Lois knew how much she needed the exercise, but she still hated working out at the gym she and Cat belonged to. She even hated Cat on the days when her knee didn’t want to get with the program.
Like today.
“Come on, Lois,” Cat urged her, “just four more reps and you can yell at me to do mine.”
“Rrrrggghhh!”
“Great! Three more knee extensions and you’re done!”
“Arrrrr you better run – when I get finished!”
“Two more, Lois. Bring it!”
“You’re a – dead woman – Grant!”
“One more and don’t drop it! Ease it down – easy – yay! You did it!”
Lois panted for several seconds, then gasped, “If you – weren’t my best friend – I’d drop – a piano – on your head.”
“Ooh, I’m terrified. Here, wipe your face.”
Still panting, Lois grabbed the towel Cat offered her. “I think I’m going to kick – the side of your knee – really hard – and see if you can – take the pain. Then you can do the leg lifts at your – your max weight.”
“Now I’m even more terrified. Hey, how come Lucy hasn’t been joining us lately?”
Lois took a long swig from her water bottle and three deep breaths before answering. “She’s been spending an inordinate amount of time with Jimmy. If he’s right, they’re – wow, I can already tell that’s never going to get easy to say – they’re dating exclusively now.”
“Good for them! It’s time your sister started looking toward the future.”
“Yeah, well, he better treat her right. That’s all I have to say about it.”
“I’m pretty sure he’ll treat Lucy at least as well as Clark treats you now.”
Lois was still uncomfortable talking too openly about her love for Clark. It was too new, too tender, too scary for her to be casual about it. She still wasn’t sure she was the best choice for Clark, even though she knew she’d never find so good a man if she looked for the rest of her life.
It was time to change the subject. She stood with a grunt and moved so Cat could use the machine. “What about you? What future are you looking toward?”
Cat didn’t answer for a moment. Then she reset the resistance, settled in the seat, and began straightening her lower legs against the machine’s weights. “I don’t know. If Clark – hadn’t fallen so hard for you, I’d – oof – probably be chasing him.”
Lois went cold. Despite their professed love for each other, despite their still vague and unformed plans for the future, if Cat Grant were to go after Clark and really set her mind to the task, he didn’t stand much of a chance to resist her. And Lois might not be able to take it if she lost him, not even to her best friend.
Cat finished her first set of leg lifts and paused to breathe. She turned to Lois and smiled. “Don’t worry about me. Or him. He’s so in love with you that to him all the other women in the world are either platonic friends or potential interview subjects. Even if I threw another forward pass at him, he’d run the other way from to keep from catching it.” She started her second set. “He’d – do the same with – any other woman. You’d have to – urrgh – hit him with an asteroid to drive him away, and even then – mmph – I’m not sure that – that would do the trick.”
Lois put her hand on Cat’s shoulder. “Thank you.”
Cat finished the second set and adjusted her hair restraints. “For what, recognizing the truth? He’s yours if you want him, and even if you don’t he’s not going anywhere or to anyone else, not even hot and sexy me.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then began her final set. “Besides, he probably wants a – whoof – a bunch of kids and a wife who – grunt – doesn’t throw herself into the middle of every – every firefight she sees the way I do.”
“I do that,” came the soft answer.
“Yeah, but you’re – smarter about it than – I am. And – oof – way more consistent. You know when to – to dive for cover and when to back off and do – ahhh – do recon. I don’t want kids, which is – huhgh – weird, I know, especially given my good family background. I’d be surprised if – if Clark didn’t want – a whole bunch of – little ones.”
Cat finished the set and leaned forward with her hands on her knees, panting deeply. After a moment, she continued. “My parents don’t get it, and I’m not sure I do either. I just can’t see myself as a mommy.” She straightened and stood clear of the machine. “A wife, yes, but not a mother. Hard to find a really good man who thinks the same way I do. And there aren’t many great guys like Clark around to start with. You’re so very lucky to have him. Hand me my towel, please.”
Lois sighed. “I know how you feel about Clark. And I’m grateful that we aren’t competing with each other for his affection. I’m sorry you’re going through this, Red.”
“Don’t be. I’m sure he wants kids and I don’t. Bad match, that. If I did have kids, I’d be a lousy mom, but I think he’d be a terrific dad.” She wiped off some of the sweat from her brow. “And I still say you’ll be a wonderful mother someday.”
“Me, a mom? Much less a good one? Now you’re scaring me.”
Cat flashed her friend a quick smile. “You say that every time we get on this subject. Come on, let’s finish up our workout so we can go grab dinner.”
*****
“Close with this. ‘I’m quite pleased with the progress your division has made over the past quarter. The FDA has formally approved the new diabetes medication, so you’ll need to change this product over from R & D to production. I foresee a bonus in the next few months for you and your team.’ Lex Luthor, CEO LexLabs, etc. Send copies to the usual recipients.”
“Yes, sir. Are there any more letters you wish to dictate – be – before I—”
Lex looked up from his notes at his secretary and followed the direction of her eyes. Of course. Superman was dropping by for yet another unannounced visit, hovering just off the balcony railing, his cape billowing majestically in the evening breeze.
“That will be all, Miss Thompson. You can go now.” The young woman swallowed but didn’t stand. Lex sighed and very slowly and clearly said, “Miss Thompson? You may go home after you type up those letters and put them in the outgoing mail.” He waited a moment, then added, “Please respond if you understood my instructions.”
The young woman slowly rose and nodded jerkily, her eyes locked on the Man of Steel as he slowly landed just inside the office balcony. She stumbled backward through the doorway leading to her office and shut the door behind her.
Lex sighed. “Thank you for discomfiting my personal secretary, Superman. I’m not even going to suggest that you call her to set up an appointment with me.”
He didn’t continue their usual banter. “You made a bad mistake the other day, Lex.”
“And what mistake would that be?”
He stepped forward. “You killed a man in front of Lois Lane.”
Lex crossed his arms and frowned. “That man was threatening Lois with a pistol. There is no telling what violence he might have done her.”
“According to Ms. Lane’s complete statement – which you apparently haven’t read and didn’t hang around long enough to hear – she was about to apply her military training to the situation and disarm Mr. Menken. She then planned to question him quite enthusiastically and thoroughly about his involvement with the enhanced boxers.”
Something I could not have permitted, Lex mused, hence the bullet in Menken’s neck. Aloud, he said, “I am not as sanguine as you are about her chances of disarming an armed and desperate thug without being injured. As I saw the situation, my involvement was both timely and propitious, not to mention necessary.”
“There was a risk in Lois acting, that’s true, but there was a greater one in you shooting a man not two feet from her from twenty feet away in a poorly lit alley – especially since you were showing off by shooting from the waist with one hand. And you almost missed him completely. If you had waited for fifteen seconds, the situation would have been resolved without bloodshed. You were behaving either as an egotist with a personal agenda or as a person trying to hide something.”
That was too close to the truth to ignore. “That’s hardly something you could possibly know unless you—”
“Unless I know you better than you think I do. Let me repeat my warning from a few weeks ago and expand on it. You must – and yes, it’s tantamount to an order this time – you must stop any and all illegal activity in which you are involved.” Superman crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes. “And I mean as of yesterday, Lex. Am I being clear?”
“You have no right to dictate—”
The muscle-bound hero crossed his arms over his chest and slid silently across the floor without moving his feet. “I asked you a question and I expect an answer. Am I being clear on what I’m demanding that you do?”
Lex almost stepped away from Superman. The blue-clad aerialist suddenly appeared larger and angrier than Lex had ever seen him. “I thought you told me that your ethics prevented you from forcing your will onto people.”
“That was wholesale. This is retail.” Superman lifted from the floor a few inches and narrowed his eyes. “Being a – a good businessman, I’m sure you understand the difference.”
Lex took a moment to compose himself, then said, “Without admitting any guilt or responsibility for any illegal actions which you seem to believe I have performed or been involved in, yes, I’m clear on your high-handed demands.”
“Good enough. Be sure to pass it on to your business buddies. I’ll see you around.” Superman rose from the floor and floated through the balcony window. A moment before he disappeared, he looked over one shoulder and said, “You almost surely won’t see me, though.”
A whoosh and a sonic boom later he was gone.
Lex sat back down in his chair, his calm demeanor a flimsy façade. He doubted that his organization could survive with a thick-headed but relentless superhero breathing down the back of his neck. The situation called for drastic action.
He opened a drawer and selected a cheap burner phone, then dialed a memorized number. The phone would be used only once more, then it would meet its planned fiery demise in one of his steel mills. As he waited for the other party to answer, he turned on a white noise generator, which would – in theory, at least – prevent Superman from eavesdropping on the conversation.
“This is The Boss. Can you speak freely? Good. The timetable for Project K must be advanced. The new completion date is two weeks from tomorrow. I know it’s a tight window, but you must make this your top priority. No, not here. The alleged landing zone. Very well, the landing zone, no qualification or equivocation. Your cover will be that of an EPA operation looking for systemic pollution of farmland. Questions?”
Lex listened for a moment. “I can’t give you any more support than that, logistical or otherwise, except to provide an airtight legal cover when the operation is successfully completed. Yes. A place of your choosing, Colonel. No, I’ll release the necessary information to direct the targets to you. If you succeed, you’ll never need to work again. You have complete authority in this instance, Colonel Trask. I wish you success.”
Lex turned off the phone and set it on his desk. If Trask were to fail, he’d have to make sure the man didn’t survive to implicate him. Just as he had done with Menken.
*****
A week after Superman’s visit to Luthor, Perry sat in his office re-editing another one of Ralph Veeder’s columns and trying not to swear at the hiring practices of certain members of the Planet’s board of directors. To distract himself, he wondered how his favorite reporting trio would react to their next story assignment.
He was sure that Clark, Cat, and Lois all came to work that morning, gleefully anticipating their next assignments, whether as a three-person team or as individuals. After the morning meeting, they all strolled into the editor’s office and sat in front of his desk, just as Perry had instructed them. All three of them smiled until Perry told them where they were headed next. “Smallville?” barked Lois. “You’re sending us to Smallville?”
Clark tried to hide a grin as Lois stood abruptly and all but leaned over Perry’s desk. It seemed the young man was glad that her intensity was directed at someone else.
Then Perry wondered briefly how Smallville would receive Lois Lane in pedal-to-the-metal mode.
Perry refocused and nodded. “The EPA is doing something fishy out in Kansas and we need to know what’s going on.”
“But all three of us? Now? We broke the cyborg boxing story and made up with Mayson Drake! Those two showoffs even turned in their penalty assignments!”
Cat stifled a giggle. Clark managed to hide his laugh in a muffled cough. “And that’s why all three of you are going to Kansas, Lois,” Perry replied. “Y’all did such a good job, I want those talents in flyover country to sniff out what’s going on out there.”
“But you can’t send your three best investigators halfway across the country just to check out a rumor about an EPA operation! We’re needed here!”
She didn’t understand – didn’t want to understand – why he was sending them out of town, so he had to throw it in her face. Perry’s honeyed tones stiffened. “You’re also targets here. The cops didn’t get everybody involved in the boxing scandal yet, including one of the fighters, and at least one of those low-level morons is liable to get the bright idea to solve their problems by killing one or all of you. I don’t want that to happen. And I seem to remember that the journalist who broke the Love Canal story – who in the beginning probably felt as you do right now – won a Pulitzer Prize for that series.”
She paced back and forth in front of his desk. “Come on, Perry, be reasonable! We got the Toasters and the Taylor gang less than a week ago! The feds are tripping over each other to prosecute them! We have enough for an entire series on them, and I’ll really enjoy watching Toni Taylor squirm like a worm on a fishhook to stay out of prison when the DA presents the evidence we put together! There are enough active stories right here in Metropolis to keep us busy for months!”
The editor leaped to his feet. “And their low-level guys are gunning for you too!” he shouted. “I’m trying to get you three out of the line of fire without wasting your talents!”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I can defend myself pretty well!”
“I know that, Lois, but are you going to lead Cat and Clark into a firefight too? Will you be responsible for their lives?”
Lois stopped and took an unsteady step backward. No longer enjoying the moment, Clark stood and said, “That was a cheap shot, Perry.”
Cat stood behind Lois and grabbed her shoulders to support her. “We’re going, Chief. Lois was just letting off steam and you know it. You don’t need to hit below the belt.”
Perry put his hands on his hips. “I’m only doing this because I care about all of you and I don’t want to lose any of you for any reason. If I didn’t think there was any real danger, I’d have you digging up dirt on a whole bunch of juicy stuff right here in the city.” He dropped his hands and seemed to deflate. “But I’ve lost too many good people over the years, sometimes because I made the wrong call. If I can protect you three without cheating the paper or the city, I’m going to do it.”
“Chief—”
“No, Cat.” Lois turned and grabbed her friend’s hand for a moment. “Perry’s right. And if I were sitting in that chair, I’d probably make the same kind of decision.” She released Cat’s hand, then dropped her head and stared at the front of his desk. “Except I’d try to find some scandal in Antigua or the Bahamas for us to investigate.”
Perry glared at her for about two seconds, then chortled. “Let me have that assignment when you get my job, Lois. Alice and I could probably uncover something there. Might take us a few weeks to double-check everything, though.”
The tension in the room slowly eased until everyone was smiling. Cat patted Lois’ shoulder and turned to leave, then glanced at Clark and said, “Hey, did you notice she called us Perry’s ‘three best investigators?’ We have it from the horse’s mouth – we are her equals!”
Clark’s face cleared. “Does that mean that the other reporters have to bow down and genuflect to us?” he asked.
“My name still goes first on the byline,” answered Lois. “You two may get ‘Minor contributions from’ in front of your names – if you’re lucky. And no genuflections unless it’s to me.”
Cat glared at Lois and said, “Oh, girlfriend, it’s on! You goin’ down hard!”
Clark followed them to the doorway and paused as they exited. “You see what I have to contend with, Chief?”
“I wish you good luck. See Cathy in Travel for your itinerary, tickets, and vouchers. Stay together until all of you are on the plane tonight. Bring back a good story, Clark, but most of all bring everybody back with you. Those women are in your charge now.”
Clark grimaced. “Don’t tell Lois I’m in charge. I’d never hear the end of that.”
Perry smiled once the young man had left. It was a good thing Clark was so easy-going. The boy would be smart and pick his battles with her. Probably even win a few of them, too.
*****
Well after dark that evening, Clark walked through the airport gate with Lois on his left and Cat on his right, both of them just ahead of him. Just as they walked past a cloud of gnats swarming around a trash can, he muttered, “I hate flying.”
Lois just gave him an I-don’t-believe-you glare, but Cat coughed as if she’d bitten into a rotten peach and stumbled into him. She pounded on her chest and ground out, “Sorry, swallowed some gnats back there.”
“Tastes great, less filling, right?” Clark asked.
Before Cat could snark back at him, Lois said, “Over in the Middle East, I had a master sergeant attached to my company who’d been an E-2 in Nam. He told us you could tell how long a guy had been in-country by the way he ate his field ration of rice.”
None of them spoke for a long moment, then Clark said, “Okay, I’m asking. How could you tell by how he at his rice?”
He thought he detected a slightly evil look on her face. “According to Sergeant McDaniel, the rice in the field ration was usually served with these three-inch trophy-winning roaches in it because it was impossible to keep them out. If the guy took a look at his rice and turned green and threw it away, he was new. If he ate the rice after picking out the bugs, he’d been there a little while. If he ate it without picking out the bugs, he’d been in-country long enough to eat Vietnamese style. And the guys who really needed to go home were the ones who’d pick out the rice and eat the bugs.”
Clark made a disgusted face. Cat gagged. As they passed through the gate to board the flight, Lois, who’d led the parade through the covered access ramp, asked the first flight attendant she saw if rice was on the menu for this flight.
The flight attendant gave her a neon smile and said yes, they had a brown rice pilaf as a side dish for dinner. Cat put her hand on her stomach, looked at Lois, and burped daintily. “You are evil personified, Louise,” she mumbled.
“Do I get to drive now, Thelma?” Lois responded.
Cat only quickened her pace onto the plane. Clark mused that he was glad most of his nourishment was gleaned from sunlight.
He still checked in every direction for possible danger. All he saw was a plainly-dressed young woman reading a movie fan magazine. No weapons, just pop culture, no danger there.
*****
Trask flipped his phone shut. He’d been uncertain as to just how many of the thorns in his side were coming to cover the fake EPA dig, but his Metropolis contact had just texted him that all three would be landing at Wichita Regional Airport just before eleven that morning. The best case scenario was that the alien would come with them, perhaps in disguise, but at least he had the three traitorous humans who were in the alien’s thrall all in one unfamiliar place. The three city people would be sitting ducks for his team, and this time they wouldn’t miss. Trask had the entire state of Kansas to look through to find them, and most of the state was flat as a table.
They still owed him for stymying his interrogation of them all those months before. He’d enjoy taking care of them – and using them to destroy Superman.
He didn’t know how his boss had acquired the green crystal the Boss’ chemists insisted would harm the alien, but he didn’t care. He also didn’t care who his Boss really was or why he was funding Trask’s efforts. All he cared about was using it to destroy the blue-suited fake. Maybe this invading force would think twice about establishing a beachhead on Earth after humans took out their advance scout. It was too dangerous to let the first scouts survive and report back on human combat capabilities.
He hoped to make this a brief operation. He was running low on disposable mobile phones.
*****
The three reporters sat in the rental car watching the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe freight hauler lumber past them. Cat leaned her head against the headrest on the seat in front of her and muttered, “Metropolis before midnight to Chicago on the big jet, a three-hour layover, Chicago to Wichita on a twin-prop puddle jumper, and Wichita to wherever this is in a non-descript four-door convertible we had to let them clean before we sat in it. Nuts!” She pushed herself up to a sitting position. “I’m tired and I’ve got travel grime and I hate waiting. Just how long are we going to sit here?”
Clark grinned. “It takes as long as it takes, Cat.”
From her perch in the front passenger seat, Lois shook her head and tried not to grin back at him. “I didn’t realize that Kansas was one of the homes for Zen masters.”
“It always takes city folk some time to decompress in farm country, ladies,” he responded. “But fear not! We have arrived at a propitious time. This week is Smallville’s annual Corn Festival. We’ll get to see the Corn Queen pageant, the husk-off, the Corn-O-Rama, popcorn, creamed corn, corn on the cob – it’s the physical embodiment of Kansas farm culture. You’ll have fun, I promise. Assuming, of course, that you allow yourselves to do so.”
“Why wouldn’t we?” Cat grumbled. “Who knows, maybe I’ll even find a nice guy, settle down with him, and build the two of us a house with my own two hands. I’d even paint the picket fence white all by myself.”
He chuckled. “I hear the Smallville Post could use another beat writer. And my mom told me that old Mr. Ellison has been talking about retiring. You could succeed him as editor before too much longer. And they always have room on the front page for a good goat exposé.”
Cat opened her mouth to respond, but then shook her head and flopped back in the seat. “I refuse to ask you how goats can be a headline story. And don’t volunteer an answer!”
Just then the last car on the train slowly rolled over the crossing. “Eighty-seven cars and four locomotives,” Clark announced proudly.
“Isn’t that pretty long?” Lois asked.
“About average for this part of the country,” Clark answered. “Lotta goods to move to marketing and shipping points. And this one had quite a few open-top coal cars. They’re pretty heavy when they’re fully loaded. Hey, did either of you know that a train with just a string of loaded coal cars is called a black snake?”
Cat huffed as Clark restarted the car. “I don’t care what it’s called. I just want to get this story finished and filed. Get me back to my apartment and my neighborhood market. There’s a bunch of organic grapes there with my name on the package.”
“Let’s go, Farm Boy,” Lois urged. “Remember, the only reason you’re driving is because you supposedly know where we’re going.”
“As you wish,” he replied.
“Please!” Cat called out. “My stomach is still upset because of Lois’ rice story. Don’t pour sugar on that open wound, okay?”
*****
Carol Sherman looked around at the wreckage of the Wayne Irig farm and frowned. Their assignment was to analyze the grounds for long-term damage caused by dangerous or illegal pesticides, but this was over the top. She was a junior member of her team, little more than the public relations liaison for this job, but the level of destruction was far and away more than necessary for such a search. At most, they should be drilling down in spots a dozen feet or so apart using multiple three-inch holes. These guys were stripping the land with bulldozers and backhoes, taking off six feet of topsoil and clay if not more. Whatever they were actually looking for, it wasn’t pesticides.
But she went along with the program, whatever it really was. Not only was the bonus money combined with her per diem almost twice her normal salary, the EPA was picking up the tab for her lodging and transportation. The government didn’t normally throw big dollars at public relations flacks like her. The only reason she was being paid as much as she was had to be that something less than legal was happening here. Her conscience bothered her from the moment she awoke at sunrise to the late hour she finally dropped off to sleep – or, as the Smallville residents had said when they were still talking to her, from can-see to can’t-see. If she hadn’t needed the money so badly, she would have walked away days ago.
She checked off yet another quarter-acre section on her clipboard as having been searched, then looked up to see a convertible with a man and two women in it, all in business clothes – although, on second glance, she wondered just what business the redhead in the back seat was actually in. But it was part of her job to control the curious and limit access to the farm. They stopped the car and opened three doors. Carol raised her hand and stepped in their direction. “Sorry,” she called out, “no civilians allowed.”
The frowning brunette said, “We’re not civilians, we’re with the press.”
“We’ve already given out a statement to the local papers,” Carol told them.
The redhead gave her a mirthless smile. “We’re not local. She’s Lois Lane, he’s Clark Kent, and I’m Catharine Grant. We’re with the Daily Planet.”
That wasn’t likely. “I wasn’t aware that the Daily Planet had a bureau in Smallville.”
“We don’t,” said the tall young man. He fished out a press pass as he spoke. “We landed this morning in Wichita. Could we have your name?”
This was a real press ID, which meant that they were real reporters. The Colonel would not be pleased. “Carol Sherman, EPA field liaison. What’s a paper like the Planet doing here?”
The redhead drifted to Carol’s right as she handed back the man’s press badge. “We cover the world, Ms. Sherman,” Kent answered, “hence the name ‘Daily’ Planet.”
“Plus Smallville,” the brunette added. “What exactly is going on here?”
Carol went into her familiar spiel for the public. “What is going on is an ecological risk assessment. The owner used a lot of pesticides during the 60’s, and we’re concerned about seepage into the local groundwater.”
The man who’d been introduced as Clark Kent wandered to Carol’s left and played with his glasses, causing her to split her focus among three people – which was surely what they were trying to accomplish. The brunette asked, “So people are getting more at the dinner table than they bargained for?”
“That’s it. No big mystery, no big story, just a public safety issue.” She turned and barked at Catharine, who was getting too close to the temporary fence around the site. “Hey! You folks need to leave now for your own safety.”
The Grant woman stopped, then gave Carol that mirthless smile again. “We need to talk to the property owner.”
Carol frowned. If nothing else, these three were persistent. “I don’t know where Mr. Irig is. We gave him relocation money, and he took off for parts unknown. I can only assume that he rented an RV and went on vacation.”
Kent pulled her attention to him and gave her an aw-shucks grin. “Well, I’m sure you have that information in your records. We’ll be back in a day or so to get it from you.”
Carol couldn’t help but be charmed by the handsome young man, but she still recognized a firm demand no matter how many layers of velvet it wore. She tried giving him back her best grin. “Then I’ll see you folks when you swing by again.”
They got back in their car and drove away as if everything were just peachy. But it wasn’t, and Carol knew it. The Colonel needed to know about them immediately.
She pushed into front flap of the main tent and was surprised to see Wayne Irig sitting across a folding table from the Colonel, wiping his face with a bandana. She stopped to listen.
“I know you found a glowing green crystal on your land. I know you sent a piece of it to the Kansas State science department for analysis. They couldn’t figure it out, so they sent it to scientists at STAR Labs. They were very interested – and my associate found out about their results.” Trask leaned toward Irig and hissed, “The way I see it, there are only two possibilities. Either you buried it somewhere on your farm or you gave it to someone to hold for you. Which is it?”
Irig looked scared but determined. “There weren’t no more of it! That was all there was! I don’t got any more!”
Trask leaped up, loomed over the table between them, and barked, “Wrong answer!” One of the armed guards in the tent cleared his throat and Trask glanced in Carol’s direction. “Problem, Ms. Sherman?”
Her pulse rate jumped up and she felt cold sweat dripping down her back. This was not the way the EPA ran its business. “You – you told me that Mr. Irig had been relocated!”
Trask stood and leaned over the table. “He has been relocated. This happens to be his new location.”
She needed more information, and she also needed to protect Mr. Irig as well as she could. “Since – since when does the Environmental Protection Agency do interrogations?”
“It doesn’t, but Bureau 39 does.”
“What – what is Bureau 39?”
“That information is available on a need-to-know basis, Mrs. Sherman. And you don’t need to know.”
“Hey, man, I needed a job, but not this badly! I will not be a part of this.”
Trask stood and faced her. “Oh, I’d reconsider that. No one living has ever quit Bureau 39. It’s – it’s kind of a curse. And you did say that you had a daughter to raise – didn’t you?”
She was stunned by the veiled threat and didn’t respond. He put on what he apparently thought was a caring expression. “But, if you’re determined to leave, I’ll accept your resignation. With regrets, of course.”
The quiet threat to her daughter tipped the scales. “No,” she said softly. “I’m just fine.”
The frisson of danger from Trask ebbed but didn’t vanish. “Good choice. Now, I assume there’s something else you wanted to tell me?”
She hesitated, then said, “I just talked to three reporters from the Daily Planet. Clark Kent, Lois Lane, and Catharine something—”
“Catharine Grant?”
“Yes, that was her name. They just drove off together.”
A fanatic’s flame lit his almost demonic features from within. “Perfect,” he purred. “If they’re all here, it means that Superman can’t be far behind.”
Carol looked at Irig’s face. The man looked sick. And scared.
She didn’t feel very good either.
