Table of Contents From Part One...The force of his yell shook the windows of the small car, and he pulled over onto the curb abruptly, shaking his head. Fighting a strange sense of claustrophobia, he opened the door and bolted out of the vehicle, barely remembering to lock it behind him as he made an open break for his apartment, where there would be plenty of distractions to take his mind off...
His apartment. Not his home.
Never his home. Never home.
Not any more.
Part Two~One Month Later~
Running to her doom. That was the thought that kept reverberating through her brain with every slap her feet made on the marble floor. The walls in the brightly lit corridor were cream, and at various intersections a painting hung, originals, Van Gogh, Renoir, Monet. Even without them his house felt like an art gallery - quiet, subdued, reverent. In her minds eye, the vase of red tulips balanced on the nearest windowsill were bloody hands reaching out to her, begging for mercy.
She skidded to a halt, tasting acid in her mouth again, as a thought assaulted itself in her brain.
She was pregnant. Definitely. Absolutely.
In fact, she'd been pregnant for almost three months now, without realising it.
She'd nearly fainted at the doctor's office when he'd confirmed it. With no small measure of disbelief, she'd told him flat out that he must be mistaken. She *couldn't* have let three whole months go by... three months without a cycle. Why hadn't she suspected, or even *noticed*?
//You haven't been eating properly... just chocolate, mostly... a lot of stress, and all the bruises and - //
She derailed the mental train of thought. She didn't want to think about that, about where the bruises were, what he'd done, the assumption she'd come to believe in... that he'd made her...
Three months. Three months since she'd sat, that night, in the bathroom, cried her eyes out for the children she'd never have. She'd just *assumed* - the worst thing anybody could do - and now...
Three months. It scared her, terrified her into a state of rigidity. Where had the time gone? Why hadn't she noticed? The days had melted into each other so that she could hardly remember what *day* it was, let alone what date... time had meant nothing to her. She'd seen that half-life stretching into infinity, and in the face of infinity, days passing were nothing.
She shook her head sharply. No! That road led to painful memories, to terror, pure and blind, and she didn't want to trip up. She couldn't afford to trip up. She needed to be cleverer than she'd been in months. She needed to be astute and... and calculating and... a damned good actress and... she needed to be able to convince...
She was pregnant. A thought she'd never relished, a situation she'd never believed she could find herself in. A situation she'd thought was impossible for her, especially after... especially now.
And she damned well wasn't going to go through it alone, she thought fiercely, resuming her march through the corridors. She couldn't *handle* it alone. Maybe she could have, once, but... not any more. No. She'd lost that ability.
<You can't do a thing right...>For all her brave thoughts about leaving her husband, once she thought it through, she knew she couldn't. It was incomprehensible. Somebody as weak and as incapable as she couldn't handle a small child. She had no money to call her own - if she left him, she'd have nowhere to live. She couldn't get a job with a tiny infant that needed to be taken care of. And it was extremely unlikely that anybody would employ her, anyway, and she didn't blame them - she wasn't competent enough to do anything. She didn't know even the first thing about babies and if she left, she would have nobody to help her.
She couldn't live in a cardboard box and raise her baby. Her child would hate her, would long for the life she'd walked away from. She needed support.
And if the baby got sick... if it got very sick... if she couldn't afford a proper home and it got an infection... if it died, because she'd walked away from protection and security and...
The very best. That was what she was walking away from. And - she felt a strong surge of protectiveness, she placed a hand on her stomach, on the tiny, tiny bulge - didn't her child deserve the best?
She needed support. Financial *and* emotional. Surely... surely he'd be pleased, a child to carry his name... she hoped it was a boy, she thought he'd like a boy... she needed so much...
She needed... she needed...
...she needed to... just to...
She reached his door. A symbol, closed, locked, his life separate from hers. Holy ground, forbidden ground, somewhere out of bounds to her.
<A man needs his privacy, darling... you understand...>She raised her hand and rapped very hard on the wood with her knuckles. And then froze. Good grief, what had she done? That stunk of impatience, of spirit even... what, did she *want* him to get angry? Did she want to forfeit the game before she even saw her cards? What was *wrong* with her?
A beat, and she knocked again - timidly this time. Funny, how easily you could convey emotion. Emotion you'd had once, or thought you'd had, before it was taken from you.
She stood as if turned to stone, her breathing light and rapid. And then she stepped a little closer to the door, and pressed her ear up against it. Knowing what she was doing, what it meant, yet unable to stop it.
The thought made her unbearably angry. She... she didn't want to be Lois Lane, Girl Reporter any more! She didn't want to stay there, outside his sanctum, and possibly be caught, and then what would happen? Then where would her long-buried reporting skills get her? Stupid! She was stupid!
A hand reached down and grasped the handle of his door. She looked down on it. She didn't know it, didn't know the person it was attached to, had never known her. *She* was altogether braver than Lois herself. Far more reckless too.
Her heart thudding madly, she heard the catch snick open. Unbelievable. He'd left his door unlocked. What had caused this, this sudden lapse in his security?
//Maybe he thinks there's no need to lock his doors. Maybe he's stopped seeing you as a threat.//
She clenched her fists and, sucking in her stomach, sidled in the door.
Her back to the door, she had a sudden, horrifying thought and scanned the walls intently for signs of surveillance cameras. To her eye, the room was clean. Of course, he wouldn't want cameras in here, in his private room... and he wasn't expecting anyone else to be in here... he wasn't expecting her to deliberately disobey him... wasn't expecting her to fight back...
Well, she'd show him! She'd get some of her old spark back, darn sure she would! She'd uncover some damning evidence, and she'd run, beautiful and alone, to the nearest police station, and the cop she'd meet would be sympathetic and handsome, and he'd support her in her endeavours to find a quiet way to kill him, and at the very end she'd maybe set up a pottery shop or a restaurant. Wasn't that how it happened in those battered-wife-meets-handsome-younger-man-kills-her-abusive-husband-and-sets-up-an-enterprising-business books she used to read?
Yeah, that was right. She'd lose a few pounds while she was at it, too, and she'd end up with her baby on her hip, writing a best-selling novel with one hand and carelessly tossing a crème brulée together with the other, while her new husband and troop of witty business acquaintances watched in admiration.
She took a deep breath, pushing the air out of her lungs slowly as she fought to remain calm. Staring across the room at the desk, she listened carefully for any movement outside before picking her way across the wooden floor. It was freezing to her bare feet, almost a trap in itself, biting at her skin, reminding her... she shouldn't be in this place, at this time, no, she shouldn't be...
Cautiously, carefully and ever-so-slowly, she eased herself into his chair, teeth gritted in anticipation of an ambush, an alarm sounding, a trapdoor opening beneath her feet. When nothing happened, she breathed out, the relief making her high.
She wasn't even sure of what she was looking for. She wasn't even sure why she was in the room.
Another hand that didn't belong to her grasped the handle of a desk drawer, pulled it open smoothly. She looked in, her eyes scanning lazily over the contents. She wasn't expecting to find anything. Wasn't that always how it worked? Things only happened if you truly didn't want them to.
Then her eyes glanced upon it - a small transparent package filled with white powder. Her heart skittered to a halt for an instant, and she could literally feel the blood leaching from her face.
Drugs? Was that what her husband was into? Mind-altering narcotics? Illegal substances?
Not to inhale them himself, she knew. He was always perfectly in control - around other people. But then what? To sell?
To give... to give to...
Her?
//That's ridiculous, Lois,// she told herself instantly, her mind reeling with the absurdity of it. Why would he give her drugs? Drugs numbed things, took away pain. Drugs would have been a blessing to her over the last sixteen months. It would have been an act of kindness, not cruelty.
She turned the package over in her palm, contemplating. It was bad, whatever it was, she knew that... she could feel the evil soaking through. She almost felt sick with it.
For the second time that day, her heart tripped to a standstill for a nanosecond as she turned the bag over fully. To reveal a... a label. And on it... printed in deep black letters, as plain as the nose on her face... a name.
Her name.
Her name was written on the label. Clear as day.
And under that... under that...
A skull. With crossbones. Stupidly, her eyes filled with images of eye patches and parrots, the ocean, "yo ho ho and a bottle of rum".
Then she returned to sanity - or the masquerade she was passing off as sanity. And she dropped it. One word echoing through her mind, like a gunshot.
Poison!Poison!Poison!Poison!
Uncertainly, she leaned down, held her head between her legs. Instantly the blood pounded back into her temples, purple dots obscuring her vision.
This... this wasn't proof. This wasn't confirmation of anything. It wasn't. It couldn't be.
He... he wouldn't be so *careless*, so downright stupid. To leave a package in his desk with her name printed on it? What kind of idiot would do something like that? It was completely out of character... the desk wasn't even *locked*!
//Maybe he feels so safe here that he didn't think it necessary,// a voice in the corner of her brain whispered gently. //Maybe he knew there was no chance of you rebelling. And who else would be in here? Maybe that's why...//
Like one in a dream, she heard the tramp of footsteps outside from far away. Far away... but getting closer. Advancing.
Advancing down the corridor. In her direction. And... this room was the last one in that row, and they'd passed all the others by now. Which meant... they were headed... for her.
She hadn't locked the door.
In one movement she shoved the container of... of whatever back into his desk and dove for the window. There was a ledge outside that she was sure - almost sure - would hold her weight... please god, please god...
Then she was out and she was clinging as hard as she could to the stonework, wishing, praying. Her husband was in the room behind her, chattering with his manservant, and if she was caught she was dead.
"Sir, may I inquire as to how your wife's been feeling recently? A little... green around the gills, I hope?"
She wondered how he would kill her. Maybe he'd stage an accident. Maybe he'd order one of his henchmen to... She strongly doubted she was important enough for him to do it himself. Maybe he'd actually use that stuff in his desk, if he wasn't planning to already...
During the lapse in concentration her foot slipped slightly off the ledge. She was surprised when she didn't have to bite back a scream. Then she realised that falling wouldn't be the worst thing. In fact, if it was a choice between falling and being discovered, she'd take the former.
She swallowed deeply, trying her best to ignore what was being said and straining to hear it at the same time.
"Don't be ridiculous... I haven't even started it yet... needed to get used to eating with her first, so I'd know what she drinks..."
Her confusion, the past few evenings, when he'd shown such an interest in dining with her... not out saving the world, spending time with her... she'd thought... she'd actually thought... when he'd fixed her drink for her, she'd thought he was...
She'd thought he was being *kind*!
"Should work fairly well in her wine... there *is* a definite trend of alcoholism in that family, so useful... made it so much easier to get her mother out of the way..."
Her throat clogged suddenly as he confirmed what she'd long suspected. After nearly fifteen years of being completely clean, her mother had relapsed uncontrollably earlier that year and was now in therapy in one of the cushiest clinics in the country. He'd paid for it. Patted her back and said softly that it didn't matter, he'd do it for her.
"I'll start tonight... can't afford to waste any time - she's become tiresome, boring... no challenge anymore... and so damned unresponsive, like a rag doll... I'll have to find someone with more spark in her... and who'll be able to give me children."
Her gaze dropped immediately to her stomach. Wh... wha... what?
"That's the damned annoying thing about women... so flimsy, so fragile... barely one year married and already her reproductive system's mucked up... she's no use to me now."
An appreciative laugh. So he *had* noticed when her cycles had stopped.
"No evidence later, I presume?"
"No - arsenic gives the impression of a natural death..."
Her mind shot back to that white package, to her reaction, Poison!Poison!Poison! flashing through her brain.
"...no real side-effects... aside from the fact that the body doesn't decompose properly, but we'll hardly be digging her up again..."
"...excellent. Really excellent, sir... ingenious..."
"Yes, it was one of my more brilliant ideas... poor Lois, she has no idea what's coming to her... start preparing my press release, would you? About how I'm riddled with grief about the death of my beloved wife, life partner, etc etc. Some Hollywood schmaltz for the masses... their hero, grieving for his wife..."
Grieving for his wife. And his unborn child.
If she died, her baby would too.
Her baby would die if she stayed with him.
Dimly, in the background, she heard the door slam closed, heard the voices of her husband and his manservant disappear back down the corridor. Then she put one foot, then the other in through the open window and collapsed in a heap of raw nerves on the Oriental rug.
He was planning to poison her. Because he suspected she was barren. He assumed he'd made her barren and now he was trying to kill her for it.
He'd actually noticed when her periods had stopped. She'd thought he was indifferent to her, but of course, he still insisted that they share a bed, share a room - keeping his friends close and his enemies closer, as always. He'd actually noticed, and he'd assumed, like she had, that he'd damaged her reproductive system... now he was planning to discard her like a used tissue because she was of no more use to him...
Some part of her numbed brain registered that she should be angry, that this should make her unbearably angry, and determined to fight back, but she didn't feel any of it. She didn't feel anything. Except maybe loss. And... protectiveness.
Not for herself. Never for herself. For her child. Her tiny, innocent, perfect baby.
Consequences be damned. Cardboard box or no cardboard box, she wouldn't let him kill her child. She'd never seen herself as a mother, but she loved it too much already. She'd rather die herself than see it hurt in any way.
What did you do, where did you go when you decided to leave your husband? What would she need?
Money. And a place to run *to*. Right?
She looked around her slowly, evaluating her situation. Whatever about the latter, she could sure as heck do something about the former, now that she was in his private domain.
Moving faster now she had a purpose and an aim, she strode - strode! Like she had confidence! - over to his desk, pulled open the desk she'd inspected earlier. The bag of poison was gone - how careless it was for him to have left it there in the first place, he must really have felt safe in her meekness - but that wasn't what she was looking for. None too carefully, she swept her hands through the contents of the desk, and *there it was.* Her one way ticket out of his clutches. Her freedom shone at her from the plastic face of a small ATM card.
The air hissed out of her lungs as, carefully and deliberately, she removed the card from its resting place. Staring down into the drawer, she nearly whimpered as she spotted the wad of bills, concealed underneath. Another tough decision.
She picked it up, her hands shaking, and flipped through it. Her eyes boggled as she counted the number of hundred-dollar bills. Five, ten, fifteen...
//In for a penny, in for a pound...//
She peeled off three of the bills, breathing hard. Her fingers itched to take more - three hundred wouldn't get her very far - but the money would surely be missed. He couldn't *not* notice a loss of a thousand dollars, could he? It would be... negligent and... idiotic of her to take more... when she needed to be on her toes... a thoroughly stupid manoeuvre...
No. She couldn't risk it.
She slid the drawer back into its place and turned around, walking slowly out of the room, trying her hardest to appear nonchalant.
Stuffing the money and card into her pocket - Versace prison-trousers this time - not daring to stop and stare at it, she reflected that it was the simplest things she missed the most. Money. Her own money. It had been... what, six months? More? She couldn't remember, but it seemed like a lifetime. A lifetime ago that she had controlled her finances independently, free to scatter and distribute at will.
<...what's yours is mine...>She didn't even know where he had put her cards. ATM, credit, everything. Even her chequebook.
<...where did you get this?...don't need this junk... frivolous spending... are you trying to ruin me?>She stopped, caught short, at the sight of the ornate door. Twisting around, she looked down the hallway in astonishment. She had crossed the entire house, already? She was moving that quickly? She'd thought she'd forgotten how to move that quickly.
She twisted the handle of the door carefully, wincing at every squeak and fault. Slipping inside, she closed it behind her, thanking the ceiling silently for the second easy entry - a blessing, indeed. She'd planned to retrieve her lock-picking tool from its hiding place if needed, but was extremely thankful that the instrument had proved redundant - in the time lapse, her memory and skill had grown as rusty as the old doors she used to pick so dexterously.
How she had hidden that... that little lock-picking thing. How she had kept it away from him. How she had kept it with her as a remnant of her old life, a realisation that things had been better once, a tiny piece of something real that might save her life, someday.
She looked around the empty room philosophically. Strangely enough, even though it was the place that... the place where... everything had happened; she had something to be thankful to it for. Her epiphany had taken seed here, and now it was about to help her escape.
But if she was caught in this particular room, at this particular time of day...
She swallowed and shook her head. No time for thinking. Just do it. Walk over and do it.
She was in front of the wardrobe in the next instant, her eyes wide and her breathing harsh and irregular. Grasping the handle of the door, she pulled it firmly toward her, wrinkling her nose as the smell of expensive clothing wafted out.
She swallowed roughly as she spotted the dress. The white dress. The backless one, with a slit up the skirt and thin straps. That was the one, undoubtedly. He preferred that dress to any other garment of clothing she had.
Taking it firmly between her hands, she glanced up and down the seam, searching for points of weakness. Clenching her fists, she brought them apart suddenly, grimacing as the resulting tear and rip of the fabric echoed around the cold room. Thank goodness chiffon was so flimsy - if it had been cotton or wool, she was sure she'd never have been able to rip it.
There. It was done. No going back now.
//Right. Go. Now. Get out. Get out of here. Right now.//
Turning around purposefully, all rational thought flew out of her head as her wedding picture, encased in a grim silver frame, leapt out at her from the bureau. Letting the dress fall in a pool at her feet, she stepped over it, as if hypnotised, and let her feet carry her unwillingly over to the photograph.
She picked it up, and the deathly chill radiating from it nearly made her drop it again. Staring at herself, she wondered how she could have been so blind. Unable to see. Or do. Unable to stop herself. Unable to fight, to run. While she still could.
The woman in the picture was a totally different person. She knew that now, as she never had before. A true bride, radiance beaming out of her face as she looked at her new husband.
She wasn't a bride any more. She wasn't beautiful or radiant or self-assured. She was a wife. Invisible. Retiring. Meek. Not like the woman in the picture, sure and...
Although... she peered closer, looking at her not-self. There was a hint of hesitation in her face in that photograph. How...?
She bit back the bile in her throat.
//Stupid. So, so stupid, Lois.//
She had *known*, back then. She had *known* that she wasn't in love with him, had never truly been in love with him. On her wedding day, she had *known*, and that knowledge had shone out of her face, imperceptible to anybody except herself, and maybe a few of her closest friends.
Was that why they had abandoned her? Had they been disgusted at the fool inside of her who had insisted she go through with the wedding? Had they seen, back then, what she could not?
Had he noticed? Was that why this life had been bestowed upon her - because he knew? Was the stinking hell that she had suffered for the past sixteen months essentially of her own making? Was that why she had failed so miserably as a wife - because he had known that she didn't love him? Was that why?
She peered closer at him, almost afraid to move her finger over his immortalised face. As if she were afraid the stiff cardboard would come to life and bite her. Tall, dark-haired, brown-eyed as ever - and handsome. So damned handsome in that stupid tuxedo.
A bride's dream. A *woman's* dream.
How could she not have seen, that day, the evil that lurked within, waiting to appear? How could she not have seen past the kind, caring, compassionate facade that was his everyday life? Why couldn't she have known back then, so that she could have saved herself now?
She stared in disgust at the wedding ring, stationed on his finger as it clasped hers. Just beside his monogram. Those sickening initials. That sickening name, now clamped to hers.
She slammed the picture back down. She was procrastinating again. She was sure to get caught if she didn't move. After all, she wasn't supposed to be here. If he found her, he'd automatically assume...
<Oh, so you want more, do you?>She strode out of the room, the ruined garment swinging on her arm, the ATM card burning a hole in her back pocket.
~&~
It had been easier than she had thought, she reflected, thirty minutes later. The sentry had taken the torn dress at face value; she was now certain that she wasn't being watched and that nobody was - or would be - suspicious of her motives for some time to come. To the slow-witted security guards, she had gone shopping to replace a dress that had gotten ripped on a nail. Stupid woman. So careless. The boss would be angry later, no doubt. Might as well give her a chance to hide it. Wouldn't make any difference, but hey...
She took a deep breath, steeling her muscles in readiness. She opened her hand, trembling, and gazed in enthralment at the knife in her hand. She had filched it from the kitchen months and months ago - as a promise, perhaps, an insurance that no matter how bad things got, she could always get out of it.
The smallest corner of her mind - the Wife part of it - was screaming at her not to do it. This was going to extremes, surely! She didn't need to do this. She could just go back. It would be so much simpler, and wouldn't involve feeling. Not much, anyway. It certainly wouldn't involve pain. Or if it did, it was no change. She was used to it, by now.
She gritted her teeth, shaking her head wildly and pushing Wife to the very back of her brain with an effort. This was going to be a *little* cut. Nothing much. Just enough so that she could leave a few droplets on the dress, and maybe on the ground leading up to it. Yes. It wouldn't hurt - not much, anyway. It was only a *nick*!
Breathing hard, her hand moved of its own accord, bringing the instrument down across her palm, hard and fast. She cried out; a second later, the knife clattered to the ground, and she watched in horrified fascination as beads of blood welled up on her palm. Gritting her teeth, she squeezed the incision, and the wound began throb, bleeding freely.
Whether it was the fact that her heart was suddenly pumping wildly, sending burst after burst of precious, life-giving blood to her hand, or just that time stopped for that short while as she watched her blood flow out of her, splattering the dress luridly took mere minutes. The redness contrasted sharply with the creamy hue of the dress, emphasising the unsuitability, the error, the sheer *wrong-ness* of it being there.
She had bled in this dress before. And she knew - blood didn't come easily out of chiffon. He had awful trouble trying to hide that fact. Then again, being who he was, he had managed it - all but a tiny brown speckle on the shoulder that nobody would notice unless in close proximity to her.
And he had made sure that nobody got in close proximity to her.
As she sat there, watching the life drain out of her, she had a sudden flicker of concern, deep in the pit of her stomach. She clamped her unhurt hand to her abdomen, suddenly scared.
What would the loss of blood mean to the baby? Could it mean - heaven forbid - could it mean that its life was now at risk? Because of a few seconds pain endured by its mother? Could she - could she lose it now? Because of a little blood?
This baby was her lifeline. Her reason for survival. The spur that had made her run. She couldn't bear to lose it - if she ever...
Swallowing hard, she scrunched the chiffon tightly. Her basic human instinct made her hang on to consciousness, but at this point it would have been a blessed relief to let it go.
//Breathe. Think. Come on, Lane - you're *smarter* than this!//
It was only a *little* blood. She had what - eight pints or so of the stuff in her body? This was a mere drop in the ocean. Nothing major. Nothing life threatening, to her *or* the baby.
She took a glance at the cut, feebly trying to brush the excess blood away from it so she could gauge how deep it was. Growling in frustration as her efforts turned up nought, she quickly stuck it up to her mouth, cringing at the metallic taste.
A few minutes later, her patience wrought and her disgust raw, she pulled away, peering closely at the wound. Her own cowardice had stopped the knife from penetrating too deep into her skin. She wouldn't need stitches, thank goodness.
Just enough and not more. Hadn't that been her mother's motto, once upon a time? Yes, it had - and very useful to Ellen Lane, as well. When the subject wasn't alcohol, of course.
She scrunched the sheer chiffon up tighter, balling it into the smallest bundle she could manage, and deposited it quickly behind a garbage can. Gasping, she caught her hand below the wrist, squeezing in and out in convulsive movements as she walked up out of the alleyway, careful not to get any of it on her clothes.
She leant back a few minutes later, satisfied. There was no way anybody could *not* notice the trail - now all she had to do was get out of there. Fast, before anybody saw her.
Her husband was a powerful man. Worth a lot of money. It wasn't completely outside the realm of possibility that his wife could be kidnapped. Held for ransom. Missing, presumed dead had a... sinister ring to it, but it worked for her. For the moment, at least.
~&~
To be continued...
