Part 1 Part 2Clark’s first stop was to the mailroom. He caught sight of Jack, who was on a soda break, and waved.
“Hey, Clark,” the young man said, closing his soda bottle. “What’s up?”
Clark held up the envelope that Jack had just delivered to Lois’s office. “Do you remember this?”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t happen to see how this arrived into the Daily Planet mailroom, did you?” Clark asked.
“Interoffice mail,” Jack said, flicking the corner of the envelope where a postal stamp usually went. “No stamp.”
“This was sent to Ms. Lane by one of her coworkers?” Clark said. He hadn’t been expecting that.
“Not necessarily. Anyone could’ve dropped it in someone’s outbox and it would’ve been brought down here. It also could’ve been left for her at reception,” Jack explained. “It’s really not all that secure a process.” He unscrewed his soda and took another sip. “What was in it?”
“Something private,” Clark replied.
Jack grinned. “Ah, Clark. You know we don’t have any secrets here at the Daily Planet,” he teased.
Ever since terrorists had taken over the Daily Planet back in early April, Jack had been dropping hints that he knew Clark’s secret.
“We also don’t repeat them haphazardly,” Clark responded. “If we did, someone could get hurt.”
“Don’t I know it?” Jack scoffed.
“Do me a favor,” Clark asked, tapping Jack’s arm with the envelope. “If Ms. Lane receives any more mail like this one, can you divert it to my desk instead?”
Jack appeared wary but the sparkle in his eye told Clark he would. “Was it dangerous?” he whispered.
Clark shook his head.
At least, not physically.“I could get in trouble with the men upstairs,” Jack warned. Meaning Luthor.
“What could they do? Demote you?” Clark said, echoing the words Jack had used against Susan earlier. “Just slip them into an interoffice envelope and direct them my way. Nobody will be the wiser.”
“Will do, Clark. You going to tell me what this is about?” Jack asked.
No. “We’ll see,” Clark said, heading out of the room. He paused at the doorway. “Any idea whose desk it could’ve been dropped off at?”
Jack shook his head. “Nah. It all gets mixed up when it’s collected.”
“Too bad. Thanks, Jack!” Clark called, heading for the stairwell.
At least, Lois wouldn’t have to worry about Susan intercepting any of the photos and informing Luthor. Even a blackmailer didn’t deserve a death sentence for threatening Lois.
Keeping secrets was certainly a recipe for marital disaster, but he knew Lois’s fiancé was already holding much back from her. As Clark wouldn’t mind if Lois and Luthor broke up, he would actively encourage Lois’s behavior, especially since she had turned to him, Clark, for help. Clark would protect Lois from any consequences. Anyway, he rather liked that Lois trusted him more than her fiancé.
He knew it was also ironic that he held the opinion that the members of a couple should be completely honest with each other as he had never told anyone his own secret. Then, again, he had never been engaged before, either.
***
Clark collapsed onto his sofa, respecting the hard work the police put into their jobs. Even with all his powers, investigating wasn’t easy.
Jack had delivered one more picture after lunch and a fourth before the end of the day, saying he thought it was best if it didn’t wait until the next day. The letters going through the mailroom meant that too many fingers touched the envelopes to distinguish the blackmailer’s prints from the outside alone. Clark had needed to compare any prints on the photographs with those on the outside of the envelopes. As luck would have it, there weren’t any fingerprints on the pictures themselves. At least, none that Clark’s magnifying vision could discern.
In the third print, Lois was back in just her Met U sweatshirt lying on her stomach in bed, shyly gazing at the camera through her hair. In the fourth, she gave the camera a suggestive look while holding a banana.
The blackmailer seemed to have sent the photos to Lois in random order. Were they increasing in sexuality? Personally, Clark didn’t think so, but the erotic factor was subjective. Clearly, they weren’t in chronological order as Lois wore different clothes in the second picture than in the other three.
Clark wasn’t sure of the blackmailer’s motives for continuing to send Lois photos throughout the day – one at her apartment the night before, one at the office before work, one after lunch, and one after at the end of the work day.
Was the blackmailer just trying to remind Lois that he had quite a few of these photos or was he doing it to drag out her torture?
Clark assumed the blackmailer must want Lois would go to Luthor with his demands. Otherwise, Lois wouldn’t have access to that amount of money. Personally, Clark thought that meant that the blackmailer was a novice, because he didn’t know with whom he was trying to play chicken.
After he received the third photo, Clark had tried to rendezvous with Lois, but she was heading into an editorial meeting with the department heads. Susan had come between him and Lois's elevator, telling Clark he would have to wait.
The afternoon had been fraught with Superman rescues and following Paul Bender’s trail to see if he had lied to Lois about losing the camera. Paul Bender worked in corporate media relations for some bank, writing press releases touting how wonderful the bank was for foreclosing on so many delinquent mortgage holders. Clark could never understand someone bragging about making another person homeless. Apparently, after Lois spoke to him that morning, Bender had boarded a plane to Chicago for a conference. It counted him out as a suspect, unless he was working with a partner.
Clark now understood why the police found the paying of the ransom such an important investigative tool. He had one disqualified suspect and no new ones. Next, he merely had to narrow down the list of everyone else who could possibly have a grudge against Lois, or Luthor, to those with means and opportunity, not to mention the smarts not to leave any traces, but not enough smarts to leave Luthor well alone.
There was a chance that the criminal underground didn’t know how dirty Luthor was, or only an elite few who did. Luthor was that good at hiding his tracks. His orders would trickledown the line of command until the one caught could honestly say he didn’t know who had hired him. Clark, Jimmy, and Jack had discovered this – on their own time – while they had investigated how the Daily Planet board had given the newspaper away to the billionaire businessman. Without Perry’s leadership and Lois’s natural ability to catapult them past the illogical into the obvious, they felt blind.
Then, again, the blackmailer could just be someone who stumbled across the negatives and saw a windfall opportunity. Maybe he didn’t have a beef against Lois or Luthor or know either of them personally or professionally. Clark didn’t really believe that, due to the wording of the ransom note. Still, there was always that chance, and the blackmailer could merely have worded the note in a manner to lead authorities astray.
Clark rubbed his face under his eyes. Superman would need to get up and start his nightly patrol soon. He wanted to find Lois’s blackmailer but he wasn’t sure where to head next on his investigation. He hated to fail her.
A knock on his door startled him. He wasn’t meeting with Jimmy and Jack this evening on the Luthor investigation. Clark hadn’t been inspired to find new friends after losing Lois.
“Who..?” he mumbled to himself as he picked up his glasses from the side table. Before he put them on, he x-rayed the door. “Lois?” He shouldn’t have been surprised, but it had been so long since she had visited his apartment, it had fallen out of the range of possibilities. He opened the door with his most cheerful tone, “Hi, Lois.”
“Well?”
He didn’t like small talk, anyway.
“Come on in,” he said, after she pushed past him and into his sunken living room.
“Have you found the negatives yet, Clark?”
“I’m still looking for the blackmailer,” he confessed, shutting the door and following her down the steps.
“I knew I shouldn’t have passed this on to you,” she snapped, continuing into his kitchen.
So much for being the best investigative reporter at the Planet.
She returned with a wine glass, a bottle of red wine, and his corkscrew; the last two she handed over to him. He obliged her. When the bottle had been uncorked, he poured her glass half-full.
“Two more photos were sent to you,” Clark said, nodding towards the envelopes on the coffee table as he set the wine bottle nearby.
Her eyes widened as she polished off the wine in her glass and dropped onto the couch. “Did you look at them?”
“Yes.”
She buried her face in her hands. “What must you think of me?” she mumbled.
“The same as I did before seeing them,” he admitted. “Only now, I know that a con man took advantage of you when you were younger.”
She scoffed, “The story of my life.” She poured herself another generous glass of wine. “I’ll never be stupid enough to be hoodwinked by another con man again.”
Clark shifted uncomfortably in his shoes. He could name two men in Lois’s life who were lying to her; one was her fiancé and the other was him. With a sigh, he sat down next to her. “Why don’t you tell Luthor the truth?” he asked. “Once he knows, the photos no longer have any power. So what if they’re published in Love Fortress. They aren’t even that risqué. Embrace that you were once foolish and that you have a sexy side, then move on with your life.”
She lifted up her head and glared at him. “Would you be saying the same thing to Superman, if someone said that they had naked photos of him that were up for sale?”
Clark blanched, before trying to clear his heart out of his throat. He reminded himself a hundred and fifty times that Lois didn’t know his secret, and then asked, “You’re na…n… nude?”
Her lips pressed into a straight line. “No.” She swallowed another gulp of wine.
Thank goodness for small miracles.“But I might as well be.” She reached into her jacket pocket and drew out another manila envelope that she promptly slapped against his chest.
Clark caught the envelope as it fell. Did she really want him to look at it?
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to pull his nerves of steel to the surface.
Opening the envelope along the slit she had made, Clark glanced down at the enclosed photograph, expecting it to be another innocent photo as the last one had been.
He was wrong.
Once more, the print was in black and white. Lois wore the white button-down Oxford shirt with fewer buttons fastened than not and the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, again. She crawled towards the camera across the bed, staring through locks of her long chestnut hair. Her knee had caught the hem of the shirt, holding it open far more than the Lois Lane he knew would ever care for anyone to see, even while undercover. While her chest was in shadow, it cast a mighty-fine silhouette of her bare chest. He could even see the bright whiteness of her bikini bottoms… underwear.
He drew in a breath that was loud enough for Lois to hear.
“See!” She set her empty wine glass down next to the bottle.
Clark swallowed and handed the envelope back to her. “Did you receive another note?”
She shook her head, staring down at her hands. “What am I going to do, Clark? I can’t let these photos be published. It would ruin me. Nobody would ever take me as a serious reporter ever again. I’d be beyond humiliated. I might as well change my name, move to Kansas, and become a farmer’s wife.”
Clark could think of worse futures… such as her current plans. He smiled gently. “At least, I’d still run into you at the annual barbeque.”
“There’s an annual barbeque?” she asked, glancing up at him.
He chuckled. Kansas wasn’t
that small. “No.”
“Oh.” She poured herself another glass.
He didn’t bring up the topic that, as the wife of a billionaire, the chances that her husband would allow her to continue in her chosen career were pretty darn close to nil.
“I’d never be able to look my friends and colleagues in the eye again,” she went on.
“You haven’t scared me off yet,” he replied, picking up the half-full wine bottle and removing it to his kitchen.
“Yeah. What’s up with that?” Lois asked, staring at him as she took a sip of her wine. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
His brow furrowed. “Haven’t I always been nice to you?”
“I have a Godzilla doll that proves otherwise.”
Clark laughed, and then shrugged. “Well, that was before I really knew you.”
Lois leaned her forearms against her knees and stared down at the wine glass in her hands. “This latest photo was waiting for me when I got home, tonight,” she said. “It really rattled me, Clark. I took your advice and went to see Lex before I came here. I was going to tell him everything.” She shook her head. “He has some business meeting tonight, so we didn’t have plans.” She closed her eyes. “I couldn’t tell him. I wanted to…but… but I couldn’t.” She bit her lower lip and took a gulp of air. “Lex didn’t have time for me. It was as if my showing up unexpectedly was an inconvenience to him. He didn’t even notice that I was upset.” She stood up. “God! You saw right off the bat that something was wrong and we hardly speak anymore… and he… he…” She set her wine glass down on his dining table.
Clark didn’t interrupt, unwilling to move as he watched her pace between his couch and dining table.
“Why am I marrying him?” she asked, throwing her hands up in exasperation.
Clark knew better than to try to answer a question he had been asking himself in vain for months.
“I don’t even love him. I mean, I respect him for… well,
appreciate all the good he has done for Metropolis and for saving the Daily Planet, but…
love? I don’t even know what that is.” She picked up her wine glass and took another sip.
“I don’t believe that,” Clark whispered.
Her gaze jerked over to him as if she had forgotten he was even there. “What? You mean Superman? Ha! That’s not love, Clark. True, I admire him. How can I not? He’s my hero, but he’s not even real!”
Clark sat up straighter. “He’s not?”
“He’s a school girl fantasy. There when I need him, gone when I don’t. He’s handsome and sexy and kind and generous, and, oh…” She closed her eyes as if reliving something in her mind. “God, he’s the best kisser in the galaxy.”
“Oh?”
“No offense, Clark, and you might be as close to second as they come…” She took another sip of wine.
Clark couldn’t help staring at her in surprise.
He rated second…Well, technically, first and second… above Luthor? Above her fiancé?
Nice to know.
Also, not so nice.
“But… oh, there’s no comparison to Superman!” She closed her eyes and sighed with contentment. “When I kiss him – and mind you, it was just that one time before he left for Nightfall – I can hardly keep my feet on the ground.”
Clark knew the feeling.
“I’ve often dreamed what it would’ve been like to kiss him again. If Miranda’s Revenge spray had worked on him and he had pulled me into his embrace, professing his undying love…” She whimpered slightly with the thought, causing Clark to shift uncomfortably on the couch. “See! Total fantasy.” She set her wine glass back down on the dining table. “A woman can’t marry him, can’t settle down and have a normal life with him. He’s good for rescues and high adrenaline stuff…”
Like kissing? Clark wondered.
“But for the day-to-day real world? Eating breakfast or just hanging out? Someone I can spend the day with, go for walks in the park with, laugh with? Someone I can both discuss the issues with and bare my heart to, and then cuddle up next to and watch a movie with? Nah. I can’t picture it.” She threw her hands into the air again. “So, that isn’t love either. Trust me, I wish it could be, but it isn’t.”
Clark knew he should just keep his mouth shut, but the words fell out before he could stop them. “Then why are you marrying him?”
“I’m not marrying Superman!” Lois roared with sudden laughter and then froze, staring at Clark. “Why? Did he say something?”
“No, Lois,” he clarified. “Lex Luthor. Do you sit and watch movies with him?”
“Operas. Theatre. Classical concerts,” she said with a flip of her hand. “All live. All in a crowd of hundreds. The only thing he watches on TV is LNN.”
“Ah.”
Sounds exciting. Clark knew he shouldn’t say any more, but he couldn’t resist. “Do you discuss the issues?”
“Of course!” Lois scoffed. “Well, okay, not really. Lex doesn’t like to debate things. There’s his opinion and his opinion. He’ll tell you a hundred reasons why you’re wrong until you change your mind, but he never changes his.”
Uh-huh. “You’ve already said that you can’t…” Clark stopped himself. He didn’t want Lois to marry Luthor, but it had to be her decision. He had already tried and failed to be the messenger. He didn’t want to be burned again for being a buttinsky. “Never mind.”
“No, what?” she asked, sitting back down on the couch next him. She rested her hand briefly on his knee.
“It’s not important.” He tried to think how to segue back to his investigation of the blackmailer but his mind went blank.
She stood up. “Do you mean that I’m not as attracted to Lex as I am to… to
Superman or… or… other men? That, if I was, I wouldn’t find being intimate with Lex as something I should wait for…?” She picked up her wine glass and polished off what was left. “Well, let me tell you something, Clark Kent, man of the world, who hangs off rafters with the likes of Cat Grant, that passion isn’t important in marriage. Actually, most surveys say that sex rate declines after marriage, and I’m just fine with that!”
Having her sex rate decline from zero?“Sex isn’t everything, you know!” she snapped.
“I really wouldn’t…” He cleared his throat. “I never said that it was, Lois, but intimacy in marriage, being able to bare one’s soul to your spouse, should be.”
“Ha! Marriage is a contract; always has been. A business arrangement between two like-minded people for the betterment of their lives,” Lois said.
Clark decided that Lois was too upset by this discussion because she was spouting utter gibberish now. Why get married at all if that was what marriage was? He held up his hands as a protective barrier between her and what he was about to say. “I’m just trying to understand, here. Okay? You don’t ‘love’ Luthor; you respect him as a businessman and philanthropist. You’re marrying him because…” This is where he was totally lost and needed to guess, “— because he saved the Daily Planet from financial ruin?”
“
NO!”
Okay. “Because he can protect you? Not like Superman, but in his own way.”
“I don’t need a man’s protection!” retorted the woman currently being blackmailed for a million dollars.
“I didn’t think you did,” Clark replied, somewhat dishonestly, but he didn’t want to get into semantics at the moment. He decided to be more blunt. “Because he’s rich?”
“Don’t be an ass, Clark.”
“I didn’t think that was the reason, but I cannot picture wanting to get married without the deepest of love,” he explained. “I’m just trying to understand your logic. Help me out here.”
“I’m marrying him
because I don’t love him!”
Huh?She picked up Clark’s sports jacket from where he had draped it over one of his dining chairs and threw it at him. “Self-preservation, Clark! He can’t break my heart if I don’t give it to him!”
The error of that statement squeezed his anguished heart on Lois’s behalf, causing Clark’s jaw to drop. “Then why get married at all?”
“I… I… I…” she sputtered.
“You’re still young and more interested in your career than starting a family.” This was more an educated guess than a reiteration of a discussion point. “You don’t need his money or the protection it brings. You’re thankful and admire him for saving the Daily Planet from ruin, but as you said that’s no reason to marry him. You don’t love him. I’m baffled here, Lois. Why get married at all if this is how you feel about marriage?”
Lois looked down at her shoes. “Because he asked me.”
Clark’s mouth opened to say the most obvious of responses, but then closed it for his own self-preservation. He didn’t want to draw himself personally into their discussion, no matter how sorely he was tempted. He opened his mouth again, but couldn’t think of a single thing to say, so he closed it again.
Her eyes rose to his. “If I don’t marry Lex, I could fall in love with someone else.”
Clark held her gaze.
And?“Someone who, with my luck, will turn out to be another con man, and I won’t find out until it’s too late… and… and…” She shook her head. She picked up her wine glass, noticed it was empty, drank the remaining few droplets anyway, and then set it back down. “I don’t want to go through that again. I won’t survive another betrayal, another broken heart.”
Clark wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms and promise to do everything in his ability, which was saying a lot, never to hurt her if given the opportunity to love her. However, he already knew that standing between them was a huge omission, or what she would call a lie, that could easily destroy their friendship, let alone any possibility for love. Instead, he stood up and taking her hands in his, said, “And what if that someone else isn’t a con man, but a man who wants nothing more than your happiness?”
Lois drew in a breath as she stared into his eyes. “Superman doesn’t date,” she whispered.
But I do. Clark bit his lips together to keep the words from slipping out of his mouth. He turned and picked up his sports coat. “Let me walk you home.”
“I drove.”
“Oh.”
“I figured we’d need the car while we worked on the investigation into the photos,” she said.
“We?”
Her gaze narrowed. “Yes,
we. Do you think I’m going to sit idly by while there’s some stranger out there with naked photos of me?”
“You said you weren’t naked in them.”
She shrugged. “A figure of speech.”
Clark wasn’t so sure.
“Fill me in on what you’ve learned.”
He handed her the photos that had arrived through the mailroom. “I already have.”
“That’s it?” she gaped.
“There are no discernible fingerprints on the photos. Paul Bender left for Chicago on a business trip after you spoke to him this morning, so he either didn’t lie to you, again, or has an accomplice who is dropping off the envelopes.” He shrugged on his coat.
“You had
all day, and
this is all you found out?”
“I also wrote up two Superman rescues,” he reminded her.
“He wants the money tomorrow night! This should’ve been your top priority!”
He ignored that comment. “Our best bet is to camp outside your apartment building and see if the blackmailer stops by during the night to make another delivery.”
“This sucks,” Lois grumbled.
“He still hasn’t told you how to deliver the funds; so we know he’ll be in contact again.”
“Fine. We can use my Cherokee for the stakeout,” she said, moving towards his front door.
“No. You’re going inside and heading to bed. I’ll do the stakeout alone. I’ll sit on that bench across the street.”
“Not happening!”
Clark shut the door behind them, locking it. “You said it yourself. The blackmailer knows what you look like. If you’re seen sitting in
your car across the street from
your apartment building, he’ll keep walking and not make the delivery, and then we’ll have wasted this opportunity. Anyway, we need you to watch your apartment door in case he comes by from another entrance.”
She pouted. “But I want to do the stakeout.”
“You’re insane. You know that, right?”
Lois hooked her elbow around his as they walked down the stairs. “I’ve missed you, Clark Kent.”
He smiled.
The feeling was mutual.
***End of Part 2*** Comments
