Table of Contents
From Part 3:He thought he heard a muffled curse at the other end of the line. But then Henderson’s voice came again, as deadpan as ever. “Okay. Well, you better tell Lois she needs to co-operate with us, then.”
He nodded. Of course, Henderson couldn’t see that. “I’ll do that.”
“Later, then.” There was a click, and the call was disconnected.
Almost automatically, Clark glanced at his watch. 8.20. Already five hours had gone by. Just nineteen until her twenty-four hours ran out. And, realistically, only fifteen or so before any damage was irreversible.
It wasn’t enough. And yet, for Lois’s sake, it had to be.
**********
Now read on...She trembled in the shower. Fumbled with her buttons and fastenings. Her hands shook as she tried to apply her make-up. She was a mess. A quivering wreck.
And that wouldn’t do. It wasn’t going to do. She was going to pull herself together, starting
now. No-one was going to see Lois Lane scared. Well, no-one other than Clark, and he didn’t count.
Plus, if that bastard was watching her, which he probably was given the sort of twisted mind he’d need to have to have to come up with this kind of plot - why kill her slowly if he couldn’t get pleasure out of watching her suffer - then there was no way on earth that she was going to allow him to see her showing any kind of fear.
A tap sounded on her door. “Lois?”
“I’m almost ready, Clark!” Involuntarily, she glanced at her watch. Already after twenty past eight. He was right; they needed to hurry. Time was ticking away.
“That’s not what I came to say. I’ve just talked to Henderson - he’s sending a forensic team over in a while to check this place out. He says touch as little as possible.”
He’d talked to Henderson? Well, that was sensible. Obviously Clark’s opinion of the other two cops had been about as low as hers. But then, she’d heard him castigate them.
She ran a brush through her hair once more. “I don’t think they’ll find anything,” she called, walking to the door. “I’m pretty sure the guy was wearing gloves.”
The instant she opened the door, she saw him. He looked terrible. His hair was dishevelled and he had a day’s growth of stubble. The dark T-shirt he wore looked as if he’d slept in it. But then, of course, she’d woken him up in the middle of the night and he’d been waiting for her at the hospital for hours. He hadn’t taken the opportunity to go home for a shower and fresh clothes while she’d been in the ER, and his first thought once at her place was to get to work helping
her.
How many other people in her life could she rely on to that extent?
“How do you know that?”
His question made her blink. How did she know what? She hadn’t spoken aloud...
“That he was wearing gloves.”
“Oh.” She frowned, trying to remember. “I’m not sure. But I think... He held my arm. I don’t think I felt skin. More like... latex, I think. But it’s all very vague.” And it
shouldn’t be. She should have stayed awake, tried to focus. Paid attention!
“Well, it would make sense.” Clark gestured for her to precede him to the door. She grabbed her purse and jacket on the way. “The police didn’t find any prints. And he must have either got in or left through the front door - maybe both. There was stuff knocked over on a pretty direct path to the door.”
“So either he had keys, or he picked my locks.” Seriously scary, the thought that someone could get into her apartment that easily.
“I guess.” He waited while she locked the door. Four locks. All deadbolt. With key control so only she could have copies made. Yet someone had got into her apartment through those four locks. She shivered.
“If someone really wants to get into someplace, no locks are going to keep him out,” Clark said, his voice wryly sympathetic. “You know that, Lois.”
She did. Didn’t make her feel any better. “The Jeep’s parked about half a block away. I couldn’t get a space out front last night.”
“Okay.” He fell into step beside her. “Want me to drive?”
“No.” It would give her something to concentrate on. “Fill me in on your phone calls on the way, okay?”
Clark nodded and held the entrance door for her. “Can you drop me off at my place on your way to the Planet? I have to shower and change. If you don’t want to take the time, I’ll walk from here.” He grimaced. “I wouldn’t waste the time, but I don’t even have my Press pass with me. Or my wallet.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “I was planning to go to your apartment. I’ll just make some calls of my own while you’re getting ready.”
Had he thought she wouldn’t care about the state he was in? Okay, there was no time to waste, but he was her partner. And her friend. And she needed him today.
With her. She didn’t want to go to the Planet without him.
Even though it was hard not to grudge him the fifteen minutes or so he needed to get ready when the rest of her life was measurable in minutes and hours.
*********
Clark was instinctively patting his pockets as he led the way to his front door - then stopped as he remembered. No wallet or Press ID - and no keys. Just as well he’d never let Lois talk him out of the country habit of keeping a spare key under the mat!
Inside, he directed Lois to make herself at home before heading for the shower, shedding his clothes on the bedroom floor on the way.
Hurry. Don’t waste a second. Time’s ticking away...Alone with his own thoughts at last, in the solitude of his shower, he leaned against the tiled wall, feeling his body sag, his strength leeching away. For the last hour or more, he’d been struggling to keep up a steady stream of reassurance, through words, gestures, his very presence. Now that Lois wasn’t here to need it, the assurance he’d been preaching all that time, that everything would be okay, vanished. As if it had never been there.
Lois was
dying. By this time tomorrow, she could be cold and still, laid out on some mortuary slab. Or on a pathologist’s table, being sliced open bit by bit so that medical science could discover what had killed her.
Lois was dying.
They had less than a day to find out what was killing her. Just a few hours more than a normal working day. And if they failed...
The consequences were too bleak to think about.
If he failed, he would lose Lois.His eyes closed. Hot tears forced their way out past his lids and mingled with the jets of near-scalding water from the shower.
And then he took a deep, shuddering breath and forced himself to stand upright. He needed to be strong.
Had to be strong. Lois was right. What she’d said at the hospital... Giving way to emotion wasn’t going to help them do what they needed to do. They needed to focus. They needed every bit of concentration, of thinking-power, logic and reasoning they had at their disposal. Plus help from anyone and everyone they could think of. And even then they needed a hell of a lot of luck.
As it was, Lois wasn’t going to be at her best. She was the one facing the death sentence - and more. He slumped against the wall again. Symptoms, the doctor had said. His heart skipped a beat. She was already pale, though that could just be down to shock and missing a night’s sleep. But was it his imagination, or had she been unsteady on her feet coming down the steps inside his apartment? That little cough just before he’d left her - coincidence, or shortness of breath?
God...For the second time, he gave himself a mental kick. Wallowing and worrying would
not help. Lois needed practical help and support, not a babysitter. They had work to do.
He stepped out of the shower, reaching for a towel as he did so, and dried himself at super-speed. No time to waste. He shaved faster than normal, too, collecting a couple of heat-burns as a consequence. And then, pulling a clean suit and shirt from the closet, he paused.
If this was going to be his last day with Lois - if they didn’t find a cure for the poison that bastard had injected her with - how was he going to make it count? He’d always miss her. Always love her. Always hate that he hadn’t been able to save her. The guilt would haunt him for the rest of his life.
But what else would haunt him? What other regrets?
It was like those truth or dare games he’d played with friends in college.
If you had just twenty-four hours to live, what would you do?Several of the guys had focused on dare-devil things. Excitement. Thrill-seeking. One or two had mentioned sex. The women had tended to focus on emotions - telling people they cared about that they loved them, resolving old wounds, revealing hidden feelings. Maybe experiencing intimacy for the first time with the person they loved.
There was so much that he wanted to tell Lois. How he felt about her. How much she meant to him. How he’d miss her for the rest of his life. All the secrets he’d been keeping from her.
But what if she didn’t want to hear them? She’d told him once before not to fall for him. Maybe she still felt the same way. Maybe telling her would only embarrass them both - and if they did manage to save her, the repercussions would be difficult to deal with. Humiliating, perhaps.
Plus their first priority had to be saving Lois’s life. There wasn’t time for emotions.
On the other hand... would he regret not telling her?
He glanced in the mirror and straightened his tie. And made himself a promise. If, by the time Dr Sutton confirmed that it was too late to save Lois, they hadn’t found the cure, he’d tell her everything. At least then that would be one regret he wouldn’t have.
**********
“Make yourself at home,” Clark had said before disappearing. “You know where the coffee is.”
Coffee. As if she could think about coffee at a time like this!
She pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and sat, only to jump to her feet seconds later and start pacing. Moments later, she noticed that she was alternately twisting her hands together and tugging at the neckline of her blouse. Fidgeting. She hated fidgets!
And yet she couldn’t keep still. There was too much to think about. Too much to do.
Who? Who could it be?
Kyle Griffin - one person who was just crazy enough to choose this way of getting back at her - was safely in a maximum-security prison. So was that crooked politician she’d exposed early in her career - Bertoli, right? What about Crazy Joe Murphy? She’d put an end to his lucrative weapons-fencing career. Then there was that hitman - what was his name again?
She’d be able to check the files at the Planet, of course - once they got there. What was keeping Clark? She glanced at her watch once more, and sighed when it told her that it hadn’t been much more than five minutes since they’d got here.
She needed to be at the Planet. Checking files, chasing down leads, talking to sources...
Sources! Whirling on her heel, Lois reached for Clark’s phone and punched in a number from memory.
“Bobby? Lois Lane. I need your help.”
A few minutes later, she hung up, frustrated. Bobby had heard nothing. Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t talking. No-one knew of a new death threat against Lois Lane - if there were any rumours at all, Bobby would have heard them.
Damn.
Something touched her shoulder, and she jumped. “Sorry,” Clark said, sounding rueful, and she spun on her heel to find him standing behind her, fully dressed and clearly ready to leave, his hand pulling back from her. “I thought you heard me come out.”
“No.” And it wasn’t often that someone could sneak up on Lois Lane. That just showed how distracted she was - and that was not good. Today, she needed every one of her faculties.
He gave her a crooked smile. “We should get going.”
Lois nodded, but then she hesitated. And, in an impulse she didn’t understand, she reached for Clark’s hand. He curled his fingers around hers and squeezed gently. Well, even if she didn’t understand, it seemed he did.
“Clark?”
“Yeah?” He didn’t release her hand, and she didn’t pull back either.
“Don’t leave me alone today?”
His expression softened, and she saw deep sympathy in his eyes. Sympathy she’d reject from anyone else - but from Clark, somehow, it was what she wanted. Needed. Just as she’d needed him when Barbara Trevino had tried to kill her. She’d protested then, of course, that she could look after herself... but she’d craved Clark’s protection all the same.
“Of course I won’t, Lois.”
“No running off? No sudden impulse to pick up a candy bar or talk to some source I know nothing about?”
His gaze held hers as securely as his hand did. “I promise.”
And, walking out to her car, her hand stayed in his.
**********
She was quiet during the journey downtown. In unspoken agreement now, Clark was driving, and Lois seemed to be a million miles away. A couple of times, he attempted to begin conversation, only to receive a distracted response, so he left her to it. Once he cut the engine in the parking garage, however, he reached over and touched her shoulder, a gesture of reassurance and solidarity.
Her gaze flew to him, and she caught his hand as he was pulling back. “Thanks, Clark. Sorry I was quiet. I was thinking... working out what to do...” Her head dipped.
She hadn’t been planning what to do. He knew that as well as he knew how scared she was. If she’d been strategising, she’d have done it aloud. They’d have done it together.
“Come on.” He squeezed her fingers again. “Let’s get inside and get started.”
She nodded, then took a big, gulping breath. “I
have to pull myself together! I...” She bit her lip. “I wasn’t thinking about what to do. I was... I was wallowing.”
Compassion and anguish warred inside him. On impulse, he leaned towards her. “C’mere.” It only took a light tug for her to be pressed against him, despite the gap between their seats. Even though he was careful to keep the hug brief, she was pulling away from him even before he released her.
“Thanks. I needed that.” Without looking at him, she opened her door and climbed out. The message was clear. No more shows of vulnerability.
That, of course, he could well understand. They had a job to do. She needed to focus, and to do that her emotions had to be frozen out. Time was slipping away, far too quickly for his comfort.
*********
...tbc
