Alien in the House

Stryker’s texts, there were four to check in the Cannon House, and five in the Longworth House.
    There was no way Jeff and I were going to get to check out the other locations today. And I knew time was of the essence. So, while Jeff searched the other two offices on the fourth floor, I contacted Tim.
    He agreed that it sounded like a job for A-Cs, but we needed a human along to ensure that everything would be checked. I’d dealt with A-C versus human searching during Operation Confusion, and, as I reminded Tim, if we’d relied on the A-Cs to find and especially to interpret the clues he’d left me, Tim and a lot of others would be dead.
    Duly convinced, Tim compromised and assigned Lorraine and Joe to Cannon and Claudia and Randy to Longworth. They each had two Field teams with them as well, and were advised to be on the lookout for people on roofs holding guns.
    Scraps of papers that seemed to mean nothing put into envelopes worked great, but I found myself wishing we’d brought along a briefcase or bag, because there were more than scraps in some of the offices. I was carrying because Jeff was searching, and my arms were getting full.
    We’d saved Reyes’ office for our last stop on the third floor. Not out of any meaningful reason, it was just the farthest from where we’d entered that floor from the fourth and we had five offices to check on this level. It was easy to spot, though—yellow police tape crisscrossed on the door stood out.
    Once inside, I wondered if we’d been intelligent about not starting here first. Reyes had truly been living here, and that meant that there was stuff everywhere. On the plus side, there was also a briefcase, and it wasn’t locked.
    Decided Reyes wouldn’t mind my borrowing it, especially since he’d wanted me to clean out his desk. I dumped our other findings in, taking the time to put the larger papers into bigger envelopes he had available and marking them. No one was going to accuse me of not paying attention to detail in regard to this hunt for a tiny needle in a really huge haystack.
    Since Reyes had been specific in his last request, I did the desk while Jeff did everything else. “There’s not much here. Just some bills I think Santiago was reading.”
    “Maybe what he bought has something to do with whatever’s going on,” Jeff said from inside the bathroom.
    “No, not that kind of bill. Bills like those that go through Congress. Passages of laws and such. You know, the ‘light reading’ you’ll be getting to enjoy starting, I guess, today.” Reyes certainly had a lot of them in his desk drawer. Took them all, put them in the briefcase. Hoped he had another case somewhere—the bills took up a lot of space.
    “Oh.” Jeff came out. “Kitty, I have no idea what I’m doing in this job. I don’t even know how long my term is supposed to be. I’m unfamiliar with the terminology. And I’ve already been told that lobbyists are going to be my best friends from here on in.”
    “In normal times, which I know we are not living in, every representative is elected to a two-year term, and the elections are every even numbered year. This was supposed to be an election year, but due to all the many decrees, everyone’s held over, which is why Santiago had to go through a special election to get here. Congress officially starts the first week of January, so technically you could expect to get out of this job after the next election—you know, two years from now.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “Some from memory.” I held up a booklet I’d found. “Some from this: ‘A New Representative’s Guide to the House.’” Tossed it into the briefcase. “I’d assume you’ll get one, but we’ll take Santiago’s so you have it to read sooner as opposed to later. As for lobbyists, technically, we’ve been functioning as such since we took over the Diplomatic Corps, and while I don’t love and adore them, at least we know Guy Gadoire and Lillian Culver. It’s not much, but it’s a start.”
    “Why are you so calm about all of this?”
    I shrugged as I went back to digging through the desk. “I know you can handle anything, Jeff.”
    He came over, pulled me to him, and gave me a deep kiss. “Thanks, baby,” he said softly as he pulled away. “I needed that.”
    “Any time, as long as you thank me like you just did.”
    We continued to toss Reyes’ office, but there wasn’t anything meaningful we could spot. I took his calendar and anything