Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic Homecoming 22

“Lucy?” Lois called quietly.

Uncle Mike’s house was unnaturally quiet. Normally it was always filled with the sounds of movement and noise. Now, though, Lois couldn’t hear anything other than the labored sound of her own breathing.

A sense of dread was spreading into the pit of her stomach.

“Lois?” There was something wrong with Lucy’s voice. It was pitched higher than normal and quivered. She sounded afraid.

“We need to get out of here,” Lois said as she turned the corner.

She froze. There was blood on Uncle Mike’s prized hardwood floor, blood that was spreading even as she watched. It was darker than she would have thought; so dark that she couldn’t look away.

Uncle Mike’s body was by the piano.

Lois’s heart raced, and she dashed forward, darting around the body and pool of blood and coming to a stop as she saw her sister.

She was being held by Bill Church, who was grinning at Lois.

“We don’t leave witnesses.”

The sound of thunder woke her up.

*************

She gasped into the darkness and reached out.

Although she couldn’t see anything other than flashes of light in the back of her eyelids, Clark was able to find her hand and hold it.

This was the fourth time she’d woken to a nightmare, and she wondered whether Clark was sleeping at all, or if he was simply sitting and waiting for the next wave of nightmares to pass.

The earlier dreams had been repeats of the night before, of watching helplessly as the boy she’d once considered dating, if only briefly had been killed in front of her.

Clark tightened his grip reassuringly, then she felt another wave of cool air washing over her. She relaxed and felt herself drifting off again.

It occurred to her that while Clark couldn’t kill, she couldn’t afford to be as picky. Lucy depended on her, and she’d do whatever she had to do to keep her safe.

All she could hope was that the plan they’d worked on the night before made all that unnecessary.

****************

“I’m still not comfortable leaving you here,” Clark said.

They were standing on the flat roof of a restaurant. According to Clark, it was owned by the Church family. Lois could smell the cooking from below, and she heard her stomach rumble. A few stale donuts in the morning were hardly a substitute for fine Italian cuisine.

It made her a little nervous, being right over the heads of the people who wanted to kill her, but this was where the action was going to be, and Lois couldn’t see herself being anywhere else. In truth, the thought of staying in the darkness of the storage unit during the stifling heat of the day had left her feeling claustrophobic.

At least here she’d feel like she was making a difference.

“I’ll be fine,” Lois said.

Clark had welded the hatch leading down to the interior of the restaurant shut. It would make it difficult the next time a crew had to service the air conditioning, but Clark wasn’t exactly worried about that now.

Reaching out, Clark took her hand. “You know I’d never let anyone hurt you.”

He said that, but he couldn’t be everywhere. He had too many people he had to protect and not enough time. Still, the thought was comforting.

Lois forced herself to smile, and Clark tightened his grip on her hand reassuringly.

“If you need me, all you have to do is call out.”

Looking down at her hand in his, Lois sighed. “I wish we didn’t have to do this.”

If she could turn back time, she’d have gladly given up the story. It wasn’t worth having even one person die, much less having all the people she loved threatened.

Clark shook his head. “You’ll never be safe until we get this done.”

They were past the point of no return. There was no way Bill Church would trust any promise they made not to tell the police. He needed them both dead, and the sooner it happened the better.

They couldn’t trust the police. Clark had heard rumors from people in the homeless community about what exactly happened at Costmart.

Police payoffs were the least of it.

Getting the equipment had required dipping into Clark’s savings. He kept half with him in cash and half in a bank. He admitted that he kept the cash for fear the government would finally decide to come after him and freeze his accounts, but kept some in the bank for fear of coming home one day to find his possessions stolen.

Apparently being robbed was an occupational hazard of the homeless.

Buying the video camera had been expensive; the seven hundred dollars it had set Clark back had to represent a month’s salary or more, and yet he’d paid it without comment. He’d tried to hide the wince when he saw the price tag, but Lois had seen him hesitate a moment before handing over the money.

Lois promised herself that she’d get her father to pay him back every cent. If her father wouldn’t pay, she’d get a job and pay it herself, even if she had to wear a wiener hat and work fast food.

She was most concerned with how bulky the camera was, and how much noise it made. At least they’d gotten a model that didn’t have to be plugged in, although the battery life was shockingly low. They’d gotten the best microphone they could find; they’d just have to hope that the wind wouldn’t make any recordings useless.

“Wish me luck,” Clark said.

They still had an hour before the meeting and Clark intended to make the best use of the time.

A moment later he was gone.

Lois stared out into the distance, feeling helpless. She was still dressed as a homeless person; it was her best defense if she should run into trouble while Clark was gone. She couldn’t depend on it, of course, but even if it bought her a few seconds, Clark assured her it would be enough.

She wasn’t worried about the people on the ground. By the time they got through the welded door, Clark would have had plenty of time to get to her. What worried her were the taller buildings all around them. Although they were mostly abandoned because it was a Saturday, all it would take would be for a curious janitor to call the police to start trouble Lois didn’t need.

Hunkering down, Lois spread out the sleeping bag Clark had provided. Along with the homeless clothes, it might be enough to keep onlookers from being too curious.

Still, Lois couldn’t help but feel like she was in the cross hairs of a gun. Bullets were supersonic; by the time Clark heard the shot, she’d be dead.

Clark had argued at length over this part of the plan, but Lois had been stubborn. She couldn’t sit alone, helpless while people threatened her and her family.

They couldn’t trust the police, but Lois couldn’t believe that Bill Church had moles in the FBI. The FBI specialized in organized crime, and just in case, they’d make copies of everything they had and deliver them to the US Marshall’s office and the Daily Planet as well. If the Churches had managed to infiltrate all three organizations, they’d keep fourth and fifth copies and would take them out of state, to Washington DC if they had to.

Clark had thought it was overkill, but Clark didn’t have a vulnerable sister, father and mother whose lives were on the line.

Although Clark hadn’t made the connection with the Church family before, he’d heard numerous stories about CostMart from the homeless, enough that he had a fairly good idea what to look for.

Even now he was moving around the city at super speed, scanning for incriminating evidence, breaking into places using his x-ray vision to pick locks and stealing the papers. He’d be making copies at the college library.

The building Lois was standing on was in the direct center of the places Clark planned to investigate. According to Clark, it was one of several buildings the Church’s owned that had secret underground complexes underneath them.

Scowling, Lois sat and pulled out the notebook Clark had bought her. Her own notebooks had been lost in the fire, and her house was still under surveillance, although the police and fire departments were already there.

She began to write everything she could remember. If she was going to become a reporter, it was important for her to be able to tell a story and have it ring true. She was likely going to have to sit on a witness stand and stare Bill Church in his cold dead eyes as she described exactly what happened.

If she didn’t make it, she wanted there to be some record to get justice.

Lois heard a noise from below.

Carefully looking over the edge, she winced as she saw a Chevy Impala pulling into the alley. It was too early!

The meeting hadn’t been supposed to happen for another hour, at least according to Clark.

She grabbed for the camera and fumbled with it, hoping she remembered Clark’s instructions correctly. She’d never used a camera like this, but Clark had done his best to pre-prepare it.

Glancing over the edge again, she saw Bill Church stepping out into the alley.

The man who stepped out of the car was dressed in civilian clothes, but according to what Clark had overheard, he was a police detective.

Lois managed to get the lens cap off the camera and she set it on the edge as she managed to get the camera to turn on. She carefully leaned out and focused the camera on Bill Church. She held the Parabolic microphone in her other hand and cursed to herself. This was really a two person job. She wished Clark was here, but she didn’t dare call out to him.

It was hard balancing both the camera and the microphone, and it was all Lois could do to keep one of the other from going over the edge.

“You left your boy’s fingerprints all over a crime scene,” the man in the brown trench coat said. “You aren’t usually that sloppy.”

“So he was dating the Lane floozie,” Bill Church said. “He’s a big shot football player; all the girls are after him.”

Lois stiffened.

“I’m sure he’ll confirm that,” the man said dryly.

“He’s dumb as a stump, but he can follow a script,” Bill said. “Especially if he gets a few softball questions.”

“I’m not the only one on this,” the man said. “Henderson is likely to be a problem. We’ve got a dead kid with bruises on his wrist; Henderson saw them before the ME could cover him up.”

Bill scowled.

“Give him a story he can buy,” Bill said. “The Kent kid is already wanted in Kansas for felony assault, and he attacked the entire football team a few weeks ago.”

“Nobody cares about a foster kid getting beaten up,” the man said. “Kansas knows where he’s at and they haven’t even bothered to extradite him.”

“He was making time with the Lane girl. Maybe he got jealous of Tom and the Malone kid,” Bill said. He leaned forward. “Sell it.”

“Say we bring him in,” the man said. “Who says that Henderson doesn’t listen to his story, start asking questions?”

“If he does, you’ll be missing a partner,” Bill said. His voice had suddenly turned cold.

For the first time the man in the trench coat stiffened. “If you kill a cop it’ll raise all kinds of questions you don’t want asked.”

“That’s why you’re going to make sure Henderson doesn’t get to talk to either of them. If you get them alone, make sure they never reach the precinct. If you can’t do that, throw them both into general population. I’ve got people there who will take care of things.”

Bill reached into his pocket and pulled out a packet covered in a brown paper wrapper.

“It’s all here,” he continued.

The other man took the package.

This was exactly what Lois had hoped to see; with pictures of Bill bribing a police detective, their stories about conspiracies were less likely to be dismissed.

Lois’s nightmare was that they would turn her away because she was just a kid.

She leaned further out as Bill said something she couldn’t hear. She felt her sleeve catch on something, but her hands were both full. The lens cap fell, and to Lois it almost seemed like it was falling in slow motion. She tried to pull back, but the sound of the cap hitting the pavement caused both men to look immediately up.

Lois found herself staring Bill Church straight in the eye.