by Jody Wallace
A half-lie shuttered his face. If I hadn’t been thoroughly sexed, it might have been a whole lie, but the mask was dim. Either way, knowing something he’d said was untrue did me no good when every word coming out of his mouth was crazy-talk. He thought I was burned out because I’d orgasmed? That was demented.
“I can fake an orgasm.” And anyone could fake being burned out. “How is that taking advantage? It would mean I didn’t get to come.”
He froze in the act of stepping into his pants, and his eyes narrowed. “I can tell when a woman climaxes. I can taste it, Cleo.”
“Can you tell when a woman is burned out?”
He finished pulling on his trousers, his back to me. Muscles worked beneath his smooth skin. “Don’t be a jerk. I know you came. Three times. You’re toast for hours. Don’t you enjoy the break from the lies? You’re always saying how much you wish you could turn it off, and now you have me for that.”
I opened my mouth to correct him, and my brain stopped me. It whirled so furiously I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear the gerbils complaining about the whip.
I could fake an orgasm, but I wouldn’t. I could also fake being burned out, if I thought someone needed to believe I was burned out.
“You got me.” I heaved a big sigh. “I am so happy to get a break from my ability.”
The rodents in my head squeaked and snapped, protesting the pace. John thought sex burned a supra out. He treated this wacked-out notion like it was common knowledge.
Orgasms. Burnouts. This was that time all supras experienced. The burnout that had embarrassed John to discuss back when I’d hired on. The burnout Lou and Ursula and Samantha had referenced at Merlin’s.
The burnout I myself was not experiencing and had never experienced.
I inched my legs off the bed, still wrapped in the sheet. My heart raced almost as much as it had when we’d been having sex. What should I say? Should I confess? Should I...
Take advantage of the situation?
I shouldn’t. It wouldn’t be right. Nevertheless, a horrible compulsion possessed me, and I said, “Are you glad to get a break from my abilities?”
He turned back to me, his dress shirt in his hand. “It doesn’t matter to me,” he lied.
I rubbed my eyes and focused on the lips of his mask as he shrugged into his shirt. Now that I understood supra orgasms, it made sense that the masks dimmed when I climaxed. But I couldn’t make out the words.
What would John lie about? “Now would be a good time for you to tell me I don’t need to lose weight.”
“You don’t need to lose weight,” he parroted. Since it was true, I smiled.
“That’s so nice of you.”
We both laughed. If I were careful, this didn’t have to be a hindrance to our relationship. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t dealt with it before. No need to confess how I wasn’t like other supras. He’d feel obliged to tell Yuri, and Yuri might tell Beau, and I did not want to be on the receiving end of those lab tests.
Well, maybe I did, if it was for the sake of science.
No! I didn’t. I was with John now.
“It is a relief, you know. Being able to trust you.” I held out my hand, and he took it, smiling at me. He raised it to his lips and brushed a kiss across the knuckles. “I dreaded asking you, John. I didn’t think it could be you. The problem is this only leaves one person. I don’t know how I can bring myself to ask Yuri whether or not he’s the leak.”
“You have our full support. You’ve got to find out if it’s him,” he said, and his mask darkened so much I could practically hear it when it finished the sentence for him.
But I know it’s not—because it’s me.
~ * ~
I did not pass go, I did not collect two hundred dollars, because I’m not a hooker, and I did not go to Merlin’s for chili. I pleaded exhaustion and escaped from the lying sex machine’s apartment without letting on I’d seen the truth. I sped home, where I dove into my bed with a box of tissues and a giant bottle of water. When I was this upset, I needed liquids to force myself out of bed to pee. Otherwise I had a tendency to hide under the comforter and, well, lose jobs and such.
When you could see lies, it was inevitable someone sucker punched you with a big fat one every now and then. The only glimmer of hope was that John didn’t know about the burnouts. I’d seen that and still believed it. But he was a traitor. A spy. The damned corporate mole who’d been slipping confidential information about YuriCorp to...well, I wasn’t sure because I’d ditched him so fast. He wasn’t handing it straight to the saboteur, as far as he knew.
Was this some cosmic punishment because I’d slept with him? In my current state of betrayal and shame, huddled in the wrinkled mess of my new bed, I had to confront the fact that my libido had driven me to make the mistake of the century. The man who’d avoided me for months had jumped me like a horny teenager after I’d brushed up against his secret, and I’d fallen for it, right onto my back.
He was a pro. I was an amateur. While it was my job to unveil him, it was his job to hide from me. He was better at his job. If I hadn’t slept with him, would I ever have figured it out? What made me even angrier was the fact he was probably the leak Yuri and Al knew about.
This was the name they’d kept from me, hoping I’d provide a fresh perspective with my so-called open mind. If they’d trusted me, if I’d really been part of their precious inner circle, I’d never have done such a tragically stupid, horrible, humiliating, idiotic thing.
Far be it from me to have made any progress in the search to uncover the traitor, even as Mata Hari. Not that I was going to tell anyone about that quirk of my DNA. Yuri would rent me out as an exclusive and call himself business savvy instead of a pimp.
Again, I was no hooker. And I was frustrated enough by the whole situation that I did something drastic the next day. I mean, besides wear yoga pants and a T-shirt to work. A girl can’t be expected to dress for success when she’s failed so miserably.
~ * ~
“I’m serious, I quit,” I repeated to Yuri. He, Al and I were sequestered in Yuri’s office, blanket on and tempers flaring. All right, my temper flaring. Al and Yuri seemed as cool as cucumbers. As cool as spies.
Al crossed his arms and leaned against the wall next to the door. “I hear Psytech is hiring.”
Well, that hadn’t worked. I’d almost meant it, too. What I really meant and said next was, “I feel betrayed. You should have told me not to trust John Arlin.”
“There are many ways in which John is trustworthy,” Yuri, behind his desk, said beyond the shadow of a doubt. “Aside from this little issue, he’s a model employee.”
“Little issue?” I yelled. Al winced. “This is not a little issue. Neither is me quitting. I could snap my fingers and go work for another consulting firm or a detective agency or even a counseling outfit. Hell, I don’t even have to get a supra job.” That would mean a vast reduction in pay, but I’d survived on normal wages before.
“I hope you’ll wait until after the company picnic before you make up your mind. After all, it was your idea.” Yuri shoved the doughnut box to my side of the desk, attempting to pacify me with starchy goodness. “Are you sure you don’t want a Krispy Kreme? Lou’s granddaughter was selling them for a fundraiser.”
“I’m sure.” I threw myself into a chair, realized I wasn’t ready to sit, and jumped up, pacing through Yuri’s office like the security guard of a very small building. I marched to the plants next to the coffeemaker, to the door, to the fake window and back. My tennies were kinder to my feet during my mini-protest rally than the heels I normally wore to work.
“You should have trusted me.” I’d let Yuri and Al think I’d unmasked John the traditional way because it was humiliating, and dangerous, to divulge my sex immunity. “I don’t care about your crackpot clean slate theories, Al. I bet John hindered my search for the real saboteur and this mythical second leak you think you have.”
“Why would he have do
ne that? It would be in his best interest for us to find the other leak or the saboteur.” Yuri fiddled with a small plant on his desk, poking his finger in and out of the soil. “Did you read something from him about it?”
“It’s simple logic. He could have fed me misleading information to make sure I never suspected him.” He was capable of it. He’d misled me into bed so I wouldn’t pester him for answers. “Months of time, wasted. This could have been avoided if you’d been honest from the get-go.”
“Arlin’s a controlled leak.” Al left the door to pinch a doughnut in his huge hand. “As long as we have him, his handler won’t try to insert a new agent, one we don’t know about.”
“We’re lucky we just have one,” Yuri added. “Baumhauser and Psytech are riddled with ‘em.”
“According to you, you don’t have just one.” I kicked the floor, my tennies squeaking. “You should have told me about John.”
Al took one of the two empty chairs, bit into the doughnut, and answered. “And take the chance you’d let on you knew?”
“It’s not like he can read lies,” I commented, a sour taste in my mouth. “I can dissemble with the best of them.”
Yuri and Al exchanged a glance. Okay, not with the best of them, but I could have kept a lid on this and myself out of John’s bed.
“John had to feel confident he wasn’t a suspect,” Yuri said. “He senses more than DNA under certain circumstances.” Yeah, like orgasms, apparently. “If your reaction to him hadn’t been entirely natural, he could have figured it out.”
To their credit, neither Yuri nor Al had been offended by my diatribe. They’d calmly defended their actions and assured me they weren’t disappointed in my performance, despite being disappointed in the results. Yet I couldn’t help feeling there was another live mine in the field and my foot was hovering over it.
It would turn me to shrapnel. I needed to bolster myself. The Krispy Kremes won out. With a muttered curse, I sank into the chair beside Al. I’d used up a lot of energy pacing and ranting. Imagine that—I’d actually gotten exercise in my exercise clothing.
“I understand why you made the choices you did, but I’m seriously questioning your methods.” Because of them, I wasn’t sure I could face John again. Ever. “Is there some reason why Samantha can’t handle the interviews by herself?”
“That’s something we already considered.” After adding drops of greenish solution to his plant, Yuri cleaned the particles of dirt from his fingers with a wet wipe. “Quite a few supras can fight off my granddaughter’s push.”
This surprised me. I paused as I reached for a doughnut. “Really? What about what Lou does?” Or what I did? I already knew Beau could fend me off to an extent.
“Later,” Al said. I couldn’t tell if he meant later or never, because he masked slightly. “What else did you learn from Arlin?”
“He believes he’s not connected to the sabotage.” He believes I trust him and am thrilled to be his girlfriend.
“We agree,” Al said. “Hence the continued importance of your assignment.” He tossed his doughnut napkin into the trash and busied himself at Yuri’s small coffeemaker. “We’re sending him back to Atlanta.”
That solved one of my problems—how to avoid my would-be boyfriend. It just didn’t solve the rest of them. “Why does he do it? He said he wants the best for YuriCorp, and he meant it.”
Yuri leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers across his stomach. His bright blue gaze, so much like Samantha’s, was unflinching. “I’d bet a potato patch they have something on him. That’s how it works, Cleo. Everyone’s got somebody somewhere. If push comes to shove, we’ll let him know we know, but that would make him vulnerable. It’s better this way.”
“It’s deceptive. I don’t like it.” I’d wrestled with my feelings about John all night. Traitor or no, sex to John meant monogamy and commitment. In his eyes, I was his girlfriend.
Too bad he wasn’t as faithful to his employment contract.
“It’s safer for him.” Al pointed at me. “You’re not the only person who can force secrets out of somebody. If John actively worked with us, they’d find out and punish him. You’re welcome to ask what they’ve got on him if you think you can do it without tipping him off. Maybe we can help him.”
“I’ll try.” I dusted off my sugary hands. From being turned on by John to being furious with John to being afraid of John, now I felt sorry for him. He wasn’t a bad person. I’d seen the lies of my share of bad people. Even taking espionage into account, he was straight arrow.
Yuri’s white eyebrows met in the center as he watched me. “You’ll cooperate with our plans for the picnic?”
“Yes, I’ll do it.” I leaned my head back and stared at the ugly popcorn ceiling. Not only was the picnic at Lou’s farm, but she was head of the refreshments committee and had already enlisted me. Would I have time to help her with all the sneaking and interrogating? Then there were Beau’s blood tests to consider.
Everyone wanted a piece of my action. Why didn’t I feel more like a winner?
“Thank you, Cleo.” Yuri released a sigh and stared at a closed manila folder on his desk.
“I’ll also do the interviews if I have to,” I added, so Al would know I wasn’t interested in transferring to security. “On one condition. You can’t turn me into a full time lie detector exclusive. That is not the color of my parachute.”
Yuri nodded, his attention elsewhere. Al’s expression remained blank.
In fact, as I reflected on the meeting, both of them had maintained unreadable expressions, as if they’d been holding something back. Sudden foreboding crushed me into my chair like pea gravel. It was all I could do to raise my arm and drag a second pastry out of the box.
“So,” I said after I swallowed, “what are you not telling me?”
Yuri drew a thick binder out of his desk and slid it across, where it came to a stop next to the doughnuts. Wow. I’d rather have the abridged version of what they weren’t telling me. “We’ve drawn up a detailed evaluation of families and known romantic partners to supplement the list Al gave you. Individuals with access to information possessed by the saboteur are marked in pink, so their families necessitate closer scrutiny. Please consider this classified.”
I had a week and a half to memorize it, not a year. “That’s all?”
“All the information about the employees? Yes.” Al said with what had to be deliberate obtuseness. He sounded tired. The perking coffee filled the air with rich, penetrating scent.
“Refill me, would you?” Yuri slid his empty coffee cup across the desk, and Al caught it before it hurtled to the floor. “Cleo, we need a list of volunteers for the dunking booth. You can use that as an excuse to question people.”
“Seriously, a dunking booth?” How would asking people whether they wanted to be the object of ridicule help me find the saboteur?
“Al ruled out the pie throwing contest.” Yuri studied Al, who waited beside the coffee pot. “We should tell her.”
Tell me what, the reason they’d outlawed pie throwing? Clearly, because it was a waste. I could only imagine how outraged Uncle Herman would be.
Al drummed his fingers on the side of the mug, a counterpoint to the pop-pop-pop of the coffeepot. “You think that’s a good idea?”
“I do,” Yuri said. “We can’t keep a lid on it much longer anyway.”
So there was more. “You shouldn’t keep anything from me. Look at all the trouble it caused,” I said, feeling both apprehensive and vindicated.
“Cleo, we’d never put you at risk if we didn’t have to,” Yuri said. “But people are...” He coughed into his hand. “It is critical we find out who’s doing this.”
I gulped doughnut. “Risk?”
“In accordance with his living will, Adam Donning’s family took him off life support last night,” Yuri said, a hitch in his voice. “He died this morning around five a.m.”
Had I heard him correctly? Numbness leached the a
bility to feel or blink or breathe from my body. “He’s not dead. He’s in a coma.”
“He’s no longer with us,” Al said gravely. He set a cup of coffee beside Yuri and placed his huge hand on the other man’s shoulder. “The family asked that it not be announced until the end of the week so they can have time to mourn privately.”
“I can’t believe it.” Comas were one thing. Death was something else, an intense new evil I didn’t want to deal with. “We have to, I don’t know, tell somebody. The police. The authorities.”
“We are the authorities.” Yuri closed his eyes, his face paler than usual. “Psytech and Baumhauser are starting their own investigations. We’re going to share information. It’s a bit revolutionary.”
“Maybe they’ll have better luck finding out who’s doing it,” I suggested.
“They don’t have you.” Al smiled grimly. “They want you, but they don’t have you.”
“I haven’t done anybody any good.” I rose, my thoughts in turmoil, and stood beside the door, my doughnut-sticky hand on the knob. “Wait. I nearly forgot to ask. Yuri, what do you know about this that you haven’t told me?”
He opened his mouth to respond, and Al coughed.
“Nothing,” Yuri lied, his mask a heat wave around his bald head.
“You’re not trying to take down your own corporation, I don’t know, for tax purposes?” I asked. “Al told me to question the inner circle. You just lied. Are you the saboteur?”
“Absolutely not,” he insisted, and it was true. But he did know things he wasn’t telling me.
“Warned you,” Al said to him.
I banged my head, gently, on the door jamb. “If you can’t be honest about this, how am I supposed to do any good? I haven’t so far, and it’s because you kept so much from me.”
“You know everything you need to do your part. Anything else is not related to this case,” Yuri insisted, and he believed it, even if I didn’t. “We’ve got to find out why this is happening before anyone else is hurt. Step one is locating the person or persons responsible for our information leak. So far the attacks have been on the job. What if it shifts to our homes?”
