“Keep an eye on her,” Bill Church said to the man in the trench coat. He slipped inside the building.
Lois pulled the camera and microphone back from the edge. If she dropped them, this would all be for nothing.
“We can make a deal,” the man called out from below. “Give us the tape and promise not to talk and I’m sure we can work something out.”
“Clark,” Lois called out in a quiet whisper. She considered shouting; they’d be less likely to openly kill her if there were witnesses, but Clark’s secret would also be more likely to be jeopardized.
There was also the chance that Bill Church would simply take care of any witnesses.
She was startled when she felt hands on the camera and antenna. She looked up to see Clark staring down at her for a moment.
A moment later he was gone, and with him the camera.
Banging noises began from the doorway to below that Clark had welded shut. Lois watched this cautiously, but the weld seemed to be holding quite well. She doubted that the men could get much leverage from below anyway.
She heard the sound of an engine from the alley below. Carefully looking over the edge, she saw the black pickup pulling into the alley even as the police detective was leaving the scene. Apparently he didn’t want to be involved in whatever was about to happen.
The pickup pulled up as near to the wall as possible. She heard the sound of something breaking inside the restaurant, and men came out carrying a table, which they proceeded to load into the back of the pickup bed.
Lois stared for a moment, doing the math in her head as she saw men climbing up onto the metal table. She grimaced and began to back away from the edge. The roof she was on was only one story; approximately fifteen feet above the surface of the alley.
“Clark!” she called out again in a whisper.
He was there again just as two of the men began grabbing onto the edge of the roof; Lois had no doubt that one or more was helping lift the others from below.
Clark pulled her by the hand and they jumped just as the men pulled themselves up. Lois could have kicked them in the face, but she was glad she didn’t have to.
He pulled her with him and they jumped over the other side of the building even as the sound of a shot rang out behind them.
Clark somehow twisted around beneath her and caught her. They landed on an old, disgusting mattress shoved up against the side of the building. It hadn’t been there when they’d shown up at the restaurant.
“Plausible deniability,” Clark said, grinning.
They had to explain how they’d gotten down the side of the building without hurting themselves, so Clark had set this up.
His bicycle was there. Before Lois could ask, he was grabbing her by the waist and pulling her up onto the handlebars.
“Hey!” she shouted, but the sight of the men on the roof looking down at them and shouting changed her mind.
Clark was on the bicycle faster than she would have thought and a moment later they were moving down the street.
She heard the sounds of shots ringing out, and Clark simply pedaled faster. Once they got out of sight of the men, they’d be able to ditch the bicycle and Clark would simply carry her. Lois did her best simply to hang on.
It was terrifying, the wheel spinning underneath her and her stomach so tense that she felt ill.
Lois groaned when she looked back and saw the black pickup truck swinging around the corner, the table flying off the truck bed as it made the corner at a high rate of speed.
Still, she knew that Clark would keep her safe, and this helped.
The Chevy Impala coming from her left made her scream as it tried to ram her; apparently the police detective hadn’t gone far.
Clark barely pulled out ahead of the Impala, which spun behind them. Lois forced herself not to scream again. Clark was under enough pressure without her making this any more difficult than it had to be. Keeping his secret was worth this, but she wasn’t certain how long she’d be able to balance herself. She found herself wishing she’d spent more time in gym class.
The sky overhead was overcast, and to Lois’s disgust, it began to sprinkle rain.
She cursed under her breath, aware only as she said it that Clark probably heard every word she was saying. She glanced back at him; he was leaning to the left so he could watch the road in front of them; given what he’d told her he probably could have just looked straight through her, but that wouldn’t have kept his secret very well.
Her hands began slipping as the handlebars became wet.
“Clark?” she said, a little panic creeping into her voice.
“We’ll be fine,” he said.
It began raining harder, and he turned down the next street. Lois could feel the tires slipping underneath them and she moaned as they pulled out into traffic.
The two vehicles behind them skidded as well, but even worse.
Clark was peddling like mad, and they slipped between two slow moving cars, the mirrors close enough that Lois could have lost an arm, if she hadn’t been using them to stay up.
“I can’t hold it,” she said. Her grip kept slipping.
“Just a little longer,” Clark said.
Lois suspected that Clark didn’t really have any idea about human physical weakness. She suspected that he could have held himself up for years. She, unfortunately was even weaker than she’d thought.
He turned into an alley; Lois could see that the alley was mostly blocked by old furniture and the detritus of a mover gone wrong. There was a trail on the left however, one too narrow for a car.
The Impala squealed around the corner just as they made their way through the opening and Lois breathed a sigh of relief. He’d have to stop and they’d be able to escape.
She heard a crash from behind her and she looked back as the Impala plowed through the furniture, although not without damage.
Apparently the detective, whoever he was, thought they had the tape on them and wanted to make sure that they couldn’t get it to anyone.
So much for his promises of making a deal.
Clark made a sharp right, and Lois suspected that he was using his vision abilities, because he swerved around a dumpster that was inexplicably placed out on the street.
He darted across the street between oncoming cars and Lois suppressed a scream as she heard the sounds of a crash behind them. The Impala had plowed into the dumpster and was currently stalled.
Clark darted between two narrow buildings. A moment after that Lois found herself being lifted off the bike handles and the world blurred around her.
****************
“That’s a pretty incredible story.”
Agent Pierce stared at them from over his desk. His desk was covered in files in a sort of organized mess that Lois had seen in her father’s workplace. He was balding and he looked overworked.
“It’s all there if you look for it!” Lois said. “There’s a boy dead in my back yard, my house is halfway burned down, and we’ve got Bill Church on tape bribing a police officer.”
“Are you sure he’s an officer?” Agent Pierce asked. He raised his hand as she began to protest. “I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but the Church family will be able to afford very good lawyers, and they’ll be asking the hard questions.”
“Watch the tape,” Lois repeated.
“Fine,” he said.
He stepped into an audio visual room while they waited. Clark stared at the wall intently while Lois fidgeted. They were unwilling to let the evidence “disappear”, even if Clark had made five copies earlier, and it was important to know if this agent was crooked.
Clark nodded slightly and his lips quirked in a smile. Lois had been afraid they’d be recorded, so they’d prearranged a signal. Lois relaxed. So far everything was working out as it was supposed to.
Returning, Agent Pierce stared at them for a long moment. “All right. What else have you got?”
Clark, as it turned out had managed to steal half a backpack full of papers, all of which he’d copied at a local copy shop multiple times.
Lois had gotten a look at some of them. He’d gotten financial records of protection racquets, of illegal brothels and of smuggling and illegal bookmaking. He’d even managed to get copies of multiple sets of books indicating the Church family was cheating on their taxes.
Agent Pierce’s eyes widened. “How did you get all these?”
“I make part of my living going through the trash,” Clark said. “Mostly I pick up cans and glass bottles, but sometimes I find other things.”
Lois glanced at Clark. He hadn’t actually answered the man’s question. He was good at lying by omission, but for some reason he was still uncomfortable with a direct lie. This was the part that could make the case fall apart, and this was where he’d have to make the agency believe him.
“I’m worried about my family,” Lois admitted. “If they get to them…”
Agent Pierce shook his head. “Let me talk to my superiors. I usually get to talk to the cranks; we do it because every once in a while something pans out.”
He got up and left the room.
Lois watched Clark, who had an intense look on his face. She reached out and took his hand. He smiled slightly, but the intense expression didn’t leave.
She felt oddly closer to him since he’d revealed his greatest secrets, both of them. They were sharing something that no one else in the world knew, and it delighted Lois to know what Clark’s occasional strange expressions meant.
He’d trusted her with it when he’d trusted no one else, and she couldn’t help but feel that this meant something.
Clark fidgeted. He wasn’t giving any of their prearranged signals that he was sensing anything bad, but he looked uncomfortable.
Everything was taking longer than they’d thought it would. Getting everything copied couldn’t be done at superhuman speeds; they were limited by the equipment. Copying the tape over and over had taken an excruciating amount of time.
Even getting into the FBI office on a Saturday to talk to Agent Pierce had taken a lot longer than Lois had hoped, even with her on the telephone while Clark was copying the tape using two VCR’s he’d “borrowed” from friends Lois knew were out of town. Normal business hours were Monday through Friday, and only her father’s reputation had opened doors for her.
Debbie owed her, and Clark had returned everything in the same condition as he’d gotten it, although he’d been uneasy about the arrangement.
Going to the FBI had been Lois’s idea, one which Clark hadn’t been comfortable with. He’d been uncomfortable with going to any member of law enforcement, not because of the threat by Bill Church.
He was worried he’d be sent back to Kansas.
After all, just getting this information had involved multiple crimes; breaking and entering, trespassing, burglary. In the hands of a hostile agency he could be charged with multiple felonies and he wouldn’t be able to do anything but run.
Although Lois had tried to insist on sharing the culpability, Clark had insisted on doing everything illegal himself. Lois had tried to point out that she could be charged with conspiracy, but he’d been adamant.
It was hard not to look at him and see something heroic, even if the rest of the world would only see a criminal.
Agent Pierce stepped back into the room.
“My supervisor is coming in; if he agrees with me, we’ll put you up in a safe house for a few days until we look further into all this. Your parents and families will be protected too.”
Lois glanced at Clark, who tensed.
“We’ll need to know where to find them,” Agent Pierce said. “We’ll have them picked up and brought to you.”
Lois hesitated. At this point, trust was in small supply, but she had to trust someone. Reluctantly she gave Agent Pierce her information. While giving the information might expose her family to danger, she was certain that the Church family had people watching her parent’s houses and maybe Uncle Mike’s.
Not telling the FBI might be the exact thing that got them kidnapped.
“What about you, Mr. Kent?”
Clark looked intensely uncomfortable. “I’ve been on my own for a while. I’ve got friends on the street, but you’d go broke trying to put them all in safe houses.”
Lois couldn’t imagine Clark’s friends allowing themselves to be rounded up and put away by law enforcement; after the first few were caught the rest would undoubtedly scatter and hide. It wasn’t as though any of them but Brother Wayman and Charlie actually had addresses anyway.
Agent Pierce muttered something uncomplimentary that Lois couldn’t quite make out. Clark’s ears turned red.
“So we wait.”
**************
Minutes had stretched into hours as it had taken time to convince Agent Pierce’s supervisor, the Supervisory Senior Resident Agent, and then his boss’s boss, the Assistant Special Agent in Charge. More and more agents had trickled in, and there was a growing feeling of excitement among the agents.
Apparently, several of the agents had pieces of the puzzle but hadn’t been able to put it together until documents Clark had collected linked things together.
It was decided that the safe house was definitely in order, but even that had taken hours to arrange. Lois felt herself flagging as time went by, exhausted. She hadn’t slept well the night before and all she could think about now was that she was likely to miss school for a while.
She felt guilty for wondering if that would endanger her trip to Ireland. A boy was dead and all she could do was think about how it affected her.
It made her uncomfortable, feeling like a bad person, but it was better than closing her eyes and hearing the sounds of the gunshot.
By the time they were finally ready to go, word had come in that her father was already at the safe house. She’d been allowed to talk to him, and it had been all she could do to not break down crying.
Mike and Lucy were still gone, but Lois had been assured that they’d be taken care of.
Still, stepping out into the darkness of the parking garage made her feel uncomfortable. It was almost ten in the evening and the weather was hot and muggy. The sky, what little she’d been able to see out the windows was heavily overcast and it looked like it might rain again.
Two men in black suits waited by a black SUV. Lois’s skin prickled as she wondered if she was even now being targeted by a sniper’s rifle. Bullets were supersonic, and Clark couldn’t stop what he couldn’t hear.
She felt his hand on her shoulder, reassuring. He was scanning the horizon, and a moment later they were ushered into the back of the SUV.
The doors looked odd, and when they shut it was with a solid thunk that was unfamiliar. The windows seemed odd as well.
Clark leaned over and whispered in her ear. “It’s armored.”
Lois felt herself relax almost immediately. They were taking this seriously, and she wouldn’t have to worry until she got out of the vehicle at the safe house, where ever that was.
One of the agents glanced back at her as the doors were locked. “Buckle up, kids. Everything will be fine.”
Lois snapped her seatbelt on and Clark did the same.
They pulled out and began to drive down the levels of the parking lot. Lois found herself watching Clark again. Once they got to the safe house, her father was going to have a lot of questions, and her time alone with Clark would come to a quick end.
Pulling out into the street, the agents moved cautiously out into traffic. The streets were still surprisingly busy given the hour. Of course, it was Saturday night, and Lois usually wasn’t out at this time.
They’d been driving for thirty minutes when Lois noticed that the driver kept glancing into the rear view mirror.
He murmured something to his partner. Clark stiffened and glanced behind them.
A moment later fire enveloped their car and Lois found herself being thrown forward, her seatbelt biting into her shoulder.
The driver desperately fought with the wheel, but the SUV was top heavy. They flipped several times. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion.
They came to a rest hanging upside down. Lois was confused; she couldn’t understand what had happened. She felt something wet coming down the side of her face.
The smell of smoke filled the car and she began to struggle with her seatbelt.
She managed to turn her head and look at Clark, whose expression showed a rage she’d never seen before. His eyes were starting to glow a hellish red.
Last edited by ShayneT; 06/01/14 01:49 AM.
