The Whole Truth (The Supercharged Files Book 1) (7 page)

Ignoring the fact John had told
me to stay put, I unlocked my door and jumped out of the truck.

And promptly sank to my knees,
more wobbly after our near-crash than I’d expected.

A hand caught me before I bit gravel.
“Cleo, I asked you to stay inside.”

“We need to see if the other
driver is all right.” Nobody had clambered out of the black sedan, a bad sign.
“He could be sick. We should call 9-1-1.”

I leaned into the cab and
scrambled for my purse. In the commotion, it had wedged itself under the seat.

“Let me check it out first.” When
John stepped toward the other vehicle, all the doors opened and four people
stepped out in unison.

“They had to have practiced
that.” When I realized they were all wearing ball caps, sunglasses, and black
track suits, I added, “Should I call 9-1-1 now?” This had all the signs of a
carjacking.

That’s when the car behind us
closed the distance, executed half of a three point turn, and parked next to
our tail end.

“John, look out!” After the
warning he probably didn’t need, I leapt into the cab and slammed my door.
Since John wasn’t in the truck, I didn’t shut his door, but I did whip out my
phone.

“Arlin,” one of the men said to
John. “We’d like a word.”

I quit dialing. This made the
second time I’d come within a digit of invoking the cops when John was
involved.

With one snap of John’s spine,
his posture changed to stiff and angry. “I don’t have anything to say to you and
neither does she.”

Wait a minute, she? I was she.

“She’s not registered yet,
friend. As I believe she informed one of our compatriots last night, it’s a
free country.”

“She’s our guest.”

“You hid her away, Arlin. You
prevented open access. Bad form.”

More Psytech assholes. Though
they were older than Alex, they had that look about them, glossy and confident,
including the woman. What would John do if they wanted to kidnap me? Punch a
senior citizen?

I wasn’t going to be dragged off
by four oldsters who were nowhere near as well-dressed as John, Samantha and
Alfonso. Matching track suits—really? They looked like the early bird buffet
eating team.

I wrenched open the glove box,
hoping for a gun or pepper spray. In the terrible mess inside, the closest
thing I found was a tire pressure gauge. Should I call the cops and involve
them in what was evidently supra business?

Right now it seemed like the
wisest choice. I hit the final “1” on the phone, but when I lifted it to my
ear, all I got was static. Shit! What a time to be too far from a cell tower.

“Miss Giancarlo.” The shortest
guy tapped the brim of his cap and raised his voice so I could hear him.
“Please don’t call the police. We mean you no harm.”

I rolled down the window. “You
made us wreck! Look at the fence. Tell Psytech to leave me alone. I mean,
Jesus! This is like a bad Mafia movie. You stalk us down a deserted road, and
I’m supposed to believe you mean us no harm?”

The thugs and thuggette appeared
taken aback by my tirade, but the short guy said, “We’re not with Psytech.
We’re with Baumhauser.”

“I don’t care who sent you. You
pissed me off. Now get out of our way because I need my dinner. You don’t want
to see my sugar bottom out, trust me.”

“We’d love to take you to
dinner.” The man took off his shades, which had been concealing a mad monobrow.
“Steak? Lobster? You name it, missy. Anything you like.”

A shadow fell across me, and
Alex, who’d apparently been in the second car, placed a hand on top of John’s
truck and peered in the passenger window. I scooted to the middle of the bench
seat so he couldn’t touch me or breathe on me or whatever he might need to do
to use his powers on me.

“Hello, Cleopatra. Are these
people bothering you?”

If I leaned closer to roll up the
window, he could grab me. I gripped my tire gauge. “What the hell are you doing
here?”

“Following you.”

“Why are you here, Berkley?” one
of the track suits yelled in a voice that shook with age. “You had your chance.
Go soak it.”

“Now who’s trying to prevent open
access?” Alex snapped his fingers. “Say the word, fair maiden, and I’ll rescue
you. Arlin’s obviously incapable of protecting you.”

“All of you need to go soak it,”
I said. “I’m taking the position at YuriCorp.”

“That’s a mistake, young lady,”
the woman called.

“Definitely,” Alex agreed.
“YuriCorp is second-rate. Even lower than the counseling outfits. You’re
selling yourself short, Cleopatra. You don’t want Baumhauser, either. You’d be
the youngest person there. Psytech can do a lot more for you.”

What they could do for me, I
didn’t want done. “Listen, buddy, I never go by Cleopatra. I hate that name.
Stop calling me that.” Then I yelled at everyone except John, “You people are
all too creepy to work with, so forget it.”

I hoped my defiant attitude
wouldn’t initiate a gang rumble. The fashion-challenged foursome had the
advantage, and I didn’t get the impression John and Alex would team up against
them.

“John,” I said, “I’d like to go
home now.”

“She’s not signed yet. Open access,
Arlin,” one of the Baumhausers reminded my escort.

John put his hands on his hips.
He looked all manly and ticked off, the muscles in his chest and arms outlined
by his posture.

I still wouldn’t bet on him over
the four track suits. Or Alex.

“Can I help it if you have
incompetent finders?” John asked. “She’s our score.”

I felt like shark chum. It was
almost like I wasn’t valuable, but one-upmanship was. How had the recruit
poachers found us in the middle of nowhere? Was this a supra pissing contest?

Supra powers. Urination. Oh, my
brain did not want to go there.

“Let me drive you home,” Alex
said to me. “I’ll take you wherever you want to go, and Arlin can follow me. It
will give us a chance to chat. You can see I’m telling you the truth.”

He was, but I said, “Hell, no,”
anyway. This might be his sly way of locating YuriCorp’s secret headquarters,
if he didn’t already know.

“Miss Giancarlo, you haven’t
heard our terms. They’re very competitive.” The spokesperson for the track suit
Mafia advanced as far as John, who glared alternately at them and Alex. Why the
hell didn’t he get his ass over here and take me home?

My hero. Not.

“They’re clowns.” Alex dismissed
them, propping his elbows in the open window. “You’re right to ignore them.”

“Go away or I’ll tell Samantha
what you lied about,” I hissed. There hadn’t been anything in particular that
would make a girlfriend angry, just a competitor.

She was both.

“I didn’t lie about anything,” he
lied.

“You’re lying right now.” Dealing
with people who knew about my ability was liberating. I didn’t have to bite my
tongue if I didn’t want to, and I didn’t want to. “No way am I going anywhere
near Psytech after what I read off you. Get away from me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking
about,” he said truthfully. Well, people like Alex lie so much they probably
can’t remember specific falsities. “I’ve worked at several companies, and
Psytech pays the best.”

“Money’s not everything. John!” I
tried again. “Can we please go?”

“I’m technically supposed to let
them present their offers,” John said gruffly. “If anyone finds you before you
sign somewhere, they get a chance.”

Says who? There were no supra
cops, yet supra politics, even without a ruling body, were as bullshit as
non-supra politics. There were all these expectations and hidden meanings I
knew nothing about, yet I was expected to abide.

“What if I don’t want them to
have a chance? Why don’t I get a say?”

“It’s policy.” John shook his
head. “I’m sorry.”

I was sorry my
okay-okay-it-wasn’t-a-date with John had turned into a close encounter of the
annoying and vaguely threatening kind. Not that it had been going anywhere
close to an encounter of another kind. Alas.

“What about after I sign with
someone? Will everyone leave me alone then?”

John shrugged. “Sort of.”

Pissed, I slid out of John’s side
of the truck with my tire gauge while Alex leaned against the cab and smirked.
I stomped up to the short man who’d spoken the most and said, “Are any of you
or anyone at your companies threatening or bothering my stepfather about this?
I want an answer from everyone. You, you and you. Take off your sunglasses.”

They did. I looked each of them
in the eyes and asked the question, varied each time so they couldn’t prep
themselves for it.

They all said “No” without masks.

“Next question.” I turned to
Shortie. Sweat sheened his forehead between his salt and pepper monobrow and
ball cap—stupid to wear a black track suit in this weather. “Do you cheat on
your wife or girlfriend?”

“What?” His monobrow did the
wacky. “Of course not.”

“Liar,” I said, because he was.

If I unsettled them, they
couldn’t maintain a subterfuge as well. It worked with norms, and if I went
about it right, I could make it work with supras.

I squinted at him and his
buddies. “Whose idea was it to wear those lame matching track suits and caps?”

He boggled at me. “What’s wrong
with our tracks? They’re slick.”

It was sad, very sad, that he
protested in all honesty. “Last question. Does your company condone or indulge
in any type of illegal activities like corporate spying?”

“Ah,” he said. “I plead the
fifth.”

What a doofus.

“Bzzt, wrong answer.” I turned to
John. “They had their chance. Let’s go.”

“Why don’t you ask Arlin that last
question?” Alex called out.

“No need,” I said. “Yuri’s
answers satisfied me, and yours do not.” I turned to the foursome. “Yours,
either.”

“You didn’t ask Arlin.” Alex,
still reclining on John’s truck, grinned outright, which wasn’t an improvement
from the smirk. “You should sometime.”

“Whatever, jackass,” I muttered.
“We’re leaving now. Come on, John.”

“Go on, John,” Alex mocked. When
I jabbed my tire gauge at him like a knife, he held up his hands and stepped
onto the shoulder. A piece of splintered white fence rested on the gravel next
to his feet. I edged past him, into the truck.

“By the way, Arlin,” he said,
“tell your people the fence is on me. I know YuriCorp can’t afford a lot of
extra expenditures.”

John’s lips pinched. “You had
nothing to do with that. We’ll take care of it.”

“Actually, I did have something
to do with it.”

“Is that what happened to the
steering? You son of a bitch!” The driver of the Baumhauser car flipped up his bony
middle finger at Alex.

Alex smiled. “Take it up with my
mother.”

I slammed the truck door and
started rolling up the window. Alex placed his hand on it, bringing his face
closer to mine. “Come with me. You’ll be glad you did.”

At this distance, I could
practically count the eyelashes surrounding his Husky-blue eyes. I could
definitely smell him.

Powder and...lavender? Maybe it
was Samantha’s perfume, though I didn’t recall she smelled like a sachet.

“Back off,” I said. “Don’t try to
hoodoo me.”

“As you wish, Cleo...patra. I’ll
see you soon.” He waved John into the truck as if granting us permission to
depart.

I triumphed over my inner ten
year old and didn’t follow up with, “Not if I see you first.”

Everyone pulled out at the same
time. We did the speed limit but stuck to each other’s bumpers like ticks. Any
minute now I expected a drag race.

A couple SUVs passed us going the
other direction. So there
were
other people in this part of town. “If we
go to Merlin’s, will they bug me? I’ve had enough testosterone today.”

“You turned down the offers. You
should be clear, at least from them. I’m sorry you had to deal with that.”

“I guess it’s okay. Nobody hurt
us.” Unless the steam coming out of my ears had damaged my eardrums. “How is it
so many people know about me if I’m supposed to be secret?”

He tapped a finger on the
steering wheel. “When we find someone like you, the information isn’t
broadcast. The suprasensor community follows certain policies. Trackers find
suspects and notify their superiors, who tell specific recruiters. The public
information about a new supra is all that’s sent to the Registry by the
employer’s Registry operator. Even then, there are a limited number of people
with Registry privileges who can access your charts. Your primary ability won’t
be in the Registry.”

Should I have been so obvious
about what I could do? “What about all those people?”

“The other recruiters? Nobody who
does know about your particular ability will share it. That would decrease a
company’s ability to maximize it.”

“If you say so.” People always
told. “Thursday I was living a normal life and now I’m not. I never get to
again, do I?”

John didn’t respond. The whole
thing sounded more complicated than a non-governmental organization ought to
be. Since he wouldn’t answer my existential complaint, I said, “If YuriCorp’s
tracker found me, who told Psytech and Baumhauser?”

“They were tipped off another
way.” John’s lips thinned into a grim line.

“The leak.” This put YuriCorp’s
trackers first on my list of people to question, and perhaps Samantha, who’d
given her boyfriend that head’s up.

“Our trackers are the best in the
business.” John focused on Alex’s car ahead of us as if he could explode it
with his gaze. “Sometimes that doesn’t matter.”

I swiveled so I could see him, my
seat belt biting my shoulder. Yow, there was a bit of bruising, after all. “You
hate him, don’t you?”

“Hate is a strong word.”

Not a lie. Nor an answer.