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Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found Here

Where we left Lois in Part 198…

Lois crossed her arms. “I’m going to get you to apologize.”

“I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you. I can hold mine longer,” Clark said, scooping her up and carrying her into the bathroom. “I need for you to gauge the water’s temperature.”

That made sense, being that he was Mr. Invulnerable.

He sat down on the edge of her tub, with her in his lap, and she leaned over the quickly filling tub full of bubbles. “Feels good. Not too hot, not too cold.”

His right brow lifted. “Do you need a cold bath, Ms. Lane?” he said between lips trying not to laugh.

She turned towards him and wrapped her arms around his neck, deliberately blowing in his ear. “Why did you laugh when I mentioned bullets bouncing off my chest?” she asked.

Clark swallowed.

That was right, Clarkie boy. Two could play that game.

“Um… you had asked if I would sleep better if I knew bullets would bounce off your chest,” he said.

“Yes, I did,” she said huskily. “So, why did you find that funny?”

He cleared his throat and set her down on the edge of the tub, moving towards the door.

“Clark?”

He grabbed the doorknob and pulled the door towards him.

“Clark?”

He paused, leaning against the doorframe and smiling seductively. “Thinking about your chest never makes it easier for me to sleep, Lois. Good night,” he said, shutting the door.

“How about thinking about me naked in a bubble bath that you drew?” she called over her shoulder.

“Minx!” she faintly heard him call back through the door.

Another point for Lois.

“Suuuuuperrrrmannnn,” Lois called out to him seductively. When she didn’t get a response, she said again, “Oooooh, Superman.”

The door creaked open. “What is it, Lois?” he asked, and she was happy to see that he was indeed back in his uniform. He also had his hand covering his eyes, even though she was still in her robe on the edge of the tub.

“Can you take that treadmill with you when you leave? It was a gift from Luthor, and I…”

“Done!” he said, and shut the door.

She would get him to apologize for not picking her up from the Space Station, if she had to withhold kisses from him to get it. She was right and she was going to make him admit it.

***

Part 199

******************
Planet, Sweet Planet
******************

“According to this poll in the Metropolis Star, twenty percent of people in Metropolis actually believe that Lex Luthor was framed,” Jimbo said to Clark, slapping the newspaper with the back of his hand.

“That’s because the Metropolis Star’s readers don’t understand that the Star uses more conjecture and less facts to write their articles than the Daily Planet,” Lois announced, arriving at her desk.

“Lois!” Jimbo exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “You’re back.”

“If you’d been reading the Daily Planet instead of that trash, you’d know that,” she retorted, taking the Star from him and tossing it in the blue recycle can next to her desk.

Despite this, Jimbo still embraced her. She glanced over to Clark with exasperation, which melted slightly with Jimbo’s hug.

“Lois,” Clark said softly with a wink, as he approached her desk. “Good morning.”

EPRAD would only hand over Lois’s belongings straight to her, so he had bought her a cab ride over to their offices that morning to retrieve her purse. An emergency had caused them to arrive at the office separately.

“Chuck,” she said, acknowledging his presence. She looked him in the eye expectantly.

He grinned, and she frowned at him. Apparently, she was still awaiting an apology from him. Too bad she wasn’t going to get it. He refused to apologize for something he wasn’t at all sorry for.

“Is that my top reporter’s voice I hear?” boomed Perry, exiting from his office.

Jimbo swiped the Met Star from Lois’s recycling bin, and slipped it behind his back.

Lois smiled at the Chief. “Hello, Perry.”

“How was your trip?” he asked.

She glared at Clark. “Long.”

Perry glanced between them, and Clark shrugged. Lois was just being Lois.

“Well, honey, I’m glad you’re back where you belong. Did Kent get you up to speed?” Perry asked with a hopeful glance at Clark.

“No,” Lois answered. Apparently, she was still peeved at him for keeping her in the dark while at the Space Station. “But he at least left me copies of the past week’s Daily Planets to read. Let me log into my…” She turned to her desk and noticed the bouquet of wild flowers Clark had placed there this morning, which she didn’t acknowledge with even a glance in his direction. She did pick up the new coffee mug he had bought her, glanced at the Superman logo, and set it back down. “— computer. Hey, this isn’t my computer.”

“No. The old computers were so clogged with dust and debris from the bombing that they needed to be replaced. These are top of the line…” Jimbo started to explain, but paused as soon as Lois raised her hand to interrupt.

“Where’s my computer?”

Jimbo cleared his throat and glanced over at Perry. “Um… gone.”

“Gone?” Lois repeated, and Clark could see the fire starting to smolder in her eyes.

“But I did transfer all the data over from your old hard drive to this new one,” Jimbo clarified.

Clark wasn’t the only one to exhale with relief at Jimbo’s quick thinking. He recalled only too vividly, how upset she had been when Bureau 39 had wanted to take her computer last year.

Lois raised an eyebrow at the young man. “Did you read my novel?” she inquired by way of thanking him.

“You mean the one where Wanda Detroit, a lounge singer and a bitter shrew of a woman, falls in love with the ghost of her former lover named Charlie Lord, a traveler from another time, whom she can’t remember because his death caused a paradox in the universe, making it so that he never existed? Nope,” Jimbo replied, before running off to answering his ringing telephone.

Lois’s jaw wasn’t the only one to fall open with that synopsis.

“Staff meeting in ten minutes, Lois,” Perry said, wisely departing.

Clark, on the other hand, sat down on the edge of her desk.

“Wanda isn’t a shrew,” she muttered, moving the Superman mug to the side of her desk. She sat down and removed a white generic mug from her briefcase with “Lois Lane” written on it in Courier font. “And they weren’t lovers.”

“Charlie Lord, huh?” Clark said, his voice sounding rough even to his ears. Charlie Lord was only two degrees off from Charlie King, the alias he had used at the Metro Club. He hadn’t realized how close to reality her story was. He was suddenly very curious to read it.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Need I remind you that Charles is a dead man?”

“No,” he replied, standing up. He would ask her later how Charlie died.

Suddenly, Lois’s fax modem went off issuing a loud series of beeps. Clark remembered well how quickly the Perry from his old dimension had changed the computer system to get rid of that annoying noise. He didn’t doubt a few more days of that blaring racket plaguing the newsroom would lead to the same result in this dimension.

“What in the hell is that?” Lois exclaimed, looking around.

“It’s your fax modem,” a new employee said, passing by.

“My what?” Lois sputtered.

“Fax modem. It allows you to send and receive faxes directly from your computer. Didn’t you get the memo?” the woman replied.

“No,” Lois said, searching her desk for a copy of the memo.

“It was sent to you via email,” the woman explained, looking at Lois as if she were an idiot.

“I haven’t accessed my email yet,” Lois said.

“Oh, don’t worry. You were sent an electronic fax about how to access your emails,” the woman said with a scoffing chuckle.

Lois stood up and growled, “Do you know who I am?”

The woman glanced at her with little interest. “According to your mug, you’re Lois Lane. Have you developed amnesia?”

Clark shook his head. Even he knew on day one not to vex Lois Lane.

“Aren’t you the woman who framed Lex Luthor?” the woman snickered, turning to leave.

Clark slipped next to Lois’s desk and gently took hold of her arm before the Superman mug could leave her hand and bean that woman in the back of the head.

“She deserves it,” Lois grumbled.

“But you don’t need to be arrested for assault on your first day back,” he replied.

“What’s her name?” Lois snapped, releasing her Superman mug into Clark’s hand and sitting back down.

“Cheryl,” Clark said.

“What did she do?”

He noticed her use of the past tense, which confused him a second until he realized what she meant. He knew Lois could be vindictive, but this was going to the extreme. “Lois,” he warned. “Let it go.”

“So, you think she should be allowed to speak to me like that?” Lois returned, glaring at him.

“She’ll learn not to,” he said.

“No. Others will learn not to cross me by her example,” Lois replied, her tone warning him it would be wise for him to remember the wrath of Lois Lane himself.

“Or,” Clark suggested. “You could give yourself a second chance to earn your new co-workers’ respect by your professionalism and not by terror.”

Lois pinched her lips together. “I could have her fired like that,” she said, snapping her fingers.

He didn’t doubt it. “Then rise above petty revenge.”

Lois’s responding grin meant that she took his words in a different way than he had intended. “Oh, you’re right, Chuck. Humiliation would serve her better.”

“She’s a copy writer, Lois. She could make your life hell.”

Her replying smile said that Cheryl wouldn’t last that long.

He raised his hands in surrender as he backed towards his desk. “I’m not going to get involved.”

“Wise move, partner,” Lois replied.

At least, she still considered him her partner.

***

As all the staff settled into the conference room for the morning meeting, Perry cleared his throat to get their attention.

“I’ve got an announcement to make. As you all know, we’ve been through some pretty difficult times recently, and the new owner feels that some of you might be suffering from stress. You know, anxiety, short fuses, etc., etc.” Perry looked around to some of his employees who had been with the Planet before her fall, Eduardo Friaz and Preciosa Valdez. He purposely avoided Lois and Kent despite knowing that their stress levels were probably off the charts. However, they wouldn’t be Lois and Clark if they weren’t. “So as of today, the Daily Planet now has its own staff psychiatrist.” He raised his hands in anticipation of the retorts and groans from everyone, which arrived as soon as he paused.

“What?” Lois scoffed. “He can’t be serious.”

“It doesn’t sound like such a bad idea,” Kent replied softly, almost sounding as if he wished he could encourage Lois to go that route.

Perry could warn Kent of the futility of that ploy, but it would probably be more fun to watch it play out.

“You may need to sit on a couch listening to psycho-babble, but some of us have stories to write,” Lois snapped back.

“I agree that the bombing of the Daily Planet certainly caused some of us lots of extra stress and anxiety,” Clark said, shooting her a knowing look. “It wouldn’t hurt for us to discuss those issues with a professional therapist.”

“Well, some of us don’t need to lie on a shrink’s couch to know where the problem lies,” she threw back, with an even more knowing glare.

“Uh… Excuse me,” Perry said, butting into their discourse. “Am I interrupting something here?”

Clark pressed his lips together sheepishly, and Perry could just image him buttoning his lips closed. Lois, on the other hand, shot Clark another glare before returning her attention to her boss and nodding for him to continue.

“Why, thank you, Miss Lane,” Perry replied sardonically. “Some of you might already be familiar with this woman from her syndicated column that we’ve been running called Healing Your… Inner Self.”

“They yanked the Jumble Puzzle for that,” Jimbo griped. “I was just getting good at that.”

“Well, I was just getting pretty good at it myself,” Perry said. “I mean I’m not so hot on this touchy-feely stuff so that’s why I never read the column, but it’s helping to sell newspapers and the good doctor has convinced our publisher that… uh…” He watched as Lois crossed her arms with annoyance. “— that she can be of some help here.” He had only agreed to this idea if their Editor and Chief, namely himself, wasn’t included in this required torture. Perry could only imagine what Lois must think of it.

“How do we even know that she’s a real doctor?” Lois interjected. “Half of these media shrinks are frauds.”

She did bring up a good point. Although knowing that Lois was responding out of self-preservation more than reporter’s instinct on this occasion, Perry didn’t take the slight against his abilities as either a boss or newspaperman.

“Oh, I’m a real doctor, Ms. Lane,” Dr. Arianna Carlin announced with her crisp British accent, entering unwelcome and without warning into the room.

There was something about this petite brunette woman, who today wore a turquoise business suit, that shouted dignity and intelligence almost to the point of overkill. Perry guessed that she must have a thick skin from often hearing these types of remarks about her profession by skeptics and others in the media to have made it this far in syndication.

“Of course, I was…” Lois stopped talking as her face went pale and drawn. She pointed at Dr. Carlin. “I know you.”

“You do?” Clark asked, turning towards his partner with curiosity.

“I don’t recall ever meeting you, Ms. Lane,” Dr. Carlin said, stopping beside Perry’s chair and setting her hand on his shoulder as if she and he were working together as a team on this little endeavor.

Shifting his position, Perry was able to encourage her to drop her hand. She might have the suits upstairs say-so, but she still hadn’t earned his respect.

“But perhaps you’re familiar with my face from the picture next to my column,” Dr. Carlin went on.

“No,” Lois shook her head as if she couldn’t place from where she knew Dr. Carlin. “I only read real news.” She leaned towards Clark and murmured, “I know her.”

Clark's expression grew concerned and he seemed to concentrate on the psychiatrist’s face a bit more intently than before.

Perry swallowed. Apparently, some of his reporters needed therapy more urgently than others. “I was just telling the staff about your addition to our family, Dr. Carlin.”

“Dr. Arianna Carlin?” Lois gasped, pushing back her chair and standing up. She took a couple steps further away from the woman.

“Why, yes,” Dr. Carlin said with a smile.

“I know where I know you from!” Lois pointed at her again. “You ran… run… the Luthor House for the Mentally Unstable… You’re… you’re…”

Perry turned sharply back to look at Dr. Carlin’s face to see if Lois’s pronouncement rang true. Was this woman a Luthor spy?

The pleasant expression on the good doctor’s face seemed forced. “Yes, I was to head Luthor’s mental institution, but it closed down due to lack of funding after his arrest. How do you know about that? It hadn’t been announced.”

“I... I… I saw your name in Lex’s files,” Lois said, shaking her finger at the woman. “He used you to get rid of his enemies. You would claim that they were mentally unhinged and lock them in your little psych ward. You make perfectly sane people feel mentally deranged.”

“Lois,” Perry warned. Even for her that theory seemed far-fetched, especially for an institution that the doctor said had never opened. It almost sounded as if Lois was claiming personal knowledge of this woman’s tactics.

“That’s quite an accusation, Ms. Lane,” Dr. Carlin retorted. “And completely unfounded.”

“Is it?” Lois demanded.

“She’s an admitted Luthor insider with a heavy grudge against us for helping put away the man who was investing in her institution,” Kent interjected. “Now, she wants us to confide our problems and private thoughts with her?”

Kent did have a point. Perry glanced at Dr. Carlin and awaited her rebuttal.

“I can see why the Daily Planet was in need of being rescued from failure,” Dr. Carlin said. “If your reporters jump to prejudge people.”

“I wouldn’t share my inner most self with you if you were the last woman on Earth,” Lois spat. “You were married to Lex Luthor.”

The room went silent as every gaze shifted from Lois to Dr. Carlin, including Perry’s. He didn’t think that the doctor’s already stiff posture could go any straighter, but he was wrong. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kent get out of his chair and move next to Lois.

“It’s something she does at parties,” Jimbo murmured with awe. “Amazing.”

“Is this true?” Perry said, addressing the psychiatrist. “And keep in mind that we’re fairly good at researching a person’s past here at the Daily Planet.”

“Lex spoke to you about me?” Dr. Carlin said, her voice cracking.

“We were engaged,” Lois replied, but didn’t answer the question, Perry noted.

Kent touched Lois’s arm and she gave a slight shake to her head, which made Kent’s hand disappear behind her back as he moved closer to her. Kent believed Lois that this doctor was bad news and that was enough for Perry.

He stood up and faced Dr. Carlin. “You’re fired,” he said, and turned to Jimbo. “Tell production that we’ll be yanking the good doctor’s column and returning to the Jumble Puzzle.”

Jimbo paused as if he didn’t want to miss what was going to happen next and Perry intensified his gaze. The young man jumped as he rightly should and disappeared out the door.

“No!” Dr. Carlin said. “I have a contract.”

“Which was breached by the non-disclosure of your close ties to the man who bombed our newspaper,” Perry roared. “Consider it broken.”

Dr. Carlin stormed out of the conference room. “You’ll be hearing from my attorney,” she called.

“And you’ll be hearing from Inspector William Henderson of the Metropolis Police Department,” Perry retorted. “I bet he would love to know if you have anything to do with the disappearance of Luthor’s clone.” He shut the conference room door with a bang.

“Actually,” Kent said, holding up a finger for Perry to wait as he went to the phone on the sideboard. He picked up the receiver and dialed. “Security? This is Clark Kent up in the newsroom. Could you please detain Dr. Carlin should she try to leave the building? Inspector Henderson or someone else from the MPD will be by shortly to speak with her. Thanks.” He hung up and dialed the phone again. Noting that they all were watching him, Kent waved for them to continue with their meeting.

“Forget about what I said about an in-house shrink,” Perry told his staff. “If any of you need therapy, it’s probably best if you find your own psychiatrist. We’ll make sure it’s covered by our health insurance.” He sat down, muttering, “Great shades of Elvis.”

“Someone stole Luthor’s clone from the morgue?” Lois growled as she dropped back into her seat. “Anything else you all failed to keep me apprised of during my stint in space?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Perry saw Kent turn his back to Lois and stick a finger in his free ear. It was a good thing the man had nerves of steel.

Perry cleared his throat. “Right. Perhaps you can spend the day researching that, Lois.” He turned away from the incensed and volatile landmine to his right and faced the man at the other end of the table, whom he had hired to replace Ralph on the Business page. “Morton, what’s new from the financial alley this week?”

***

Perry shut his folder with a slap of his hand. “Okay, sluggers, that wraps things up here. Go get ‘em.” He pointed to Lois as she gathered up her things. “Give me a half-hour to go put out some fires our resident psychiatrist lit and then I want to speak to you in my office.”

“Gotcha, Chief,” Lois replied, before turning to Clark. “So, Chuck… Anything else you forgot to inform me about?”

Clark smiled sheepishly with a shrug. “Probably. It’s been a busy couple of months.”

“Ms. Lane?” Cheryl said, pausing by Lois’s chair. “I’ll get you a copy of that memo, so you can access your fax modem and turn off the sound.”

“I’d appreciate it… Cheryl, was it?” Lois replied, more graciously than Clark expected, especially since she was on the warpath.

“Yes, Ms. Lane, and I’ve got to say that the way you jerked that shrink off her high horse…” Cheryl placed a hand on her own chest with awe. “I’m one of those who thought it possible that Luthor may have been framed, the good he’s done for this city and all… but sending his ex-wife to spy on you… that’s… that’s… I just want to say I’d be happy to assist you in any way possible.”

“Thank you, Cheryl, I’ll remember that.” After the woman nodded and hurried out of the conference room, Lois turned to Clark. “See, I can be nice.”

Clark felt his stomach drop as Lois glanced at him with a vindicated grin. “Says the fox to the rooster,” he murmured, gathering up his things.

Lois laughed. She set her hand on his arm a moment before they walked out of the conference room and headed for her desk. He wasn’t so naïve as to think this conversation was close to being over.

Clark lowered his voice as he sat down on the edge of her desk. “Did Luthor really speak to you about his ex-wife?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she replied with a scoffed chortle. “According to him I was the first woman he had ever loved.” She made a gagging sound. “I didn’t buy it for a minute.”

Clark smiled at the brilliance of the woman he loved. “So, how exactly do you know Dr. Carlin?”

Lois glanced around. “Let’s call it a burst of inspiration or a gut feeling,” she said, picking up a pile of pink messages on her desk. “Oh, look. Bobby called to say ‘welcome back’ and give me his phone number. Isn’t he sweet?” She chuckled. “He also wants me to take him out for Italian, saying I owe him one. Probably best to stick with take-out, huh?”

Clark set his hand on hers to still the nervous energy she was expounding. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not with a therapist, thank you,” she replied. When he still didn’t let go of her hand, she glanced up at him. “Not here, Clark. Tonight.”

That told him everything he needed to know. Her knowledge of Dr. Carlin had been psychically delivered. “I guess we both need to play some catch up.”

“I did see her name on some file or other about the Luthor House for the Mentally Unstable on Mrs. Cox’s desk,” Lois clarified. “The rest came from my secret source.”

He gave her hand a slight squeeze and let go, standing up. “I’m curious to hear what she had to say.”

Lois looked him in the eye. “She told me that I’ll never be able to trust a therapist.”

He pointed at her. “Never say ‘never’, Lois,” he said, and chuckled when she rolled her eyes.

Herb was the one who taught him that nothing was impossible when Clark thought he would never find love with a Lois Lane. He knew that Herb had since changed his tune on the subject, but Clark was determined to stay cautiously optimistic. Never was a long time.

***

It was a bit longer than a half-hour later, when Lois set down the copy of the Metropolis Star from several months earlier to speak to Clark about a small news item she noticed. The Star had hardly covered it; no surprise there. She wondered if they had done any follow up on the renowned geneticist Dr. Fabian Leek since the discovery of Luthor’s clone.

Somehow, she had missed Leek’s death notice in the weeks prior to her and Lex’s fake wedding. It could have had something to do with not wanting to be forced to read the Metropolis Star as her only means to get local Metropolitan news. She might as well be reading the National Whisper for all the hard news that they covered. Unfortunately due to Luthor, there hadn’t been any back issues of the Daily Planet for a good four months. Sometimes, as a reporter, one had to do unsavory things to find the truth buried underneath.

She wouldn’t allow herself to be so petty again. Also, she hadn’t had any idea about clones when Leek was killed. Had she seen his death notice then, she didn’t know if she would have had the same interest in it as she did now.

Clark was talking to someone on the phone, so she merely made a note on her pad to ask him about Fabian Leek or if anyone had discovered which scientists had helped Lex make his creature.

Glancing at her watch, she noticed it was far past the time Perry had wanted her to pop into his office. She figured she better get this over with before he came out and started to bellow for her. She set down the newspaper and rose to her sore feet. Despite wearing the most comfortable pair of business shoes she owned, it still hurt to walk the few long paces over to the Chief’s office to knock on his door. He waved her inside.

Perry set down the paper he was reviewing. “Go ahead and shut the door, honey.”

Lois closed the door and sat down. “Was there something in particular that you wanted to discuss with me, Perry?”

He cleared his throat, stood up, and moved around to her side of the desk to lean against it. “Space, huh?”

She smiled. “You know me. I like to be first on the scene.”

“Well, you weren’t exactly the first, darlin’…”

Lois narrowed her gaze. Clark was right outside those doors. If Perry made some overt reference to Clark being the first reporter in space and her partner overheard it, she would be the one in hot water, not him.

Perry continued, “The colonists were there before you.”

She exhaled. He was only messing with her. “Yes, but I’m the first one to cover it in-depth.”

“Frankly, Lois, I was a little surprised to hear that you skipped town just as the cops were scheduled to apprehend Luthor. It’s not like you to go this far into a story, only to abandon it,” her boss said. She could hear the concern in his voice.

If she told Perry the truth, he would think she had gone soft on him. She hadn’t; therefore, she went with her cover story. “It was a no-brainer, Chief. There wasn’t any proof that Luthor would be found squirreled away in his bunker as I suspected. It was merely a hunch. For all we knew, he could have already escaped and was holed up elsewhere. EPRAD offered me a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be the first reporter in space. I had to choose between a possible story and a definite one. I made the right choice and I would again.” Although, she might make Clark vow to rescue her if she got stuck up there before she left next time. “Anyway, I knew my partner was here on Earth to cover the Luthor story should something develop.”

Perry’s gaze became skeptical as he replied, “Uh-huh.” He stared at her for a long moment before speaking again, “You trusted Kent to close your investigation for you?”

Lois stiffened. “I believe it was you who told me that if I can’t trust my partner, I can’t trust anyone.”

He rubbed his jaw. “If the FBI Lab down in Quantico hadn’t returned with definitive proof that the dead body of Luthor’s supposed fiancée found down in the ark wasn’t you, honey, I’d wonder if he did a switcheroo on us after all.”

A chill slithered down her spine and her nails dug into the arms of the chair. Body? Luthor had another fiancée down in his bunker? One he actually killed? She swallowed, but refused to rise to this new bait. “Are you saying that I can’t trust Clark with my stories? Isn’t that why you partnered us up together to begin with? So that I’d become more of a team player? Are you saying that you want the old Lois back again?”

“No… No…” Perry said hesitantly, rising to his feet and returning to his chair. “Kent showed up to the raid on Luthor’s underground bunker. Unfortunately, he didn’t make it there until after Luthor was hauled off, so Cat and Jimmy got the exclusive on that story. Kent did visit the staging area for all of Luthor’s Luckies and wrote an in-depth series of articles for the A.P. on the mental and emotional trauma Luthor’s hostages endured.”

Lois knew all this. After her bath the night before, she had found a folder Clark had left on her dining room table with a copy of all his articles that he had written while she was in space. Interestingly enough, there was no mention of this so-called dead fiancée. Nor had there been a copy of Cat’s exclusive. Lois would make sure to remedy that mistake as soon as she left Perry’s office. Wait. “Jimmy? As in Jimmy Olsen, aka James Olsen, my old researcher, who recently ran off to Vegas to get married? That Jimmy? What was he doing there?”

Perry shrugged. “He said he got a tip and showed up with his camera. His photos accompanied Cat’s article in the Houston Chronicle.”

Lois’s teeth ground together. Now, she knew the true reason Jimmy had abandoned Metropolis for Las Vegas just shortly before her return. Elopement, ha! The man knew what Lois would do to him if… when she discovered he had read her personal note to Clark. She stood up, her hands clenched into fists. She would have to be doubly sure nobody else piggybacked her hard work to gain their own success. “How lucky for him,” she snarled.

“Those photos along with the ones from Bureau 39 story in Smallville from last year got him a nice junior photo journalist position at the Las Vegas Review-Journal,” Perry bragged in such a manner that told her that he had more to do with that job offer than Jimmy’s photos had.

“Uh-huh,” Lois replied, rising to her feet. “If there wasn’t anything else…” she said, pointing behind her towards Clark’s desk. She had a partner to strangle.

“You were right about Arianna Carlin. A little digging upstairs showed she was on the board as the lead psychologist at the Luthor House for the Mentally Unstable,” Perry said.

She looked at him, waiting for him to tell her something she didn’t already know. That gut feeling she developed upon seeing Dr. Carlin would have increased to an ulcer had she been forced to spend more time with that woman. “And?”

“Good work, honey. I can’t imagine what she thought she could accomplish by coming here,” he said.

“It’s simple. She wants to ruin my life as she believes I ruined Lex’s. I’m sure if I had been forced to sit on her couch, she would have made me barking mad… and not in my usual way, by the end of the week,” Lois replied, heading for the door. She paused as another wave of unwelcome familiarity flowed over her as if the change of only one detail would have had her locked in that woman’s psych unit instead of free. “Thank you for believing me, Perry.”

To have both Clark and Perry back her up on the day she came face-to-face with Dr. Carlin felt as if some major wrong had finally been righted.

***End of Part 199***

Part 200

How's that for tying up A-Plot threads quickly? Comments