The Whole Truth (The Supercharged Files Book 1) (23 page)

“I got home late.” He flipped
open the lid of the pizza box for my approval, like a wine steward swooshing a
label in front of a diner.

“Al knows I’m here.” I glanced at
the locked door and back at the food, which he’d placed on the kitchen island.
“So does Beau.”

“Walker can bite...” He stopped
himself before I could read the mask that had popped around his face. Huh. I
crowded closer, and he opened a cabinet door, his elbows forcing me back.
“Cleo, I’m not trying to hide the fact I invited you to dinner. The whole
company probably knows. The walls have ears in that place.”

I didn’t want John to think I was
nervous, so nervously I tried to explain. “I wasn’t gossiping. Al said
something about meals with his kids and I said you and I were having pizza.
Make that dinner. I didn’t know it was pizza at the time.”

As I babbled, John sorted through
the shelves for glasses and plates. I peeked over his shoulder to see great
disorder inside his cupboard. It was like his glove box. Stacked mugs tottered
next to books propped against a blender beside a casserole dish with wine
glasses in it.

I finished my near incoherent
speech with, “So if I get a call tonight I’d better answer it.”

John frowned. “Red or white?”

Was he referring to my face? I’d
go with rosy pink.

He tried again. “Red or white
wine?”

Wine tasted like sour grape juice
to me but I wasn’t the one with the magic tongue. “Whatever you’re having.”

“Red.” He popped the cork on a
green bottle and poured two stemmed glasses halfway full. Then he set plates
beside the pizza box.

I smiled and cupped the glass as
if I planned to enjoy it. “I bet this goes great with pizza.”

 John handed me a spatula, a fork
and a linen napkin. “Let’s find out. I usually go for a Pinot Noir, but I
thought you might prefer something sweeter.”

I slid two pieces of pizza onto
my plate and took a seat at John’s six person table, perched on the edge of my
chair like a shelf sitter. When John chose the chair next to me instead of
across from me, I almost flinched.

“’S good,” I said, my mouth full
of crust and pepperoni. I added wine to the mix while the taste of the pizza
would override it. “You’re right, this is much better than a Pinot Noir.”

“You’re a terrible liar.” He
sipped his wine and wiped his mouth on the cloth napkin. “Anybody ever tell you
that?”

“That’s what you think.” I
pretended to adjust the cushion on the chair seat, discreetly inching away from
him. “Are you a good liar?”

“It depends on who I’m lying to.”

Why in the world had he plopped
down a foot away from me? I mean, his Pilgrim name was Miles Standoffish. “You
wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”

“That depends on what you’re
asking.” Flutters shadowed his face, not enough to pin him on. “And yes, I know
lying wouldn’t do me any good.”

If he took the Alfonso route and
refused to answer me, I wasn’t sure how I’d get results. How could I trick the
information out of him? “What is it you wanted to talk about tonight?”

“It can wait. Let’s enjoy our
meal.”

“Okay.” I flicked onions off the
pizza. “Tell me how you discovered your abilities. I was thirteen. At first I
thought I was going nuts and... My story is too depressing. What’s yours?”

“Both my parents were supras,”
John said. “I knew it was a possibility the whole time.”

“What was it like, growing up and
knowing there was a whole world of people you weren’t allowed to talk about?”

“I went to a private school where
a lot of supra children are sent.”

I grinned. “Cool. Is it called
Hogwarts?”

“No.” The bland expression on
John’s face didn’t so much as flicker. Maybe he wasn’t hip to the young adult
fiction scene. Or the New York Times bestseller scene. Or the blockbuster movie
scene.

I nibbled some cheese. “What was
your first job where you got to use your powers?”

“Starting out, I worked for a PI
firm.”

“So did Lou Lampey.” I hoped this
didn’t mean John was about to treat me to a rant about a supra police force.
“Did you work with her family’s company?”

“There’s more than one supra PI
firm in the Southeastern United States,” John said, more sharply than I think
he intended, because after he said it, he cleared his throat. “There are more
PI firms than consulting companies. They’re all small.”

“Do you think we need a police
force? Lou does.”

He rose and hovered over the
pizza box, his back to me. “We seem to be functioning without formal checks and
balances. The good guys might not always win, but that’s life.”

What did he mean by the good guys
didn’t win? “Speaking of good guys and bad guys, did Yuri tell you Psytech and
Baumhauser admitted they’ve had incidents of sabotage?”

As soon as it was out of my
mouth, I knew it was a mistake.

John whirled, his hair falling
out of its sedate side part. A half-eaten piece of pizza flipped off his plate
onto the floor. “Psytech and Baumhauser got hit? How the hell did that happen?”

He hadn’t known. Maybe he wasn’t
supposed to know. “I assume the same way it happens to us. Does that surprise
you?”

He bent to clean the tomato sauce
that had splattered out of the escaped pizza. “We’ve been operating under the
assumption YuriCorp was being targeted. Doesn’t it surprise you?”

“I guess. It’s easier to wrap my
brain around greed and corporate espionage.” I craned sideways so I could see
his profile. He tossed the crust into the trash and stared at the countertop.
“If it’s not one big corporation trying to take out another, what could it be?”

“I have no idea,” he growled. A
mask fluttered around his face.

“You know, I’m not burned out,” I
commented. “I can see lies.”

“All right.” John sat beside me
heavily and drained his wine glass. “I have a theory. I think whatever group is
after us has enlisted norms to help do...whatever they’re doing.”

“Why do you think that?” I needed
to work the topic around to,
Hey, are you a corporate spy?

“I haven’t smelled any supras at
the companies where we’ve been hit. On several occasions, I cleared the
premises before the job, and we got hit anyway.”

“What if it’s all norms? The US
government, trying to weed us out?” Conspiracy theories rose like a high tide.
“Maybe it’s a secret association and they’re hunting us, like Buffy hunted
vampires. What if they find our nest?”

“You watch too much television,”
John said. “These are burnouts, not slayings. It’s not the same thing.”

“Adam Donning and the other
consultants are in comas.” My brain spun its little hamster wheel, sawdust
flying in all directions. “Maybe they’re seeing how far they can push us.
Seeing what it takes to negate our powers.” As I said it, it felt right. “We’re
guinea pigs.”

“I don’t think so.” His certainty
made me doubt my logical conclusion. “If that were the case, why target a
single company and restrict it to job sites? They’d target all sorts of supras,
in all fields and walks of life.”

“They did hit other companies,” I
pointed out. “Psytech. Baumhauser. Maybe more. Who can grasp the minds of
maniacs? Or the US government.”

“Still restricted to consultants.
There’s only one explanation.” John poured himself a second glass of wine.
“Greed.”

I sipped my wine and studied him
over the rim. His brow wrinkled as he frowned in concentration, a familiar
sight. “What does Yuri think about your theory?”

“I haven’t shared with him. In
Atlanta, as far as I could tell, we were the only supras in the building, and
they pegged Walker. It could have been any of us. You. We can’t let that happen
to you, Cleo,” he said with a peculiar intensity.

“I’m not important enough.”

“Yes, you are.” He rubbed the
bridge of his nose. “You’re extremely important.”

“Stop it, you’re making me
blush,” I said, but he had a point. We were assuming the saboteurs didn’t know
about me. If the leak was John or Yuri, that was a false assumption, and I was
as much a target as anyone with high level skills. Good thing I hadn’t
concluded that before Atlanta or I’d have been even more of a nervous wreck.

“Why did you come home early from
Atlanta?” I asked him.

“I’m going back in a couple days.
I told them I had to take care of some things.”

“What things?” Bills to pay?
Secrets to leak? His theory and the fact he believed it didn’t mean he wasn’t
the mole. It might just be the truth.

He didn’t respond. When the
silence became measured in minutes instead of seconds, I took a deep breath to
ask him something along the lines of, “Are you leaking private YuriCorp
information to someone who’s not supposed to have it?”

He chose the moment before the
words left my mouth to speak. “When did you start dating him? Two weeks ago,
you said he was a bastard and you wanted him locked up.”

Okay. That was a topic change I
hadn’t expected. I chewed on my bottom lip. Truth or consequence? “Is this what
you wanted to talk to me about? You could have asked in a text.”

“That wouldn’t have been
appropriate.” He didn’t deny it was his intended topic.

“I’m not dating him,” I said.
“I’m doing him a favor.”

His brow unwrinkled slightly. “Is
that what they’re calling it these days?”

“You sound like an old codger. He
was tired of everyone trying to get a piece of him.” I waved away John’s offer
of a refill on my wine. “In case you hadn’t noticed, he looks a little
different now that his fade is gone.”

“I noticed,” he said dryly.

“Well, you can’t tell anyone our
epic romance is fake. He threatened to... Well, he threatened me, and I believe
him.” I didn’t want to tell John what Beau had threatened. It was embarrassing
to admit I was afraid of being embarrassed.

John clenched two very
uncustomary fists. “If he lays one hand on you—”

“John,” I said, “it wasn’t that
kind of threat. Come on! I’d have had Al kick his ass if he’d mentioned bodily
harm. I might be chicken, but I’m not dumb.”

John swiveled in his chair, put
his hands on my shoulders, and peered intently into my eyes. “I’m not talking
about violence.”

“There’s no other reason he’d lay
his hands... Oh.” I’d better not tell John about the kiss. “It’s not like
that.”

But it sort of was, and I’d
discovered today Beau wanted it to be more like that, because my life was
insane and so were all the men in it.

“That’s not what I heard.” John
ran a hand through his hair, mussing it further. “Why would you want to be with
him, Cleo?”

Samantha must have told him about
the kiss after I’d asked her not to. My face and ears heated with shame and
annoyance. Women hook up with men they ought to dislike all the time. “A, I’m
not with him. B, there’s no reason why I can’t make out with some guy if I feel
like it. I’m single.”

“Walker, of all people. You don’t
even like him,” John said. “It’s repellent.”

There wasn’t even a hint of mask
around John’s handsome face.

I’d never been fond of Beau. Right
now, I wasn’t fond of John. Whether or not he found the idea of me and Beau
repugnant, who was he to question my relationships?

I tried to raise one eyebrow,
failed, and jutted my chin instead. “Hell, John, maybe I’m horny and he was
available. Unlike someone else I could name.”

“You don’t know what you’re
talking about.”

“I haven’t gotten laid since I
moved to Nashville, and frankly it’s starting to interfere with my tranquil
nature.” I slapped my palms on my thighs and leaned toward him. “If we’re done
talking about this, I have a few things to ask you.”

John glared at me. “What?”

I was pissed enough that subtlety
was impossible. “Are you YuriCorp’s leak?”

Apparently being accused of
corporate espionage revved John’s motor. He cursed and dragged me into his lap.
One of his hands buried in my hair and held my head in place. The other arm
wrapped around my ribs like a seatbelt.

“Hey, what...” I managed.

He silenced me with a long,
drugging kiss. I resisted for less than a second. Our tongues tangled, teeth
bumped, all that hot jazz. One kiss led to another. In less time than it should
have taken, our shirts were in the floor, his mouth was at my breast, my hands
were hovering in the area of his waistband.

I shouldn’t let him sex me up,
but Christ, I hadn’t lied about the celibacy. John tasted good and felt better.
I melted like fondue. I petted his toned abdomen and chest, my hands drifting
lower and lower.

He cupped my ass and squeezed,
pressing me against him. His spot hit my spot. When I swiveled my hips, we both
groaned. Sensation blazed between my legs, up my spine and short-circuited my
brain. The first time we’d kissed, it hadn’t gone further than awkwardness.
Tonight, it looked like things were headed somewhere else without any help from
Samantha.

This was all John, giving in to
months of my seductive wiles.

This was all John, avoiding my
question.

I came up for air with a gasp.
“You didn’t answer me.”

He unhooked my bra and buried his
face in my bosom. “I’m loyal to YuriCorp. Hush.”

“You can’t hide things from me.”

He lifted my breasts and sucked
one nipple, then the other. My privates clenched. Oh, hell.

Panting, I tried again. “Why are
you doing this?”

John couldn’t answer when he had
a mouthful of boob. I squirmed and moaned. I was so not cut out to be a secret
agent, befuddling men with my body while sweet-talking information out of them.
I was too involved in my arousal to breathe evenly, much less trick John.

No tricking, then. How could I
let this continue unless I knew whether he was the mole? He had to be. Al
wasn’t, Samantha wasn’t, and John was behaving unlike himself.