The Whole Truth (The Supercharged Files Book 1) (13 page)

“Everyone at work bed hops like
fleas.” I felt a pout overtake my face and concealed it by sticking my fork in
my mouth.

“I’m not everyone. Neither are
you. I won’t be shoved into something because Samantha tricked us.”

He wasn’t telling me anything I
didn’t know—thought I was cute, didn’t want to go there. “Maybe she figured she
was doing us a favor.”

“She doesn’t do anybody any
favors.” John sighed. “You’re a great girl, Cleo. I just can’t do this right
now.”

A great girl. Damning words.
Damning and not particularly accurate words since had a rare showing of shadow
mask along with them.

Was I not great? Or did Samantha
do favors for somebody?

I let it go. John, who left
shortly thereafter, was obviously upset by tonight’s revelations, and I had to
decide how I was going to deal with Samantha.

There might not be a supra police
force to report her to, but it was my job to expose untrustworthy YuriCorpers.
I was far from helpless in the jungle of office politics. What else did I need
to find out about her before I went to Yuri?

Chapter 11

Revenge Is For
Losers With No Friends

Lou snagged me as soon as I walked
through the door on Monday. “Yuri wants to talk to you.”

I wasn’t ready to talk to Yuri. I
needed more ammo on Sam. “I’ll go see him after I—”
Kick Samantha’s
treacherous butt.

“He said as soon as you got in.”
The phone rang, and she picked it up. “YuriCorp. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No, I don’t
think so, let me ask.” She cupped her hand over the phone. “Uncle Herman wants
to know if you have a headache.”

“Why?” After warning me to keep
the racket down during my furniture fiasco, Herman had blasted the TV all day
Sunday. He’d found a Star Wars marathon from the sound of it.

“He has one and he thinks it’s
your heat and air.”

“Sorry, I don’t.” He probably had
a headache due to an overdose of the Force.

Lou uncovered the phone. “She’s
fine. No, don’t do that. Uncle Herman, I swear. If I’ve told you once, I’ve
told you a million times. Okay, bye.” She hung up. “Better hurry, Yuri has
doughnuts. One of the kids is raising money for band uniforms.”

“Want me to bring you one?”

“I couldn’t eat another bite.”
She patted her stomach. “But thanks, hon. By the way, Uncle Herman wants you to
pick him up some ibuprofen.”

The frequency with which I ran
errands for Uncle Herman had increased until he ordered instead of asked. Lou
was nicer, but she didn’t hesitate to boss people around either. It surprised
me she was a Registry operator instead of in management. There wasn’t much call
for an eraser in consulting outside of damage control, but this was the job she
said she wanted, and Lou seemed the type who got what she wanted.

Despite her alarming skill, she’d
been one of the first people I’d crossed off my list. She and Pavarti were the
friendliest people here, and Lou had taken me under her wing. Her memory zapping
had originally drawn her into the family PI business, but she said she was too
old for the stress and despair.

Lesser stress could often be
soothed by pastry, and if I wanted doughnuts, my violent encounter with
Samantha would have to wait. I hustled to Yuri’s office before the hyenas
sniffed out the goods.

Yuri had a new plant, I noticed,
when I slipped into his office. The overly large Venus flytrap reminded me of The
Little Shop of Horrors.

“What did you feed that thing,
somebody from Psytech?” I asked.

“Not at all.” Yuri liked to suck
the wind out of my sails by taking my jokes seriously. “I tried a different
mineral mix.”

Yuri had a green thumb—literally.
He could read soil content with his fingers. What it didn’t translate to was an
advantage for management consulting, but he did have a head for business. He
had some small ability to read people’s hormonal chemistry if he could get his
fingers in their mouths. Also not that useful on a consulting gig outside of a
dentist’s office.

“Lou said you wanted to see me.”

Yuri flicked the switch on his
blanket box, which was a lot like one of those ultrasonic pest control devices.
The lab guys said you just had to retune it on a regular basis. That way ears
like Alfonso couldn’t train themselves to hear beyond your particular
frequency.

You couldn’t run a blanket
full-time or you got a killer headache, so this meant Yuri wanted to have a big
talk. I sat in one of the visitor chairs and tried not to stare at the boxes of
Krispie Kremes next to the coffeepot.

“How’s our special project
going?” Yuri asked. Today he was sans-suit, wearing a striped sweater and
slacks that made him look like a French mime.

We’d had a couple meetings about
my search, but he didn’t want our interactions to seem out of place for a
chameleon in training. Since my suspicions about Samantha had insufficient
confirmation, I decided not to mention them or what she’d done to me and John.

“I’m sorry, Yuri. I don’t know
anything yet.” The squicky search for the mole had continued to be futile as I
pawed through the private lives of my coworkers. “I’m starting to have doubts.”

“There’s no room for doubt.” Yuri
leaned back in his chair and rubbed his bald head with his hands, heaving a
giant sigh. “As if losing Pavarti weren’t bad enough, another job blew up
today. Donning burned out like a hosta in the sun. Another stroke. We haven’t
told anyone yet.”

“Oh, no.” I’d met Adam Donning
long enough to get him confused with Mike Mason and quiz him about his
loyalties. He’d seemed like a decent guy.

“We’ve never been hit this close
together, or this bad. They’re stepping up their efforts.”

There was no way two healthy
consultants stroking out within a couple days could be a coincidence. YuriCorp
was going to have trouble keeping the norms from noticing. Perhaps Lou was
going to have to use her skills after all. “You’re sure I don’t need to spend
more time downtown?”

“The issue is definitely in this
facility. Some of the information leaks involve the work of our trackers, who
function strictly out of this office. You’re our last new recruit, despite our
best efforts. We’re working on Tina.”

“I don’t think it’s a tracker.”
We had quite a few on staff. No other company spent as much time, energy and
resources on trackers as YuriCorp did, and it was a demanding job. Jolene had
spent years in tracking before switching to DNA with Beau—and said working with
Beau was easier. “Are you positive the burnouts are connected to the
information leak?”

He peered through his fingers at
me. “Do you see a lie around me, Cleo?”

“No.” Usually good natured, today
Yuri was testy, and it was obvious why. “I just wondered how you knew. Pavarti
was near the end of a motivational seminar when she burned out. It’s arguable
she could have been overtaxed. What was Donning doing?”

In training, I’d learned how to
protect myself from stress—meditation, dark rooms, quitting situations that over
stimulated my suprasense. To prevent my chameleon half from burning out, I
needed to avoid situations that made me want to disappear, like public speaking
or someone smacking me around. So disappointing to remove speeches and beatings
from my schedule.

To avoid a lie sight burnout, I’d
concluded I should avoid people who lied. Which was most people, but I’d
suffered all sorts of stress in my life watching liars lie and had never burned
out. Perhaps my years of, you know, leaving the house had increased my
tolerance.

“Donning and his team were on day
two.” Yuri massaged his temples like he could squeeze the company’s misfortunes
out of existence. “We were going to send John, but he and Sam took over
Pavarti’s seminar.”

My breath caught. “You think they
were gunning for John?”

“No way to tell. John’s been on
any number of assignments and never on a team where somebody got hit. What are
you hearing from the staff about morale?”

“Pavarti’s condition spooks
them.” Yuri and Al had received some complaints, but not as many as I’d seen in
people’s masks. The disquiet was a low rumble, distant thunder before a storm.
“When they find out about Donning, it might get ugly.”

“I agree,” Yuri said, still
rubbing his head. “Chameleons rarely burn out under normal circumstances.
Donning’s situation is highly unusual.”

If our ill-wishers were
escalating, we needed to escalate as well. I just didn’t know what else I could
do. “What if we create a chart of who burned out where and see if there’s a
concentric pattern that leads back to the villain?”

“There’s no pattern, Cleo.” Yuri
dropped his hands and leaned back in his seat. “On-the-job burnouts have always
been a risk for people who exert their suprasenses. The only consistency is it
happens at work, it happens more than it used to, and it happens more to our
employees than anyone else’s. I’m going to have to approach the other companies
again, and I don’t like exposing my throat that way.”

All my best ideas, shot down like
squirrels. “I don’t see how anybody could be hiding something of this magnitude
from me. The few people I haven’t met are on the road all the time and couldn’t
be doing this anyway. Everyone thinks I’m a busybody.” I considered telling him
about my note-writing friend, who had continued to gift me with little advice
bombs, but it seemed trivial compared to the threat to our staff.

“I’m sorry,” Yuri said sincerely.
“This won’t be forever. We’re all fumbling in the dark. The situation is
unprecedented.” He didn’t mean the corporate infighting. Supras had been
undercutting each other’s bids and stealing employees since they’d had the
bright idea to create rival companies. But according to everyone, they’d never
attacked one another like this.

All this strain was enough to
make a girl crave carbohydrates. I needed a doughnut. Bad.

I clenched the chair arms and
concentrated on Yuri. “If a suprasensor is causing the burnouts, isn’t that
against our code of ethics?” Of course, the code didn’t keep Samantha in line,
but I had no proof—yet—that her actions extended beyond her own personal
amusement.

“If nobody can prove you did
it...” He trailed off with a shrug. “During our, ah, management consulting conferences,
we’ve discussed forming a police unit, but the idea never gets off the ground.”

“You’d think this would change
everyone’s mind.”

Yuri shook his head. “No one else
has been this affected.”

“So no one else cares.” Opinions
were mixed about supra cops. Lou, after her time as a PI, felt strongly that we
needed protection from the dangerous elements among us, so strongly she
circulated a regular petition. She, Samantha, Ursula and I had debated it at
lunch the other day, after a much more entertaining discussion of the fashion
indiscretion that was dresses over pants. Other supras were more ambivalent.

The more I saw YuriCorpers
injured, the more I sided with Lou. “I think it’s time to revisit it. Everyone
abides by other rules, like use of the Registry. I don’t see why we can’t agree
on some policies and a way to enforce them.”

“We all benefit from the
Registry. Many don’t want the oversight of a police unit.”

“Probably the men,” I griped.

Yuri smiled a little. “Not just
the men. I for one would support a police unit as long as there were measures
in place to disrupt oppressive tendencies.”

One thing I’d noticed—strength
and power were relative when women like Samantha pushed moods and men like Yuri
grew flowers. That being said, there was no way so many people could have
abilities and not be swayed to the dark side. Suprasensors were no more morally
upright than anyone else, and Lou had told me stories I didn’t like to think
about.

Like nearly everything that came
out of Lou’s mouth, the stories were true.

“I wouldn’t have dreamed
management consulting would be dangerous.” If I’d known, would I have taken the
job? Maybe. Whoever was attacking my fellow employees needed to be stopped, no
matter who it was—even Yuri’s own granddaughter.

“Nor would I,” he said.
“Dangerous times call for desperate measures.”

How could I sound him out about
Samantha? I got us both a doughnut to lighten the mood before I broached the
topic. When I resettled into my chair, I cracked a joke. “We do have long-term
disability, right?”

Yuri cast me an exasperated
glance over his pastry. “Of course we do, but it won’t matter if we go out of
business. We’ve lost too many key employee skill-sets. We’re struggling to
fulfill contracts. We’re like grain without nitrogen—poor yield, low protein.
Our effectiveness plummets when we fall back on normal management consulting
techniques.”

I looked him in the eyes and took
a deep breath. “Did you know Samantha is dating Alex Berkley from Psytech?” I
bit into the Krispy Kreme and hoped the sweetness would erase the bitterness of
the near-accusation from my tongue.

“Cross pollination.” With his
half-eaten doughnut, Yuri waved away my concern about his granddaughter and
favorite employee. Well, next to Lou, who was everyone’s favorite. It helped that
Lou let YuriCorpers stay in the Lampey family beach house in Destin for free.
“A number of employees are involved with competitors. Married, even. It doesn’t
mean there’s trespassing. Suprasensors are drawn to one another.”

I nodded, but I didn’t comment on
the bed-hopping at YuriCorp. It was old news. “Alex can’t force her to tell him
things, can he?”

“Samantha can protect herself
from Alex.”

So what could he do? Listen?
Smell? See? One thing I did know, Alex Berkley had no concept of personal
space. He always crowded me when he joined us at Merlin’s, and if I ever found
out he was hoodooing me, there’d be hell to pay.

“Can he burn people out?”

Yuri shook his head. “No supra
can do that.”

“Samantha tends to, um, use her
powers outside of work. Casually.” By casually, I meant without a second
thought and for her own malicious purposes.

“Most of us do.” Yuri steepled
his fingers and frowned at me, which he rarely did. “Are you trying to tell me
I should be suspicious of my granddaughter’s loyalties?”

“Gosh no.” I changed the subject
fast. “What if it’s not one of us? Maybe it’s a hacker.”

“Not all information goes into
the computers, and our network is secure.”

“I have one last idea.” Yuri was
like a father to me and I hated to disappoint him. Okay, that was crap. Yuri
was like a boss I was fond of, who paid me a lot of money and seemed to think I
could make miracles happen. “Maybe Alex isn’t getting it from Sam, but what if
somebody else is having the information tricked out of them? Or not tricked.
The leak and the saboteur don’t have to be the same person. It could be, like,
a whole conspiracy.”

Or Psytech.

“Hm,” Yuri said.

“Is there any way I could meet
people’s families? A company party or a picnic?”