The Whole Truth (The Supercharged Files Book 1) (22 page)

I was flattered whether I wanted
to be or not. The only people in my life who’d ever been proud of me were Dan
and a few of my friends, who were impressed by my ability to correctly “guess”
what their date really meant when he said “I’ll call you.”

“Did Yuri tell you my theory that
the leak and the saboteur might not be connected? The bad guy could be like me,
getting information from YuriCorpers without their knowledge.”

“Hence the picnic.” He grinned at
me, his canines prominent and his expression pleased. “You see? We needed you
here to point that out. You’ve helped, Cleo.”

Al rarely smiled that broadly and
I tried not to stare at his sharp teeth. “I could have done more if you hadn’t
handicapped me. You’re sure you’re not evil?” I asked, though I knew he wasn’t.
He was the head of security, and he knew something about this espionage stuff.

“I’m on your side. I’m also
against the interviews. We shouldn’t reveal what you can do.” He steepled his
fingers. “Not all positions at YuriCorp are consulting. The security branch
could definitely utilize your unique skills.”

“I was hired to be a consultant.”
The thought of my current occupation becoming permanent gave me a shiver that
had nothing to do with the fact Al kept his thermostat set on sixty-eight. “I
don’t want to do this all the time. I don’t like it.”

“It would get easier.” He leaned
forward, his stare intense. “If you agree to work for me, I have influence with
Yuri. The interviews don’t have to happen the way he says they do.”

What was this, a coup? Al was
willing to muscle Yuri into keeping me a secret, and all I had to do was switch
my job title from management consultant to security guard. I didn’t want to do
the interviews, but I definitely didn’t want to be a snitch the rest of my
life.

“Honestly, Al? I’d rather be a
consultant, even if it means everyone finds out,” I said. “I’m not cut out for
espionage.”

He shook his head. “They won’t
just find out, Cleo. Once your ability goes public, you’ll get offers left and
right. Yuri will, too. He’ll bump you out of regular consulting and into our
exclusive branch. Half of Arlin’s assignments are exclusives.”

John had mentioned YuriCorp had
patented one aspect of his suprasense but not that we had a branch for
specialized tasks. I guess they’d patent...me. “Do we have a lot of
exclusives?”

“Not as many as we did. Many of
them are consultants, too.” He scratched his scalp through his military style
buzz cut. “Adam Donning was one.”

“Oh. Gosh.” I coughed into my
fist and changed the subject. “Will you come with me when I question the
others?”

“No,” Al said. “Nobody’s going to
hurt you, Cleo. Don’t be such a chicken.”

But I was a chicken, and chickens
didn’t make good spies. The trail of feathers was a dead giveaway.

Which is exactly what I told Al.
After he forced a box of cookies on me, he told me I’d better hurry up and find
the weaknesses in YuriCorp’s chain of information or my bravery was going to be
sorely tested.

I suspected I’d fail that test.

Chapter 17

Two Down, Hell to
Go

John was due home from Atlanta
next weekend. I had to interview him before I could accuse Yuri of demolishing
his own company. It might be a challenge to corner John, all things considered.
If he’d been the leak all this time, he had compelling reasons to avoid me that
went beyond my personality.

While that possibility soothed my
feminine ego, it bruised my supra one. How could I have missed that? I couldn’t
imagine John, of all people, was a traitor. If it wasn’t Al or Sam and they
insisted it wasn’t Yuri... Process of elimination. However, Al hadn’t said the
suspect was one of the final four. For all I knew, it was somebody I’d already
crossed off my list.

Or two somebodies. Or four.
Dammit, I hated this job! Why couldn’t Al and Yuri just tell me the ringer?
Samantha wouldn’t tell me either. Like Al, she claimed she wasn’t authorized.

Unlike Al, she didn’t ply me with
cookies.

As another peace offering, Al
supplied me with a print-out of which YuriCorp family members were supras and
which were in the “norms who know” Registry database to study before the
picnic. It had photos and everything. I’d rather have had the identity of the
known leak.

My indignation ebbed and flowed
like my weight. I was light every morning, but by the end of the day, I’d
gained six pounds of pissed. It made my evening Q&A sessions with my fellow
employees interesting, that’s for sure. And oh joy, my friend had recovered
from my zing about her crumbling relationship with downtown Bob enough to leave
me a note that said, “If you don’t stop poking your nose into everyone’s
business, you’ll be sorry.”

If I weren’t so worried about the
fact nobody was making any headway finding the bad guys, least of all me, I’d
have quit my job and disappeared to Canada or the Everglades or the Mall of
America. We were all in this now, which is why it was such a crock of crap my
so-called team wouldn’t give me the one single lead any of us had.

Two more weeks. Two more weeks.
How was I going to find the mole in two weeks?

~ * ~

“Stay back! I don’t feel like
getting poked today.” I whisked away from Beau around the tall, black-topped
lab table. He brandished a needle and a short rubber tourniquet.

“That’s not what I hear.” He
waggled the needle. “What exactly have you been telling people?”

I thought about the tales I’d
concocted for Samantha, Ursula and Lou last Friday and blushed. Conscious of
Jolene in the back office, I said, “I didn’t want people to know how lousy you
are in bed, so I lied.”

Beau smiled. “Relax and let me
stick you.”

“Not today, I have a headache.” I
thought about fading my way out of it and decided against it. For now.

I couldn’t believe how much our
back and forth the past couple days had resembled flirtation—and how similar it
was to our conversations prior to Beau’s burnout. I hadn’t been consciously
flirting with him, and I hated it when my subconscious ruled my behavior.

The rumors of our relationship,
though, had made a difference in the traffic to the lab. There was more, people
hoping to catch Beau and myself in something illicit. We were the hottest
gossip item to hit the circuit my whole time here. I’d even heard that I’d
demanded Beau hide his sexy magnificence so I wouldn’t have to fight off the
competition.

My personal favorite. Me in
control of anything.

“I need to finish your DNA
tests.” Beau placed the needle and hose on a clean metal tray and leaned
against the lab counter, staring across at me. “I might start to wonder if
there’s something about your DNA you want to conceal.”

Any lummox could have figured
that out by now. On TV they used fake blood to hide alien origins, but I
couldn’t fake my own arm.

“Why didn’t you run these tests
five months ago?” How did Yuri and Al expect me to avoid Beau’s DNA tests
forever? It was just another resentment to place on their doorstep in a
nondescript brown baggie and set on fire.

“They’re tedious as hell.” He
gestured at one of the large silver machines near the wall. “I could do most
DNA testing without sending it through the Registry, but then I’d never have
time for anything else. Our machines aren’t as advanced as their equipment.”
The scowl on his face underscored his opinion of his primitive equipment—and my
balkiness.

“How about Labor Day?” I
suggested. “I need time to get my iron up.”

“Cleo,” Beau said, “if there’s
something you’re not telling me, I can find out as soon as my abilities
return.”

“If they return.” Hardly anyone
who’d suffered a breakdown in recent months showed any signs of supra recovery.
Adam Donning and several others were comatose despite Yuri and the other
companies enlisting every supra health specialist they could find.

“They’ll be back,” he said,
unperturbed. “Why don’t you level with me? I might understand your situation
better than you think.”

He was doubtless referring to the
fact his abilities ran deeper than anyone suspected. So he could see chameleons
in fade and hide from anyone, anytime. It was nothing that would make people
hate him (more). They already seemed to know he could go invisible.

My ability, on the other hand,
was less innocuous.

“It’s not that.” I sat on a stool
and fiddled with a pipette. If he didn’t drop this, I was going to have to chameleon
my way out of it. Hey, he was the one who’d trained me.

“I think it is.” Beau rounded the
table and faced me. “You’re going to lose this fight. Let me run the tests. I
won’t send it to the Registry lab. I’ll discuss the results with you before we
do anything. It’s not like this situation hasn’t occurred before.”

I wanted him to be conning me,
but he was one hundred percent sincere. No doubt supras before me had wanted to
downplay an ability, which reminded me of Lou’s rant about supras who abused
their powers. Which reminded me how everyone would loathe me once they knew
what I’d done, what I could do. All right, my inner circle wouldn’t hate me,
but since I hated all of them right now, that was no balm.

Deliberately misunderstanding
Beau, I said, “What do you mean, this has occurred before? You forced some
other poor woman to be your beard because you’re scared of sex?”

Beau threw his head back and
laughed. He really hooted. I stared at him in amazement because I’d never seen
him laugh before. Chuckle, smirk, snort, but never laugh like that.

Of course, it would be directed
at me.

“Cleo, where do you come up with
this stuff?”

“You must be asexual.” I pointed
the pipette at him and hoped Jolene wasn’t listening. “Why wouldn’t you want
people to know you’re gorgeous? Why wouldn’t you want dates? If I looked like
that, I’d flaunt it.”

“You have no trouble getting
attention.” He crossed his arms and rocked back on his heels. “Arlin pants
after you. Can it be this is a feminine ploy for compliments?”

“John doesn’t pant after me.”
John would hardly even talk to me.

“He’s as jealous as a dog with a
bone,” Beau said. His gaze dropped to my chest and then my legs. I was wearing
a coral blouse and his favorite Hawaiian print cropped pants. “There’s nothing
wrong with the way you look.”

“At one point you implied I was
fat.” I thought for a moment. “Two points. Maybe more. Give me time, I can
remember them all.”

He stroked his chin, as if
considering my claim. “Did you believe me?”

“No.” I don’t know whether I’d
have believed him I hadn’t seen his lies for myself. “It still hurt my
feelings. You are a mean person. Who’s asexual.”

At this moment, he didn’t look
asexual. He watched me with a predatory expression, his dark eyes hooded and a
smile playing on his lips.

He’d also closed the distance
between us without me noticing. With me perched on the stool, that put us at
eye level.

“Do you want me to kiss your
feelings and make them better?” He nudged my knee aside so he could stand right
in front of me. “Then you can tell me whether or not I’m asexual.”

I did.

No, I didn’t! “This is stupid.
Can we get back to work?” No parts of our bodies were touching, but not by
much. If I closed my legs to ward him off, they’d wrap around his hips. Who
would have guessed two weeks ago that this man would develop a bad habit of
invading my personal space?

“You’re the one interfering with
work, Cleo. I need your blood.” He caught my hand, flipped my wrist, and
stroked a dark finger up the underside of my arm until he reached the bend,
where my veins pulsed closer to the skin.

Then he stroked down, lingering
at my wrist. “Your pulse is elevated. Am I making you nervous?”

Better a coward who fades than a
victim of Beau’s hotness. I concentrated and felt an incipient tingle.

“Stop that.” He grabbed my chin
and forced me to meet his eyes. “Don’t fade, Cleo. We’re in the middle of a
conversation. Even I don’t do that.”

Were his suprasenses returning
already? Talk about rebound. “How did you know?”

“You squint and hold your
breath.”

I widened my eyes and exhaled
loudly. “I do not!”

He splayed his fingers across my
cheek, his pinky feathering my neck. His hip brushed my inner thigh. “Did you
know you can’t fool another chameleon who’s touching you?” he lied.

“Gee, you never mentioned that.”
I scooted away from him. Okay, I didn’t. I let my thigh connect with his body
and stared at his mouth for purely investigative reasons. “Why did you fade
yourself for years?”

Beau licked the corner of his
bottom lip. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“No.”

He leaned forward like he was
going to whisper the answer. He’d agreed to tell me if I pretended to be his
girlfriend, after all.

A shiver raced down my spine.
Before he could say anything, the lab door opened.

John loomed in the doorway, in a
suit and not a lab coat. “What the hell are you doing, Walker?”

Beau didn’t have the good grace
to back away from me. “I’m about to take Cleo’s blood.”

“Doesn’t look like it.” John
frowned, and it was a new kind of frown. Not the crease between his brows, the
worry wrinkle, but a black glower that put all his other frowns to shame.
“Cleo, I need to talk to you.”

“Now?” Had somebody tipped him
off I was questioning the inner circle?

“Soon.” He was still frowning.
“Tonight.”

“You’re back from Atlanta early,”
I commented lamely. I twisted on the stool, elbowing Beau until I escaped his
zone of influence. This was not how I’d wanted John to find out about Beau and
myself.

This was also not how I wanted to
begin my interrogation of John’s loyalty to YuriCorp, him annoyed with me for...what?
If he didn’t want me, why couldn’t Beau have me?

Guess I’d find out all sorts of
things tonight.

“Dinner?” I suggested.

“I’ll cook.” John didn’t wait to
see whether I’d agree to come to his apartment, he just slammed the lab door.
In the security camera focused on the outer hallway, we watched him stalk down
the hall toward Al’s office, posture stiff and shoulders squared.

“Guess somebody told him about
us,” Beau said.

“There is no us,” I hissed.

Beau pursed his lips. “There’s no
you and John, either.”

“What’s your point?”

“I don’t have one.” His mask told
a different story. “Just stating the obvious.”

According to his shadow, Beau was
the one who was jealous—of John. If I hadn’t been able to read him, I’d never
have suspected. When the hell had this happened? It was either of recent origin
or his defunct fade had hidden it from my lie sight.

If a fade do that, everything
he’d ever said was now suspect.

 Every chameleon I’d ever
questioned was now suspect. Well, hell.

He grabbed the metal tray with
the phlebotomy equipment and dragged it toward us, his face impassive. “Give me
your blood before I hold you down and take it.”

I did. This gig was up anyway.
What difference did it make if Beau found out a week ahead of schedule?

~ * ~

Before I could park in John’s
apartment lot, I had to wait for a pizza car to back out of the last space. I
followed the spicy scent of tomato and grease straight to John’s doorstep.

He stood in the foyer waiting for
me, a white cardboard box balanced on his hand. Contrary to our other out of
office encounters, I hadn’t dressed for this occasion. In fact, I’d downplayed
my charms as much as possible, when your charms are as ample as mine. An old
Superman Festival T-shirt, courtesy of Dan, and a pair of khaki shorts would
hopefully keep the evening on track.

I’d also worn my running shoes.
While John wasn’t somebody I imagined as willing to harm his fellow supras, I
also hadn’t imagined him as a corporate spy. I’d even considered inviting
Samantha. Half Pint was more protection than nobody, but she’d said something
about giving Alex the what for. Since she’d been wearing stilettos and a glare,
I hadn’t pursued that avenue further.

All in all, I felt underprepared
for anything the evening had in store. Butterflies that had nothing to do with
the fact I’d been trying to charm John for months plagued me. I was down to
John and Yuri as the leak, and John made so much more sense than Yuri, I felt like
he was a done deal.

John closed the door behind me
and locked the knob, the deadbolt, even the chain. My stomach lurched.

“Expecting a break in?” I tried
to keep my voice light instead of trembly and shrill.

“I always lock the door.” John
clicked the chain into place with a final snap. He still wore his suit, though
he’d removed his jacket.

To distract myself from my
anxiety, I indicated the pizza. “I thought you were cooking?”