Even with the extra time it took Lois to get ready in the morning, they were dressed and on their way to the Daily Planet by eight o’clock.
Clark had barely slept the night before, his mind and body still reeling from the ecstasy of taking her flying. It had been beyond his wildest imaginings. He had never dreamed that she would love it so much or take to it so quickly. He had longed to fly with her, but he had envisioned leisurely flights, low to the ground. He had not imagined that they would be able to fly at speeds far faster than an airline jet or that he would be able to take her above the clouds to see the stars.
Now his mind reeled with all the possibilities. In the nearly twelve years since he had started flying, really flying, he had visited every corner of the earth. There were so many things, so many places, that had left him in awe. So many times he had wished he had someone to share that wonder with. And now, he did. He could take her deep into the bamboo forests of China to see the pandas. He could take her north during the endless nights of winter to see the Aurora Borealis. He could take her out in the middle of the ocean to listen to the whales sing their way home.
They could swim in pools fed by breathtaking waterfalls and sleep under the stars on beaches where no human had walked before. Together they could travel to places he had never been. They could make their own discoveries together.
He could give her the world.
And he could take her home with him. Whenever he wanted. No more waiting a month for just a few days with her. He could come to her, and he could bring her to Smallville. And he would never have to lay in his bed and ache for her the way he had on her birthday.
He was unbearably happy.
Except for the simmering fear that lay deep in his stomach. Because Luthor was still out there, and their lives could never be peaceful until he was accounted for.
Last night, watching her brain work as they searched for that monster, and then again as they searched for a way to explain what they had found under his home, he had been in awe of her again. And when she asked him to help with the investigation, his heart had leapt in his chest. Working beside her the previous week had been exhilarating. He couldn’t wait to do that again.
Now they were on their way into the newsroom, her Jeep parked securely in the deck. They had hardly spoken on the way in. He had been lost in his reverie, and he assumed she was deep in thought about the investigation.
When the door slid open, revealing the bullpen below, there was a pause, and then a sudden hush, and then a cacophony of voices and clapping as her coworkers realized she had returned. She held up a hand to stop the applause, waving away their appreciation, but behind the embarrassment, he could see in her eyes how much it meant to her.
They walked to her desk, and he helped her out of her coat. Around him he could hear the horrified whispers of her coworkers. He looked at her through their eyes and felt his heart twist. She was dressed in slacks and a sweater, both of which he’d had to help her into that morning. Her injured wrist was in the splint and strapped to her chest with a blue sling. The sleeve on her other arm was pushed up so it wouldn’t rub against the sensitive skin. Angry red marks criss crossed her wrists, the skin chafed and scabbed. He had rebandaged the cut on her face after her shower that morning, and the stark white of the bandage only brought more attention to the purple bruising along her cheekbone that had begun to develop yesterday.
He was glad they couldn’t see the rest of her body. Under her clothes, her entire left side was mottled and purple. Clark had begun to wonder if Luthor hadn’t simply opened a manhole and shoved Lois through, allowing her body to slam against the floor below. Or perhaps he had tried to carry her down the stairs and lost control and dropped her. Either way, the extent of her injuries didn’t seem consistent with simply falling from standing when she was drugged. If he had indeed dropped her or pushed her into the sewer, Clark was thankful her injuries weren’t worse than they were.
“Lois!”
His musings were interrupted by Jimmy’s shout from across the bullpen.
He watched cautiously as Jimmy came rushing over. Clark could see the younger man’s enthusiasm overriding his common sense as he opened his arms and prepared to grab Lois in a hug.
Clark stepped in front of her automatically, and Jimmy skidded to a stop and pulled back, confusion and surprise warring on his face.
“Gentle,” Clark said softly, stepping aside.
“Oh, right,” Jimmy said, grinning awkwardly at Clark. He turned his attention back to Lois and opened his arms to her, and Lois stepped into his embrace.
“You look like hell,” Jimmy said, as he stepped back and appraised her appearance.
“Thanks,” Lois said drolly. “Just what every woman wants to hear.”
“You know what I mean,” Jimmy said, laughing. “You look like you went ten rounds. Reminds me of the time that crazy scientist brought those gangsters back to life and you got into a rumble with them at that casino. You were black and blue for weeks.”
Clark turned and looked questioningly at Lois who just smiled and shrugged. He scrubbed a hand across his face, trying not to think of the dozens of times she cheated death before he met her.
“Lois, what in tarnation are you doing here?” Perry thundered, making his way to her desk. “I know for a fact I told you to use your sick time and take it easy.”
“I’m all rested and ready to go,” Lois insisted, and Clark watched with amusement as everyone around her looked her up and down with a healthy dose of skepticism.
“Now, Lois,” Perry said, shaking his head. “The suits upstairs will have my hide if I put you back to work this quickly. They’re already worried you’re going to find a reason to sue.”
Lois huffed an annoyed reply. “You can tell them I have better things to do than hire a lawyer. Like find Luthor. We’ve got a lead, and-”
“We?” Perry asked, raising an eyebrow and smiling curiously.
Lois waved him off, but Clark could see she was flustered. “Clark and I were talking it through last night, and we have a theory. But we can’t test it on our own. We need help with research.”
Perry sighed, obviously resigned. “Fine. Just try not to get yourselves killed.”
“I’ll be on my best behavior,” Lois said with a smirk.
“Why does that not make me feel any better?” Perry muttered, directing his question to Clark. Clark laughed and shrugged. He knew the feeling. “How are you doing, son?”
“Great,” Clark said honestly, pulling Lois’ chair out for her before she could reach for it.
“You look a hell of a lot better than the last time I saw you,” he said. “You gonna stick around for a while?”
“He needs to go home tomorrow,” Lois answered for him. She was only half focused on the conversation, as she flipped through her rolodex. “He needs to be at work on Thursday. If this lead doesn’t pan out, I’m going to take that sick time and go with him. Until the police catch Luthor. Or until they determine it’s safe for me to come back.”
Clark watched as both Perry and Jimmy went wide-eyed with shock, and then wiped the looks from their faces. He could only assume his face mirrored theirs. She had told him she would come. She hadn’t said how long she would stay.
“You’re going to go to Kansas…indefinitely?” Perry asked, his voice both incredulous and concerned.
“If we don’t catch Luthor,” she reiterated, looking up. “That’s not a problem, is it?”
“No,” Perry said quickly. “Not a problem. You take as much time as you need.”
Lois nodded, then turned to Jimmy, clearly finished with this conversation. “I need all the contractor bids for the construction of Luthor Tower. Everything you can find.”
“You got it,” Jimmy said, still shellshocked.
Perry and Jimmy took off for the morning meeting, and Clark turned to Lois, who was holding a card from her rolodex. She looked from her hand to the phone and made a frustrated sound before placing the card on her desk in front of her and reaching for the phone. She held the phone between her shoulder and her ear and started to punch in the number from the card.
“Indefinitely?” Clark said softly.
She reached over and hung up the phone, then turned in her seat and smiled at him tenderly. “I know how horrible Monday was for you. I’m not going to make you do that again. I’ll stay with you until it’s safe. Or until you get sick of me and kick me out,” she said with a grin.
“That’s never going to happen,” he said with a grin.
“Let’s just find Luthor,” she said with a sweet smile. “Then we can…figure out how we’re going to split our time.”
He nodded, eager to begin planning that future.
“I know a guy in city planning,” she said, punching in the number again. “Let’s see if he can fast track us some of the old permits.”
They worked furiously all morning – making phone calls, fielding faxes, and scouring page after page of contractor bids and old articles about the construction process. Every dead end only energized them more.
Lois’ source in the city planning office called back finally and told her it would take a week to get her a copy of the files, but if they came down, he would let them look through the official files in his office. They were in the elevator on their way to City Hall practically before she had hung up the phone.
A half-hour later they were seated in a conference room with two banker’s boxes full of files sitting in front of them.
“We’re never going to get through all of these today,” Lois whined. “Trust Luthor to bury the evidence in a thousand pounds of red tape.”
Clark smiled and reached for a box, checking to make sure the door was closed and no one could see in. “I might be able to give us a little assist here.”
She looked at him curiously as he lifted a hefty stack of files and held them in one hand, his opposite thumb poised to fan through the documents. He grinned at her, and then slid down his glasses and skimmed through at super speed looking for anything that mentioned a basement, bomb shelter, separate structure, or sewage.
Nothing. He sat the stack down and reached for another stack.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Lois said, her voice somewhere between skeptical and annoyed.
He thumbed through again. Still nothing.
On the fourth try, he stopped abruptly. He looked up, stunned.
“What?” she said, all traces of disbelief and annoyance gone.
“I think I found something. Look at this,” he said, setting aside the rest of the documents and handing her the one that had caught his attention. “This paragraph here…it’s buried in a bunch of pages about the electrical load. Did you know Luthor Tower has solar panels on the roof?”
She looked at him, confused. “What? Why? There’s no way they could produce enough electricity to offset their usage. It’s an enormous building.”
“They don’t power the whole building,” he said with a smile. He pointed to a line on the page. “They power an “independent emergency support structure’.”
Her eyes flew up to his.
He turned and reached for the stack of files he had set aside and continued skimming while she studied the permit for the solar panels.
“Independent emergency support structure!” he said victoriously. He pulled the permit from the stack and scanned it as Lois leaned closer to read over his shoulder.
“This is it,” she said softly.
He nodded. In front of them was a permit for the construction and placement of an “independent emergency support structure” that would be powered by solar energy. The structure was climate controlled, and the permit claimed it would house artifacts and valuables owned by building residents that required safe, long-term storage. The application was thirty pages of minutiae and legalese, all of indicating the structure was roughly the size of a bank vault. But buried in the paragraph about electrical wiring, there were the dimensions – fifty-five meters long by fifty-two meters wide by twelve meters high.
“Every other measurement in this document is given in feet,” Clark said. “Whoever reviewed this document must have glossed right over this.”
Lois had that look in her eye, the one that said she knew she was about to score a major victory, and for a moment he desperately wanted to kiss her. Later, he told himself.
They continued studying the document, and there on the paper was the name of the company responsible for assembling and installing the structure.
“This is where we go next,” Lois said, pointing. “We need to see these ‘independent emergency support structures’ they build.”
Clark nodded in agreement. They made copies of the relevant files and put the originals back, stopping briefly to thank Lois’ contact before taking off.
They had taken a cab to City Hall, but rather than flag down a taxi, Lois stopped abruptly at a bank of payphones outside the building. He stopped, expecting her to call Jimmy with updated information requests, but instead, she reached for the phone book chained to the booth.
She flipped immediately to the yellow pages, skimming through quickly, and he realized she was looking for the name and address of the company they had just uncovered. Of course.
“Ha!” she said, shaking the book victoriously. “Look at this!”
She held the book out to him awkwardly, one armed, and he took it from her. There in the middle of the page was a listing for Security First Home Solutions. It sounded like any other home security company, and he suspected that was part of the appeal.
“Now we call them?” he said.
She hesitated. “Let’s go check it out first. See what kind of operation they’re running.”
He nodded in agreement, and they flagged down a cab. They spent the twenty-minute drive going over their plan. They would pose as a couple building a new home and looking to install a safe room or shelter of some sort. They hoped Lois’ battered appearance would lend credence to their story that they had recently been victim to a home invasion and wanted to ensure their new home would offer protection their current home hadn’t.
The company’s storefront was nondescript and situated between a bodega and a small appliance repair store. A bell chimed as they entered, and Clark felt a wave of unease as the man behind the register stood to greet them. He stepped closer to Lois, resting his hand on her back, and reached up with his other hand to slide his glasses down and give the building a quick scan. He didn’t see anything amiss, and he chalked up his reaction to general protectiveness.
“How can I help you folks?” the man asked. “Looking for a new home security system?”
Clark glanced over the walls, which were covered with various home security systems – cameras, monitors, alarms, locks, and a number of devices Clark wasn’t sure he could even identify.
“My husband and I are building a new home,” Lois said, approaching the counter, and he felt his stomach flip at her words, even though he knew it was only a cover story. “Before we begin building…we’d like to discuss security options. We’re looking for something….comprehensive.”
“Wonderful,” the man said, reaching for a stack of brochures. “We offer a wide variety of both monitored and unmonitored devices. You can pick and choose, or we offer a concierge service where we design a custom system for your entire home.”
Clark exchanged a look with Lois. The brochures all depicted systems similar to what was displayed on the walls around them.
“We’re really looking for something much more extensive,” Clark said. “A safe room, perhaps? Or a modified bomb shelter of some sort?”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “How did you say you found us?” he asked with a casualness that didn’t reach his eyes.
Lois gestured to her face. “I attended a support group recently for victims of violent crimes. There was a lot of discussion about security precautions. Someone mentioned this place, said you could help with something of that nature.”
“They must have had us confused with someone else,” the man said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Everything we offer is right here. I can assure you, this should be more than enough to give you peace of mind. We can monitor both the outside and inside of your home 24/7.”
“I really was hoping for something more…substantial,” Lois said, reaching for a brochure. “We’ll hold onto this and look over our options.”
“You do that,” he said pleasantly. Clark reached out his hearing and heard the man’s heart fluttering like a hummingbird in his chest.
He led Lois through the front door and back out on the street.
“Did you see the look on that guy’s face when you mentioned a bomb shelter?” Lois said as soon as they were out of sight of the doorway.
He held up a hand to silence her and listened intently for a minute. He sifted through the voices surrounding them and picked up on the salesman's voice eventually. “They didn’t mention their names,” he was saying. “They said they got the information from someone at a support group?” There was a pause. “Of course I understand. That’s why I called you immediately. Our clients pay for discretion. If someone is-”
“He called someone,” Clark said in a hushed voice. “He said their clients pay for discretion. He seems offended that we stumbled across this information.”
“Well, that certainly fits – if Luthor was building a secret lair under his palace, he would definitely be willing to pay top dollar for discretion.”
Just ahead there was a small alley, and Clark ducked down it, glancing quickly at Lois to make sure she wasn’t uncomfortable. The alley led behind the row of shops they had just passed, and they walked quickly to the backdoor that belonged to the security company.
“What are you going to do?” Lois whispered eagerly. “Do you want to break in?”
He looked at her incredulously. “No,” he said. “I’m just going to…take a look.”
“Oh, right,” she said, chagrined.
He slid his glasses down and scanned the building. “He’s in the back office,” he relayed. The man was still on the phone, speaking agitatedly. One full wall was lined with filing cabinets. Clark worked his way through the contents quickly. The first set seemed to be mostly financial documents, tax forms, and employee files. The second was customer files, with detailed information about the systems they had sold and set up. And finally, at the bottom of the third cabinet, he found what he was looking for. Blueprints.
“Bingo,” he said.
“What?” she asked, and he could see both the excitement and frustration in her eyes.
“Blueprints,” he said. “There are blueprints in the filing cabinet. That has to be what we’re looking for.”
They hurried out of the alley and flagged down another cab, this time heading straight for the police station.
They laid out their theory for Henderson, showing him the copies of the permit applications and the brochures they had snagged at the security company. He looked skeptical at first, but as he went over the permit, including the paragraph with the dimensions, a hopeful smile spread across his normally grouchy face.
“How the hell do you do this?” Henderson muttered. “You sure you don’t want to make a career change? We’ve got some openings.”
Lois laughed, and gave Clark a conspiratorial look. “No thanks on the job. But you know what I do want.”
Henderson sighed. “An exclusive.”
She nodded. “And I want to be there when you open that…shelter.”
Clark started to protest but Lois cut him off. “The whole MPD will be there. And you can bodyguard me all you want.”
Henderson threw his hands in the air. “I don’t recall agreeing to this.”
Lois just looked at him, eyebrows raised.
“Fine,” Henderson said eventually. “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’re going to need a warrant for those blueprints first.”
