. He’d never done this before, but at the moment he felt like making up the source. Adam didn’t ever have to know it came from Mabel, the kook.

As that last of his coffee buzz deadened away, he realized the Sissy report might not be as much as he’d hoped. Yet he promised himself he would make Vera feel it was. Wasn’t that more important than any information contained in it? So what if it was stale? So the other paper had picked over it for months? They weren’t Vera.

For the first time, Adam and Stanley returned together instead of separately, as they usually did, to conceal they’d been meeting. There would have been a time when Stanley would have tingled at such an emollient from Adam. As they walked past the elevators into the Room, Stanley looked around. Almost everyone was in a cold jitter—jaws to phones, eyes to screens, fingertips to keypads—locked in rapid talk and quick thinking. He’d always believed they rarely missed a thing, these insects. Yet the night editor walking with the executive editor—that was outside this hive’s neural hum. Vera was there, though; she’d just come in for work. She saw them and gave Stanley a happy look.

Adam tossed off a “see you,” and Stanley went to Vera’s desk. He would have had a smoke with her, but he wasn’t ready for her yet.

“A meeting in an hour or so?” he said instead.

“Since when do we have a meeting?” It sounded officious. Smoking room was their idea of a meeting.

“Just want to make sure you’re not driving to northern Virginia tonight,” Stanley said.