Lois banged her head sharply as she fell into the dumpster. The smell of rotting vegetables and the empty, soiled boxes of food mixed with the remains of meals gone sour after two days in the heat. The smell was overwhelming.
For a moment she lay stunned. She heard the sharp retort of metal hitting metal above her. The man was shooting down the shaft of the garbage chute!
Undoubtedly, he was already calling his cohorts outside, and it wouldn’t be long before they made their way around the building to kill her.
Struggling to right herself, Lois felt a moment of frustration. It didn’t seem fair.
She pulled herself out of the dumpster, trash and grime sticking to her clothing. It was more of a struggle than she thought it would be, and when she slid out of the dumpster, she fell to the alley floor.
The sound of a vehicle nearby made Lois stiffen in fear. She scrambled to her feet as a car turned the corner into the barely lit alley. Though she tried to dodge behind the dumpster, the beams of it’s headlights shone on her.
The car surged forward. Lois was preparing to run when she realized that it wasn’t the familiar green sedan. Instead, it was a battered gray pickup. A gun rack hung on the back windshield, and all she could see was the silhouette of the driver.
Lois froze for an instant, and then it was too late.
The pickup slid beside her, and the driver leaned out. Lois fumbled for her mace, only to realize that she must have dropped it upstairs.
“Get in the back, Missy.” The sweating face in the driver’s window was a familiar one; Clark’s foster brother Carl. His voice was low and urgent. “There isn’t much time. They’ll be here any second. Get in the back and get under the tarp.”
Lois hesitated for only an instant. She didn’t have much of a choice. The people trying to kill her were only seconds away. If Carl was working with them, he’d pull out a gun soon enough. If he wasn’t, then it might be her chance.
She pulled herself heavily into the back of the pickup, and she was thrown backward heavily as Carl gunned the motor. She struggled to pull the tarp over herself and find a place to lie comfortably in the middle of all the grease spots, dirt encrusted tools and fast food bags.
She’d just settled down comfortably when the truck began to slow. Lois’s heart sank. Had Carl betrayed her to the people who were after her.
Shadows surrounded the pickup, and Lois fought the urge to peek out to see just what was happening.
“What are you doing here?” The voice was harsh and startlingly close, and slightly accented.
“The boss sent me to tell you guys to get the hell out of here. The cops are on their way. Did you get the girl?”
“No. Diego and Billy Ray screwed up.” The voice was sullen and angry. “She’s around here somewhere.”
“You don’t have time.” Carl’s voice was clipped. “The boss wouldn’t have had to send me out if you’d remember to charge your phone every once in a while.”
“It’s the battery, man...”
“They’ll be here in about two minutes. You’d better clear out.” With that, Carl gunned the engine and a moment later, Lois hit her head again as he made a curve sharply.
He made several sharp turns at high rates of speed before finally slowing to a normal rate. Carl drove for several minutes before finally slowing to a stop.
Lois reluctantly pulled the tarp away and began to sit up. She was in another dark alley, and Carl had cut his lights.
He sat still in the driver’s seat. Lois looked carefully around, then climbed out the back of the pickup. She walked around to the driver’s side, and slid through the narrow gap between the truck and the wall of the building.
“There’s a gap in the fence up ahead.” Carl refused to look at her. “If you turn left, and go three blocks, you’ll find a police station.”
“Than-”
“If you tell anyone about this, I’m dead.” Carl stared straight ahead. He was silent for a long moment, then his eyes flicked in her direction. “Now get out.”
Lois hesitated, then turned. She slipped under the driver’s side mirror and moved forward to the chain link fence covering the alleyway and leading to a parking lot on the other side.
The short walk to the police station seemed to last forever.
******************
Lois was pale; seeing her through the one way mirror was a shock. The fluorescent lights made her look sallow, and Clark could see that she was swaying slightly with fatigue.
If anything had happened to her tonight, he never would have forgiven himself.
“You both seem to have your stories in order.” The detective standing beside him shook his head, “I still think it would be better to put you both in protective custody. From the descriptions of the tattoos, it sounds like it’s the Sangrias. We’ve been trying to get something on them for years.”
“I thought the Sangrias were minor league.” The Sangrias had started out as a minor prison gang that had liked to use minors to do most of their dirty work. Clark had known several people who’d been members, including at least two of his foster brothers.
Jess had tried to talk him into joining; he’d been furious when Clark had refused. He’d taunted Clark about it for months before finally giving up. He’d talked about community, a sense of family and belonging. In the end, it had gotten him killed in prison.
“That’s how they used to be. We thought we’d broken their backs for a while there, but it seems like they got their second wind. New leadership, maybe.”
“Are we cleared to leave, then?” Clark glanced again at Lois, her slumped shoulders and dejected expression clearing showing her exhaustion.
He wouldn’t blame her if she was in shock. He should have made sure she was safe before he’d done anything else.
The time in Smallville was rattling him, making him sloppy. Normally, he’d have been much more careful.
He opened the door, and was stunned to see the transformation on Lois’s face as she turned to face him. She straightened up and truly smiled, and it was as though the entire room lit up.
She was even more beautiful than the first time he’d met her. Clark felt a sharp pang of regret; for the first time in years of sorrow, he’d discovered a new source of pain about his parents deaths.
Jonathan and Martha Kent would have loved to meet Lois Lane. They’d have seen instantly what had taken him days to allow himself to believe. He’d never get to tell them about his first date, or about the feelings which, despite his years of experience in dating were only now being to awaken within him.
“Clark! I was so worried you weren’t going to make it!” Lois stood up, then stiffened when she saw the detective standing behind him. “I told them all about how we got separated when...”
“I already gave my statement. The detective says we’re free to go.” He stepped forward and took her hand, squeezing it reassuringly.
Lois gaped. “So I get the bad cop and you get the good cop? My cop acted like he was one step from throwing me in the brig and throwing away the key! Then he disappeared for thirty minutes and left me here with the worst cup of coffee I ever tasted in my life. I think I’ve found out where Metropolis ships it’s industrial waste.”
The detective behind Clark cleared his throat. “I’m sorry about that Ms. Lane. Detective Hood transferred in from Metropolis six months ago, and he’s made no secret that he’s not happy about some of your articles about the police. Once we realized that he had a personal grudge, we pulled him out of there.”
“So I’m not going to be stuck in a safe house for the next month?”
“That probably wouldn’t be a bad idea. You are the only witness whose actually testified against the Sangrias in eight years. We’d really like to have something more than rumors and innuendo when everything comes to trial, and that would be a lot easier if you were alive to testify.”
Clark shook his head slightly when he saw Lois glancing at him. Under ordinary circumstances, the detective would have been correct. But he was finally feeling himself again, and he could keep her safer than anyone on the planet.
“We’re conducting our own investigation,” Lois said. “And we can’t do that if we’re locked away somewhere.”
With that, she took his arm, and Clark led her out of the police station happy that here at last he had a second chance.
************
As they turned the corner into the alley, Lois began to speak. She didn’t get a chance; in the space of a moment they were in the air, and the city was falling away below them.
He was faster this time, more self assured. She glanced at him, and could only see that his face was expressionless in the dimness.
The world below was beautiful, a glowing sea of lights spread out in all directions, surrounded by a sea of darkness. It was beautiful, and the air was warmer than she would have thought. She felt protected, not at all what she would have thought she’d have felt suspended in the sky with nothing to support her but a man’s arms.
It was magical, flying, and for a moment Lois had to wonder why he did anything else.
The lights of the city fell away behind them, and another passed below. That one was followed by another and yet another still. In the darkness, Lois didn’t have any real sense of speed. It was as though there was no wind, only an endless stillness. The only indication she had that they were moving faster than anything she would have imagined was the strings of lights that were flashing by like lines on a highway, almost blurring together.
Yet as they rose above the clouds, the endless sea of stars remained still. Vaguely, Lois thought that she shouldn’t have been able to breathe at this altitude. She should have been freezing, with wind blasting and buffeting her.
Instead, she felt only the warmth and stillness, and she wondered if this was what he felt every night.
They began to slow, and the clouds parted below them. In the moonlight, Lois could see the dimly lit form of an island.
It grew larger below them, and Lois clutched at Clark more tightly. He tightened his grip reassuringly.
They sank gently towards a moonlit beach, with nothing but a sea of stars above them, the darkness of the surf beside them, and the palm trees disappearing into the darkness.
Landing so softly that it took Lois a moment to realize that she was once more on the ground, Clark continued to hold her for several moments longer than necessary.
“Where are we?” Lois asked, finally finding her voice.
“Safe,” Clark said.
They couldn’t go back to the hotel rooms; the odds that someone would be waiting for them were too great.
“I don’t suppose this place has a shower?” Lois said, smiling a little to show that she wasn’t expecting much.
Clark grinned. “It’s only been a few days, but I already knew you were going to ask that.”
He took her hand and gestured toward the forest. “Come on.”
Lois wondered when she’d forgotten just how sensual simple hand holding could be.
The sounds of the surf were soothing after the uncanny silence of Smallville. At least she might have a chance to fall asleep without the usual sounds of traffic, random screams and passing loud music that were part and parcel of living in the big city.
They walked only a few steps to the ridge separating the beach from the forest. Lois stumbled slightly when her feet left the ground, and she realized that he was levitating her.
Lois gasped. Before her was a small, perfectly appointed cabana, in good repair.
“Who owns this?” Lois asked.
“Spenser Spenser,” Clark said. “But I don’t think he’ll be using it for a while.”
