Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found
HereWhen we last saw our hero in Part 136 …There was a momentary hesitation, and then Henderson released the clipboard. Superman flipped over the paperwork and drew a picture of what he had seen when he had glanced in the box. He gave the picture to Cortez. Henderson peered over Cortez’s shoulder for a better look.
“From your sketch, it could be a remote detonator to a bomb,” Cortez said. “But I’d have to take it apart to be sure.”
“Is there a way to use the signal from the remote to trace it back to find the bomb’s location without detonating it?” Superman asked.
Cortez and Henderson exchanged a doubtful look. “It might be possible with your speed,” Henderson finally said. “But I wouldn’t want to risk it.”
“Understandable,” Superman replied. “Ms. Lane said that Fuentes pushed some buttons on the bomb before strapping it to her chest. The first thing I checked for was a timing device, but I didn’t see one.”
“It could be that the timing device is on the bomb itself and not on the remote,” Officer Cortez explained.
“So, there could be a live bomb somewhere in the downtown Metropolis area, and there isn’t any way to follow any signal back to it, or to know when it will detonate?” Superman confirmed.
“I’m afraid so,” Cortez said. “The best I can do is take this puppy apart and see how far of a range it has. That will lower our search radius. For now, let’s start with a square kilometer with the Daily Planet at its epicenter and work out from there.”
Superman nodded, taking a quick look around. There were many office buildings, subways lines, sewer tunnels, gas mains, and underground parking structures in downtown Metropolis. The bomb could be anywhere, inside any nook or cranny, be any size, and with the remote having been lead-lined, that meant the bomb was probably shielded as well. He decided to begin searching and keep an extra sharp eye out for any blind spots in his x-ray vision. “I’ll get started.” He took one last long glance back towards Lois in her apartment with regret, but this had to be done or Lois could get caught in the blast.
Henderson picked up his radio. “Tuzzolino? We’ve got a problem.”
Part 137**************
A Different Path**************
Lois glanced up from her computer at the swooshing breeze that foretold Superman’s arrival into the newsroom. She had been working on her story, well… stories, since she left the Planet the night before and now dawn’s early light was just peering over the horizon. Apparently, her partner had stopped in to talk to Jimmy at some point during the night, shortly before she returned. A situation had developed, he had told Jimmy, and Clark was searching Metropolis with the MPD bomb squad to locate Fuentes’s real bomb.
Superman floated down to land between her desk and Perry’s office, his red cape billowing. He stood in the same spot he had when she had first told him that she loved him, and he had said that there could never be anything between them. So much had changed since then and so little. He looked tired, yet still gorgeous. Damn him. If
Superman appeared exhausted, how must she look?
“Did you find it?” Lois asked, avoiding pleasantries. She knew they couldn’t have a real conversation in the middle of the newsroom where anyone could walk in at any moment, especially Jimmy, who had run downstairs to the archives. Anyway, she wasn’t in the mood. Her search of area hospitals for Lex Luthor had come up dry. It was too early for anyone at LexCorp to return her calls and nobody was answering Lex’s private line. It was as if the billionaire with a gunshot wound had faded into thin air, and she didn’t like it.
Superman’s lips tightened. “No.”
“Did you find anything?” she asked, swiveling her chair around to face him.
He closed his eyes for a moment longer than a blink. “I’ll let Clark tell you about that. He should be in soon.”
Okay. Lois waited. Why had Clark come to her as Superman?
“Lois, I want you to be careful with Lex Luthor,” he finally said. “You don’t know him like I do.”
She stared at him. Superman
knew Lex Luthor? Sure, she realized that Superman and Lex had been to several of the same charitable functions and had
met. Lex Luthor had given Superman the Key to Metropolis, and they had both been auctioned off at the bachelor auction. She had been there when Superman had rescued Lex from the Smart Kids… well, not
there there, but she had seen Superman fly Lex Luthor out of their lair after they had taken him hostage. She even knew that Superman had taken Lex and Menken together to be interviewed by the police the night Menken had kidnapped her and Lex had shot her. Not to mention that time when Superman had shut down Lex’s nuclear power plant. They had even talked recently at her apartment, when Superman had busted in after she screamed in her sleep over that purple octopus dream, and then Lex had dropped by. To what exactly was he referring? What did Superman know about Lex that he hadn’t shared with her?
The elevator dinged, and she automatically turned her head.
Jimmy exited, waving some papers. “Lois, I’ve got everything you wanted to know and then some about Pino Dragonetti, Bill Robertson, and the Daily Planet building. For starters, did you know that Pino was short for Pinocchio?” Jimmy’s voice trailed off as his gaze moved upward to the windows above the bullpen.
Lois turned back to Superman in time to see his red boots disappear through the window. So, Superman had only stopped by to give her a vague warning about Lex. Did Clark believe that she wouldn’t listen to him if
he had given her a warning, but she would listen to Superman? How shallow did he think she was? What was with that warning anyway? It told her nothing, except that Superman didn’t trust Lex. That could have easily been jealousy talking. Also, clearly, Clark had trouble trusting
anyone, except Cat Grant and a couple of farmers from Kansas.
If Lois hadn’t known that Lex had been lying to her, tracking her, and spying on her, she might have put Superman’s warning down to jealousy, but she
did know Lex was scummier than the underside of the Titanic, so there could’ve been merit to what Superman told her. The question was what else was Clark withholding from her?
She and Clark were seriously in need of a conversation… a
private conversation. Annoyance over his rejection of her Smallville weekend returned. She brushed it away knowing the Jimmys and Perry had needed them at the Planet the night before.
“Why was Superman here?” Jimmy asked, his voice slightly cracking. “Is CK okay?”
“Yeah. He said that Clark was on his way in, but that they hadn’t found the bomb,” Lois said. She thought about what she had said. In point of fact, Superman had said very little, as per the norm. She had asked if he had found
it and he said ‘no’, but there had been something indefinite about that ‘no’, something that had made her press for more information. ‘Clark would explain,’ Superman went on to say. She braced herself against her desk. What
had they found?
Jimmy nodded. “I’m not sure if I’m happy or unhappy that they didn’t find a bomb. Do you think Fuentes lied about there being a real bomb?”
Lois shrugged. She knew as much as Jimmy did until her partner came in with the details.
Jimmy handed her a file of research on Dragonetti’s gang before continuing back to his desk.
All she knew from her phone calls and research was that Fuentes wasn’t at a level to get his hands on a nuclear bomb unless he stumbled across one, or had an anonymous backer who had access to such things. The one source she had been able to reach who had any knowledge of Fuentes had said that he heard the man was an orchestrator of bank heists and private mansion invasions up and down the eastern seaboard. He found places with a security weakness and loads of money. Then he hired a crew to exploit that weakness to their benefit. It was no wonder that Fuentes didn’t want to be hauled off to jail; he was wanted in three states.
It was difficult for Lois to focus on her story again after Superman’s brief visit. She found herself checking the clock on her computer every minute, or less, until Clark arrived.
“Lois,” she heard Clark’s voice say from behind her as he walked into the newsroom from the stairwell a few minutes later. Lois turned and looked at him with relief. If Superman had appeared tired, Clark appeared downright exhausted.
Standing up, she crossed over to him at the ramp and embraced him. “You’re late,” she informed him.
“I left a message with Jimmy,” Clark explained, reluctantly letting her go as she stepped out of the hug.
“You’re still late. Superman was just here. He said you… well,
he and the MPD found something,” Lois said, returning to her desk. She picked up her coffee mug and walked over to the coffee station.
“Did you know that there are abandoned coal mines under Metropolis?” Clark asked.
It seemed like a strange segue, but she figured she would go along for the ride. “That sounds vaguely familiar from third grade history. Why?”
“Oh, totally, CK. It’s a little known fact to people from outside of Metropolis, that our great city had an ugly and dirty past in the coal industry,” Jimmy interjected, joining them. “Mine tunnels crisscross this city and up into the hills of Westminster County. Some tunnels have been made into subway tunnels, bomb shelters, sewer tunnels, or expanded into parking garages. If you go into the hills outside of town, there’s a state park with abandoned mineshafts you can visit… Well, visit the outside of. Anyway, the immigrants used to get off the boats to be recruited to work directly in the mines, and the industry built up from there. Coal was shipped from Hob’s Bay up and down the coast, and inland via rail. Eventually, due to cave-ins, sinkholes, and public outcry due to unsafe labor practices after the suffocation death of five immigrant workers, which the coal mine owners tried to cover up, the last active city mine closed in the 1920’s or thereabouts, why?”
Lois stared at Jimmy, her mouth ajar.
“What?” Jimmy said with a shrug. “I did a paper on it in school. I made this really cool diorama of an opening of the Metropolitan United Coal shaft entrance after visiting the park on a field trip.”
She shook her head in disbelief. The man was a walking encyclopedia sometimes.
During Jimmy’s history lesson, Clark had walked over to Lois’s desk and sat down in her guest chair. He appeared as if more was bothering him than being tired and exhausted. Whatever Superman had hinted at that they found must have been holding down his soul. She filled up his coffee mug along with hers.
“While scanning the subway station under the Daily Planet for bombs, Superman found an entrance to the old Greater Amalgamated Mine shaft, which used to run from the hills outside of Metropolis into the city center,” Clark said, looking at Jimmy. “I only know this because after he found the tunnel, someone from MPD got an old mine map somewhere, and it showed the tunnels, most of which have been blocked since then.”
Lois set a black cup of coffee down in front of Clark. He smiled in gratitude and took a long sip.
“So, Dragonetti could have used the old mine shafts for smuggling,” Lois guessed.
Clark rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe. Possibly. That makes sense,” he said, but Lois could tell that wasn’t what Superman had found.
“Were there dead bodies in there?” she asked. He was really taking his own sweet time getting to the point.
“Not that I’m aware of, Lois,” Clark said, and then sighed. “In the 1940’s, the Black family bought the property where the old mine shaft entrance was and used it to smuggle something else into Metropolis.”
“What?” Jimmy asked.
“Nazis,” Clark announced.
Lois blinked. Had she heard him right? “Nazis? As in World War 2? That kind of Nazi?”
Clark nodded. “Superman found two nuclear bombs under Metropolis, practically across the street in fact,” he said, raising his gaze from his coffee cup and focusing it on her. “Well, across the street from the Daily Planet and down a couple hundred feet.”
Her knees weakened and she sat down in her seat.
Two bombs? “Fuentes wasn’t lying about his dirty nuclear bomb, then?” The control box to a nuclear bomb had been attached to her chest. Her hand began to shake and she released her own mug before anyone else noticed. How could something that hadn’t scared her in the moment, terrify her now?
“No, neither of these bombs was his. They belonged to the Nazi party,” Clark explained. “And they hadn’t been activated.”
Lois wanted to exhale, except the relief wasn’t there.
“The Nazis left two nuclear bombs to disintegrate under Metropolis?” Jimmy asked skeptically.
“Yes and no,” Clark replied. “Along with the bombs, Superman and the bomb squad found an active sleeper cell headquarters. We found three empty concrete caskets, which appeared to have been used as cryogenic chambers of sorts. They were opened last May.”
“When you say sleeper cell, you mean literal ‘sleeper’ agents?” Lois said, raising a hand to her head. This was too much. “Is that even…?” She was in love with a man who flew. Anything was possible.
“The Nazis want to bomb Metropolis?” Jimmy asked. He pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “Hitler’s Nazis from the 1940’s want to bomb modern day Metropolis? Those Nazis, CK?”
“This is huge, Clark!” Lois said, jumping to her feet and turning towards Perry’s office, where the crime scene tape reminded her that her boss wasn’t there. “Bigger than our little hostage robbery event last night. Do you know who all is involved?” She grabbed her notebook instead.
Clark shook his head. “Henderson and Henderson are shifting through the paperwork and data files trying to find names. Superman spent all night flying through abandoned mine shafts looking for more bombs, but because of all the blind spots due to lead-lining of bomb shelters, lead-based paint, lead-pipes, and such, he came up empty.”
“Is there any reason he expected to find more bombs?” Lois asked, sitting back down. She had a feeling she would want to be sitting when she heard his answer.
“Because we…
he found a master switch, which when flipped would’ve detonated those two bombs and three others. Also, we never found Fuentes’s bomb. It could still be here somewhere.” He set down his coffee and rubbed his face. “There could be three more of the Nazi nuclear bombs out there somewhere, more if Fuentes wasn’t lying about his bomb as well.”
Lois patted his hand. “At least Superman found the master switch. They can’t be detonated without that,” she reassured him. He lifted his gaze from their joined hands to her eyes, and she was no longer sure. “Right?”
“Unless someone else finds them first,” he murmured.
Jimmy’s phone rang and he ran off to answer it, calling back to them, “Hold that thought!”
She tried to smile, but it came out lopsided. “I hear sleep is over-rated anyway.”
Clark returned a similar smile. “I promise:
this week, Lois.”
“I’d like that,” she replied, patting his hand and trying again to coax a smile to her lips. “You better type up what you’ve got before you head home to shower, shave, and change. I’m still waiting for an official comment on Lex’s condition.” She picked up her rough draft. “Oh, and I got started on the Fuentes story. See if you can pepper that with any more details from your time with the bomb squad.”
“I don’t deserve you,” Clark murmured.
“Trust me, partner, you deserve each and every cell of me, especially if you try and edit my copy,” she said, shooting him a warning glance.
His eyes lit up and coaxed a real smile to his lips. “A challenge!”
“Oh, you want a challenge, Chuck?” Lois said, picking up her ‘belly of the beast’ story. “I believe Perry wanted you to make this ‘extra moody’.”
Clark looked down at the pile of papers now in his hands and groaned as his shoulders fell. “Don’t other reporters work here
besides us?”
Lois laughed; she actually threw her head back and laughed so hard her stomach hurt. Then she looked Clark in the eye, all traces of humor gone. “No.”
***
Several hours later, Clark headed home under the pretext of cleaning up and getting some shut-eye, but Lois knew better. Until Superman had found the bombs, which the master switch controlled, Clark wouldn’t be getting any sleep. So much for the promise of a nice quiet Sunday.
With his office cordoned off with police crime scene tape, Perry had commandeered Cat’s desk when he had returned to the office. Clark had explained to him what Superman had found underground. Perry had sent Jimmy in search of any public records he could find on a Sunday regarding ownership and history of the mine, its previous and current owners, and the current tenants.
Rita, that mousey researcher and probable Lex spy, wandered in looking bleary-eyed shortly after Clark and Jimmy left. “Sir,” she said softly, standing next to Cat’s desk and facing Perry. “Can I talk to you?” She glanced over at Lois. “Er… privately?”
“Hon, this is as private as we’re going to get at least until tomorrow, being that my office and the conference room are considered active crime scenes. Anything you have to say to me, you can say in front of Lois,” Perry said, leaning back in Cat’s chair. It almost toppled over and he immediately sat up, swearing under his breath.
Lois appreciated the statement of trust in his words, and it caused her to look up and focus on the conversation more than she would have otherwise.
Rita shifted her weight from one foot to the other and held out a thick manila envelope. “These are photos I swiped from the Metropolis Star,” the researcher confessed. “They were taken outside of the Planet last night.”
Lois was impressed. Rita had broken into the Star and stolen photos. That took guts. They might make a reporter out of her, yet.
On the other hand, Perry’s brow furrowed as he pulled out the photos. “Do you want to explain yourself, Ms. Bale?”
Rita glanced over at Lois, and then swallowed. “Preston Carpenter of the Metropolis Star placed me inside the Daily Planet as a spy, to let him know about what stories everyone here was working on, and to report my findings to Ms. King,” she replied.
Lois rose to her feet and pointed at the woman. “I knew it! I knew you were a mole. Always sneaking around and following me everywhere,” she crowed. “Wait a minute. You spied on me for
Linda King?” She wished Clark were here to hear these accusations against his friend, the so-called ‘innocent’ Ms. King. ‘She’s a good reporter, Lois.’ Ha! She couldn’t wait to rub this news item in his face. Once a sewer rat, always a sewer rat.
Rita took a step back and nodded. “Now that Ms. King has been fired for playing a part in Carpenter’s arrest, I’ve decided to leave the Metropolis Star. I don’t want to work for a publisher with such low morals. I should have said ‘no’ to the assignment when Carpenter offered it to me, but I so wanted to try my hand at investigating, because I was tired of copy editing.”
And now she wants both Perry’s forgiveness and to retain her job here? That was asking a lot.
“This is why you didn’t do that research on Linda King I asked for, isn’t it?” Lois accused.
“Yes, Ms. Lane,” Rita admitted. “I thought you were on to me and that’s why you had given me the assignment. Luckily, I was able to play on your professional jealousy of Mr. Kent’s lunching with Ms. King to muddy the waters.”
Perry glanced at Lois skeptically, which told her that he had known it wasn’t
professional jealousy behind Lois’s behavior. Lois returned a shrug.
Lois had been on to her, only she had thought Rita was Lex’s spy. If Rita wasn’t spying on her for Lex, who was?
“I just wanted to apologize to you, Mr. White, for any problems I may have caused for you or the Daily Planet. Despite being a tough boss, you were always fair, and I appreciated that. I saw that you cared more for your employees and the truth than the bottom line. You pushed me to get your dry-cleaning, so that I would stand up to you and tell you I deserved better, and when I did, you gave me better. Neither you or the Daily Planet deserved what Mr. Carpenter did to you, nor do you deserve the Met Star to make fun of you in this morning paper after being held hostage last night,” Rita said, raising her hand towards the envelope she had handed to Perry. “I thought it only fitting that since I had stolen so much from you that I leave you with this parting gift. I was supposed to deliver these to the night editor at the Metropolis Star before cleaning out my desk.”
“While I appreciate your honesty, Ms. Bale, I’m afraid we won’t be able to retain you here either,” Perry said as gently as he could and with more humility than Lois thought Rita deserved.
“Oh, no, Mr. White. I never officially worked for the Daily Planet. I just arrived on the newsroom floor one day, took an empty desk, and claimed HR hired me as a researcher. Everything was such a mad house after Nightfall, nobody seemed to notice,” Rita explained with a sheepish smile. “Anyway, you worked me twice as hard as a researcher than I ever worked as a Junior Copy Editor at the Met Star. I have a friend who has a position at a publishing house, editing textbooks for children, and she says they have an opening for me. I’ve decided that the news business is a bit too cutthroat for me.”
Perry stood up and his gaze at Rita turned hard. “You never worked here?”
“Well, to be precise, Mr. White, the Daily Planet never paid me for the work that I did,” Rita corrected, taking another step back. “I also wanted to apologize to Ms. Lane about leaking your involvement with Eugene Laderman to Ms. King. I couldn’t help but overhear you and Mr. Kent discussing that you were hiding the escaped murder in your apartment.”
Lois put her hands on her hips, knowing full well who had turned her over to Detective Reed, and her initials were L.K. “I was right not to trust you. Not only did you steal from us, but also you besmirched both the Daily Planet's name and mine. Did it even matter to you that I was trying to prove Eugene Laderman was innocent of murdering Mr. Harrison? That he
was innocent? If you hadn’t have told Linda, we would've been able to prove it sooner and stopped a meltdown of the infrastructure of this country from happening.”
And I wouldn’t have been convicted of harboring an escaped felon.Rita took another step back. “Well, anyway, I hope those photos help. At least, the Metropolis Star wasn’t able to use them for this morning’s front page,” she said, before turning on her toes and bolting for the elevators.
Perry and Lois followed her as far as the ramp.
“Good riddance!” Lois screamed after her.
When Rita was gone, Perry turned to Lois, appearing like a broken man. “What kind of Editor-in-Chief am I, honey? I recommended an ex-con to be our security guard, because he seemed like a nice old man and he needed a job, and I let a nobody mole work in my newsroom and she didn’t even have a job here,” he asked, sitting down at the break table and dropping his head into his hands. “Maybe the time has come for me to step down as editor.”
“Don’t think that way, Chief,” Lois said, sliding into the seat next to him. “You’ve just had a bad night. You directly manage over a hundred people. A bad egg is bound to slip in every once and a while. Why don’t we call it a trifecta and fire Ralph as well?”
“He might not be the best writer out there, but he’s good at his job, Lois. Those financial guys in stock market alley love him. He’s always able to get tips and insider information out of them,” Perry said.
“That’s because he’s as much of a slimebucket as they are,” she reminded him. “He preys on their drunken stupors for leaks and calls it ‘investigating’.”
Perry shrugged as if to admit that he wouldn’t disagree with that assessment. “I try not to hold my reporters’ personalities against them, if they do their job.”
“Well, that explains Cat Grant,” Lois grumbled.
“What is it between you and her, lately? I thought you two were finally starting to get along,” he asked.
“I refuse to admit that she’s a better reporter than I am.”
Perry burst out laughing. “Who’s asking you to? Certainly not me. Even Superman wouldn’t be stupid enough to suggest such a thing, and he’s invulnerable.”
“You heard Clark tonight… last night, trying to get me to acknowledge that Cat’s reporting has merits,” Lois mumbled. She was too embarrassed to admit the truth. Cat Grant had seen through Clark’s disguise on day one. It still rankled Lois that it took a kiss from Superman himself nine months later to clear the fog from her eyes.
“And you know Clark, darlin’,” Perry said, patting her on the shoulder. “If that man could find goodness in Linda King, he could in just about anyone.”
“I suppose so,” Lois murmured.
“Hey, now. You didn’t let yourself be sweet-talked into giving a ‘special contribution’ credit to someone who was working to destroy your best reporter’s career and your newspaper,” he said.
“Linda could sweet talk the lollypop from Kojak’s mouth,” Lois said. “You’re a good captain, Chief. Anyway, despite vultures circling, your reporters cracked open a huge Nazi conspiracy that was simmering beneath the city.”
He raised his eyes to her, and they both knew what he was thinking.
Superman discovered the Nazis, not his reporter.
Lois scoffed. Same diff.
“Good thing that he did, too,” Perry said, flinging out his hand. “Because their headquarters was directly across the street. Right under our noses… my nose.” He groaned before lowering his voice. “Just like Dragonetti’s vault.”
Lois rubbed his shoulders, before heading back to Cat’s desk. She needed to knock the fight back into Perry, or he’d crawl back into bed and let Lex take the Daily Planet without a peep. “Let’s see what our friend the spy provided us.”
Perry rolled his eyes. “Just photos. It’s not as if we could publish any of them, being that a Met Star photographer took ‘em,” he said.
“Even so…” Lois said, taking out the pictures and flipping quickly through them. “Maybe we can learn something, such as the face or name of Metropolis’s new vigilante.”
She tossed out, instantly, the photos of Henderson and Tuzzolino talking with a group of officers. She paused at the photo of the S.W.A.T. team leading Willie out of the Daily Planet. It almost seemed like overkill, all those young officers surrounding the old man. Apparently, the Met Star photographer showed up just after they nabbed Willie, so maybe he didn’t have a photo of the vigilante. She flipped through a few more useless pictures.
Lois stopped at the photos showing Superman talking with Henderson and Tuzzolino; Cat Grant hung at his elbow. That was where Clark had been while she was having a bomb strapped to her chest. She pushed that thought and those pictures aside.
Then there were some photos of the Jimmys and Lex exiting the building. Her brow furrowed, and she went quickly through this bunch. Perhaps there was a shot of what happened to Lex after he had been checked out by the EMTs, and she could figure out to where he had disappeared.
She pulled out a photo of a baseball-capped paramedic leading Lex off to an orange and white van, and the next shot of the non-traditional ambulance doors closing with him inside. So, Lex had definitely gone off in an ambulance as Jimbo had said he had seen. In the first photo, their heads were blocking out the words on the side of the ambulance, but she could make out an S-P-E at the beginning and an N-C-E. “Chief!” she called over to her boss, snapping her fingers. “What was the name of that front for the Nazis headquarters Clark told us about? The one you sent Jimmy to check out?”
“Do you mean ‘Speedy Ambulance’…?”
“That’s the one!” she said, bringing over the photo to her boss, who met her half way. “Look who just happened to take a Speedy Ambulance from here last night and into oblivion.”
“You don’t think Lex Luthor is a Nazi, do you?” Perry said, disbelief hanging off every word.
“I hope not, but he hasn’t checked into any of the hospitals in Metropolis,” Lois told him. She thought about how Lex ran his business. He didn’t care who or what anyone was, as long as they had the skills to do the job. Additionally, she could never see him ceding power to such a group. “No, I couldn’t see him working with them. It looks like the ‘Speedy Ambulance Service’ is about to get an overhaul Mad Dog style.”
“And if he
is a Nazi…?” Perry asked, setting a hand on her arm.
“It’ll be on the cover of the Daily Planet.”
“Where it belongs,” he agreed with a nod.
*
Lex Luthor leaned back in his chair and drummed his fingers on his desk. He picked up the CD recorder that Asabi had given Nigel with Lex-C’s disastrous date on it and turned it over in his fingers. He now had to pretend that he had been shot. That was nothing if not damned inconvenient.
To say that his evening with Arianna had gone badly would be stating things mildly. The Revenge had worked wonders on her. Miranda really had been a genius, but, unfortunately, it was about ten years too late. Lex tossed down the CD and knocked everything, including it, off his desk. His lamp, his fancy pen set, his box of cigars, and the CD recorder all landed on the floor with a crash.
Arianna had been loving and intimate. She had begged Lex to do whatever he pleased to her, no matter what. She had even moaned with desire, instead of whimpering with fear. Arianna, of all people. It was revolting. He wanted a little fight in his woman. It was boring. He had even fallen asleep at one point and awoke to find her cuddling up to him, whispering sweet nothings in his ear as she caressed his body. Arianna!
So, Lois didn’t trust him. He could tell she wanted to, but she wasn’t there yet. Apparently, she needed a little persuasion. She was worried about him though. She didn’t like the thought of him disappearing where she couldn’t find him. Deep inside Lois, Lex knew there was a part of her fighting her good sense to love him. It was time to give her permission to do what she really wanted.
Lex walked over to his wall of ancient weapons, pressed a hidden button under the lip of the display case, and watched as the door slid open into his secret office. He flicked a manacle as he passed by, listening to it clang and wondering exactly what Superman would do if he was strapped into them, unable to break free. Lex moved a hideous piece of framed art and typed in his code to his vault. The door opened silently. The inside of the lead-lined safe glowed green.
***End of Part 137*** Part 138 Comments
