The Whole Truth (The Supercharged Files Book 1) (32 page)

Clint readjusted me on his
shoulder again, sending waves of vertigo and pain through my head. “It sure as
hell won’t work if you shoot anybody else.”

“I didn’t hire you to question
me,” Lou told him. “I hired you as muscle. You know what happens if you step
out of line.” She jerked Samantha’s arm, and the smaller woman stumbled into
the breezeway of the barn. “Maybe we could start now.”

“See, this is too about me,”
Samantha said to Rachel, who shot her an evil glare. Sam grabbed Lou’s hand,
and they had some kind of power-off that ended with Lou hissing and shoving her
into Alex Berkley, who was trying to sneak out of the tack room. Lou raised the
gun and aimed.

She wouldn’t...would she? I alone
had seen the murder in her mask, but everyone had seen her shoot John.

Alex placed his hands on
Samantha’s shoulders as if literally getting her back. His fingers were streaked
red with blood. John’s, I assumed. His chiseled features were as cold as snow
and scary even in the warped triplicate of my upside down vision. “You don’t
want to do that, Mrs. Lampey.”

Lou certainly looked like she
wanted to do it. What could Alex the trisensor do? Was he doing it right now?

Whatever it was, Samantha
shrugged him off. “I can take care of myself.”

She could push somebody who was
grappling her, but she couldn’t stop a bullet. She should be ducking behind the
door of the tack room, not staring down the barrel of Lou’s pistol.

“I’m so tired of you both.” Lou
slammed the door in their face and turned to Clint. “Is Cleo burned out yet?”

“Dunno. You awake, honey? How do
you feel?”

“Fuuu.” I wasn’t saying “fine”. I
wiped my streaming nose and eyes on the back of his shirt, relieved it didn’t
smear red.

Not entirely red. Blood
discolored the mucus and my stomach heaved at the sight of it. Oh, that was not
good.

“I think she’s—” Clint began,
right before I hurled breakfast down the back of his legs.

“Going to be sick,” Clint
finished. “Ah, hell.”

“I didn’t peg her as a puker,”
Lou observed. “She always has such a good appetite.”

“Uhhhhhh.” I vomited again.

“If she’s puking, she’s fried.”
Rachel gulped back a sob. “Turn it off now. I can feel myself starting to burn.
Aunt Lou, please!”

“I’m not burning yet,” Junior
said. “Trey’s out cold.”

I heaved again, but nothing was
left. I was disappointed Clint hadn’t dropped me. I’d much rather be balled in
the fetal position on the cow barn floor than pretzeled over his shoulders. My
stomach muscles felt like I’d been repeatedly punched, but they were less
miserable than my poor head.

Lou inspected Rachel like she
would a half-completed customer service report. A pesky task that stood between
Lou and the end of her work day. “Chameleons don’t burn that fast. Don’t be a
sissy.”

“We’re running out of time.
Should I take Cleo to the maze?” Clint asked.

Lou checked her watch, reviving
her drill sergeant half over her psychotic killer half. “Junior, wake Trey and
send him to head off the hayride. Clint, take Cleo upstairs for five more
minutes. I’ll start erasing everyone down here.”

“You bet, Aunt Lou,” said the big
man. “Who cold-cocked him?”

We all turned. The first big man
still reclined on the floor of the barn, his face slack. He had Lampey features
identical to Junior’s. The twins.

Lou shook her head. “Arlin. These
people are management consultants, not military. I had no idea he had martial
arts training. I wish we could convert him to the cause, but Psytech’s got him
by the short hairs.”

Junior found a bucket, filled it
in one of the water troughs, and dumped it on Trey’s head.

The other man spluttered and
woke, and the twins conferred a moment before Trey trotted out of the barn. Or
was that Junior? No, Trey, because he was wet and dirty.

Clint passed Rachel, who was
crying quietly, on his way to the ladder. “Can’t you pick the lock on these now?”
she asked.

“No.” He hoisted me higher on his
shoulders and began to ascend the ladder.

This close to the opening, the
noise from upstairs became shriller, louder. My vision went grey, white, grey
again. Stroke? I bumped and jounced. Clint’s body worked beneath my stomach and
legs as he climbed.

Suddenly I was flying through
space and landed in a much too thin cushion of hay. My head thunked the floor.
From inside my skull of pain, it sounded like a watermelon splitting open. I
rolled to the side, free of Clint’s paralyzing touch but in too much agony to
crawl away.

“Kid’s not cooked yet?” Herman
shouted. He was seated in a chair sipping a jug of tea. I couldn’t help but
notice he was as far from his machine as he could get without climbing to the
top of hay mountain. “I worked on her all week. She should be softened up. Much
more and this’ll stroke her out. If she can’t walk, she can’t run errands.”

“Lou wants a few more minutes,” Clint
yelled.

Herman cursed. “Lou won’t notice
if I turn it down. She’s all touch sense.” He started to rise.

My vision flashed white again,
wavery. Tears poured out of my eyes. When I sneezed, blood speckled my hands.

I squinted, saw Clint’s head
disappear down the ladder, right before something electrical popped, and the
horrible noise snapped off.

“Damned machine.” Herman hobbled
over to his contraption, but stopped abruptly before he got there.

“I heard that. Who’s there?”

No one answered.

Herman fiddled with switches,
turned a few dials. No noise. He shoved his headphones around his neck and
thumped to the exit. “Did somebody unplug the extension cord down there?”

My head contained an echo
chamber. Every noise rebounded and doubled. Too bad it wasn’t a sensory dep
chamber because I could use a cease fire from my nerve endings. When I breathed
too deeply, my chest hurt. Clint and Lou assumed I was down for the count,
leaving me up here with rickety Herman and his cane—unless he had a gun, too.

They might be right. I struggled
to move and failed. Tried again and rolled off my thin padding onto bare
planks. Damn.

Somebody downstairs shouted, and
our overhead bulb clicked off, leaving Herman and me in the dark. The only
light emerged from the exit and a few thin cracks in the walls.

“Do they want me to break my neck
up here?” Herman grumbled.

“Herman,” I groaned. “I’m over
here, don’t trip on me.”

Somebody’s hand brushed my cheek
and covered my mouth. I smelled the distinct, tinny odor of the dunking booth.
“Shh.”

Beau’s face wavered into focus.
Barely. It was very dark in the loft. “Took you long enough.”

“Made a few calls. Popped a few
locks.” Rachel’s missing headphones encircled his neck. He grazed my lips
gently with his thumb and disappeared again. My eyes began to adjust to the dim
lighting.

“Who’s with you, Cleo? That you,
Herman, Jr.? Oh, shit.”

When I maneuvered myself into
position to see what Herman was cussing about, Beau stood beside him with a
taser-like weapon to his head. “I think you know what this is, considering you
invented it. Don’t say a word.”

Herman nodded.

Beau slipped handcuffs out of his
pocket and secured Herman to a chain against the far wall that may have been
used to raise and lower hay bales. I rolled into a sitting position and dabbed
my face with my shirt. My skin felt chapped. All the blood seemed to have come
from my nose—none from my ears or eyes. My head pounded, but not as bad as when
the machine had been active.

Beau returned to my side and
checked me for injuries. I assumed that’s what he was doing when he rubbed
various parts of my anatomy, particularly my throat and head.

If Clint’s touch had been
branding irons, Beau’s was sunshine and satin. He threaded his fingers through
my hair, massaging my scalp.

“Feels good.” I leaned against
him, inhaling the harsh odor of his damp clothing. “Do my neck.”

After glancing at Herman and the
loft exit, he complied. “Summarize the situation.”

“Lou’s psycho. Wants to kill bad
supras. I was supposed to find out who—” I coughed, covering my mouth. No blood
flecks, good. “I was supposed to find out who was hitting our people. Bleeding
info out of YuriCorp. She caught me. Can you believe I did it?”

His hands paused, my head cradled
in the crook of his arm. “I can believe it.”

“Don’t stop touching me.” It hurt
to think when he wasn’t rubbing my head. Every part of me that didn’t ache
wanted to crawl inside his skin, where it was safe and pain-free. Granted, it
wasn’t much of me, but it was enough that I wondered.

What it would be like.

Beau apparently wondered, too.
“Are you amped?”

“They made me.” I placed my
fingertips against his cheekbones. “I feel strange. I feel terrible, but I also
feel strange.” When I touched his hair, it was powder soft. Not what I
expected.

He trapped my hand against his
chest. “I have to go.”

“How’d you spot Rachel in
Atlanta, boy? She’s the best chameleon I’ve ever met.” Herman called from the
other side of the barn. “I knew she screwed up. Not my machine. Were you even
burned?”

Beau didn’t bother answering
Herman. We gazed at one another like two people who didn’t argue every time
they were in the same room. He pushed my hair away from my face and for a
minute, I thought he might kiss me. My lips parted. A kiss would ease the
aftereffects of a burnout. Wouldn’t it? Endorphins were pain blockers.

Clint’s head popped into the
loft. “Lou wants the burner on,” he told Herman. “Hey, what—”

He was yanked downwards and I
heard a crash. More fighting, yelling. Apparently they were going at it with
trash cans. Samantha’s voice, Rachel screaming. Somebody hollering about sons
of bitches. The gun went off, but it didn’t halt the brawl.

I didn’t get my kiss. “Don’t even
think about it,” Beau warned me before settling me into the hay.

Was he talking about kissing or
entering the fray?

“Don’t come downstairs.” He
dropped through the opening like a paratrooper.

I not only thought about it, I
crawled to the exit and wobbled halfway down the ladder before I realized how
stupid I was. I had no business climbing ladders when I’d been burned, amped
and tossed around like a sack of potatoes.

For the second time that day, I
lost my grip and fell off the ladder, onto my back in the barn floor.

The world shook. Somebody tripped
over me and landed with a tremendous thunk, liberating farm implements from
their hangers. I rolled toward the ladder and used it to leverage myself up.

Junior had plunged headfirst into
the wall next to Alex Berkley, who had a cut on his cheek and a swollen eye.

“Thanks,” Alex said before he ran
toward another part of the barn.

A bit unsteadily, I grabbed a
shovel off Junior’s back and held it above him in case he stirred. If I could
kick Rachel in the head, I could knock somebody back out with a shovel.

I should have kicked Rachel
harder. She was still handcuffed to the wall, screaming for no apparent reason.
She groped for a trash can lid and hurled it at me, but it curved like a
Frisbee and flew into a cow stall.

“Stay back!” she screamed at me.

Like I’d bother. She was
handcuffed. I scanned the barn’s breezeway.

Samantha and Lou were tussling,
the gun in the dirt. I had to assume their powers negated each other, because
Lou did not seem persuaded and Sam did not seem forgetful.

Trey slumped on the ground inside
the tack room, John on a crate beside him with his shirt bandaging his leg and
a pitchfork at the twin’s neck. Good thing the twins had ended up essentially useless,
because our team didn’t seem so adept at hand to hand.

This left Clint, who shifted
Samantha’s—no, his—taser between Beau and Alex as they approached from
different sides.

Alex jabbed at Clint, but he
blocked and latched onto Alex’s wrist. They grappled, cursing one another. I
figured Alex was a goner, but he knocked the taser out of Clint’s hands before
they broke apart, chests heaving.

The Clint effect had no effect on
Alex?

Beau snatched the taser off the
floor right as Lou flung Samantha into a garbage can.

“A little help here?” Samantha
yelled. “I think my ankle’s broken. Ow, shit, Lou, don’t step on it!”

“I’ll handle McAdams,” Beau said.

And he promptly disappeared,
taser and all. Right before everyone’s staring eyes.

“I knew it!” Rachel shouted.
“Zone defense, Clint, like we practiced.”

“Fuck this. I’m out of here.”
Clint took off toward the pasture.

Should I go for the gun? Stay
where I was? Steal a car and speed to the picnic, shouting for Al to bring the
cavalry? Beau had said something about making a few calls. Had that included
reinforcements?

“I don’t want to hurt you, Mrs.
Lampey,” Alex said. She feinted. He dodged.

“I saw you try to fight my boys.
You won’t hurt me.” Lou flexed her fingers and circled him. She was nimble for
such a burly woman. Perhaps her gym trainer taught her wrestling. “What are you
gonna do, Berkley? You can’t push me like your girlfriend does, and you
obviously can’t box.”

“I am—”

When he was mid-sentence, she
pounced. He sidestepped—not far enough. She laughed and seized his chin in her
hand.

“Forget about it,” she ordered.

Alex blinked, his eyes clouded.
Then they sharpened, as did his smile. “Your money’s no good here.” He tried to
twist her arm behind her back.

“Damn, one of those.” Lou kneed
Alex’s crotch and dashed for her gun.

As he doubled over and gasped,
the wuss, Samantha’s foot intercepted the gun. She kicked. The weapon skidded
toward Rachel.