by Jody Wallace
The women (and gay men) of YuriCorp had noticed Beau Walker in a big way. When he arrived at work Monday, looking scruffy yet hot, it took everyone aback. By Tuesday, they figured out he’d been running a fade this whole time. Several took an almost malicious pleasure in speculating about his assets when he was within earshot, and Jolene exited LaLa Land long enough to tease him about what was obvious to everyone.
Not that he admitted he’d been running a fade. He treated all comers to the same hateful attitude, which goes to show personality isn’t everything.
On Friday, Beau slammed and locked the lab door after Sheila Hornbuckle—that slut! what about Bob?—claimed she needed to consult with him on a possible supra. It was reasonable since he was our DNA guy, but she’d been lying through her teeth.
She wanted a crack at YuriCorp’s hottie of the month and had eyeballed me like I was the competition.
When she left, I snickered loudly. Beau glowered at me and turned his back.
“Everybody hates you,” I said, “but suddenly they all want to be your friend.” I didn’t think Sheila wanted to be his anonymous friend and limit their exchanges to one-way notes. “Is this because you can’t maintain your precious fade at the office?”
He raised one shoulder in a shrug. “Crazy people. How should I know?” he lied.
“Uh-huh.” Even in his shapeless lab coat, Beau was gorgeous. Everyone knew it. It was like he’d undergone a hunky makeover, only he hadn’t done anything but lose his ability to hide.
Luckily I was inoculated by his personality. I was wearing my new sandals and red and white Calvin Klein sundress because I liked them, not because they flattered me.
“When are you going to admit it? Everyone knows, even Jolene.” Jolene barely remembered to eat, much less what people looked like. She referred to me as “Yuri’s girl” half the time and as Rachel, her daughter in sales, the other half.
“Does it matter?” he said. “I can’t get shit done no matter what I tell people.”
“Maybe if you pick somebody, the others would lay off.”
“That’s a terrible idea.” He scratched his chin and frowned. “Would it work?”
I didn’t have a chance to answer. Beau glanced up at the security camera he’d had Al install outside the laboratories and started cursing. “Shit fuck hell, not this one.”
Samantha stood there, sorting through her purse for a key card, which she then used. “Doesn’t anybody do any work around here?” Beau griped. “This isn’t a damn singles club.”
Most of YuriCorp’s employees did their jobs with something approaching enthusiasm. They approached their social lives the same way.
The door of the lab rattled, didn’t open, and Samantha knocked. “Beau Walker, I know you’re in there. You know Al said you aren’t allowed to lock the lab door. Open up.”
“That’s it.” Beau stalked over to me and grabbed my shoulders. I squeaked. “Here’s the deal. Go along with what I’m about to do, or as soon as my abilities come back, I’ll find out every embarrassing thing you’ve ever done and use it to humiliate you.”
“That is not fair.” I batted his hands ineffectively. I swear, the asshole even smelled better now that he wasn’t running a fade, like wood chips and cinnamon.
“I don’t give a crap. I can’t take this anymore.”
“You have to explain everything to me,” I said, “or I won’t do it.” Whatever it was. If he intended to murder Samantha and hide the body, he’d really owe me.
“You have to let me run whatever tests I want,” he countered.
Samantha pounded on the door, hollering. We glanced at it, then back at one another.
“That’s two things for you and only one for me,” I said. “I haven’t been avoiding the tests. I can’t help it if your DNA machine’s on the fritz.” How ironic if Yuri’d had to sabotage his own lab in order to hide his scheme to catch the real saboteur.
“First, don’t let that bitch touch either of us.” Beau’s eyes bored intently into mine as if he could stare me into agreeing. “Second, do not tell her. I mean it.”
“I’m using my override code!” Samantha yelled. “Al’s going to hear about this.”
Of course Ms. Granddaughter of the Boss had an override code. The door beeped and swung open. Samantha, properly suited up in lab whites, stormed into the room.
Beau planted a kiss on me like his life depended on getting a taste of my tongue.
Maybe it did. I figured I’d better kiss him back.
“Wow,” Samantha said. “I guess you know where Cleo is.”
Beau broke off and said, “What?”
I deflated, the air sucked out of me by the most intense five second lip lock of my life. If Beau hadn’t been gripping my shoulders like handlebars, I’d have fallen off my stool.
“I was hunting Cleo,” Samantha said. “Pop-Pop wants to see to her, and he said nobody’s answering the phone down here again.”
“You weren’t here to...” Beau glanced at me, smirked and shrugged. He lifted his hands and wiggled his fingers. “Take her, I’m done with her.”
I opened my mouth and no sound came out. That wasn’t a shriek.
Samantha and Beau clapped their hands over their ears. Jolene wandered out of the office, where she had apparently been ignoring the phone, and said, “Did somebody make tea?”
“You don’t have to scream, I won’t tell anybody about you and Beau,” Samantha said, complete with a mask almost as dark as her hair.
“What about them?” Jolene cocked her head to one side like a wren as she inspected us, and I wondered what she could see. I had no idea what her ability was. “Thank goodness, they finally got together. It’s been like cats and dogs. Rachel and her boyfriend just got back from the Lampey condo in Florida. Lou thinks they’re getting serious. Are you two serious?”
“We are not—” I began, but Beau put a finger on my lips.
“Samantha promises she won’t tell,” he said. “Even if she does, baby, nobody will assume we’ve been screwing around on the clock just because we’re screwing around off it. Nobody’s going to think you’re a slacker.”
So this is what he wanted. He wanted me to be his beard. And it had been my stupid idea.
“I’m sure Yuri will be done with me by lunch.” I punched his arm way too hard for affection. “Especially since you’re buying me that pair of diamond earrings today.”
Beau had the good grace to look like he already regretted his ploy.
Chapter 16
The Pursuit of Truth and Consequence
“You and Walker. I can’t believe it,” Sam exclaimed for the sixth time en route to Yuri’s office.
“Me either.” Even though Sam couldn’t read my lies—and no way was she getting her hands on me—I didn’t want to talk about this. There were other ways humans could detect dishonesty. “What does Yuri want to see me about?”
She ignored my question. “Walker’s been running a fade for years. Why hide all that dark chocolate lusciousness? He’s a pin up guy. An underwear model. Nobody noticed, not even the other chameleons. It’s unreal.”
Nothing much surprised Samantha, but she was going overboard with the amazement. “Don’t be sexist. Racist. Ist-ist.”
“You’ve got to tell me what he’s like in bed. Does he get you off or do you have to do it yourself?” She reached for me and I smacked her hand.
“Forget it.” If she pushed me, I’d admit Beau wanted to con our coworkers so the horny ones would leave him alone. He hoped.
No harm in helping him if it meant he owed me. It wasn’t a plot to overthrow the company. It was just embarrassing that Beau had kissed me and a small part of me wanted him to do it again.
There, I admitted it. God, I was desperate. I’d never had this much trouble getting dates since I’d been in high school and in the throes of mastering my ability.
Actually, I could get dates, just not with John Arlin, Stick in the Mud.
I was tempted to c
onfide in Samantha anyway. Though our back and forth was combative, Samantha and I were drawn together like two peas that didn’t fit the pod. We’d have an awesome bitch session over nachos and margaritas as we plotted my revenge on Beau.
But if Beau’s powers came back, I’d be at his mercy. Since I knew he could turn himself completely invisible, I did not want to be on that man’s bad side.
Did he have a good side?
We reached Yuri’s office after the longest nine minutes of my life. Samantha leaned on the door so I couldn’t open it. “What are you going to tell John?”
Did it matter? He’d made his unwillingness to date me clear, but there’d been that concern and tenderness after the cacti attack. Damned idiot men. Both of them. I should take Rooster up on his offer. It would be a lot less complicated.
“I don’t owe John any explanations.” I knocked on the door, and Yuri called for me to come in. “Go work or something.”
“I can’t work at a time like this. I have to gossip with Lou.”
I pretended to be shocked and amazed. “You promised you wouldn’t tell.”
“I lied.” She backed off so I could attend Yuri. “Surely you noticed.”
“Get burnt,” I said, and slammed Yuri’s door in her grinning face.
~ * ~
“Two weeks!” I paced between Yuri’s plants and tugged my hair. “I can’t guarantee I’ll find the mole in two weeks.”
“The company picnic is the weekend after next on Lou’s family farm,” Yuri stated mildly. He was adjusting a display of tiny cacti, of all things, on his desk. “It was the only weekend they had free.”
“I can’t possibly eliminate everyone and their families in one afternoon,” I said, well aware I wasn’t going to win this argument. It didn’t matter—I never can keep myself from arguing. “I’ll try harder. I’ll be sneakier.”
“Cleopatra Giancarlo,” Yuri said in his sternest voice, like Dan when he’d been frustrated with me in high school. “You’ve been here five months, and we don’t know much more than we did when we hired you. Half our employees are afraid to leave the building. The other half are typing resignation letters as we speak. We’ve had to refund three clients this month, with several pending. Baumhauser underbid us on several clients we thought we’d pinned down. My accountants tell me we’re going to have to restructure our finances by next quarter if this keeps up. I want to do this about as much as I want to eat poison ivy.”
“Lay offs,” I guessed, a sinking feeling in my stomach. Would we hire a supra company to tell us who should stay and who should go? “I guess I’d get fired first.”
“We have few enough consultants as it is,” he said, which didn’t reassure me. “We’re going to have to divert funds from our side ventures and put them toward running the company. In another six months, who knows? Not even our employee attrition is enough to avoid pink slips this time.” Yuri pushed the cactuses to the other side of his desk. “The ones who are staying trust us, Cleo. They trust that we can fix this. Can we fix this?”
“Not right at this very moment.” I thought about all the questions I’d asked people so far. There didn’t seem to be any stones left to turn, and it felt like I was the only one at YuriCorp looking for slugs. “I didn’t cut my teeth on corporate espionage like the rest of you.”
“We know.” Yuri sighed and sank back into his chair. “We wanted to give you time but things have changed. There are two more developments you should be aware of. Adam Donning’s condition worsened last night.”
“Worsened?” I stared at Yuri and noticed his eyes were watery. “But supras have been getting better. Pavarti’s using a walker.”
“He slipped into a coma.” He dabbed his eyes with a hankie.
A whooshing roar echoed through my head, and I found I’d collapsed into one of the chairs opposite Yuri. “Is he going to—”
“This is beyond our ken.” Yuri blew his nose. “There’s more.”
No wonder Yuri had browbeat me. He was desperate. “Somebody else was attacked?”
“In a manner of speaking. This morning I had a meeting with Baumhauser’s CEO and several of Psytech’s chairpersons. I waved the white flag. I was going to offer them whatever they wanted if they would stop.”
“Like what?” I asked with a gulp. Had I just been traded to the other team like an NFL quarterback?
“I’d give them our trackers. I’d give them you. I’d give them the company.” He folded his handkerchief into a small, neat square, his restrained gestures at odds with the passion in his voice. “But as of this week, their employees are being hit, too. It’s not just us anymore.”
~ * ~
Shaken, I returned to my desk instead of the lab. I needed to cry. Rage. Make another chart. Do something. I’d come out of my overstuffed closet if I had to.
Vision blurry, I squinted at my computer screen to read my latest emails. Staff meeting. Research request. A follow up on a report. Spam.
No, not spam. Hell. If that didn’t top my day with a cherry, I didn’t know what would. My special friend had graduated from anonymous notes and texts to emails. The host was some random webmail provider and tracing the email’s source past that was beyond me. Besides, I knew who sent it.
That damn Sheila Hornbuckle. One annoying Q&A with me, and this is what I got?
“It should have been you,” she wrote. “Quit while you can.”
I’d seen Sheila this morning when she’d hit on Beau with her sexy DNA talk, and I know she didn’t mean she should have hit on me. She thought I should have been burned instead of poor Beau Walker, though if that had been the case nobody would have noticed his hotness and nobody would think I was involved with him.
Rather than confront Sheila in person, which I didn’t have the time or the balls for, I clicked “reply” and shared some scathing comments about how I hoped Bob didn’t know she was trying to get a piece of Beau’s action. She’d taken such pains to be anonymous through all this, hopefully knowing that I’d twigged her would take care of her.
Then I opened my passworded list only I and anyone who could speak Pig Latin could understand and overviewed everything I’d accomplished so far. Typing furiously, I brainstormed my thoughts in hopes the stream of consciousness would uncover genius.
What did it all mean? My first thought was it must be a naturally-occurring phenomenon, not sabotage—a lack of vitamin W(eird), an excess of environmental pollutants. Asbestos. Lead paint. Kryptonite. The fact we worked in a bunker masquerading as an office had to be unhealthy.
Of course, that was wrong, and I knew it. Natural and random events had been ruled out. The fact that the ranking supra was usually taken, the fact that all the attacks were on site or en route, spoke of intent, not environment.
Now the people I’d assumed were the bad guys were in danger, too. Roxanne and other healers could help supras bounce back from a stroke with better than average results. Not so much a coma.
Who stood to benefit if the companies ascended to the big cubicle farm in the sky? We were the largest firms in our niche. Smaller outfits were poised to jump on any opportunities we lost, but there were quite a few of them. No way to tell which one might be behind this without stumbling across a lucky lie.
I hadn’t been lucky so far.
Lou passed behind me in a waft of White Shoulders. I hunched closer to my screen, hoping she wouldn’t stop to get the dirt on my hot romance with Beau. She paused, said something to Tina, and continued on.
I sighed and started typing again.
Point one—it wasn’t my job to figure out how our ill-wishers were burning out YuriCorpers. I was only supposed to locate our corporate leak so the hole could be patched with supra Fix-a-Flat. If there was more than one person ratting us out, that was more than one person I’d failed to find.
Point two—nobody was leaking information that I could confirm.
Point three—I couldn’t go by my instincts about people. Look at Beau. If anybody was a suspic
ious bastard, he was. He’d acted like a freak on our trip, cursing our clients and sneaking into my interviews, but I’d cleared him. The man was off the hook, whether I liked it or not.
Point four—I had to get with the program. My program. And my program had four blank spots on it, four YuriCorpers I’d never truly questioned. Four people who knew what I could do and how to work around it.
I’d start with my number one suspect.
First I cancelled my lunch date with Beau. He wouldn’t have bought me the earrings anyway, and did I really want to have lunch with Beau? No need to answer that because I’d only be lying to myself.
Second, I phoned Samantha.
“You’re right, I do want to tell you allllll about it,” I said. “Let’s do lunch, just us girls.”
~ * ~
“Just us girls” to Samantha included Lou and Ursula. While they were undoubtedly female, their presence put a damper on my plans for a hard-hitting, film noir interrogation.
“You sly dog. I can’t believe you’re hitting that,” Ursula said as soon as I showed up at Merlin’s. I slid onto the bench beside Lou, across from Samantha and Ursula.
“I never thought that one would go with anybody.” Lou flicked parsley bits off her potato skin. “Some can’t stand to lose it. I figured he was one of those.”
Lose what, his virginity? Samantha and Ursula nodded.
“Wouldn’t surprise me if he was,” Ursula said. “He’s always in a bad mood.”
Ursula and Lou laughed. Sometimes supra humor flew right over my head.
Samantha pushed a soda at me. “I ordered you a turkey club since you were running late.” Her eyes glittered with some combination of interest and excitement. “Tell us everything.”
I groaned. “Lou, please make her forgot about Beau.”
“Not a chance,” Lou said. “This is too good to pass up.”
This was not the lunch I had envisioned, where I confronted Samantha about her loyalties to YuriCorp in my last ditch effort to save the company and, well, probably not the world, but who knows? But how could I, when Lou and Ursula were waiting for me to describe Beau’s sexual prowess?
