Lex sat in his cell in solitary confinement, silently fuming at the idiocy of his hired help.
He had expressly ordered his attorney to tell Asabi to set up a snatch to get Lois back, a snatch which would involve no shooting, no loss of life or injury, and no risk to Lois. He didn’t want his wife endangered. And he didn’t want another shooting incident added to the mountain of accusations already leveled against him.
Instead, two cops – one of them Asabi’s plant – were dead. Another cop was clinging to life. And an assistant district attorney, whose prognosis was not good, was undergoing surgery to save her life. It was a monumental screw-up in a season of insanity.
Asabi had failed him. So he’d used the code with his attorney to hand the task of locating Lois Luthor to Nigel St. John. Nigel had never failed before, and Lex had faith in him.
Of course, the stakes had never been this high before. And the one thing Lex knew for certain about Nigel was that Nigel was a survivor.
At any cost.
*****
Her name tag identified her as Marcie Cunningham and claimed she was a registered nurse. She was neither of those things, but it didn’t matter. Cathy Ames – her real name – had been trained as a physician’s assistant, and along with the ability to prescribe certain drugs when working under an M. D. she knew how to check a patient’s vital signs. If necessary, she could also administer lethal drugs to “special” patients. She was one of Nigel St. John’s more valuable assets.
But Cathy’s real talent was in getting patients to talk to her. She was pretty in a girl-next-door way, short and slender and looked totally harmless, had a gentle voice, with a soft Southern accent that made her sound like anyone’s close friend. She knew, if she could get close enough to the woman in the hospital bed, she could get her to talk.
The trick, of course, would be getting past the huge cop at the door.
Most people, especially men, would take one look at her soft brown hair, bright eyes, and gentle smile, and simply step aside. Not the monster detective here. He held up his oversized hand to stop her and blocked the entire doorway when she tried to enter Drake’s room.
“Hold on, miss,” he growled. “You’re not who I was told to expect.”
“I know,” she drawled. “I’m just helpin’ out a friend. She’s not feelin’ real good right now.” She leaned closer as if sharing a secret. “It’s her time o’ the month, y’see, and she’s kinda cramped up. You know how it is with girls sometimes, don’cha? I just gotta check the lady’s pulse and stuff.”
That almost always moved men out of her way. The male of the human species is generally uncomfortable discussing the intimate workings of the female members’ internal plumbing with said female members.
Not this giant. Her shared intimacy made no impact on the big man. “Sorry. You don’t go in unless my boss or your boss comes here and tells me it’s okay.”
“Aw, come on, man! I got a job to do here! Don’t y’all cover for each other sometimes?”
“We do occasionally, honey. But I got a job to do, too. No one goes in that room unless that person has the proper authorization.”
She feigned offense, one of her better expressions. “Well, I never! You ain’t gotta be so rude about it, Lieutenant!”
The man swelled up and blocked the light from the sun. “It’s Detective, not Lieutenant, and I don’t care how rude you think I am. Tell your friend to go take some Midol and do her job herself.”
Cathy decided she couldn’t push her luck any further. She should leave before he decided to do more than block her access to Drake. She spun on her heel and barked out, “Fine! We’ll see who still has a job tomorrow!”
Her new nurse’s shoes squeaked slightly as she stalked down the hallway. The more she thought about it, the worse her chances of getting to Drake this afternoon seemed. Nigel wanted answers right away, but it was too soon after multi-hour surgery for a bullet wound for the patient to be alert and talking. Assuming she was in the room and not still in recovery, she’d be in no shape to talk until at least tomorrow.
Cathy wasn’t getting a bonus for this job.
*****
Klaatu walked up behind Barada and asked, “What was that all about?”
Without turning, he answered, “Some cute little white chick wanted to see Drake. Claimed to be a nurse here to check her vitals.”
“But you didn’t like her?”
“No. Did you get a good look at her?”
“Sure did.”
“She remind you of anyone?”
“She fits the description of a woman posing as a nurse or an EMT. I still don’t know why she’d do that unless she was getting paid for it.”
“Maybe she’s just a little nuts. Or she’s a hospital groupie. You know, like some people listen to police band radios so they can show up at crime scenes?”
Klaatu frowned. “You’ve run into some of those, I take it?”
Barada nodded. “I seen ‘em before. This didn’t feel like that. That girl was clear-headed and sane, just up to no good.”
Klaatu sighed. “Okay, swap places with me and call Henderson. Tell him what happened and what you think about her.”
He backed into the room and reached for his cell phone, but the tall Amerind woman detective stopped him. “Uh-uh. Remember what Bill said? No sensitive info over the LexTel phone?”
He grimaced. “Right. I forgot for a second. I’ll use the phone in the room.”
“I’m sure Detective Carter won’t mind the noise.”
They both glanced at the blonde woman lying on the bed. She gave them both a sneer, then stuck her tongue out at them. As Barada picked up the phone, Carter whispered, “How much longer do I have to lie here like a sack of potatoes? My back is getting stiff.”
He punched the number for Bill Henderson’s desk and smiled. “As long as you work as a decoy. You make a very convincing Mayson Drake, by the way. Now go back to sleep. You just had major surgery, remember?”
Glynis Carter huffed and shifted to a less uncomfortable position. Barada grinned at her and waited for his supervisor to answer his desk phone.
*****
“Henderson here. Really? Yeah, I have a pencil. And paper too. Go ahead.” Bill listened and wrote for several moments. “I think you’re right about who she is. No, don’t arrest her unless she tries to force her way into the room. Just let me know if she shows up again. I don’t think she will either, but it’s best to be prepared. Right. No, Drake is in intensive care now, and Nikto is watching her with a couple of unis. The surgery went well and her prognosis is as good as we could have hoped. Tell your other partner, but do it quietly. As far as Luthor’s people know, she’s hanging on by her fingernails and we don’t think she’ll make it. I’ll get back to you if I get anything firm on Kent and Lane. And have the hospital staff start looking for the nurse who was supposed to be there. If we’re lucky, she’s sleeping off a sedative in a closet somewhere in the building. No, we – I know what it means if we’re not lucky. You guys stay sharp.”
Bill let the handset slide off his fingers onto the rack. He hadn’t liked the tricky plan that Mayson had devised, but he knew it should have worked. The crime scene folks were still working the site of the shooting, but their preliminary results told him what he’d feared most had come to pass.
He’d had a mole in his department and it had cost at least two lives.
Even under pressure to get results, the ME’s office wouldn’t have the autopsy results for both bodies until the middle of the next day at the earliest. He was still waiting for financial records on all three, even though he suspected that Kendra Rogers had been the killer. Given the position of the bodies and the number of rounds fired from her weapon, it was the scenario which made the most sense.
The joker in the deck was the missing weapon. Paul Bridges’ service pistol wasn’t on the scene, and Dennis Franklin, the investigator from the DA’s office, was no help. He had been interviewed more than once, put on paid administrative leave, and allowed to go home. He claimed to know nothing about Bridges’ pistol, and Bill wanted to believe him. The only thing he was certain about was that he’d seen Mrs. Luthor carry the luggage to the back of the van while Clark had given him strict instructions on keeping pressure on Mayson’s wound, which he had done until the ambulance had arrived.
Bill knew that Kent didn’t like firearms very much and only carried one because he had to. The man had phenomenal accuracy on the firing range, and his paper targets nearly always came back with one hole cut out of the exact middle of the target instead of multiple holes from multiple hits close to the bull’s-eye. He chuckled as he remembered Kent’s most recent range check.
The new range master, who’d known Kent’s reputation but hadn’t seen him shoot, had handed Kent a full fifty-round box of ammo and challenged him to write his name on the target. Clark had smiled and nodded and filled two twenty-round magazines and put the remaining ten rounds in a third. Then, at the range master’s order to fire, he’d written “Kent” across the target’s center mass. Mayson had been there with him, and Bill suspected that Clark had been showing off just a little for her, especially since she’d clapped her hands and bounced on her toes when the target had come back and the range master had growled at Kent to “get off my firing line, you punk showoff.”
Why the young man disliked his weapon so much when he could use it so well still puzzled Bill. But he was confident that if any individual in his command could deliver Lois Lane Luthor to the Feds, Clark Kent could do it. He seemed to have a knack for wiggling out of tight spaces and bad situations using a minimum of force. He could get Mrs. Luthor halfway across the country—
Wait a minute. Mrs. Luthor—
Oh, no. No. No, it couldn’t be!
It struck him with the force of a bowling ball falling off the shelf over his head. The missing weapon was in the van, on its way to Denver.
And Clark didn’t have it. Lois Luthor did.
That meant one of two things. Either the woman was scared enough to want to defend herself if necessary or she was going to use it to get away from Kent. If the latter were true, then she wasn’t the willing witness she’d claimed to be.
She might be just as much a crook as her husband was.
And Bill had no way to warn Kent about her.
*****
Warren, Ohio wasn’t the smallest place Clark had ever driven past, but it if you yawned long enough while driving you’d miss seeing the town from the highway. He turned to Lois and said, “I think this is far enough for today. We can order a pizza, fix your hair, get a good night’s sleep, and get away early tomorrow.”
Lois unfolded the itinerary. “According to this, there’s a place about two miles just east of Niles called – oh, no.”
“What? What’s wrong?”
She giggled. “I’m sorry – the motel is – it’s called – the Dew Drop Inn.”
Clark’s eyebrows rose close to his hairline. “You’re kidding.”
She giggled again. “No – not kidding. Hahahaha! I hope they have – hahaha – I hope they have locks on the doors!”
He forced himself not to laugh out loud. “I just hope they take cash when we check in. What’s your middle name again?”
*****
The desk clerk at the Dew Drop Inn looked like she’d retired from at least two other professions and was counting the minutes down on this one. She hauled her oversized bulk out of the chair behind the desk and said, “Got a reservation?”
Clark refrained from looking around at the few people in the lobby and eating area. He also refrained from mentioning the worn, frayed carpet and peeling wallpaper. “No, sorry. We need a room just for the night.”
“Need to see your ID.”
He dug in his wallet and pulled out his department-issued cover ID. “Here you go.”
The woman glared at the card for a moment, then nodded. “Jerome Clark of Gotham City. Just for one night, Mr. Clark?”
“Yes.”
“Who else?”
“My wife Joanne. She’s outside in the van.”
“You two on your honeymoon or something?”
“Oh, no. We’re travelling cross-country to Las Vegas.”
The woman huffed. “Place’ll take your money and leave you flat broke you ain’t careful.”
“We’re not going to gamble, just see the sights along the way and meet up with my sister and her family there.”
The woman nodded again. “Whatever. Sign here, here, here, and initial here. You got any animals with you?”
“No, just the two of us.”
“Fine. You can order something in the restaurant if you want and we’ll charge it to your room. And we got a free continental breakfast in the morning from six to nine.”
He turned and looked at the dingy dining area. “Uh – is there a pizza place nearby that delivers here? Joanne has a craving for Canadian bacon and sausage.”
She shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She pulled out a laminated sheet of paper from under the desk and handed it to him. “There’s four places that deliver here, and they ain’t all pizza. Just leave the card in the room when you get ready to leave tomorrow. Checkout time is eleven or I gotta charge you for another day.”
“No problem. We want to get an early start.”
“Uh-huh. Then I’d recommend you don’t order anchovies on your pizza. Charley don’t always have the freshest ones, you know?”
“Thanks for the tip. How much do I owe you?”
“Just gimme a credit card and we’ll settle up in the morning.”
“Oh, sorry, I don’t carry credit cards. I was planning to pay cash.”
She lifted her gaze and glared at him. “You sure? Cash customers have to put down a four-day deposit and wait for me to inspect the room before they leave.”
He lifted his hands as if helpless. “What can I say? I’m a slave to my wife’s financial constraints. She thinks I can’t handle having credit cards in my wallet.”
The woman gave out an onion-and-garlic-flavored sigh that made Clark want to gag. “Fine. I’ll take three days of basic charges and give you back your change in the morning.”
“Thank you. How much do you need now?”
“Let’s see, a double for three nights – I assume you want a queen-sized bed?”
“That’s fine.” If necessary, he knew he could sleep on the floor. Lois would surely prefer that to sharing a bed with a man she’d just met.
“Okay, three nights at sixty-three-fifty a night, plus state and city taxes and fees – give me two-twenty-five even and I’ll be here in the morning to check you out and give you back the balance.”
He reached into his pocket and counted out a small pile of cash. “Here you go.”
“Thanks. Here’s your receipt. Oh, I almost forgot, I have to leave about nine-thirty tomorrow to take my sister to the doctor. You get here by nine so I can take care of this, okay? And bring the receipt in case someone else is here, otherwise you might not get your change for a while.”
“Don’t worry. And thank you again.”
“You’re welcome. Wait!”
“What is it?”
She handed him two plastic rectangles with holes in one end, like a perforated domino. “Card keys for your room. It’s number one-eighteen, down the hall to the right and next-to-last on the left side. It’s closer to park behind the building and come in the side door. Your room key will open it.”
“Thanks again.”
He exited the front door and climbed into the van. “Got the room and paid cash. Guess my Kansas charm worked again.”
Lois smiled at him. “You’re from Kansas, huh? I didn’t think you were a native Metro.”
“Nope. Transplant about five years ago. I was a little overwhelmed at first, but now I really like living there. So many people, so many stories, so many opportunities to help.”
She shook her head. “You are such a Boy Scout.”
“Eagle Scout, ma’am, Eagle Scout. I earned just about every merit badge I could except the ones dealing with boats and such.”
“You don’t like the water?”
“It wasn’t an option. The water in Kansas usually comes out of a well or a faucet. We don’t have a lot of lakes, and there are no ocean beaches there.”
“Sounds boring.”
He backed into a parking space near the door and turned off the engine. “There are some very interesting geographical features in Kansas, I’ll have you know.”
“Yeah, if you like flat.”
He gave her a mock glare and shook his head. “Come on, let’s get in the room and get that pizza ordered.”
“You’re that hungry?”
“No, but I’m betting you can’t be too snarky with your mouth full.”
“You’d lose that bet.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and strode to the motel’s side door. “C’mon, Clark, I gotta make a pit stop.”
“Okay, okay.” He pressed the card key into the reader and the door unlocked. “Is that better, your highness?”
“It will be when I actually get to the bathroom.”
He held in his chuckle and keyed the door to their room open. “Here’s the sheet with the pizzeria’s phone number. You call for the pizza when you come out. I’ll get the luggage. We’re checked in as Jerome and Joanne Clark.”
“Got it.”
”Oh, the desk clerk said not to order anchovies.”
“Yuck. I wasn’t going to.”
He propped the door open with a rock, then walked back to the van and opened the back door. A pang tapped his heart when he saw Mayson’s suitcase, but he suppressed it. She had still been alive the last time they’d heard a news report on her, just before they’d crossed the Ohio state line. Clark doubted that they’d hear much more before tomorrow, although he planned to watch the twenty-four hour news network before they went to sleep.
He almost left Mayson’s luggage in the van, but he didn’t know which bag the hair dye was in. He’d let Lois go through Mayson’s suitcase if necessary, and if—
He lifted the suitcase and something under it made a metallic ‘clunk.’
He looked closer and saw the pistol. Then he went cold.
There was only one place that weapon could have come from. Lois had picked it up that morning right after the shootout.
But why? Was she that unsure of his ability to keep her safe? Or was there a more subtle reason?
Could she have somehow been in on this? Could that shootout been a rescue attempt and not a hit that went bad? Was Lois planning to shoot him in his sleep?
He didn’t know what to think. The easy conversations they’d had this afternoon, the joking, the gentle teasing, the comments on each other’s hair and clothing – had they all been a smokescreen? Could she have been working to lower his defenses and get him to trust her so she could betray him?
Was she that good an actress?
He didn’t know. And he didn’t dare risk it. He glanced around to make sure no one was watching and went to work on turning the weapon into a paperweight.
*****
“Yes, room one-eighteen,” Lois said into the phone. “No, we’ll have cash for you. Your tip? That depends on how long it takes you to get here and how hot the breadsticks are. Great! Oh, drinks? What two-liter bottles do you have? That’s it? Fine, we’ll take the Sprite. Bring enough change so you can break a fifty. I don’t know what my husband has in his wallet.”
She heard the tap on the door as she hung up the phone. “Jerome?” she called in a high, screechy voice. “That you, babe?”
“It’s me, Jo. Can you open the door? My hands are full.”
She opened the door and let him in, then set the deadbolt and security lock behind him. “Pizza’s on its way. Soon as we’re done I’ll find the hair dye and—”
She stopped talking when the saw the unloaded pistol on the end of the bed in front of the unopened suitcases. Clark’s voice was bone-dry. “Forget something?”
“Um – yeah, actually. I was going to mention it but I forgot.” He sighed deeply. “No, really, I forgot it was there! I was going to tell you but—”
“That’s enough!” he barked. “I’ve got the magazine and the firing pin. It won’t shoot now. Thanks to you, though, we’ve got another three plus pounds of weapon and ammunition to carry around with us and smear oil on our clothes and leave a scent trail for a search dog.” He stepped closer and leaned down so his face was at her level. “I’m more interested in why you even had it. Do you not trust me to protect you? Were you going to run out on me? Or were you going to put a couple of rounds in my ear one night while I was asleep?”
“I wasn’t going to run and I’m not going to shoot you!”
“Oh, and you have such a record of trustworthiness to fall back on.”
She took a step backwards. He was really mad, mad clear through, and she felt herself reverting to her default attitude when Lex showed her his temper. She turned her body ninety degrees, bent over at the waist, and covered her head with her hands, trying to make herself smaller. It was a submission posture, and it was one of the few things which would deflect both Lex’ anger and the blows he would rain down upon her. A bruise on the arm was less debilitating than a hard blow to the head or neck.
Except Clark didn’t hit her.
His voice finally came to her from across the room. “I’m not going to hit you. I promise.”
The promise sounded as if it were being given under some duress, but for some reason it reassured her. She slowly lowered her arms and straightened up. “I – I’m sorry. I really was going to tell you about it.”
“I wish you had. This is going to make it that much harder to trust you.”
“I know. I’m so—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, you’re so very sorry. You’re sorry about marrying a skunk like Lex Luthor, you’re sorry about Mayson getting shot, you’re sorry about stealing a police weapon from a crime scene, you’re sorry you didn’t tell me you had it, and now you’re sorry you got busted for it.” He stalked toward her again, his index finger pointing at her forehead. “I’m tired of how sorry you are! And I’m sorry I treated you like a human being today!” He stood in front of her for several seconds, teeth gritted and breathing hard, then spun away and yanked off his coat. “I promise you I won’t make that mistake again.”
Lois knew it was a reasonable reaction from him given the provocation. She knew that her actions had brought his ire down on her. She knew she was responsible for the suddenly altered dynamic between them.
She also realized that she would miss the easy camaraderie they’d developed in one short day. It left her feeling hollow and empty.
And she didn’t know why.
*****
Clark hid the disassembled pistol in the top of the closet before he answered the door and paid for the pizza. He almost told the kid to keep both twenties he gave him, but Lois’ quiet throat-clearing reminded him that they didn’t need to make themselves any more memorable than they had to. He opened the pizza box and set it on the end of the bed, then popped the plastic wrapping on two cups and poured some of the clear sugar water into each.
He took a big swig and gestured with his cup. “Feed bag’s on. Come get it while it’s hot. I don’t know if that microwave works very well.”
She didn’t answer. She just put a slice on a napkin and took her cup to the chair farthest from hm. Despite her earlier protestations of severe nourishment deprivation, she ate almost mechanically.
“How’s the pizza?” he finally asked.
She shot him a dead look and nodded. “Not too bad.”
He finished his second piece and reached for a third. “Sorry about all this.”
“Not your fault,” she muttered. “Don’t be sorry.”
“No, I mean I’m sorry I accused you of planning to shoot me. If you were going to go back to Luthor, you wouldn’t have stopped me from turning on my phone this morning.”
She stopped eating for a moment but didn’t look at him. After a moment, she finished chewing and swallowed. “Thank you,” she all but whispered. “I – I’m not used to anyone apologizing to me. Not sincerely, anyway.”
“But you are used to being abused, aren’t you?”
Her head snapped up and her eyes narrowed. “How do you – what makes you say that?”
“I’m a cop, remember? Two years as a uniformed officer in a black-and-white. I’ve responded to domestic violence calls before. I’ve seen smaller women who were bullied and beaten by their husbands. A lot of times, I couldn’t get anywhere near them because of my size and because they were terrified of anything large and male. And I’ve seen that protective crouch before.” He sighed deeply. “I can almost understand why you’d want something you could defend yourself with.”
“With which I could defend myself.”
“What?”
She shook her head and almost smiled. “Sorry. It’s a holdover from my days writing news copy for LNN, and before that for the Daily Planet. You ended your sentence with a preposition.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess I did. Hey, did you ever hear the story about the major league umpire who was trying a new technique to calm down batters who didn’t like the calls he was making behind the plate?”
“No. What about him?”
“Well, seems he called a strike on a batter who didn’t like the call, and the guy backed out of the batter’s box and said, ‘Hey, Ump! Where was that last pitch at?’
“The umpire called time, pulled out his whisk broom, and leaned over to clean off home plate. While he was bent over, he said to the batter what you just said to me, that you shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition.”
“And?” prompted Lois.
“And he had to explain to the batter what a preposition was.”
Despite herself, a smile tried to peek out of her face. “Then what happened?”
“The batter said, ‘Okay, smart guy. Where was that last pitch at, jerk?’”
She snorted and almost dropped her pizza. “No more of those, okay? I don’t think I can stand being whipsawed any more today.”
“No problem. Uh, we’ll need to get an early start in the morning. You want the bed or the floor?”
Her smile melted away. “You’re giving me the choice?”
“Yes. You can tell me after you shower and dye your hair if you like.”
The smile crept back on kitten’s soft paws. “I’ll do that. You need in there before I get started?”
“No, I’m good. I’ll clean up and dump the trash outside. No sense putting out more roach bait.”
“Yeah,” said Lois. “There are plenty of roaches chasing us already.”
