The Whole Truth (The Supercharged Files Book 1)

by Jody Wallace

  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 w
ith 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?”

  Samantha touched the corner of her eye. “Cleo, sweetie, we’re all like you.”

  Chapter 2

  When is a bagel not a bagel?

  Their headquarters was a dump. I was expecting some kind of high tech, retinal scan, white-and-silver office building with the three G’s—guards, gates and guns. Instead, Alfonso pulled into a run-down strip mall in front of a chiropractor’s office. Dawn had hit us like an axe an hour out of Nashville, and I felt less than sterling. I envied the people getting out of bed and grabbing a shower and a cup of coffee that wasn’t from a fast food restaurant.

  “Which office is yours, the chiropractor or the cell phone place?” I fumbled out of the car and tried to straighten my legs. Alfonso caught my arm before I ate pavement that looked suspiciously like my parking lot in Chicago.

  “It’s good camouflage,” he said. “Our actual company is named YuriCorp.”

  “Oh, it’s a secret hideout. I can see why you’d want to keep it that way.”

  John came to stand beside me. I smiled up at him and asked, “Now that we’re here, can you tell me your super power?”

  “This is where you’ll be staying while you’re in Nashville.” John, ignoring my question, yet again, unlocked the glass door of the chiropractor and motioned me inside.

  Ooooo-kay. I could use an adjustment after nine hours in the car. I hoped the other clients weren’t allergic to cat dander. “I want to let the cats out. They need a break and some water.”

  I tugged Boris’s carrier with both hands, my satchel, which weighed nearly as much as the cat/carrier combo, on top of it.

  “I’ll get that and give it a rinse in the shower.” Alfonso grabbed the carrier and disappeared around a beige carpeted wall that blocked the majority of the office from the waiting room and receptionist’s desk.

  “Just don’t rinse Boris,” I called after him. The glass door swung shut behind us with a hiss. Watercolor prints of flowers adorned the walls; a matching silk arrangement perched atop the IBM-grey computer console. On the desk calendar, somebody had written “C.G.—si, 1t, by YC” on today’s date.

  John blinked in the nearly blinding sunlight streaming through the glass, not quite awake. “Everything you need is inside. Food, cat box, change of clothes, and”—John sniffed—”bagels, I believe.”

  “How about a chiropractor?”

  “Do you need a chiropractor?”

  I pointed at “Dr. Spivey” airbrushed on the glass door. Dr. Spivey worked from ten to four Tuesday through Saturday, and it was eight a.m. Saturday. “Won’t the doc be here in a couple hours? Maybe he could work this kink out of my spine.” I sidled my ribcage back and forth.

  John’s gaze dropped to my cleavage, where I’d unbuttoned my blouse to get more comfortable in the car. He might have unidentified super powers, but one of them wasn’t the strength to avoid staring at women’s breasts.

  Well, I did have impressive ta-tas, and better my breasts than my crazed tangle of mousy hair or the perma-wrinkles in the ass of my skirt. Some women say they hate being treated like sex objects. I like it, myself, because those guys lie to me less than the ones who try to ignore my big chest and bottom.

  I noticed Samantha hobbling out of the car so I halted John’s exhaustion-dazed ogling. “John.” I snapped my fingers in his line of vision. “Is this or is this not a chiropractor’s office?”

  Samantha kicked the bottom of the glass, Natasha’s carrier in her arms and a scowl on her face. John hurried to open the door. Natasha’s low, simmering growl preceded Samantha into the office.

  “If I ever travel with another cat,” she began, but shut her mouth when she noticed my smirk. Hey, she could have been next to Boris the pisser instead of Natasha the slasher.

  “This isn’t a full-fledged office,” John ex
plained.

  “What if we get walk-ins? Since I’m, ah, staying here, do you expect me to give them an adjustment?”

  Because, no.

  “We have somebody to take care of that.”

  Samantha shoved the carrier at John and stomped behind the beige wall. I followed, John beside me. A short hallway with an exam room on one side and a file room on the other ended in what looked like an employee break room. Samantha thumbed the coin return button on the drink machine, punched the “Diet RC Cola” label, and the snack dispenser rolled aside to reveal a passageway.

  “This is more like it!” I followed the scent of Boris’s pee down another beige hallway, fully expecting to see a massive spy hideaway with guys in white lab coats and crazy machines.

  Instead I got a studio apartment with a single, grey-glassed window, a kitchenette the size of my bathtub, a tightly made bed, and a nineteen inch television with rabbit ears. Alfonso had deposited a skanky, noshing Boris in the kitchen in front of a bowl of dry kibble and was trying to rinse the carrier in the shower stall, only he was almost too big to fit into the tiny bathroom.

  “Nice headquarters,” I commented. “You invested your budget in the revolving snack machine, I see.” If we had the big meeting to poke and prod me here, where would everyone sit? Or was the tale of a mysterious boss man with all the answers a true untruth to get me here?

  “This isn’t the office, this is our guestroom. The main entrance is behind the pizza place.” John set Natasha’s carrier on the ground, opened the latch, and barely avoided the streak of white that hissed out of the crate and under the bed.

  I laughed, but nobody else did. “Seriously?”

  “The pizza’s not bad. We don’t deliver, though.” Samantha flopped on the bed and spread her arms. Her black hair fanned out like a half moon. Underneath, Natasha moaned her hatred of her nemesis, the trip, her new quarters, you name it.

  “Do you own the whole strip mall?” They should do something about the parking lot. I could see the whole thing through my murky window. Our black car. A minivan and several other cars at the other end, near the strip mall’s half empty billboard. A moped chained to a post.