by Jody Wallace
“I’ll take that,” Clint said after he tossed Jolene’s plate in the garbage. “Number eight.”
Instead of handing it over, Beau dropped the ball into the pail. I expected Clint to protest, but he didn’t.
“You’re late,” I said to Beau, astoundingly relieved to see him. “Everything okay?”
“I’m just in time.” He eyed the milling onlookers. “You really want me to do this.”
“Did you think I was kidding? This was part of our agreement,” I reminded him. He’d run tests to his heart’s content, and I hadn’t balked. It had been easier than expected for harmony of a sort to reign when Beau wasn’t being an ass and I wasn’t hiding my true nature.
He turned to Clint, his eyes concealed by the shades. “Is Rachel here?”
“Far as I know,” Clint said. “Why do you ask?”
“I haven’t seen her lately,” he lied. “She was one of my students years ago, and I wondered how she was doing.”
Rachel worked downtown, mostly from home, didn’t visit Jolene at headquarters because of the downtownie ban. Normally Beau would have no reason to see Rachel, but apparently he had anyway. When I opened my mouth to ask, Beau’s foot brushed mine and I realized he wanted me to do something. Probably shut up.
While I found Beau’s question odd, Clint didn’t. He answered without the hesitation he’d had in all his questions to me. It was possible Beau was fading him some. “She’s been busy. She took the week off to help Lou.”
“Jolene,” Beau said, indicating his lab partner, “said you went to Florida with the Lampeys a couple weeks ago. Did you drive through Alabama or Georgia? It’s shorter through Alabama. I can make it in six hours, tops.”
“Yeah, we went through Alabama,” Clint lied. So what if they’d gone through Georgia?
“We need to get you suited up,” I told Beau with a tiny headshake, in case he wanted to know about Clint’s honesty.
“I am ready.” A brief smile flashed across Beau’s face. “Do you want me to make money or disperse the crowd?”
“It’s for puppies and kittens,” I said in response to his latest odd question. He was in a mood today, that was for sure. I pointed at my placard. “Make money.”
He blew out a breath. “Damn. All right.”
With a slow pace that showed no fear of madman Clint and his killer aim, Beau crossed the firing line and began stripping off his shirt.
Oh, man. He’d been hiding all that under his clothes?
What Beau lacked in social graces, he more than made up for in muscles and smooth brown skin. The temperature, already steamy, rose ten degrees as he tossed his shirt over his shoulder like some kind of sexy cologne ad. When he motioned Samantha out of the cage, she practically fell scrambling down the ladder because she wasn’t watching her hands and feet.
She was watching our magnificently half-naked coworker.
Beau wore low-slung swim trunks, and his hair, instead of dull, ratted up dreads, shone blue-black in the hot afternoon sun. Without doing anything beyond taking off his shirt, he radiated a confidence and sex appeal that was almost tangible. He was careful to sidestep Samantha when she reached for his gleaming chest.
My jaw dropped, and I practically had to shut it with my hand. How could anyone be fooled by mere chameleon powers into thinking this man was a nonentity?
A low hum of gossip rose behind me, and even Jolene stopped pelting balls in my direction to ogle Beau as he climbed into the dunking booth. His muscles bunched and released under his mouthwatering skin. He took his time swinging into the cage before he lowered himself to the seat, his sunglasses still on his face.
He reached to each side and laced his fingers into the cage mesh in a gesture that caused sighs to ripple across select onlookers in a stadium wave of appreciation.
Tina Harris bumped Clint aside and held out her wallet. “I want some balls.”
“I’m not done.” Clint pinched the bridge of his nose and focused on Samantha, who stood under the white gazebo scrubbing herself with a beach towel. In her wet one piece with her hair springing every direction, she looked about fifteen. Fifteen and precociously well-endowed. “Hell, keep the money. My arm hurts.”
“What in the world is Beauregard doing?” Jolene asked.
“Who cares as long as he does it without his shirt?” Tina fondled a softball and stared.
“He’s turned it off, the little playboy,” Jolene said. “Dang. We’ll never get a break.”
“Fresh blood!” Herman exclaimed. “Who’s on first?”
Clint, no longer interested in watery revenge, stalked to Samantha for a more hands-on variety. I slipped the placard around Jolene’s neck and handed her the money apron. “Alex Berkley is supposed to show up to be dunked in two hours. Yuri’s wife said she’d spell you. There’s a chair if it gets slow.” I pointed at a folded lawn chair leaning against the gazebo. “I should warn you, Herman’s been here the whole time.”
“Uncle Herman’s a sweet old man,” Jolene said, confirming my suspicion she was not of this world. Nobody human or supra would call Herman sweet unless she meant “sweet” in the “eats a lot of pie” sense.
Beau half-rose from the dunking booth’s seat and called to me. “Hold on, where are you going?”
“Buffet. Have fun storming the castle.” I waved and headed for the gazebo. I needed to update my Harriet the Spy notebook, alert Samantha her ex had fallen under suspicion, and get Clint to an isolated location for some probing questions.
Samantha and Clint seemed to have fired the first sally without me.
“I’m not discussing this here, Clint.” Her voice pitched low, Samantha wrapped a towel around herself toga style. She glanced at Herman, but he was busy knocking the small piñata hanging from the gazebo rafters with his cane.
She was right. We should all go discuss it somewhere else, somewhere with a blanket so supra ears couldn’t hear us. Perhaps the bathrooms in the video barn were set up for privacy. Or maybe we could slip into the farmhouse. Sam was obviously in need of a wash-up. I just needed to avoid Lou so she couldn’t dispatch me to the corn maze.
“Hi, guys,” I said brightly. “I’m going to get lunch. Samantha, I know you’re hungry after all that swimming.”
“Starving. But I—”
I mugged at Samantha behind Clint’s back. “Clint, would you care to join us? I’d love to hear more about your baseball career. I’m Cleopatra Giancarlo. It’s nice to meet you.”
“I already ate.” Clint petted Samantha’s upper arm. Was he trying to use his supra powers on her? “Sammie, you know we’re right for each other. If it’s about the job, I can quit.” A lie glossed his face and faded, quicker than I could catch it.
Herman lowered his cane. “You can’t quit the agency until your contract’s up, boy.”
“Clint, I’m with somebody else now.” Samantha plucked his hand off her arm. “You are not sucking me into this conversation.”
“You mean Alex Berkley?” Clint laughed. “Lies, cheats, steals. All those Psytech bastards are the same. He’ll get what’s coming to him soon enough.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, because Samantha looked like she was going to ignore the testosterone. If he intended to have Alex beaten by thugs, who was I to interfere?
“Butt out,” he said, instead of answering my question.
Herman piped up behind me. “I want some pie. Crust and fruit. Cleo, you’re not busy anymore. Get it for me.”
Either bossiness ran in the family or Herman felt my being his chauffer translated to my being his handmaiden. I glared over my shoulder at him. “How much pie have you had today?”
“Not enough.” His face masked with dishonesty. Glutton.
“I haven’t had any.” Samantha slipped a pair of terrycloth capris over her bathing suit and slid her feet into flip flops. “I need to change and wash off the smell of dunking booth.”
“There are bathrooms in the video barn,” I suggested. She did
smell faintly metallic. “Pit stop before the buffet?”
“Sure.”
I tried to slyly gesture toward Clint in a way Sam could see but nobody else could. Yuri and Al hadn’t given me any last-minute lessons about spy hand signals. “Clint, I bet you’re hungry again.”
“He has better things to do.” Samantha flip-flopped down the gazebo steps. “Come on, Cleo.”
“Clinton and I will come with you.” Herman started to rise.
Crap, not Herman!
“To the women’s bathroom?” Clint asked. “I’ll pass. Samantha, I’ll see you later.”
“You’re not leaving the picnic early, are you?” I asked him, a little desperate now. I actually stepped into Clint’s way to prevent him from walking off. “Seriously, I love baseball. And hot dogs and America and stuff. Could I interview you? I’m working on a company newsletter.”
“We could work something out.” For the first time I received the full force of Clint’s attention. During previous encounters, including the dunking booth incident, he’d only half noticed I was there.
We locked gazes. The man had crazy eyes. Swirly. Wild. They were fringed by eyelashes so blond I could hardly see the hairs. Pinprick pupils meant his grey irises appeared bigger than normal.
I forced a smile and tugged my shirt over my hips, which tightened it over my breasts and deepened the vee neckline. If he was hung up on Sam, it was possible he was a breast man. “That would be great.”
“Are we going to the house?” Herman asked. “Quit standing around jawing. I’m not as steady on my feet as I used to be.”
“You don’t want to interview Clint.” Samantha did some mugging of her own, and she was no more successful than I’d been in getting her message across. She probably thought I wanted a piece of Clint’s rugged stubble since she’d convinced herself I was a femme fatale. “You shouldn’t be doing interviews with other guys when you’re dating John.”
“Good God, Samantha, if you’re jealous, interview me yourself,” Clint said.
“It’s not jealousy on my part.” Samantha’s face, already pinkened by the sun, reddened a little. But she was telling the truth. “John gets really jealous of Cleo and other guys.”
“Then I’ll definitely give you an interview, Cleo.” He reached out a hand for me to shake, and reluctantly I took it. I didn’t feel anything obvious in his touch, but I didn’t like the gleam in his eyes or the fib that had flickered across his face when he agreed to the meeting. “I need to let some people know my schedule has changed. When you’re done eating, find me and we’ll talk.”
He held my hand longer than necessary, and Samantha’s lips tightened.
The deal was cinched. I resolved to find him sooner rather than later. Whatever he had up his nonexistent sleeve—I’d find that, too. I hoped his lie wasn’t that he had no intention of meeting me but was trying to rattle Samantha.
When he stalked off, my instincts told me to follow. Now. I took several paces before I remembered I had to wait for Samantha and Herman.
“Punk,” Herman said to his retreating back.
We waited for Herman to clump down the stairs and shuffle across the grass, up the slight incline that led from the yard. Herman had graduated from a walker to a cane after his hip replacement. He complained about the cane and the heat and the distance between the gazebo and the outbuildings, and Samantha motioned me to her side behind Herman’s back.
“What is up with the Clint thing?” she hissed
“I need to ask him some questions.” I widened my eyes and tilted my head at Uncle Herman, stumping his way up the grassy slope. “For the newsletter.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Waste of your time.”
“Did you know he was dating a salesperson from the downtown office?” I said. “Rachel, Jolene’s daughter. Small world, huh?”
“I don’t think it’s a good reason to interview him.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You shouldn’t have let him touch you. You’d better let me fix anything he did.”
I’d never heard one pusher could adjust what another pusher pushed. Say that five times fast. “I don’t feel any different.”
“Do you feel different after I do it?” We fell behind Herman so he couldn’t hear us. He certainly never heard me when I banged on the wall or his door to ask him to turn down his television.
“Usually I can tell,” I told her. “I’m fine.”
“Let’s not take the chance. He’s not me.”
She reached for my arm, and I shied away. “I need to interview him. I can’t miss my window.”
“I’ll go with you.” We reached an area where picnickers milled and kept our voices whispery, heads together like two women discussing a man. Which we were.
“Bad idea,” I told her. “He’s obsessed with you, and that could distract from the information I want for the newsletter.” I needed Clint where no guilty supras could overhear my questions and put two and two together, but that didn’t mean I planned to hop in the car with him and head off for a deserted, back country road.
The fact Clint might put two and two together himself crossed my mind, but I had to find out what Yuri needed to know. Carefully. If Clint was the saboteur, I was risking a burnout, or worse.
I needed ammunition. Samantha might know if Clint’s particular skill lent itself to burning. Could he explode somebody’s emotional stress levels? I’d been told there were no supra talents that could, but my instructors weren’t infallible. Which is why the hunt for the saboteur was so challenging.
That and the fact he or she appeared to be smarter than the rest of us.
“You two quit whispering. It’s rude,” Herman said.
Our whispers had been so tiny, I could barely hear them myself. Was Herman an ear?
“We have to go to the ladies room so I can get dressed,” Samantha said in a loud voice.
Herman paused, his gnarled hands on the hook of his cane. “Go by yourself, missy. Cleo promised to get my pie.”
I hadn’t promised. I hadn’t even agreed. Nor had I agreed to man the dunking booth or the corn maze and I’d already found myself doing one of those two things. Herman was definitely a Lampey.
“You can’t get your own pie?” Samantha asked.
“Do I look like I can carry a pie plate and tea at the same time with this stupid cane?” A sour expression twisted features that were habitually sour anyway. “You young people, thinking it’s all about you. Nobody respects their elders anymore.”
I felt like a jerk, and he wasn’t even my uncle. “If you find a place to sit, I’ll come help you in a bit, I promise, Herman.”
“You can do it now,” he argued.
Samantha patted him on the arm. “She has other responsibilities.”
Herman blinked at us, his mouth pinching and relaxing. He heaved a giant, disgusted sigh. “Fine,” he muttered before he stomped off.
I raised a brow at Sam. “Did you—”
“Totally. Let’s run before it wears off.”
I needed a blanket to ask Samantha about Clint. A sonic wristwatch would be incredibly useful. Too bad our tech guys were far from Q-like. Besides, I was out of the espionage business come Monday—one way or the other.
We headed toward the outbuilding that had the most people, assuming correctly it was the one with the restrooms. However, it was so crowded I couldn’t talk to Samantha privately, blanket or no blanket.
We stood in the line a couple minutes before impatience got the better of me.
“I’ll go take care of Herman before he blows a gasket. Then I’m going to find Clint. Can you tell Al I’m getting a baseball interview for the company newsletter?”
“Wait for me,” Samantha insisted.
“I’ll be fine,” I repeated. “But you could tell me a few things about Clint since you dated him. What are his likes and dislikes? Does he have any hobbies or special skills besides deadly aim with a baseball? Any, uh, burning desires?”
“Not that
I know of.” The line moved slowly. Female supras didn’t pee and primp any faster than norms, that was for sure. “Do you really want to waste your time with him? There are better people you could interview. Roxanne, for example. Is she really that bad of a shot?”
“Yuri and Al would love an article about minor league baseball. Clint has some good stories about it. I caught some hints of them earlier.”
“You’re positive?”
I wasn’t, but it was the best lead, outside of John, I’d had since I’d started this job. “There’s something there.”
“I doubt it’s as interesting as you think,” she said seriously. “When I broke up with him a year ago, he—”
“There you are.” Clint interrupted whatever Samantha had been about to tell me. “I’ve got to scoot, so if you want that interview, let’s go.”
Clint placed a hand on my upper arm as if to escort me away from Samantha, but she grabbed my wrist, quick as a snake.
Two pushers, one Cleo. If they tried to vibe me at the same time, what would happen?
Would it make my moods rock like a see saw?
Or burn me out?
Light bulb. Light bulb light bulb light bulb! A pusher alone might not burn somebody out but if two joined forces… Definitely a question for Yuri and Al, provided the supra tug of war being enacted upon my person didn’t melt my brain.
“Let go,” I said.
“Where are you going?” Samantha asked.
“Somewhere else,” Clint said. “Somewhere with a table.” His mask suggested that was definitely not the whole story. “I assume Cleo’s going to want her little notebook.”
“I do need to take notes.” I thought I’d been discreet about my notebook, but I guess PIs like Clint were trained to notice details. “How about you both take your hands off me and—”
I tugged, but neither released me. I couldn’t exactly pitch a fit. The women waiting for the bathroom hadn’t noticed our confrontation, and it would be best if we kept it that way.
“We’re holding up the line,” I said. “Samantha, can you get Herman’s pie and tell Al I’m interviewing Clint?”
Samantha’s grip tightened, and we locked gazes. “I’ll find you in twenty minutes, Cleo.”
