The Whole Truth (The Supercharged Files Book 1) (19 page)

He raised one shoulder in a
shrug. “Crazy people. How should I know?” he lied.

“Uh-huh.” Even in his shapeless
lab coat, Beau was gorgeous. Everyone knew it. It was like he’d undergone a
hunky makeover, only he hadn’t done anything but lose his ability to hide.

Luckily I was inoculated by his
personality. I was wearing my new sandals and red and white Calvin Klein
sundress because I liked them, not because they flattered me.

“When are you going to admit it?
Everyone knows, even Jolene.” Jolene barely remembered to eat, much less what
people looked like. She referred to me as “Yuri’s girl” half the time and as
Rachel, her daughter in sales, the other half.

“Does it matter?” he said. “I
can’t get shit done no matter what I tell people.”

“Maybe if you pick somebody, the
others would lay off.”

“That’s a terrible idea.” He
scratched his chin and frowned. “Would it work?”

I didn’t have a chance to answer.
Beau glanced up at the security camera he’d had Al install outside the
laboratories and started cursing. “Shit fuck hell, not this one.”

Samantha stood there, sorting
through her purse for a key card, which she then used. “Doesn’t anybody do any
work around here?” Beau griped. “This isn’t a damn singles club.”

Most of YuriCorp’s employees did
their jobs with something approaching enthusiasm. They approached their social
lives the same way.

The door of the lab rattled,
didn’t open, and Samantha knocked. “Beau Walker, I know you’re in there. You
know Al said you aren’t allowed to lock the lab door. Open up.”

“That’s it.” Beau stalked over to
me and grabbed my shoulders. I squeaked. “Here’s the deal. Go along with what
I’m about to do, or as soon as my abilities come back, I’ll find out every
embarrassing thing you’ve ever done and use it to humiliate you.”

“That is not fair.” I batted his
hands ineffectively. I swear, the asshole even smelled better now that he
wasn’t running a fade, like wood chips and cinnamon.

“I don’t give a crap. I can’t
take this anymore.”

“You have to explain everything
to me,” I said, “or I won’t do it.” Whatever it was. If he intended to murder
Samantha and hide the body, he’d really owe me.

“You have to let me run whatever
tests I want,” he countered.

Samantha pounded on the door,
hollering. We glanced at it, then back at one another.

“That’s two things for you and
only one for me,” I said. “I haven’t been avoiding the tests. I can’t help it
if your DNA machine’s on the fritz.” How ironic if Yuri’d had to sabotage his
own lab in order to hide his scheme to catch the real saboteur.

“First, don’t let that bitch
touch either of us.” Beau’s eyes bored intently into mine as if he could stare
me into agreeing. “Second, do not tell her. I mean it.”

“I’m using my override code!”
Samantha yelled. “Al’s going to hear about this.”

Of course Ms. Granddaughter of
the Boss had an override code. The door beeped and swung open. Samantha,
properly suited up in lab whites, stormed into the room.

Beau planted a kiss on me like
his life depended on getting a taste of my tongue.

Maybe it did. I figured I’d
better kiss him back.

“Wow,” Samantha said. “I guess
you know where Cleo is.”

Beau broke off and said, “What?”

I deflated, the air sucked out of
me by the most intense five second lip lock of my life. If Beau hadn’t been
gripping my shoulders like handlebars, I’d have fallen off my stool.

“I was hunting Cleo,” Samantha
said. “Pop-Pop wants to see to her, and he said nobody’s answering the phone
down here again.”

“You weren’t here to...” Beau
glanced at me, smirked and shrugged. He lifted his hands and wiggled his
fingers. “Take her, I’m done with her.”

I opened my mouth and no sound
came out. That wasn’t a shriek.

Samantha and Beau clapped their
hands over their ears. Jolene wandered out of the office, where she had
apparently been ignoring the phone, and said, “Did somebody make tea?”

“You don’t have to scream, I
won’t tell anybody about you and Beau,” Samantha said, complete with a mask
almost as dark as her hair.

“What about them?” Jolene cocked
her head to one side like a wren as she inspected us, and I wondered what she
could see. I had no idea what her ability was. “Thank goodness, they finally
got together. It’s been like cats and dogs. Rachel and her boyfriend just got
back from the Lampey condo in Florida. Lou thinks they’re getting serious. Are
you two serious?”

“We are not—” I began, but Beau
put a finger on my lips.

“Samantha promises she won’t
tell,” he said. “Even if she does, baby, nobody will assume we’ve been screwing
around on the clock just because we’re screwing around off it. Nobody’s going
to think you’re a slacker.”

So this is what he wanted. He
wanted me to be his beard. And it had been my stupid idea.

“I’m sure Yuri will be done with
me by lunch.” I punched his arm way too hard for affection. “Especially since
you’re buying me that pair of diamond earrings today.”

Beau had the good grace to look
like he already regretted his ploy.

Chapter 16

The Pursuit of
Truth and Consequence

“You and Walker. I can’t believe
it,” Sam exclaimed for the sixth time en route to Yuri’s office.

“Me either.” Even though Sam
couldn’t read my lies—and no way was she getting her hands on me—I didn’t want
to talk about this. There were other ways humans could detect dishonesty. “What
does Yuri want to see me about?”

She ignored my question.
“Walker’s been running a fade for years. Why hide all that dark chocolate
lusciousness? He’s a pin up guy. An underwear model. Nobody noticed, not even
the other chameleons. It’s unreal.”

Nothing much surprised Samantha,
but she was going overboard with the amazement. “Don’t be sexist. Racist.
Ist-ist.”

“You’ve got to tell me what he’s
like in bed. Does he get you off or do you have to do it yourself?” She reached
for me and I smacked her hand.

“Forget it.” If she pushed me,
I’d admit Beau wanted to con our coworkers so the horny ones would leave him
alone. He hoped.

No harm in helping him if it meant
he owed me. It wasn’t a plot to overthrow the company. It was just embarrassing
that Beau had kissed me and a small part of me wanted him to do it again.

There, I admitted it. God, I was
desperate. I’d never had this much trouble getting dates since I’d been in high
school and in the throes of mastering my ability.

Actually, I could get dates, just
not with John Arlin, Stick in the Mud.

I was tempted to confide in
Samantha anyway. Though our back and forth was combative, Samantha and I were
drawn together like two peas that didn’t fit the pod. We’d have an awesome
bitch session over nachos and margaritas as we plotted my revenge on Beau.

But if Beau’s powers came back,
I’d be at his mercy. Since I knew he could turn himself completely invisible, I
did not want to be on that man’s bad side.

Did he have a good side?

We reached Yuri’s office after
the longest nine minutes of my life. Samantha leaned on the door so I couldn’t
open it. “What are you going to tell John?”

Did it matter? He’d made his
unwillingness to date me clear, but there’d been that concern and tenderness
after the cacti attack. Damned idiot men. Both of them. I should take Rooster
up on his offer. It would be a lot less complicated.

“I don’t owe John any
explanations.” I knocked on the door, and Yuri called for me to come in. “Go
work or something.”

“I can’t work at a time like
this. I have to gossip with Lou.”

I pretended to be shocked and
amazed. “You promised you wouldn’t tell.”

“I lied.” She backed off so I
could attend Yuri. “Surely you noticed.”

“Get burnt,” I said, and slammed
Yuri’s door in her grinning face.

~ * ~

“Two weeks!” I paced between
Yuri’s plants and tugged my hair. “I can’t guarantee I’ll find the mole in two
weeks.”

“The company picnic is the
weekend after next on Lou’s family farm,” Yuri stated mildly. He was adjusting
a display of tiny cacti, of all things, on his desk. “It was the only weekend
they had free.”

“I can’t possibly eliminate
everyone and their families in one afternoon,” I said, well aware I wasn’t going
to win this argument. It didn’t matter—I never can keep myself from arguing.
“I’ll try harder. I’ll be sneakier.”

“Cleopatra Giancarlo,” Yuri said
in his sternest voice, like Dan when he’d been frustrated with me in high
school. “You’ve been here five months, and we don’t know much more than we did
when we hired you. Half our employees are afraid to leave the building. The
other half are typing resignation letters as we speak. We’ve had to refund
three clients this month, with several pending. Baumhauser underbid us on
several clients we thought we’d pinned down. My accountants tell me we’re going
to have to restructure our finances by next quarter if this keeps up. I want to
do this about as much as I want to eat poison ivy.”

“Lay offs,” I guessed, a sinking
feeling in my stomach. Would we hire a supra company to tell us who should stay
and who should go? “I guess I’d get fired first.”

“We have few enough consultants
as it is,” he said, which didn’t reassure me. “We’re going to have to divert
funds from our side ventures and put them toward running the company. In
another six months, who knows? Not even our employee attrition is enough to
avoid pink slips this time.” Yuri pushed the cactuses to the other side of his
desk. “The ones who are staying trust us, Cleo. They trust that we can fix
this. Can we fix this?”

“Not right at this very moment.”
I thought about all the questions I’d asked people so far. There didn’t seem to
be any stones left to turn, and it felt like I was the only one at YuriCorp
looking for slugs. “I didn’t cut my teeth on corporate espionage like the rest
of you.”

“We know.” Yuri sighed and sank
back into his chair. “We wanted to give you time but things have changed. There
are two more developments you should be aware of. Adam Donning’s condition
worsened last night.”

“Worsened?” I stared at Yuri and
noticed his eyes were watery. “But supras have been getting better. Pavarti’s
using a walker.”

“He slipped into a coma.” He
dabbed his eyes with a hankie.

A whooshing roar echoed through
my head, and I found I’d collapsed into one of the chairs opposite Yuri. “Is he
going to—”

“This is beyond our ken.” Yuri
blew his nose. “There’s more.”

No wonder Yuri had browbeat me.
He was desperate. “Somebody else was attacked?”

“In a manner of speaking. This
morning I had a meeting with Baumhauser’s CEO and several of Psytech’s
chairpersons. I waved the white flag. I was going to offer them whatever they
wanted if they would stop.”

“Like what?” I asked with a gulp.
Had I just been traded to the other team like an NFL quarterback?

“I’d give them our trackers. I’d
give them you. I’d give them the company.” He folded his handkerchief into a
small, neat square, his restrained gestures at odds with the passion in his
voice. “But as of this week, their employees are being hit, too. It’s not just
us anymore.”

~ * ~

Shaken, I returned to my desk
instead of the lab. I needed to cry. Rage. Make another chart. Do something.
I’d come out of my overstuffed closet if I had to.

Vision blurry, I squinted at my
computer screen to read my latest emails. Staff meeting. Research request. A
follow up on a report. Spam.

No, not spam. Hell. If that
didn’t top my day with a cherry, I didn’t know what would. My special friend
had graduated from anonymous notes and texts to emails. The host was some
random webmail provider and tracing the email’s source past that was beyond me.
Besides, I knew who sent it.

That damn Sheila Hornbuckle. One
annoying Q&A with me, and this is what I got?

“It should have been you,” she
wrote. “Quit while you can.”

I’d seen Sheila this morning when
she’d hit on Beau with her sexy DNA talk, and I know she didn’t mean she should
have hit on me. She thought I should have been burned instead of poor Beau
Walker, though if that had been the case nobody would have noticed his hotness
and nobody would think I was involved with him.

Rather than confront Sheila in
person, which I didn’t have the time or the balls for, I clicked “reply” and
shared some scathing comments about how I hoped Bob didn’t know she was trying
to get a piece of Beau’s action. She’d taken such pains to be anonymous through
all this, hopefully knowing that I’d twigged her would take care of her.

Then I opened my passworded list
only I and anyone who could speak Pig Latin could understand and overviewed
everything I’d accomplished so far. Typing furiously, I brainstormed my
thoughts in hopes the stream of consciousness would uncover genius.

What did it all mean? My first
thought was it must be a naturally-occurring phenomenon, not sabotage—a lack of
vitamin W(eird), an excess of environmental pollutants. Asbestos. Lead paint.
Kryptonite. The fact we worked in a bunker masquerading as an office had to be
unhealthy.

Of course, that was wrong, and I
knew it. Natural and random events had been ruled out. The fact that the
ranking supra was usually taken, the fact that all the attacks were on site or
en route, spoke of intent, not environment.

Now the people I’d assumed were
the bad guys were in danger, too. Roxanne and other healers could help supras bounce
back from a stroke with better than average results. Not so much a coma.

Who stood to benefit if the
companies ascended to the big cubicle farm in the sky? We were the largest
firms in our niche. Smaller outfits were poised to jump on any opportunities we
lost, but there were quite a few of them. No way to tell which one might be
behind this without stumbling across a lucky lie.

I hadn’t been lucky so far.

Lou passed behind me in a waft of
White Shoulders. I hunched closer to my screen, hoping she wouldn’t stop to get
the dirt on my hot romance with Beau. She paused, said something to Tina, and
continued on.

I sighed and started typing
again.

Point one—it wasn’t my job to
figure out how our ill-wishers were burning out YuriCorpers. I was only
supposed to locate our corporate leak so the hole could be patched with supra
Fix-a-Flat. If there was more than one person ratting us out, that was more
than one person I’d failed to find.

Point two—nobody was leaking
information that I could confirm.

Point three—I couldn’t go by my
instincts about people. Look at Beau. If anybody was a suspicious bastard, he
was. He’d acted like a freak on our trip, cursing our clients and sneaking into
my interviews, but I’d cleared him. The man was off the hook, whether I liked
it or not.

Point four—I had to get with the
program. My program. And my program had four blank spots on it, four
YuriCorpers I’d never truly questioned. Four people who knew what I could do
and how to work around it.

I’d start with my number one
suspect.

First I cancelled my lunch date
with Beau. He wouldn’t have bought me the earrings anyway, and did I really
want to have lunch with Beau? No need to answer that because I’d only be lying
to myself.

Second, I phoned Samantha.

“You’re right, I do want to tell
you allllll about it,” I said. “Let’s do lunch, just us girls.”

~ * ~

“Just us girls” to Samantha
included Lou and Ursula. While they were undoubtedly female, their presence put
a damper on my plans for a hard-hitting, film noir interrogation.

“You sly dog. I can’t believe
you’re hitting that,” Ursula said as soon as I showed up at Merlin’s. I slid
onto the bench beside Lou, across from Samantha and Ursula.

“I never thought that one would
go with anybody.” Lou flicked parsley bits off her potato skin. “Some can’t
stand to lose it. I figured he was one of those.”

Lose what, his virginity?
Samantha and Ursula nodded.

“Wouldn’t surprise me if he was,”
Ursula said. “He’s always in a bad mood.”

Ursula and Lou laughed. Sometimes
supra humor flew right over my head.

Samantha pushed a soda at me. “I
ordered you a turkey club since you were running late.” Her eyes glittered with
some combination of interest and excitement. “Tell us everything.”

I groaned. “Lou, please make her
forgot about Beau.”

“Not a chance,” Lou said. “This
is too good to pass up.”

This was not the lunch I had
envisioned, where I confronted Samantha about her loyalties to YuriCorp in my
last ditch effort to save the company and, well, probably not the world, but
who knows? But how could I, when Lou and Ursula were waiting for me to describe
Beau’s sexual prowess?

How could I describe his sexual
prowess when I only had one kiss to go on?

I took a long sip of my soda. I’d
avoided discussions like this with my normal friends in the past, considering
how full of hyperbole they tended to be. “There’s not much to tell.”

Lou cackled. “Not well
represented down there, is he? Hon, it isn’t the size of his equipment, it’s
what he does with it.”

“That’s what I hear,” joked
Ursula, who didn’t care what men did with their penises. Because she’d never
publicized her sexual preferences, nobody got the joke but me. Too bad, because
it was funny. I covered a grin with my glass.

“How long have you been with
Walker?” To Samantha’s credit, she didn’t mention John.

“Not long.” I pumped the straw up
and down in my ice, realized how vulgar it looked, and shoved my hands under my
legs.

Samantha, directly across from
me, propped her elbows on the table. “Did you jump him before or after he lost
his fade?”

I thought about Atlanta and the
cactuses and the kiss in the lab today and said, in all honesty, “He jumped
me.”

“How funny!” Ursula hooted.
“Never would have thought he had it in him. Not even after he dropped fade. He
just doesn’t do it for me. No offense, Cleo.”

“None taken.” Beau was too male
for Ursula and too much of an asshole for everyone else, unless his personality
was a fade as well.

No, there was no way somebody
could fake being that much of a turd.

“Can you change your appearance?”
Sam asked Ursula. “I had no idea chameleons could do that.”

“Not me, and I’m good.” Ursula
was about to elaborate when our orders arrived.

As soon as the waitress departed,
Lou asked me, “Why in the world was he hiding himself with that fade?”

“It’s his business if he wants to
downplay his appearance. It’s not like it interferes with his job.” I crunched
into a triangle of my very tall sandwich, avoiding the toothpick stuck through
the middle. “If a girl comes to the office in comfy pants and no make-up, it
could be argued she’s doing the same thing.”