Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic Undercover Reporter: Resurrection (6/17)

She flexed her calf muscles, bending low, ready to run.

The first pair of men reached the van farthest from the Luxe Soap building.

This was going to be tight.

She took a deep breath.

They climbed into the van.

She pushed off with her back foot —

And a crash rang out!







Drastically off balance, Lois could only pivot her momentum to fall backwards into the hard brick wall behind her, fighting her sluggish muscles for control as they threatened to tip her over into the metal garbage can beside her. If that happened, the clamor would be impossibly loud, and they’d find her for sure!

At the same time, both men jumped out of the van they’d just gotten into.

She managed to steady herself and ducked down low, praying she hadn’t been seen.

“What was that?” One of the men from the van closest to her shouted.

“Aw, nothin’,” one of the other pair called back from near the warehouse door. “Butterfingers here dropped his end!”

“Well, be careful! Ya scared the daylights outta us!”

“Awwww, yer fine!” The man with the crate picked his end back up, gesturing to his partner. “Let’s just get this done fast!”

“Listen, you better be careful with that!” the nervous man at the van snapped back. “You bust anything and the boss will have your head!”

The blood froze in her veins.

She hadn’t heard that name in nearly a year.

The Boss.

She shook her head against the specter that rose up to meet her.

Luthor.

Panic crested down her spine.

Luthor was The Boss.

She’d missed it entirely the first time, but she would never miss it again.

No, she told herself, knees going weak.

She pushed into the wall against her back to keep her upright as fear collapsed her spine.

No, Lex is dead.

To her horror, it sounded like more of a plea than a cold fact.

Lex is buried, she told herself again, more sure this time, as she talked herself down. She knew she was being irrational.

After all, anyone could be a boss.

Anyone could be the boss of this operation.

Anyone living, she tried to convince herself, pushing the panic back into place. You can’t be a boss of anything if you’re dead. And Lex was dead.

She refocused.

She was here to find out who had taken his place.

Because he was definitely not here anymore.

Putting her attention back on the operation in front of her, she saw that the Scared Pair was now headed inside with their crate, while the Butterfingers Duo were already returning. Butterfingers and his mouthy partner may have downplayed the moment, but they were clearly on the alert now. They both scanned the area as they headed back to their van, looking to see if the noise of the crate’s fall had attracted attention.

Butterfingers hopped in the van. But his mouthy partner stood at the door, looking both ways down the alley. His gaze moved past her, then stopped. He looked back at her trash cans, squinting into the darkness.

Dammit.

She held her breath, not moving, and willed herself to be invisible.

“Hey, Mac!” Butterfingers grunted. “Help me with this.”

She watched as Mouthy Mac took an anxiety-inducing step toward her, squinting harder.

Then he gave up and moved back into the van.

Lois held back the sigh of relief, willing her tense limbs to loosen.

Time to get things back on track.

She watched the men move two more sets of crates, getting their timing down. On the third set, she saw her chance and vaulted herself across the alley, coming to rest in front of the first van. Heart pounding in her chest, she waited for someone to shout out that they’d seen her.

No call came.

Silence meant success!

Now came the hard part, since she’d have to do this by sound. She heard footsteps coming down the drive and wondered if it was the Scared Pair headed for her van or the Butterfinger Duo that would stop nearer to the building. Either way, they sounded like they were getting close. She crossed her fingers that they still had crates left, and that they wouldn’t come around to the front.

In the next instant, she felt the van she was leaning against dip down.

It was the Scared Pair! And it seemed like there was another crate left to move.

She positioned herself at the far corner of the van, hugging the silhouette of the bumper. A moment later, she felt the van lighten with a little jolt. Tracking their subsequent retreating footsteps, she tried to step in time with them, quietly making her way to the back of the van.

The Scared Pair’s footsteps receded into the warehouse.

As soon as they were through the door, she dove from her cover alongside the first van across the gap between the vehicles, landing at the front of the van nearest the Luxe Soap warehouse and scrambling to blend into the silhouette of the grill.

She listened.

Silence, she thought gleefully.

And then more footsteps.

This should be the Butterfingers Duo, she thought. From her new vantage point between the vehicles, she couldn’t see them, but she could see into the van that was now in front of her. There was only one crate left. She bit her lower lip. She’d really have to make this fast!

The van she was leaning against dipped. Thank goodness they’d still had a crate to unload!

Knowing she had a tight window, she held her adrenaline-infused impatience in check, and waited until she felt the van rock again, then crept toward the driver’s side, again using the sound of their footsteps to cover her own. They had to be getting close to the warehouse now…

She heard them cross the threshold, footsteps now absorbed on a cement floor instead of crunching on gravel, and flung herself around to the driver’s side to open the door and search the cab. Prising the satchel open, she found three small black velvet bags inside. She hastily pulled the drawstrings loose on one, upending it into her other hand.

The diamonds glittered in her palm in the scant moonlight.

They were smaller than she’d imagined, each at least two carats, but not much more than that — and there were only three. The other two little bags didn’t feel any heavier. Did that mean there were only nine small diamonds total from this job? That didn’t seem like a lot, and probably not worth the vans and the thugs and whatever was in the crates, if they were even related.

But she didn’t have the time to analyze it now.

She dumped the diamonds unceremoniously back into the bag, tightened the closure, dropped all three into the satchel and left it where she found it.

She closed the door quietly, and then bumped it with her hip to get it to latch. She turned and dove back in front of the van.

A footstep sounded a second later.

She tried to listen over her quick breathing.

The footsteps sounded unhurried.

So they hadn’t seen her.

But that wouldn’t be the case much longer! This would be the Scared Pair, and that meant they’d have to cross directly in front of her to get into their van. There was no way they’d miss her if she stayed here.

She stayed low, all but crawling along the front side of the van, until she finally turned the corner. She snuck down the far side of the van, trying to stay far from the crate-carriers.

Once the Scared Pair got their last crate, she would be able to sneak up past their van and back to her little encampment between the trash cans. She should be at least passably safe then. Even if they found her there, she could probably convince them she’d slept through their whole drop-off.

In the meantime, the Scared Pair had pulled their crate out and were closing the back cargo doors.

Another set of footsteps began crossing toward her from the warehouse. The Butterfingers Duo! They’d come back out early!

It was time to think quickly. She would never make it around to the front of the vans without a gap between the pairs coming and going from the warehouse.

She was trapped!

They were mere steps away.

Crossing her fingers, she dropped to the ground beside the van and rolled.

Footsteps crunched along on both sides of her, and both cab doors opened and then closed. The van settled a little lower than it had without passengers.

This could be worse, she thought glibly, looking up into the metal undercarriage of the van.

The engine started.

She winced. Should she call for Superman? He’d have her out of this in a nano-second.

The second pair of men were headed back into the warehouse with their final load. Stuck in a supine position, she contorted herself to try and look around for other ways out. There was a high chain link fence on the far side of the warehouse, but she’d never climb it quickly enough if they saw her. If she ran back to her alley, the Butterfingers in the van’s cab would see her pass them for sure. And she didn’t want to chance actually running into the warehouse.

With deepening dread, she squirmed around to examine the underside of the vehicle. No scary metal bits sticking down, she assessed. Maybe if she stayed put, she might just be alright. Besides, she’d seen this in TV shows all the time, and the hero always came through.

Right?

As the Scared Pair approached her for the last time, she realized they were at their best angle to see her. In response, she tried to pull her feet up toward her.

Please don’t notice me, she willed them. Please don’t notice me now!

She heard two hollow metallic thunks and nearly gasped out loud. But the Scared Pair were just saying goodbye to the Butterfingers with a pat to the cab’s door, and their footsteps continued onward to their own van. She heard the engine start and their van pull away.

Much closer to home, she heard the van above her shift into gear.

She flattened herself, and prepped to roll in case Mouthy Mac decided to turn at the last minute.

But instead, the van began moving gently forward and slowly slid over and past her. She tilted her head back, and watched in near shock as it turned leisurely into the alley and pulled away.

She sat up, running her hands over herself as if in disbelief that there weren’t any injuries.

She was fine!

She laughed out loud into the empty night.

She’d outmaneuvered the bad guys, seen the evidence — not that it made much sense — and not been hurt or caught!

Good luck lightening her mood, she swaggered up to the warehouse door and tried it.

Locked.

Her good mood prevailed – a locked door didn’t stop Lois Lane! She fumbled in her pockets for her lock picking kit. She’d switched coats, she remembered, which meant that her kit was at her apartment.

Good mood wavering just a bit, she circled the building, looking for options. The front door was locked, too. She put her shoulder into it. It didn’t budge.

Wondering how close it was to eleven o’clock and Clark’s promised return, she circled around again, looking for weaknesses.

It was an old building. Like most in the neighborhood, it was made of stone and brick. She’d noticed earlier that the corner of the Luxe Soap warehouse had a chief cornerstone as tall as her waist. Above it, the decorative masonry blocks formed an interlocking pattern at the edge of the building before the darker, smaller bricks took over to blend smoothly into the wall.

The quoining brickwork made perfect footholds, she realized with sudden inspiration.

As she’d learned through numerous investigations with her undercover partner over the recent weeks, roof entries were rarely protected with as much vigor as ground doors.

Reaching up, she grasped a protruding brick with each hand and hauled herself up, feet coming to rest on the lip of the cornerstone.

Stretching upward from her crouched position against the wall, she grabbed another mason block to pull herself up. Then another.

This was going to work!

It turned out to be a slow, laborious climb.

The texture of the old masonry scraped and bit at her hands. Some of the bricks were misshapen or broken entirely, leaving jagged edges that she had to grip carefully or else risk cutting her hands. After one crumbled away at her touch, she realized that she had to be judicious when putting her weight on them, too, both with her hand and then again with her foot.

Nearing her goal, she realized that her interlocking bricks stopped a few feet from the top. Instead, there was a smooth capstone facing that covered the last few feet.

When she ran out of handholds, she kept moving upward, literally hugging the building as her feet navigated the footholds.

She didn’t dare look down.

With only two footholds left, could she make it to the top?

Her hands met the metal rain gutter at the edge of the roof. She grabbed onto it to steady herself, and took her last two steps upward.

Finally!

Hopefully the trek had been worth it. Standing on tip-toe, she looked across the roof, hoping for an entry point.

A skylight.

Yes!

She’d make it inside before her investigating partner even made it back, she bragged to herself.

Gripping the rain gutter in front of her, she pushed down to test it.

It held.

Up, up, and away, she thought with a confident grin.

Twisting, she lifted one leg to the top of the roof, then pressed down against the gutter to heave herself up.

As far as Lois Lane stake-outs went, this had been a pretty simple one. Doing her best to ignore the lingering haunted feeling from the mention of The Boss, she set her sights on the skylight ahead of her and thought, Easy as pie.

That was the instant her boot slipped on the damp, corrugated roof.

She lost her balance, pitching backwards into open air!

One leg flew free – her other foot came down hard on the brick she’d climbed.

Too hard.

Her breath caught in her chest as it crumbled away under her.

She threw an arm up, reaching blindly above her.