The Whole Truth (The Supercharged Files Book 1) (2 page)

“Who exactly is behind us?” I
angled Boris’s carrier so his pee wouldn’t slosh on us and the car seat. I
poked my finger through the slats and wiggled it.

“The competition,” John said over
his shoulder.

“The government?”

Samantha laughed. “The government
is hardly what I’d call competition.”

She had no mask.

Somehow that worried me even more
than being politely kidnapped by people who knew I had mysterious powers—and
how to work around them.

~
* ~

“Where are we going?” I asked for
the hundredth time. Alfonso had jetted down the interstate southwest out of
Chicago until the city no longer glowed on the horizon behind us. With Chicago,
that takes a damn long time, too, especially when people keep telling you, “Be
patient,” with an increasing lack of patience themselves.

John met Samantha’s eyes in the
mirror of his sun visor, but neither answered. Whatever they knew about my
affliction, it must include the fact I couldn’t see a lie where silence
existed. Even the cats had settled down to the occasional moan and hiss.

I wadded the brown sack from my
dinner and pegged it into the front seat in disgust. John caught it without
comment. “I got in your car without screaming my head off, but if you don’t
cough up some info, I’ll consider this kidnapping. Catnapping, too. No court in
the world would side with you.”

Alfonso stuck a finger in his ear
and wriggled it. He cocked his head to the side and appeared to listen, to what
I have no idea. “We shook them,” he finally said. “They know where we’re headed
anyway, and I can run the blanket for a while. There’s no reason you can’t tell
her a few things.”

Finally!

“Tennessee,” Samantha admitted,
without any hint of a mask.

“Is that a joke?” I asked
sharply. Attacking people can be helpful. Sometimes when they get defensive,
they slip up. “I didn’t agree to go to Tennessee.”

“It’s not a joke. That’s where
we’re headquartered.” Samantha leaned against the opposite door of the car, as
far from Natasha’s claws and Boris’s pee as she could get. I’d stuffed the
napkins from my satchel through the cracks, so we weren’t in imminent danger of
urine groundswell. Alfonso had cranked the vents and we’d rolled down the
windows, but they refused to pull over so I could swish out the carrier. I
mean, the cat only had so much pee in him. Eventually he stopped.

“Isn’t it quicker to go through
Indiana? I have to work tomorrow.” I calculated distances mentally and realized
finishing the presentation at the office tomorrow, when there was nobody there
to interrupt me, would be out of the question. Not a tragedy, considering my
boss should have been doing it himself, but I’d certainly hear about it if I
didn’t come through.

John turned in the seat, his
elbow across the back. His nearly black hair swooped across his forehead like
he’d been running his hands through a formerly perfect coiffure. Which he had.

“We have somebody taking care of
your house and mail. We’ve also drawn up paperwork to notify your employer
you’re taking a medical leave of absence.”

My boss wasn’t going to like
that. He might have to do some work himself. “What affliction am I sporting for
the insurance company?” The obvious choice was a mental breakdown, but I wasn’t
going to suggest it.

“What do you want us to say?”

“The truth, of course,” I
quipped.

He smiled. “We’ll also compensate
you for any lost income, Miss Giancarlo.”

“I’m not worried about lost
income. I’m worried about being dissected by scientists.” They hadn’t bullied
me, but they had to be lunatics to kidnap two howling cats and a potential
alien-human hybrid to have a meet and greet in Tennessee. Hadn’t they ever
heard of conference calls? I loved the telephone. I couldn’t sense a single lie
through the phone lines. So far.

Samantha snorted. “Nobody’s going
to dissect you. Where we’re going, you’re nothing special.”

I was oddly wounded until I
noticed the skein of shadow around her. Not enough to read but enough to know
there was something fishy in her statement.

“Say again?” I asked, squinting.
“You’re going to an awful lot of effort for somebody who’s not special.”

Samantha rolled her eyes and
refused to elaborate. What a priss. In real life? We would not be friends,
despite the fact she had great taste in clothes and didn’t think I should lose
ten pounds.

“We’re interested in your
ability,” John said. “Look at me, Miss Giancarlo, so you’ll know I’m telling
the truth.”

I did. He radiated sincerity. His
gaze locked with mine. “We will not dissect you.”

“Then you can call me Cleo,” I
conceded. “Will you test me?”

“Yes.”

“Will it hurt?”

“No.”

“Will it take long?”

“That depends.”

I thought a minute. This was the
moment I’d always been waiting for—meeting the “others”. The ones who knew. It could
be life-changing to find out more about what I could do and why. Mom had always
refused to tell me anything about my biological father, the obvious culprit,
though you think she’d have mentioned if he was small and green and his ride
was this weird flying saucer car. Unless she’d been on too many drugs to
notice. Hell, the drugs could be the reason I was this way.

But since John and Samantha
seemed to have more knowledge about me than I did myself, maybe they could help
me turn the lie sight off. Then I could have sex without squeezing my eyes shut
the whole time. The last guy I slept with accused me of fantasizing about
George Clooney. Funny thing for him to say, considering who he fantasized
about.

And before you ask, I’d tried
blindfolds, with mixed results. Here’s news—you can’t trust a man when you
can’t see what he’s doing.

“Are you going to hold my cats
hostage and make me read the minds of politicians? I’m telling you now, you
don’t want to know what they think about.”

“You read minds?” Samantha’s eyes
widened. “I thought you—”

“I can’t. It’s a figure of
speech. What else would you call it?” I wished I could read minds. It sounded
less complicated than trying to read ghostly lips that hovered a few inches in
front of a liar’s face.

“What do you call it, Cleo?” John
asked, lobbing my question back at me.

“I don’t know. Seeing lies, I
guess.” Depending on the degree of dishonesty, my victims project a vague
mirage or a thick haze with distinct features that mouths the rest of the
story. A mask of truth, which is ironic, because masks usually hide the truth.
Worst of all is when the lies are so thick I can’t see the real person.

Or can I? I have to wonder.

“Seems like it would be a handy
skill.”

“Not when you can’t turn it off.
Everybody lies, John.” Except for John and Al, and only because they knew.
Samantha knew and couldn’t help herself.

“If you’d read her blog, you’d
know how much it pisses her off,” Samantha added. “She needs us.”

“So the blog finally got me into
trouble.” All this time I’d hoped my blog would strike a chord with somebody,
and now to discover the chord was sour. Well, I wasn’t a musician.

“You’re not in trouble.” John
swiveled toward the front of the car.

“I feel like I’ve met the people
you work with.” Samantha leaned on Natasha’s cat carrier and patted my arm. She
was one of those wee, touchy chicks. “You’re a vivid writer.”

“When you know everybody’s
secrets, it’s easy to be.” She liked my writing! I felt a relaxing glow of pleasure.
Maybe Samantha and I
could
be friends in real life.

Natasha took advantage of
Samantha’s proximity to slash through the vent in the carrier with a heartfelt
growl. Boris, hearing his sweet love crank it up in the other crate, began
panting loudly, like a dog. Or a cat very tired of smelling his own pee.

“Ouch!” Samantha jerked back.

“Sam, was that necessary?” John
asked.

“I’m telling the truth,” Samantha
grumbled. And she had been, I could vouch for that.

The two of them had a vibe I
wasn’t sure about. A little competitive, a little something else. Man, woman,
neither with a wedding band, both attractive.

With the right questions, I could
find out. “Have you two worked together long?”

Dead silence. Well, hell. I
hadn’t wanted to know their life stories, just whether or not they were
sleeping together.

I let the quiet drag and stared
out the window, tickling Boris through a gap until he calmed. I wondered what
to expect from this adventure and why I didn’t feel particularly threatened. I
should be. I should be scared to death. Mostly I was curious, tense, and
curious some more.

We passed a couple urban areas
and some farmland. Illinois was very flat. I’d city-hopped along the top of the
country—Seattle, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, New York. I’d never been further
south than Metropolis, Illinois, when my stepfather Dan and I had visited the
giant Superman statue and museum. Dan was a huge comics fan. It was something
my mother had never understood about him, and something I’d always understood.

Of course, I did have an
advantage. I needed to press it now in order to find out what was going to
happen to me.

“Let me ask you this,” I said,
hopefully after they’d lowered their guards a scooch. “When we’re done meeting
whoever you’re dragging me to see, can I go home?” I wasn’t especially attached
to Chicago, but I was used to it. Used to the lies of the people around me,
used to my routine. I knew the best places to shop, the best movie theatre
popcorn, the best routes to and from work. The cheapest gas was a block from
the freshest bagels with the pineapple cream cheese, and my bagel card lacked
two stamps before I got one free.

John shifted to face me, and
Samantha concealed a yawn, not very well. She’d been nodding off despite the
ammonia smell and cramped quarters. The darkness outside the windows, the sound
of the blacktop under the tires, was hypnotic if you didn’t happen to be wound
as tight as a pair of pointy-toed Jimmy Choos.

“You can go back to Chicago if
you want,” John answered. “But keep in mind, we aren’t the only ones who know
about you now. We can’t guarantee others won’t seek you out, and their methods
can be more...uncompromising.”

I resisted the urge to fix John’s
rumpled hair. Samantha might get jealous. If we were going to be gal pals, I couldn’t
move on her man. “Less compromising than dragging me cross country in the
middle of the night?”

“We’ll take you back if you don’t
like what we have to offer. They wouldn’t hesitate to blackmail you. They know
you’re close to your stepfather.”

“Leave Dan out of this. I’ll go
straight to the cops if anything happens to him.”

“They won’t do anything while
you’re under our protection. You’ll be fine. So will he.”

For the first time, I saw a waver
from John. A smidge of shade. He had doubts about whether Dan and I would be
fine. Was he worried about me or Dan? He, Samantha and Alfonso weren’t giving
me enough information to cross the street, much less a country.

I hadn’t been around conscious,
talking people this long without seeing masks since I’d turned thirteen and
woken to a grey world. All this bizarre honesty was making me edgy.

When I next spoke, I did it
loudly. Maybe it would stir them up if I yelled and accused.

“Just because I’m different, why
do you think you can jerk me around and turn my life upside down? I’m a U.S.
citizen. I have rights. My affliction is a private matter.” I tried not to
cringe at my cheesiness.

“Cleo, I know what you’re doing,
and it’s bullshit.” Samantha rubbed her eyes and yawned again. “If you didn’t
want anybody to know, you wouldn’t blog about people’s split personalities that
come to life. You’ve been screaming for attention.”

“I wasn’t screaming.” Though I’d
been known to begin my entries with “Argh!” “Lots of people blog about their
dissatisfaction.”

“Clues a child could follow.”
Samantha pushed her hair back, and it returned to its spot with nary a wisp.

I sighed. “Do you promise you’re
not going to make me run for office or fight terrorists? Or be a spy? I don’t
want to be a spy.”

“The people we’re taking you to see
don’t get involved in that kind of thing,” John assured me.

“Then what do you want from me?
What do you know about how I can do what I do?”

“Our boss will talk to you about
that.” John sniffed the air and wrinkled his forehead. “May I have your hand?”

I extended a pointy finger. He
took my whole hand and turned it over, and I swear, he licked my wrist over my
pulse. Tingles of pleasure, unexpected and sharp, shot up my limb and into
other places. Alfonso and Samantha acted as if nothing were unusual about their
comrade licking some woman’s arm.

I yanked my hand back, still
tingling. “What the hell?” I rubbed my wrist where he’d licked me, but I
couldn’t erase the strange, erotic sensation.

John appeared to mull something
over in his mouth and mind. “When you see lies, you must use a combination
of... It’s unique. It explains why Psytech was so anxious to get to you first.
We finally scooped them.”

“It’s about time,” Samantha said.
“Those jerks are running us into the ground.”

“You just licked me. Hey. Hey!” I
got their attention by yelling. The cats both meowed. “You licked me.”

“Yes,” John acknowledged. “It’s
one of the easiest ways to tell how you’re different from other people.”

 I had to know. “Do I taste like
beef instead of chicken? Am I an alien?”

Samantha burst out laughing. Even
Alfonso, who hadn’t spoken except to tell John and Samantha we’d shaken our
pursuers, grinned.

“You’re perfectly human,” John
said.

“Have you met many people like
me?”