Cloud Dust: RD-1 Read Online Free PDF Page A

at three to get a
late lunch. I was watched the whole time. Somebody, somewhere, was watching
while I unpacked my stuff for the second time in a week.
    I pretended that wasn't true as I filled drawers in my small
kitchen with kitchen gadgets. If I thought about it too much, I'd lose the beef
stew I'd had for lunch. With crackers.
    "What are you doing in there?" I pulled my mp-3
player out of a box of ladles and spatulas. Sticking earphones in my ears, I
listened to music the rest of the evening while I put things away.
    * * *
    James showed up with two lattes the following morning.
"I'm here to hook up your desktop," he grinned.
    "Hi, James. How long will this take?" I asked.
    "Maybe an hour, why?"
    James has blue eyes, brown, curly hair and probably got into
everything when he was a child. He has an air of curiosity about him that
hasn't been taken away as yet.
    "I have time to bake cookies for you," I nodded and
let him in. I took my vanilla latte, too—I wasn't about to turn that down.
    "Oatmeal cookies?"
    "Yep."
    "Nobody bakes cookies around here," he sighed and
followed me to the kitchen. I didn't point out that the hour he took watching
me bake cookies was under surveillance; he had warm cookies to eat in
forty-five minutes and ate almost a dozen. I packed another dozen for him to
take with him after he hooked up my computer.
    "I wish I could tell my family that I just hooked up
Sarah Fox's computer," he said as he walked out my door. "Thanks for
the cookies."
    "Oh, you could tell them," I shrugged. "I just
can't say what might happen to you afterward."
    "True." He grinned and waved before heading toward
the elevator.
    "Look, it's Corinne. Itty, bitty, helpless Corinne,"
he mimed a fainting fit. Becker, my least favorite of the Five walked up,
tossing an insult in my direction. He'd been to the gym to work out and just
happened to walk all the way to the other end of the Mansion's third floor to
ride down the west end elevators.
    Nosy bastard .
    "Look, it's Becker," I said, waving an arm.
"I'm surprised you can say my name without pointing. Or drooling." I
didn't wait for him to think up a comeback—that could take a while. I shut the
door and locked it instead. He didn't walk away for several minutes. Yeah, I
listened shamelessly for his footsteps.
    * * *
    "Corinne, you shouldn't bait him like that," August
speared chunks of salad with a fork. He'd forced me to have dinner with him in
the cafeteria later, before he went home to his wife.
    "So, you want me to just listen to the insults and say
nothing?"
    "What did he say to you?"
    "Come on, you know what he said." I figured
everybody in the Mansion knew what he said.
    "Yeah." August shook his head and kept eating.
    "When the President waved her hand and ordered me here,
didn't you step up and argue with her? Why didn't you tell her what happens
when the Five and I get together?"
    "I think she's seen the reports."
    "Everybody sees the reports," I muttered, hugging
myself. I had chicken and noodles in front of me and hadn't touched them. My
stomach would rebel, and the cafeteria floor was mostly clean. The staff would
probably prefer that it stay that way. "Nobody does anything about
them," I added.
    "The Five are special," August said, refusing to
look at me.
    "Yeah."
    "Maye and Becker are with the President, tonight,"
August said.
    "Of course they are. I understand things are a bit
strained with the Russian Ambassador. Is the Prez trying to soothe ruffled
ushankas?"
    "Cori, most people don't even know what those things are
called."
    "Yeah."
    "Corinne, I wish, well, fuck." He dropped his fork
and pinched the bridge of his nose.
    I blinked at August—he seldom used profanity around me. I
didn't mind when he did—I knew what all those words meant. I'd used them, too,
in my seventy-plus years.
    "Auggie, I have a long list of I wishes, and none of them
are on anybody's list to be granted. I'm stuck here. You're stuck with me.
We're both miserable. Admit it."
    "I guess