The Whole Truth (The Supercharged Files Book 1)

THE WHOLE TRUTH

Book One of the
Supercharged Files

By Jody Wallace

“The Whole Truth”

By Jody Wallace

From Meankitty Publishing

Copyright ©2013 Jody Wallace

Cover by James of Goonwrite.com

Editing by Julie Coffey

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment. This
ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to
share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for
each recipient or use a qualified vendor’s legitimate lending program. Thank
you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedication:
Julie talked me into this, so this one
is completely on her. I mean, FOR her. It’s FOR Julie. Thanks, Julie! You’re
inspiring and witty and I’m glad we did this.

About the book:
A human lie detector is hired
to unmask a mole but discovers her powers can’t protect her when even the bad
guys are superpowered.

Cleopatra Giancarlo is different from your average twenty
something career girl. For one thing, she knows when people lie because she can
see the truth in their shadows. For another, she doesn’t use her power for
good. Or evil. After repeated failures to help others, she mostly just uses it
to get deals at Bloomingdale’s. She fears what the government would do if they
discovered her ability, yet she longs to find out if there are people like her
out there. If there’s anything more she could be.

She gets her wish when two strangers whisk her away from
her old life and introduce her to the world of suprasensors. John and Samantha
represent an organization called YuriCorp, one of many privately-owned firms
that employ supras to increase their profit margin. Any of these firms would be
thrilled to have Cleo on staff, and their methods of recruitment aren’t always
friendly.

But even in the world of supras, Cleo isn’t safe. Her new
boss wants her to go undercover and seek traitors in the company ranks. Her new
friends know what she can do and how to work around it. And when someone starts
wiping out supras, her new assignment might end up with her in a coma—or worse.

Chapter 1

I see shadows. But
not dead people.

When they found me, they weren’t
ninjas, just garden-variety men in black. Excuse me, people in black. The
frustrating part wasn’t that they invaded my home but that I should have been
expecting it. After all, I’m the only person I’ve ever met who can do what I
can do. Besides write advertising copy. Anybody can do that as long as they
have a penchant for buzz words and hyperbole.

No, as far as I know, I’m the
only freak like me in existence. I should have been ready for this to happen. I
should have had a bag packed, with stylish travel wear and airline-friendly
cosmetics.

But I didn’t. They caught me
completely unaware. I’m stupid that way, even if I can discover any truth by
asking the right questions.

I got home from another late
night, after a normal week at work, if there is such a thing. I unlocked the
door, cursed it when it stuck, and had almost kicked it shut when I noticed
them.

A man and woman I’d never seen
before were in my living room watching my newest indulgent purchase. Wait, technically
that would be my new Kate Spade purse. While it’s sparkly, it doesn’t do any
tricks worth staring at. They were watching my widescreen TV.

The man rose when he noticed me,
as if he always stood when a female entered the room. He inhaled audibly but
made no sudden moves.

Had I surprised their....illicit
TV viewing?

“What the hell are you doing in
my house?” I asked from the safety of the foyer. I would have taken off without
asking questions, but they didn’t seem aggressive. I mean, they’d been absorbed
in Andy Griffith.

The man’s lips parted slightly.
Then he gave a sharp nod.

“Cleopatra Giancarlo?” he asked,
smoothing the lapel of his expensive suit.

“Maybe.” I propped the door open
with my toe, tensed to run. “Maybe not.”

“I see you were working late
again, Miss Giancarlo,” he said.

“Working late isn’t a crime.”
Unless you were a mobster or something. When the man didn’t respond, I
continued.

“Who are you people?” Let them
try to claim they were friends. Let them try to lie to me. I didn’t step away
from the door.

The man glanced at the woman. She
shrugged.

“My name is John Arlin. This is
my partner, Samantha Graves. We’re happy to meet you, Miss Giancarlo.”

Their actual names, and they were
honestly happy to meet me.

Samantha reclined against the arm
of my sofa with my cat—my cat!—in her lap. I hoped Boris got hairballs all over
her spiffy tweed.

She smiled at me. Her teeth were
unnaturally white. “Shut the door,” she said. “You’re letting in mosquitoes.”

I backed onto the porch, only to
notice a gigantic man in a dark suit step out of a vehicle at the curb. He was
nearly twice as tall as the car. He waved.

Safer inside or outside?

Outside lurked their giant.
Inside I could see their masks if they lied. I went in, closed the door, and
held my keychain at the ready. I’d read somewhere you could stab people in the
eyeball with your key to incapacitate them. Provided you had the guts to do so.

“Please don’t feel threatened. We
just want to talk.” John adjusted a sleeve and glanced at his watch. His dark
jacket parted to reveal a crisp white dress shirt and...

Did I see a holster?

“You’re in my house without my
permission. I feel threatened.” I inched into the room, toward the phone, my
cell having disappeared in the depths of my work satchel three days ago. I knew
it was there because I could call myself. I just couldn’t find the damn thing.

“I apologize for that. Time has
become critical, and it was expedient to meet you in private, instead of making
an appointment.”

Was it true? I squinted, trying
to detect the shadow that formed around the faces of any liars in my line of
vision. No darkening. He was being honest.

It occurred to me that John and
Samantha could be the people who wanted to buy the house from my landlord. The
old coot threatened to sell the place out from under me every time I complained
about the parking lot, if you could call a ten foot wide section of rubble a
parking lot.

John continued. “Dinner’s in the
fridge. Pastrami and jack on sourdough.”

Good guess...but the sandwich put
him out of the running for home buyer. “You didn’t break into my house to talk
sandwiches. Why are you here?”

“We have some information for you
about an opportunity,” he said. “Will you hear us out?” He had yet to display a
mask, the shadow veneer that appeared in front of a liar’s face, which did ease
my nerves. That didn’t mean I was going to let my guard down.

“Cut the solicitous crap. What do
you want? My television?” I doubted it, because their car outside wasn’t big
enough to transport it, but bravado seemed smarter than fear. “Take it, I have
renter’s insurance.”

He stepped closer, and I became
aware of the fact he was tall, not to mention built. I was short. Could I
key-poke his eye or not? More like his throat. Wasn’t the spot between your
collarbones vulnerable? I patted my non-key-holding hand against my breastbone
to check, my heavy work satchel thumping my hip.

John picked up my cordless
telephone from the bookcase next to the couch and extended it to me. “The
minute we make you nervous, dial the police.”

“I’m nervous right now.” I
pressed various areas on my throat to test which was most stickable. Nervous
people did that, protected their throats, or their boobs. I guess they were
protecting their hearts, not their boobs.

“Sorry.” He tilted his head down.
“Would you prefer to eat first? You must be hungry. We got the sandwich from Mazio’s.”

How could they know my favorite
eatery was a dive three blocks down on the east end?

An ugly suspicion rose in me. A
nightmare of a thought. They knew all these things about me because they’d been
spying on me. Watching where and what I ate, how late I stayed at work.

“I’d prefer that you leave,” I
told him.

“We’ll leave as soon as we talk
to you.” He stepped closer, still offering the phone.

“I think you should go now.” I
snatched the phone but John held onto it, keeping me within arm’s reach. His
nostrils flared and his pupils dilated, and for a minute I got the distinct
impression he was smelling me.

“John,” Samantha warned. “You’re
creeping her out.”

He shook himself. I returned to
the relative safety of my foyer with the handset. Since Mondo was in the
street, I could make a run for the neighbor. So what if he wasn’t home? They
wouldn’t know that.

Oh, wait. They probably would. My
fingers found the nine. I pressed it, then a one. John pursed his lips and
fingered his Snoopy tie. Snoopy?

They waited to see if I’d dial a
third number. If they meant me harm, would they give me the chance to call for
help? Maybe I should hear them out.

We all stared at each other until
Samantha said, “What a soft, fluffy cat. Is this Boris or Natasha?”

I contemplated the additional
digit on the phone. “Why do you know all this stuff about me?”

“We know all sorts of things
about you. That’s what we’re here to discuss.” The woman slid Boris off her lap
and rose.

First thing I noticed was she was
really short, too.

Second thing I noticed was she
had on four-inch heels, Manolos, which meant she was actually shorter than me.
Mine were two-inch kitten heels, the same rose pink as my tiered ruffle skirt
and blouse.

You know, that thing about secret
servicemen in black isn’t true. Samantha had on a tweed suit. I know tweed’s
the new black, but I was pretty sure John’s Snoopy as the Red Baron tie wasn’t
regulation at Ye Olde Agency.

“You guys aren’t from the CIA,
are you?” I asked. “FBI? NSA? Homeland Security?” The main reason I’d kept
myself to...myself was my inherent fear of the government and what they’d want from
me if they found out. You could only tip off the cops so many times before they
got suspicious, and pretending to be psychic only works on television.

Samantha Graves smiled, and her
long-lashed, blue eyes twinkled as if we were sharing a joke. She had a
perfect, shiny black bob without a hair out of place, and she couldn’t be more
than a size three. I could hate a woman like that.

“That’s correct, we’re not from
any of those places. May I call you Cleopatra?”

“Not unless you want me to finish
dialing 9-1-1 for the murder I’d be forced to commit.”

I had yet to see a glimmer
surrounding either of them. They had yet to answer any of my pertinent
questions.

Shit.

They knew.

John Arlin’s gun holster beeped
the theme song from Shaft, breaking the tension, and he pulled a cell phone out
of it. Phone, not gun. He spoke. “Arlin. Yes. Five minutes? I thought we had two
hours. No, no problem.” He clicked it off, and he and Samantha exchanged a
glance.

“Miss Giancarlo,” he said, “could
we convince you to go on a drive with us? Your cats, too.”

“Go with you? Do you think I’m insane?”

Samantha minced up to me and
tilted her head to the side like a bird. “Do you think you’re insane?”

“No.” When you live with this
affliction as long as I have, you develop great skill at getting people to
confess the truths they aren’t telling. You realize you aren’t nuts.

“We read your blog. We’d been
wondering about you, but the post yesterday cinched it.”

“My blog?” I kept an online
journal called The Whole Truth. It's part diary, part social diatribe, where I
vent my frustrations about what liars people are and how screwed up the world
is because of it. I'm not crazy. I don't go around listening to politician's
speeches and unveiling the truth behind their words. That would attract
attention of the wrong kind.

So much for all those precautions
I’d taken to remain anonymous. The question was whether this was the wrong kind
of attention—or the attention I’d always dreamed of.

“Your blog,” Samantha agreed. “We
know what you can do, and so does at least one other group. You’ve got to make
a choice and make it now.”

My stomach flopped. The moment of
my own truth was upon me, and I had no idea how to handle it. “Is this where
you say, ‘Come with me if you want to live’?”

John frowned. He looked so
serious and concerned for my safety it was cute. And frightening. “We won’t
hurt or coerce you in any way. They might.”

Of all the times not to see a
mask! The air around both unwanted guests was as clear as lip gloss.

Whoever was coming was bad news.
At least, John and Samantha thought so. “All right,” I said. “Where are we
going, for how long, and why do you want to take my cats?”

“Trust us.” Samantha clasped my
hand between hers. Something deep inside me warmed and tingled in an “I just
ate homemade chicken soup” way. My uncertainty eased, though I still wondered
how much danger was I in. Were these guys secret agents? Was the other group,
the one they said was coming?

Would I be dissected? Hidden away
in Area 51?

Did they know whether or not I
was from Mars? No, Venus.

“You’re making the right choice.”
John’s steady brown gaze locked with my own. He was really quite attractive.
“We won’t force you to do anything you don’t want.”

Samantha dropped my hand. I
swallowed hard, my gut, my instincts, leaping around like a fish on the hook.
“I need to get my—”

“We don’t have time. Rest
assured, it’s all been taken care of.” John leaned behind my sofa and snagged a
cat carrier with Natasha, my white hellcat, already in it. Ooooh-kay. She
lurked against the back of the crate, her eyes slitted with fury.

“Can they ride together or will
we need the other carrier?” He pointed to a second blue crate behind the couch.

“Natasha needs her own space.”
Especially considering what Boris usually did in the carrier. “I assume we’re
using that black car out there? Boris would do better if I held him.”

“We can’t take the chance he’d
get loose,” John said. “Can you help me?”

I scooped up the yellow tabby
from the couch. John and I popped Boris into the crate while Samantha got a
brown sack from my fridge.

“Let’s roll,” John said.

“I got your dinner.” Samantha
smiled and held up the bag. “Diet Dr. Pepper, too.”

“Wow, you have been keeping
track.” I’d only switched to calorie-free beverages a week ago when a lady at
work asked me if I’d lost weight—because her mask said something else entirely.

“Your blog is very entertaining,”
she assured me. “Just so you know, I disagree about the ten pounds, but it’s
your body.”

No shadow! It shouldn’t have
excited me as much as it did, not when my life was in danger. Or something.
Suddenly, I wished my affliction was the ability to stop time and make people
tell me what was going on. That would also help during Quentin Tarantino films.

Samantha hooked my arm and
hustled me out the door, into the dark sedan, where the other guy, taller and
broader than John, opened the back door for us to slide in.

“Hi, who are you?” I asked,
hoping for a lie.

“Alfonso.” Alfonso the Ape Man.
He checked the street both ways and hurried to the driver’s door. “Cats in
back. Psytech’s almost here.”

The carriers fit on the seat between
Samantha and me. Boris, the coward, yowled out his terror and pissed. Natasha
yowled out her disgust at Boris’s actions and tried to claw Samantha through
the small slits in the crate.

Samantha wrinkled her nose. “Aw,
poor kitty. Sorry you’re so miserable,” she said.

Around her face, a thin shadow
winked into existence.

I smiled. Gotcha.

Her eyes widened and she pinched
her mouth shut.

We sped off, our tires—I swear!—squealing.