The Whole Truth (The Supercharged Files Book 1)

by Jody Wallace

  “Aw, are you asking me to be your date?” He spread the charts and papers and color coded sticky notes on the shockingly clean surface of the lab table. The whole room looked like it belonged to someone else. Nary a petrified sandwich in sight. He must have worked all weekend. “I accept.”

  Was he accepting a real date or a beard date, neither of which could I go on since I was, however reluctantly, with John? I stared at Beau, squinting. “Actually, I’m going to ask you to sit in the dunking booth.”

  He paused, his hands hovering over the paperwork. “You want me to sit in a dunking booth.”

  “Yes.”

  “What do I get out of this?”

  “Wet?”

  “No.”

  “Fifty bucks?”

  “No!” he exclaimed.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not sitting in a damn dunking booth,” Beau said. “We need to talk about your test results. I haven’t shared this information with anyone yet—”

  “It would only be for an hour or so,” I interrupted. The longer we could postpone the DNA talk, the better. The longer we could postpone the John talk, the better. “You’re the perfect candidate. Everyone’s annoyed with you for running that fade for years.”

  Beau smiled at me. “That’s not really a problem anymore.”

  That was when I realized nobody, not even Tina Harris, had dropped by to flirt with Beau or catch us in the supposed act. Tina in particular liked to start her day off with a hearty ogling.

  “You healed,” I accused. “In one weekend.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lied. It was one of those lies a person doesn’t expect you to believe, even without suprapowers.

  “Yes, you do.” I hopped off my stool, dragged it to the table, and sat back down, my elbows pinning most of the papers in place. “Most of the others haven’t healed. And Adam died, Beau. Or did you not hear?”

  “I heard.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Took vitamins?”

  It was true he’d taken vitamins. And stupid to think it would heal a burnout. “If you have special medicine, why haven’t you shared it?”

  He just shrugged.

  “But you did get better. You’re running your fade again.”

  “Why would I do such a thing?”

  “I don’t know, you never told me. It’s not like they’ll forget you’re hot. You’re not Lou. You can’t make them forget, can you?”

  “Golly, I’m flattered. Cleo thinks I’m hot.” He slipped his glasses out of his lab coat pocket and slid them on. Peering at me across the table, he said, “Maybe that’s why she wants to see me all wet.”

  “Don’t be juvenile.” I hadn’t considered that aspect of Beau in the dunking booth. Wet shirt, no shirt. Shorts. Bare legs. Water glistening on his skin. Of course, with him fading again, nobody would notice.

  Nobody, it seemed, but me, and I didn’t need to see it to picture it. “I want an answer. Can you make them forget?”

  Could he please make me forget? I did not want to be sexually aware of Beau Walker when I was involved with John. I did not want to be sexually aware of Beau Walker, period.

  “Forget what?”

  Abbot and Costello, we were not. “If you’re better, there’s no reason for us to pretend...you know.”

  “I was going to break up with you anyway.” A thin mask flashed across his face before I could evaluate it. “I don’t date cheaters. I heard about you and Arlin.”

  “You don’t date anybody.” With a bare minimum of movement, I scooched some of the DNA papers off the table and onto the ground, where perhaps he would forget about them. “Heard from whom? You don’t talk to people, either.”

  “Still hear things.”

  Sneaking around and eavesdropping, I bet. A couple more pieces of paper fell into my lap. “How long does it take a supra to fully recover from the typical burnout?”

  “It varies. I’m not fully healed,” he lied.

  He did expect me to believe that.

  “About your test results,” he continued. “Very interesting, I have to say.”

  He wasn’t behaving any differently around me that I could tell. If he knew I could see lies, he hadn’t bothered to be honest. And if he didn’t know, I wasn’t going to tell him.

  “As I suspected, your sensitivities converge as some sort of truth-reading ability. Am I right?”

  Well, hell.

  “No.” I lay my chin on my hands, my arms on top of the papers.

  “It’s right there in black and white.” The table between us wasn’t wide. He didn’t have to lean very far to yank the papers out from under me.

  My elbows zipped forward, dropping my chin perilously close to the table’s surface. I squawked.

  “Cleo, I’m just doing my job. Give me the charts.”

  Just doing his job? Well, so was I. And mine was more important.

  With a sigh of disgust, Beau circled the table. Frozen in indecision, I watched as he gathered the papers I’d flipped to the floor. Several had fallen under my stool, so when he straightened, we were practically cheek to cheek.

  “You’ve wasted months of our time, what’s a few minutes?” he kidded, his tone less cutting than normal.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I blustered. His hip brushed my leg as he arranged the papers on my side of the table. I twitched.

  Beau placed a hand on my knee, which, as luck and my Lily Pulitzer dress would have it, was bare. His palm was warm and firm. “Would you relax? Jolene’s not here. Nobody’s going to overhear us. I cleared the place, and I’m running a blanket. We have complete privacy.”

  Beau was one of the most private people I’d ever met. He was going to hate that I’d been reading his thoughts for months. Hate me.

  So I started the disclosure on a strong, confident note. “Are you mad at me?”

  “I’ve confirmed my latest trainee, the sham who’s been under my nose for months, possesses one of the most rare supra skills in our generation, and you want to know if I’m mad at you?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  He removed his glasses, but the tape gave way and the temple clattered to the table. He didn’t seem to notice. “I’m not sure how to answer that.”

  “It doesn’t matter how you answer. I’ll see the truth anyway,” I said glumly.

  “Fascinating.” Without taking his gaze off me or his hand off my leg, he groped for a clipboard and a pen. “Can you turn it off?”

  “No.” Why was he still touching me?

  “Is the effect visual or do you hear the truth?”

  “Visual.” He wasn’t petting me. His hand was just...there.

  “What happens when you’re under the influence of intoxicants?”

  “I piss a lot of people off.”

  “I can see that.” Finally, so he could scribble on his clipboard, he moved his hand, leaving a chilly place above my knee. “Have you ever amped?”

  “No, and I don’t do drugs, so don’t ask me to.”

  “I wasn’t going to. Does orgasm negate it?”

  I flushed. “None of your business.”

  “It is my business.” Without the glasses, he had to tilt his head to see the writing on his clipboard.

  “Doesn’t it negate it for everyone?” I countered, reluctant to tell him what I’d only just discovered myself. The tests he’d want to run... I licked my lips. “Samantha says it does.”

  “Samantha isn’t an authority on supra response to physical stimuli just because she has lots of sex,” Beau said. “Are you going to balk me now there’s no reason to? Cat’s out of the bag, Cleo.”

  I sighed. “It’s more complicated than that.”

  “Yuri and Al have you searching for spies, no doubt. Their secret’s safe with me. Yours, too.”

  “How did you—”

  “It’s what anybody would do with a supra of your talents in this particular corporate environment,” he said,
though he wasn’t being entirely accurate. I couldn’t tell which part was untrue or incomplete, though, because omissions didn’t show up as lies.

  “You said you confirmed it. Did you suspect?”

  “Since the first time I saw your DNA chart.” He masked slightly. Could be braggadocio, not wanting to admit he hadn’t pegged me sooner. Could be something else.

  “Why were you always telling me how much I sucked? I don’t suck,” I said. “You owe me so many apologies.”

  “No,” he said, “I don’t.” He masked—and his mask apologized—but he forged ahead. “You’re a wash as a chameleon. It’s such a subsidiary skill, I can’t believe you can generate any sort of fade.”

  “God, you can’t stop, can you?” I swiveled my stool until I faced the table instead of him, my knees pointed away and my skirt tugged down as far as it would go. From this angle, there was no way he could put his nice, warm hand on my leg unless he wrapped his arms around my waist. “Despite your dire predictions, I can fade, which is another reason I don’t suck.”

  “You kind of suck,” he said.

  “And you’re kind of a liar.”

  “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”

  “Go jump in a lake.”

  Beau kicked my stool until I swiveled back to face him. He wedged his foot in the bars to keep me from turning away. It also pinned me between the table and his thigh, far too close for comfort. “Do you know what I can do?”

  “Annoy the shit out of anyone in under five seconds.”

  “I’m not proud of it,” he lied, “but it is a skill I’ve been honing for years. Do you know what else I can do?”

  “Wait, are you saying you are supra annoying?”

  “I’m a chameleon,” he answered evasively. “The good ones don’t just fade, Cleo.”

  “So you really can alter your melanin to match your camo pants.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Are we going back to day one? Cleo, please. I am begging you. I can do this if you can do this. Set aside the bickering and the sexual tension. Temporarily. We can fight later. I’ll even let you read a few lies so you can feel like you’ve gotten one over on me. Right now, let’s do some business.”

  Sexual tension. Oh boy. Though I didn’t know how I could feel any tension of the sexual variety after my weekend with John, Beau was dead right. Long before he’d burned out, I’d noticed him on some primal level and apparently he’d noticed me. Whether we wanted to notice or not.

  Why, I have no idea, and I didn’t care. My reputation was on the line, my job was on the line, and supra safety was on the line. It would be a relief not to argue. It would be a relief to be completely frank with somebody truly equipped to help me understand myself.

  It was, after all, his job.

  “Orgasm,” I said, and his eyebrows quirked, “does not turn it off. Does it turn yours off?”

  “Nope.”

  “Is that normal?”

  “It is for us.” We shared a moment of communion that went beyond our agreement to set aside whatever lay between us. It went beyond finding out there was a whole world of supras waiting for me to be a part of it.

  I really wasn’t alone anymore. I had an elemental us.

  “Can you read lies?” I asked.

  “Not like you can.”

  “Will you sit in the dunking booth?”

  “I will do just about anything if it ensures your cooperation.”

  He didn’t make it sound sexual, which was a bit of a disappointment. “Will you tell me why you ran a fade?”

  “Except that. And a few other things.” When I opened my mouth to suggest some of them, he held up a finger. “But I will sit in your dunking booth.”

  “Then I will tell you what you want to know.”

  “And no, Cleo, I’m not mad at you,” Beau said. “I just don’t like to get my hair wet.”

  ~ * ~

  I have never worked harder in my life than the week before YuriCorp’s ironically named Employee Appreciation Day.

  Once I gave Lou my dunking booth culprits, I thought I’d be free, but she kept cornering me. I cowered whenever I smelled White Shoulders. Cleo, call that weather-sensing supra and see if it’s going to rain, I don’t trust the norms on the TV. Cleo, make sure you come to the farm early on Saturday and help decorate the trees. Cleo, I’ve signed you up to find lost kids in the corn maze, make sure you wear comfy shoes. Cleo, fetch Uncle Herman a half gallon of milk and one of those bakery pies on the way home. All of this with the light flicker of ulterior motive masking her face, which made me even more reluctant to be sucked into the Lou Machine.

  I didn’t have time to be Lou’s flunkie. She had a whole squad to order around like the drill sergeant of fried chicken. And that was just at YuriCorp. Her vast family had also been enlisted since the picnic was at their farm. From the sound of it, either they had no other employment or she’d made them take the week off.

  First I had the confidential binder of employee relationship analysis. Then I had Al’s cross reference chart that made about as much sense as calculus. The depth of information YuriCorp kept on file about their employees put the government to shame.

  Under the pretext of party planning, Al and Yuri treated me to lunch twice in various secure locations as they crash-coursed me in data retrieval, aka spying. I don’t know if the new tactics rubbed off or what, but when I quizzed YuriCorp employees about their intended picnic guests, it bore fruit. I enlarged the bulging confidential files by a fourth.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t learn anything that ended the mole hunt, but I did shrink the suspect roster to a manageable list of suspicious characters. I concentrated on certain facts. Who had talents that could squeeze loved ones for information? Who had tried to get hired here, been fired from here, or resented their spouse’s long work hours? Who might have a grudge against the company?

  Who was a computer genius capable of infiltrating our systems despite Yuri and Al’s insistence we were hacker free?

  I figured I knew what more supras could do now than the Registry. Okay, maybe not the Registry. My knowledge was limited to middle Tennessee supras. But I’d amassed quite the index of supra skill sets. Most were uni-sensors with some bi-sensors for variety. I was the only tri-sensor. Touch talents led the pack—chameleons, mostly—with sensitivities in taste and smell running a close second.

  Since most of my new suspects didn’t work for YuriCorp, I had no reason to approach them during the week. I had to hope they’d show at the farm Saturday or I’d be hawking magazines door to door yet.

  Memorization was afternoons and evenings. Unlike before, I now preferred mornings. Not only was I Lou-free in the lab, but my truce with Beau held as we plunged into a new round of tests. We were careful to hide what we were doing from Jolene and the others, and he never once mentioned sending his analysis to the Registry. He also lied as frequently, or infrequently, as before our détente, which made me wonder if he’d been careful around me from the first or if he was truly an honest person.

  Being in cahoots with Beau instead of at odds with him improved my YuriCorp experience. Greatly. He was so geeked about what I could do and all the cool tests he got to run, he was complimentary several times. The tests did not involve my orgasm-immunity to my dismay, I mean, my relief.

  In fact, the three things we never touched on were that aspect of my ability, the status of my love life, and the fact everyone at the company had mysteriously forgotten the sexy that was Beau Walker. When I reminded Samantha, she looked at me like I was nuts and went back to discussing which bathing suit she should wear in the dunking booth.

  Speaking of my love life, John, in California for the week, texted me so much throughout the day I turned my cell off during work hours. If anyone were desperate to find me, they could go through the office phone system. Learning he’d had kettle corn as a snack and it reminded him of me was distracting. Learning he couldn’t wait to see me was cringe-inducing. My guilt and confusion about our rel
ationship would have bogged me down if I’d had time to allow it.

  When he asked if I missed him, I said I did.

  How often, and how casually, I lied to people, from the woman who was my closest friend, to my boss, to the man who wanted me to be his girlfriend. I lied to them all. If they’d had my ability, maintaining relationships would have been trying. Difficult. Horrible. The enforced honesty would have poisoned everything.

  I’d always imagined having friends who knew would be this huge breakthrough. I’d be able to open my arms and let the world in. Instead, it added a layer of difficulty to interactions that were already complex, a layer of angst and twistiness. With some, like Yuri and Al, it was easier because we didn’t have a personal relationship. With others, knowing I was a challenge to be around was hard to bear. I’d taken my burden and transferred it to them—but it hadn’t relieved the weight on my own shoulders.

  It just exhausted us all.

  Chapter 20

  Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Freakin’ Pie

  Lou instructed me no less than six times to come to the picnic early Saturday. Something about filling the dunking booth and memorizing the corn maze Yuri had used his green thumb to speed-grow to a proper height.

  I didn’t comply. Lou had her family to decorate trees and unfold tables, and I had no intention of helping with the maze. I needed to finalize my suspect cheat sheet. I’d tried to complete it last night, but John got in from California and I’d spent a while on the phone, persuading him not to rush over. The last thing I needed at the picnic was to be exhausted and partially sexed out of my ability.

  I hadn’t been sleeping well all week due to stress and what sounded like a budding robotics factory in Uncle Herman’s apartment. He’d never been a quiet neighbor, considering he listened to his television at maximum volume and more rock music than you might expect for a senior citizen, but he’d had to pick this week to construct his own killer cylon. Bleeps and bloops and high pitched whines pierced our shared wall at all hours. I slipped a couple notes under his door begging him to tone it down, but the old coot cranked it up instead.