The Whole Truth (The Supercharged Files Book 1) (15 page)

Three days into it, another fear
hadn’t been affirmed, either. Beau remained content with my contributions,
thanks to my sly and desperate maneuvering. Whenever I read a juicy lie during
an employee interview in which Beau was present, I made sure to encounter said
employee “in the break room” or “in another meeting”. He took every opportunity
to let me know what I was doing wrong, but I was still able to function.

John could only smell so many
people before he had to leave information-gathering to experts like me and
Beau, so he aided us—me—as much as possible. He was the front man for our extrasensory
operation. The John who frowned all the time was not the John on site. This
John was friendly, charismatic—I mean, where did that come from?—and exuded an
aura of trustworthiness that put everyone at ease. If I hadn’t known better,
I’d have suspected him of some kind of Samanthaness.

I hoped I knew better. Seeing him
on the job made me wonder if Beau and I were the only ones who had secret
talents.

As for Beau, he should stay
faded. He’d make more friends if people didn’t know he was in the room. I got
the impression he resented the suit and tie. Getting out of bed in the morning.
The selection of local restaurants. Riding in elevators. Sharing a room with
John at the hotel. I’d considered offering to share my room with John, but he’d
been a cold fish since the kiss.

The cold fish and I had to cover
for Beau several times when he broke fade and shot off his mouth, as if the
assignment were leaching whatever civility he’d mastered. Some poor woman from
Accounts bluffed her way through our questions about job performance, and he’d
jumped her ass.

I guess he’d had enough, but so
had I—of him.

“Why is he allowed to leave the
lab?” I asked John the next morning. We had assembled our notes over Starbucks
and canned sodas we bought outside the office and didn’t allow out of our
sight. John wanted me to strike out on my own today; Beau disagreed.

John shook his head. “He’s good.
You know that.”

“He’s an asshole. No home
training. He can’t be trusted to act like he’s getting paid to do this, and it
makes us look bad.”

Beau stood up on the other side
of the table. “I’m right here.”

I smiled. “I know.”

Beau had maintained a low grade
fade the whole time we’d been on assignment, but a low fade didn’t phase people
who knew him. I wondered if the fade was some instinctive reaction to his
unwillingness to be here.

“She’s not ready to work alone,”
he said. “She’s no better than a norm when she opens her mouth. Now you want to
turn her loose?”

“She’s interviewing the
administrative staff.” John blew his nose in one of his special antibacterial
tissues. Was it fair that, with a reddened nose, he was still handsome enough
to make me want to violate his personal space? “They’re often retained in this
type of merger.”

“I’ve got a rapport with them.” I
could use my skills to flatter someone when I wanted to, and they all thought I
was a sweetheart. “Piece of cake.”

“She’s terrible with security.”
Beau placed his fists on the table and leaned forward. “Going out to lunch with
those women yesterday without either of us present? Not regulation.”

We’d gone to a nearby mall for burgers
and sales, but a bargain-hunting woman is a woman too distracted to bother with
subterfuge—unless you asked her opinion of a really ugly pair of shoes.

“I knew where she was.” John
tossed the tissue into the trash. “She wasn’t in any more danger than either of
us.”

Beau huffed and tightened his
lips. “Not all employees who burned out did it at the customer site. And none
of them were idiots who wouldn’t recognize a threat if spit in their face. This
isn’t a great part of town, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

The building that housed Wyse
Money wasn’t high gloss. There were scrapes on the walls, tufts on the carpets,
and the computers caused the employees some degree of grief. The units outside
the conference room emitted a lot of beeps and ominous, high-pitched tones.

Sometimes there was cursing and
wailing. Other times, nobody seemed to notice.

“Having another supra around
hasn’t kept anyone safe,” I pointed out, though the possibility of the bad guys
hunting me down at the mall hadn’t occurred to me. “You do interviews alone.
What’s eating you, Beau?”

Beau stalked away from the table
and stretched, his shirt untucking from his pants and lopping over the
waistband. “Not my professional jealousy of your competence, that’s for sure.”

Troll. “That’s right. Take it out
on me. It’s better than taking it out on our clients.”

“It’s a specific strategy used in
garnering confessions,” he said. “Shock startles people out of defensive posturing.”

“So we’re the Redneck
Inquisition.” I sipped my Starbucks and watched him over the rim, pacing like a
wind up toy. He didn’t realize he was pontificating to the Mistress of Truth.
“Should we break out the bright lights and pointy things?”

“Make all the jokes you want.”
Beau paused by the window and rubbed his fingers along his hairline. “That’s
exactly what we’re doing.”

“Whatever we’re doing, we should
do it properly dressed.” The back of his shirt was as wrinkled as if it had
never been ironed. John’s tailored shirts were always perfectly starched.
“Button up, cowboy. Your inner slob is showing.”

“Children,” John said, “we have
work to do.”

That morning’s bickering, as
essential for Beau and me as morning coffee, set John on the wrong path. Instead
of Fancy New John, in the sessions he conducted with the uppity ups, he
frowned. Or maybe that’s how you’re supposed to consult with uppity ups—act
serious and solemn since, in the near future, a bunch of people are going to
lose their jobs. Yuri, Al and our other managers had been exuding that same
solemnity the past couple of weeks, and it was a relief to escape from
YuriCorp’s tension and immerse myself in Wyse Money’s.

During the session with customer
service—my mano-a-mano interviews were after lunch—John pulled me out of my
quasi-fade and spoke to me directly, a YuriCorp procedural no-no. It disturbed
clients to realize they’d forgotten someone who was sitting calmly beside them,
taking notes.

“Cleo, what was the percentage
Mr. Haverson gave yesterday? I can’t read your handwriting.”

“Uh.” Stu Haverson, the VP of the
purchasing company, sat in on most meetings but wasn’t in this one. Did John
want me to clarify what had come out of Stu’s mouth or what he’d lied about?
“He may have mentioned...” with great dishonesty “...that no department would
be cut by more than twenty percent.”

The Customer Service Director
frowned, inspecting me as if she’d forgotten I was there—which she had. “I need
to retain my whole staff,” she said, a mask popping on and off around her face
like a blinker. Considering her staff was in the meeting with her, what else
could she say?

“If you’re looking at ways to
preserve jobs, allowing employees to multitask instead of outsourcing cuts
several financial corners.” John paused and sneezed into one of his tissues.
“Excuse me, I seem to have caught a cold.”

“It’s the pollen count,” said the
woman. “It’s driving everyone mad. I’m sure Mr. Haverson will agree none of my
employees are redundant.”

Except for the ones that get
on my nerves
, said her mask.

I wrote a note to that effect on
my YuriCorp-only clipboard and shot the woman an innocuous smile. She was on
Stu’s chopping block herself but it wasn’t our place to tip the employees off.

“Thanks, Cleo.” John shuffled
papers. “Do you have any other questions?”

“No.” I wasn’t supposed to ask
questions. Good thing Beau wasn’t here. I was pretty sure he wasn’t here.
Suspiciously, I glanced around the room. If he was here, his fade was too
strong for me to pierce without effort. It’s not like he could be invisible,
just that my conscious mind would register him as “this is not the jerk you’re
looking for”.

“Anyone else?” John asked. No one
spoke.

I concentrated on reestablishing
my fade and felt the peculiar tingle across my face that indicated I’d
succeeded. I’d been assuming the flush was embarrassment all this time. Once I
managed that, it was no trouble to read the lies of the assembled staff.

I didn’t learn anything else
relevant. The afternoon interviews would be easier. With free reign, I could do
my job more efficiently than the whole good cop, invisible cop set-up. I
wouldn’t have to pretend to be a chameleon, and I wouldn’t have to wait for
John to ask the questions. Best of all, I wouldn’t have Beau cataloguing every
misstep.

After lunch I began my interviews
with a sense of anticipation. I had to mind the security protocols, but they
didn’t affect what I was going to do much. I wasn’t to eat or drink anything
offered or let anyone I hadn’t vetted touch me. I was to keep the doors closed
in whatever room I was using, stay away from the windows, and avoid pointy
objects.

Piece of chocolate cake. I had a
rapport with these women.

Part one of my solo flight was a
group session with the administrative staff, some of whom I’d accompanied to
the mall yesterday. When they were seated in the smaller conference room,
facing me expectantly, knowing my presence had something to do with who was
going to be let go, I realized something horrible.

I had no idea what I was going to
say.

Chapter 13

Uber-Sneaking, the
Sport of Lizard Kings

“Um.”

Good start, me.

“Hi, everyone.” What the hell was
I thinking, asking to do the whole segment? Group sessions weren’t private
conversations where I could concentrate on one person at a time. I had all these
people to read, all these people to get information from at once. I couldn’t
ask weird questions and gloss over them by reformatting my quarry’s lies.

I found myself wandering too
close to the windows and hopped sideways. “Nervous.”

They looked at each other.
“Whatever’s going to happen will happen,” a dark-haired lady said. “We’ve been
living with the news of this merger so long, we’re beyond nervous.”

“I mean, I’m nervous. How are
you?” They were all employees of a year or more, so unless they’d been
recruited, none were likely to be YuriCorp’s saboteur. I couldn’t imagine a
conspiracy running
that
deep.

Fear of burnout, however, wasn’t
drying my mouth and dampening my palms.

“Not nervous,” she said with a
laugh. She was the senior administrative staff member here today, the executive
secretary for one of the VPs. She was one of those intimidatingly professional
women with perfect clothes, hair and makeup, a gold chain with a tiny pendant
her only jewelry. However, she had a wicked glint in her eye and awesome taste
in power suits. And she was as short as I was.

I liked her already.

“Nice to meet you, Gladys,” I
said, squinting at her badge. They’d been wearing nametags this week for our
benefit. Several of the younger women had added smiley faces and glitter to
theirs.

I tried to channel Pavarti,
before her burnout. Samantha, without the rubbing and petting. Fancy New John’s
penetrating sincerity.

Instead I channeled pipsqueak.

“I’m sure you all know you’re
here today to, ah, undergo employee assessments. I mean, undergo makes it sound
like it’s a medical procedure, but it’s not. No painful, invasive probes,” I
said. “With, you know, medical probey things and biopsies.”

Gladys crossed her arms, and most
of the women began to shift in their seats. My God, was I nuts? Probes and
biopsies? My face started to tingle as I wished I were somewhere other than
here.

Uh-oh.

“Basically it’s an interview,” I
said in a rush, hoping I could get this over with before I faded. “We’ll talk
about your feelings and the merger and all that touchy gushy crap.”

“You’re new at this, aren’t you,
sweetie?” asked a white-haired lady in the corner. “You’re that intern.” She
and Gladys hadn’t gone to the mall with us.

“Yes, ma’am.” I took a deep
breath. Was it a fade or embarrassment? When I talked it would blow my fade,
anyway. “We’ll do the interviews and skip the pep talk. You guys are the
secretaries. I mean, administrative assistants.” Damn, I’d been told not to use
that term. “You know what’s going on more than management.”

“Sounds good.” Gladys spoke for
the group. “What are we supposed to do while we wait our turn?”

“I have questionnaires to hand
out.” I shuffled through my box. “You can stay here while you fill them out or
go back to your desks. I’ll fetch you for interviews. I think we can get
everybody done today.”

“I don’t suppose you know who’s
going to get laid off, do you?”

I had a good idea, based on what
Stu had lied about and what we planned to recommend so far, but I wasn’t
allowed to hint. “We’re only the assessment company. YuriCorp’s primary
management philosophy revolves around
kaizen
—change for the better. That
means working with employees instead of putting employees out of work.” I felt
like a geek, quoting the slogan on our website, but they seemed to buy it and
turned their attention to the paperwork.

“Who wants to be first?” I asked.

“I need to get this over with. I
have a bunch of portfolios to assemble for the sales staff,” Gladys said. We returned
to the office I’d been given to conduct interviews.

I sat on the boss side of the
desk in the small, cluttered room. A bookcase heavy with business and investing
manuals lined one wall, partially blocking the window. In the other corner was
a filing cabinet teeming with plants that seemed like they could be used as
deadly weapons. The office was obviously somebody’s, somebody with unattractive
children, goggling at me from matching gold frames next to the blotter. I
assumed they weren’t Gladys’s because they were mutt white and she appeared to
be of Asian descent.

Gladys sat in one of the two
chairs next to the door and crossed her legs.

“Cute kids.” I indicated the
frame, half-turning it so she could see.

“They’re monsters.”

“Oh.” Silence descended as the
expanse of the messy desk yawned between us like a sleepy dog. I didn’t want to
sit here with the monster children watching me, condemnation in their gazes, so
I rolled my chair to middle of the room without getting up. I had to scrabble
on the plastic mat, but eventually I made it.

“That’s better.” I shuffled my
clipboard and pen into note-taking position and smiled at Gladys. “Let’s get
started.”

“I’m ready whenever you are,” she
said.

“I, ah, have my own interview
questions,” I told her. “Hopefully they’re less boring.”

“I’m sure they’re fine.”

In an attempt to be casual, I
thought about propping my feet against the chair on the other side of the door
but decided against it. My skirt was knee-length. “So, how do you like working
here?”

She glanced at her paperwork.
“You realize that’s the first question on the form, right? Do you want me to
write it down or answer you?”

I blushed. Definitely a blush,
not a fade. “We’re here to chat. Do the paperwork later.”

“How do I like working here,” she
mused. “It’s a short drive from my house, which is a blessing in Atlanta
traffic, and the health insurance policy is excellent.”

I scanned the questions and found
my favorite. “What do you feel could be done to improve working conditions at
Wyse Money?”

“I’d rather not say,” she lied
while scribbling on her documents. I couldn’t be positive, because her shadow
lips were moving too fast, but the truth of the matter was something along the
lines of
Assholes assholes assholes!

Masks were not always especially
eloquent.

Outside the office, I heard a
computer start bleeping like the one outside the conference room. The network
here was falling apart. “Bet you’d like new computers,” I joked.

“They upgraded us last year.
Before that it had gotten pretty bad. Still on Windows 98.”

Huh. They must have done a cruddy
job, if the strident machines outside here and the big conference room were
anything to go by. When you were used to the worst, the mediocre impressed you.

Which meant the new management
might make everyone here quite happy.

“Do you have any advice for the
incoming owners?”

“Don’t fire me.”
Fire the
assholes!

Such a relief to skip fading and
ask the questions myself. This was so much easier. “Do you feel you’ve been
able to work up to your potential at Wyse Money?”

Gladys sighed and put her pen
down. “Cleo, I’ve got a BS in Economics, and I spend my time filing, copying,
writing things in a calendar, reminding people what I wrote in the calendar,
answering phone calls, and putting up with...” She smiled. “What do you think?”

Her mask thought she could be
running this place better than those assholes.

I wrote down that Gladys was
underused and overqualified, so they were getting a great deal if she was
willing to stay. “What is your biggest strength as an employee?”

“Patience,” she said without
hesitation or dishonesty. “Can I list more than one?”

“Sure.” I poised to write them
down but didn’t take my attention off her in case she tried to pad her image.

She didn’t. “I’m never late, I
don’t download viruses on my computer, I don’t conduct personal business during
office hours, and I don’t gossip.”

Wow. This woman was the Mary
Poppins of the administrative world.

“What about your biggest
weakness? Be honest.” I kept a straight face, something I’d perfected over the
years.

“Nothing that affects my ability
to work,” she said.
Unless I come out of remission.

Oh, dear. I’d joked about
biopsies. Pain twinged between my eyebrows.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted out.

Gladys eyed me with interest, one
thin, dark eyebrow arching. “For what? Are you going to recommend they let me
go because I exhibited hostility and lack of team spirit?”

“No, no.” Dag nab it! “I’m sorry
I have to ask so many questions. What do you think other people would say your
biggest strengths and weaknesses are?”

“I don’t pay attention to what
other people say.” The air around her face fuzzed.

“I can’t write that down.”

“All right.” Gladys glanced at
the other chair as if checking for spies. She was leery of the wrong people if
she wanted to keep things hidden. “People love the fact they can dump a project
on me at the last minute and I get it done. People do not love the fact that
sometimes I bring my dogs to work with me.”

The truth was often stranger than
the lies people dreamed up. I pictured German Shepherds running up and down the
cubicle aisles. “Your dogs?”

“I breed Poms.” She clasped her
fingers on the edge of her leather notepad. “If I can’t get a pet sitter and
one of my babies is on meds, I bring her to work with me. I have a deal with
Mr. Turner but some people don’t appreciate it.”

“Do they want to bring their dogs
too?”

“Most don’t have dogs.” Her lips
tightened. “To each their own, I suppose.”

“Most offices don’t allow
animals. Do you feel no one has a valid reason to protest?”

“The girls are no trouble,” she
said emphatically. “They stay in my office. They don’t bark, they don’t have
accidents, and I wipe them with anti-allergen cloths to cut down on dander.
Anyone who has a problem just wants something to complain about.”

“They sound sweet.” My interview
with Gladys was fascinating, but I should finalize it. I already knew I was
going to recommend the new employers keep her. They needed a kick in the pants
like Gladys around. “How does the administrative staff feel about management?”

“They have the same complaints
you find anywhere. Lack of respect, menial tasks, coffee stains.” She grimaced.
“Coffee fetching.”

I nodded. “Been there, done that.
Spilled it accidentally.”

We both smiled.

“I’ll drop by later and pick up
the paperwork,” I said. “Tomorrow’s fine, too.” We rose in tandem. I clasped my
clipboard and realized I couldn’t shake her hand. I started to fling it into
the other chair, thought better of it, and set it down behind me. I wished I
could tell her more. I wished I’d worked with more people like her in the past.

“Thank you.” We shook hands and she
exited with a little wave, leaving the door open. I picked up my clipboard so I
could sit back down when a giant bang startled me.

I dropped the clipboard and
whirled, my hand to my throat. Beau slouched in the chair that was no longer
empty, a look of utter disbelief on his face. His hand lay against the door
he’d just slammed.

“How the hell did you sneak in
here?” I asked, my heart thudding.

He narrowed his gaze. “You’re not
a chameleon, are you, Cleo?”