The Whole Truth (The Supercharged Files Book 1) (21 page)

John was out of the office and I
planned to ask Yuri last, which left Al. If Al and John were innocent, I’d make
everyone accompany me to confront Yuri. Yuri as traitor was so screwed up,
there was no way I was going into that situation alone.

I procrastinated so long I didn’t
catch Al until he was on his way home. I trotted after him down the long, bare
hallway that led to the warehouse parking lot.

“Hey Al, I need to talk to you
privately,” I whispered.

“It’ll have to wait.” Al held the
door open for me—a standard steel door, not a dumpster—and we walked into the
fading summer sunlight. “Tabby will kill me if I miss dinner again.”

I peered around the large, open
lot. Weeds and broken bottles sprouted around the perimeter, and one of those
self-serve pay-to-park boxes cast a long, dark shadow across the cracked
pavement. Most of the other cars were already gone. “I just need a minute.”
Plus a couple years to learn the fine art of self-defense in case our
conversation turned ugly.

Al stopped beside his dark blue
minivan. “Is this about the job?”

That’s what he called it when we
weren’t private—the job. “Yeah.”

“I tell you what.” Al shifted his
briefcase to his other hand and jingled his keys. “Come by the house around
nine.”

I’d rather get this over with now.
My stomach was threatening to empty itself on Al’s shiny black shoes. “It won’t
take long.”

“I have a state of the art
security system,” he said. “Designed it myself. Anything you need to discuss
will be safe and confidential. I’ll leave a light on for you.”

“O...okay.” Our conversation
might be safe, but I was worried about my health. “Will Tabby and the girls be
there?”

“Where else would they be?” He
got into his van, slammed the door, and rolled down the window. “Don’t be
late.”

~ * ~

I wasn’t. At eight fifty two, I
parked on the street outside Al and Tabby’s two story brick McMansion because
the aggregate driveway was filled with a big white van. My knees knocking like
clogs on a wooden floor, I inched past the vehicle. A tall man leaned against
the far side, his profile limned by the house lights. He was smoking a
cigarette.

He ignored me, so I continued to
the porch until I could almost touch the doorbell. Knowing Al, there’d been a
camera trained on me from the moment I’d driven down their driveway. I took a
deep breath, reached out a finger, and...

The door opened.

“Cleo, what are you doing here?”
Lou stood in the foyer of Al’s house with a blue zippered money bag in her
hands. Behind her, Jolene’s daughter Rachel balanced a tall stack of brightly
colored tins.

“I’m here to see Al.”

“Hey girlfriend!” Rachel
exclaimed, her blonde ponytail bouncing. “Want some cookies? It’s for the
school’s new digital projectors. Eight bucks a tin.”

Al came out of the living room
into the foyer, chewing something I assumed was a cookie. He dusted his hands.
“They’re pretty good.”

“No, thank you.” A Lampey offspring
had hit me up for a giant tub of cookie dough last week. I’d rather have had
the premade version, but the dough fulfilled my chocolate chip quota for the
month. “You ladies taking over the fundraising?”

Lou tucked the money bag under
her arm. “Just this part. It’s too late for children to be running the roads.”
She and Rachel exchanged a glance. “We have a few more tins to deliver. Nice
doing business with you, Al.”

“Anytime.” With a genial wave, Al
motioned me into the house and Lou and Rachel out of it. He shut the door with
an ominous thud and locked it before he activated the security system with a
series of electronic beeps. “The Lampey kids must be in year round school. Our
girls don’t go back until August.”

“Are they already in bed?”

“They’re supposed to be. Tabby
might still be doing the bedtime story.” He glanced up the stairs that led from
the foyer to second floor. “Let’s go to my office.”

I’d been to Al’s house once for
dinner. His office was their unused, but tastefully decorated, formal dining
room, where a laptop, stacks of papers, boxes, gadgets, books and other
paraphernalia covered the long cherry table. French doors, painted the same
cappuccino and cream as the walls, separated it from the foyer while a hallway
branched off to the kitchen. A glistening chandelier sparked tiny prisms all
around the room.

The chandelier was off. The only
light in the room was a desk lamp. Several china cabinets that matched the
table lined the walls, empty of dishes but full of gizmos. Al aimed a remote at
a black box on a shelf with some of his daughters’ dancing trophies. “We’re
covered. Wish they’d invent a blanket I could use all the time.”

“Wouldn’t the sound drive you
nuts?”

“You wouldn’t want to bring a dog
around, but I can tune it out. I just can’t hear anything beyond this area when
it’s on.” Al leaned against the dark, heavy table, eschewing the chairs. He was
dressed in a T-shirt and shorts that resembled swim trunks, but he exuded
professionalism. “What is it you need to speak with me about, Ms. Giancarlo?”

“I wanted to talk about my
project.”

“You don’t have to hint. The
blanket is on and the girls are upstairs.” He slid the remote into a desk
organizer and gave me his full attention.

“Okay.” I took a deep breath,
remaining beside the half-closed French doors in case I needed to make a quick
escape. I’d put myself in too many positions lately where I felt compelled to
hover near the exit. “I realized today there are a couple people I haven’t
interrogated. People you wouldn’t suspect.”

Al nodded. “Four, I believe. I
wondered when you’d get around to this.” He cracked his huge knuckles. Shadows
fell across his face as the desk lamp guttered, and I experienced an abrupt
bout of dread.

I pushed against the door,
preparing to break for my car. Al moved to intercept me, so I froze like a
rabbit in the headlights. This had all the makings of the stupid heroine
stupidly confronting the villain and getting stupidly bashed in the head for
her pains.

He wouldn’t do anything violent
with his wife and kids upstairs, would he? If they really were upstairs. I had
only his word as proof.

“Ask me.” He flattened his giant
hand high on the door and glowered down at me.

“On second thought, this can wait
until we’re all together.” I valued my skull’s integrity. If I questioned
everyone while we were in the same room, the innocents would protect me from
the guilty. And I’d have Samantha bring her gun.

“This is your job, Cleo.” Al
poked a threatening finger at me, and then himself. “You. Ask me.”

“Are you...” I tried to swallow
and speak at the same time and ended up choking. Al’s muscles bunched. His hand
raised to strike.

I gasped, coughed, and stumbled
away before he could get me. He gave chase. When I opened my mouth to shriek, I
hacked instead. My eyes teared and I bonked into the table. Al caught up,
pounding me on the back.

“You okay?” he asked. “Want a
drink of water?”

Koff, koff, koff. Whack, whack,
whack. His palm
hurt
.

“I’m fiiine,” I croaked. My heart
raced like that stupid frozen rabbit.

Sliding my butt halfway onto the
cluttered table, I edged away from his large, slapping hand. He loomed over me.
He might be have several girl children who put barrettes in his hair and used
him as a horsie, but he was one of my prime suspects. If he decided to shut me
up, he could break me in half.

“D..d...did you d...do it?” I
stuttered, watching his face with every ounce of bravery I didn’t possess.

His beady eyes glinted like the
proverbial villain. “Do what?”

“Are you the leak?”

“No.” Al crossed his massive arms
over the logo on his red T-shirt that read, “World’s Best Dad”. “I am not and
have never been disloyal to YuriCorp.”

The air around his face was
crystal clear, and by that I mean expensive crystal without any clouds or
cracks.

I wanted to sink into the Persian
rug with embarrassment and relief. And fear—because I had to ask another
question. “Are you sabotaging YuriCorp’s employees or directing anyone to do
so?”

“I answered that.”

“I should think it was obvious,”
I said in a small voice, “that the leak and saboteur may not be the same
person. Yuri told me about Psytech and Baumhauser. How could one person
eavesdrop on all three companies and attack consultants? There must be some
kind of ring.”

“In that case, no,” Al said. “I’m
not a leak, I’m not a saboteur, and all I want is for YuriCorp to be able to
return to business as usual with its employees safe on the job. I don’t want
employees of the other companies hurt either.”

My knees turned to pudding. It
made the rest of me wobble. “Why did you scare me?”

“To teach you a lesson.” He
gently guided me to an armchair. “Sit down, Cleo. We should have had a couple
sessions about data retrieval when you hired on.”

“Data retrieval. How politically
correct of you.” I crumpled into the chair like a stringless puppet.

He hunkered into another chair
and scooted toward me until we were almost knee to knee. Aside from briefing me
on security protocol, Al and I didn’t interact on a daily basis. With the
saboteur at large, his workload was intense, and I had no clear idea what it
entailed.

If I’d asked him to instruct me
on espionage in the first place, maybe I’d be better at it. I’d been cocky,
taking everyone’s word for it, especially my own, that all I needed was my
suprasense. It was a blow to realize my only skill was seeing lies. I had no
innate subtlety and minimal cleverness.

I might not even be particularly
insightful.

“In any game of confidence,” Al
began, “test the inner circle first. It’s one of the basic rules of security.
Just because we told you whom to trust doesn’t mean anything until you confirm
it yourself. Especially not when you come up with zero other explanations.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Was this a
test to see how long it took me to ask if you were the bad guy?”

“It’s not a test.”

“I still think it could be Trojan
software or spy camera.” With my knowledge of computer security limited to
installing a firewall and using a proxy service to keep my identity private at
my former blog, which hadn’t deterred YuriCorp, I figured hackers could steal
anything they wanted. Wireless was endemic. Point, click, swipe.

Al gave me the same look he’d
given me the fifth time I’d asked if it could be a hacker. “The leak is in the
main office, and it’s a person.”

I took a stab in the dark. “Do
you know who it is?”

He didn’t answer right away. “We
aren’t sure.”

“What?” I yelled, fury surging.
“How long have you suspected somebody? Since before I was hired?”

“Don’t wake up the kids,” he
chided, straightening. “I’m not authorized to tell you.”

I gripped the arms of my chair so
hard it made my knuckles ache. “I am seriously pissed off.”

“That much is clear.”

“Tell me who it is now.” I wanted
to hit Al with a baseball bat or a really vicious insult. “If you don’t, I can
find out.”

“Do you think you can?” He
smiled. “I invite you to try.”

I was so mad I was bouncing in my
seat. He had the gall to smirk at me even though he and Yuri had put me on the
front lines of their supra war without giving me enough bullets. Or teaching me
to shoot.

“Who is it?” I demanded. Clever,
no?

No.

“I’m not authorized to tell you.”

“Is it Samantha? John? Ursula?
Jolene? Sheila? Lou? Mike? Yuri? Yuri’s wife?” I rattled off a list of people,
hoping for a tweak. If he said no and a mask popped up, I’d have him.

He shrugged. My inner circle had
practiced circumventing my ability before they’d kidnapped me. All anyone had
to do was refuse to speak. Samantha had demonstrated some aptitude, but Al’s
technique put her to shame.

I rested my chin on my fist
instead of resting my fist in his face. That would break my knuckles and I’d
never punched anyone in my life. “Why the hell couldn’t you bring me to
Nashville, say, “Ask this person if he’s a snake,” and be done with it?”

“Calm down, Cleo. We wanted to
get you on staff.” Al patted my knee in a fatherly fashion. “You’re a valuable
asset.”

“I could be finished sneaking
around. I could be a normal consultant.” I tried to stay quiet enough to let
sleeping children lie, but my voice rose as I warmed to my topic. “I wouldn’t
have to pry into everyone’s life and become public enemy number one with the
interviews. Why would you do this to me?”

“It’s not about you, Cleo. It’s
about saving people’s lives however we can.”

“Yeah, well.” My stomach churned
and my face burned as he pointed out the obvious failing in my motivation. “I’m
the one on the chopping block.”

“I’m sorry for your position, but
you have to understand ours.” He gestured in the vague direction of YuriCorp.
“The company comes first. We can’t put one employee’s well-being ahead of the
company.”

“The company would be better off
if I’d solved this months ago with one simple question to your suspect.” It
rankled so much that they knew who it might be and hadn’t told me. It rankled
more that I hadn’t been able to find this person myself.

“Another time-honored strategy for
problem-solving,” he said patiently, “is an outside source without preconceived
notions.”

A dummy, in other words. I
slumped into the padded armchair, my anger fading. “Once you realized I was
nowhere closer to finding this person, why didn’t you drop hints?”

“You wouldn’t have searched with
an open mind. We don’t believe the leak and the saboteur are the same person
either. I’m proud of you for figuring that out.”