If Lisa had been afraid of bugs, she’d have gone mad the first time her hearing had appeared. On a quiet day, when it wasn’t drowned out by the larger sounds of the human world, Lisa could hear the sounds of thousands of feet marching through the soil beneath her. Interspersed with those sounds were occasional tiny popping sounds that had puzzled her until she’d asked her father about them.
When he’d explained, she’d flushed and giggled. An anthill sounded a little like popcorn in a microwave sometimes, and Lisa could simply lie in the sun all day just enjoying the sounds of the earthworms crawling through the ground.
It was good that her mother had encouraged her to be a little bit of a tomboy growing up. The girlish things were great, but her mother believed that being female didn’t mean that doors were closed. It meant that they were open, even if sometimes you had to push a little.
If she’d been afraid of the creepy crawlies, she’d hate a place like this. She’d have wanted to stay back in Metropolis, where the constant sounds of motors, jackhammers, screams, arguments and making love blotted out the quieter sounds.
She wouldn’t have been able to sit against a tree and stare out over the lake at the mountains enjoying the sun and the world around her.
Altogether, the sounds of the earth and wind were a little like music. It was almost as though life moved together in harmony somehow.
Her father said that was just an illusion, but Lisa didn’t believe him. It appealed to her to think that everything was somehow connected, that she was part of a greater whole.
Every sense was sharper here in the country. The cacophony of millions of lives was so overwhelming in metropolis that Lisa could barely understand any of what she was experiencing.
Here, though, everything was serene. She could identify one sound from another, one smell from another, and she could feel the warmth of the sun on her skin and the breeze gently touching her.
She was as happy here as she could ever recall being, and it wasn’t just that the place was beautiful. It was seeing the sudden spark of life in her mother’s eyes, the sudden spring in her step when she didn’t think anyone was looking.
There was a smell that had been bothering her all morning. She’d come to know the smells of the Kent manor pretty well in the time that she’d been there. The rich smell of earthy soil, the smell of water, of grass, the occasional faint reek of machinery. She could actually smell things here, whereas in Metropolis the smells were so strong they nearly deadened her nose.
This smell reminded her a little of death. Her mother had smelled a little like that this morning, and Lisa had felt a little dazed and confused. Usually her mother smelled like life, a little like jasmine, which she wore only occasionally but left trace scents for days afterwards and soap.
This smell though was oddly familiar, although Lisa couldn’t put her finger on it.
She found herself rising to her feet and wandering through the grounds. She’d never tried to track a smell down before, but considering how much it was bothering her, now was as good a time as any.
When she found herself approaching her mother’s window, she suddenly knew where the smell was coming from. It was coming from her mother’s room, mixed in with the overpowering odor of roses.
Lisa’s lips tightened and she headed for the nearest door. This wasn’t the smell of the occasional dead mouse or squirrel droppings. This was something altogether different and more pungent.
A moment later she was inside, heading for her mother’s room.
She stopped at the doorstep. The flowers in the room were the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. They sparkled in the light of the morning sun, and as Lisa approached she felt a feeling of lassitude and contentment wash over her.
Everything was right in the world.
*********
It felt like she’d been standing there for hours just staring at the roses. The smell seemed to be coming from the roses, a light dusting of scent as though they’d been handled by someone she didn’t like but couldn’t remember.
Lisa couldn’t remember why it had seemed so important to find out in the first place.
There was a knock at the door, and Lisa looked up. The chauffeur Bruno was standing there.
“Hey, little lady,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you for a while.”
“Can I help you?” Lisa said. Normally being alone with a strange man would have alarmed her. Not only had her mother warned her repeatedly, but she’d heard stories from her friends.
However, she had no doubt that she was already strong enough to hurt him if she had to, and besides, he worked for her father.
“Your parents called,” he said. “Their date has been going very well, and they wanted you to come out and meet them.”
Lisa nodded. She’d heard part of what her father had said to her mother. She’d been so excited that he’d asked her out that she’d missed part of the conversation.
It didn’t matter now. All that mattered was that they were going to be together.
“OK,” she said.
He stepped into the room and looked at the flowers for the first time. “These are pretty roses. Your dad got them for your mom?”
Lisa smiled.
“Maybe you ought to remind them about it,” he said. He pulled a heavy Swiss army knife from his pocket and Lisa still didn’t move away.
He reached out and snipped off one blossom and when she started to protest, he tucked it behind her ear.
Her ear tingled where it touched, and Lisa’s small amount of resistant faded away. He put a hand on her shoulder as they stepped out the room and said, “It’ll all work out.”
*******************
Clark sniffed the air and said, “She came this way and left with Bruno, the chauffeur.”
“How can you tell?” Lois asked. Was this some new ability he hadn’t mentioned before?
“Bruno wears Aqua Velva cologne. He insists on slapping it on despite my complaints about it. Now he just slaps it on after work and thinks a shower takes care of it.”
“And Lisa?”
“She smells like I do,” he said. “Nobody else in the world smells like her.”
She’d never noticed that he smelled any different than anyone else, but she didn’t have a nose like a bloodhound either. He’d always just smelled good to her.
Clark wrinkled his nose. “What’s that smell?”
“What?”
He strode forward and pushed the door to her room open.
She should have put the flowers from earlier in water, Lois thought.
Clark suddenly staggered beside her and his face turned pale. He backed out of the room. “When did you get these?”
“They arrived this morning,” Lois frowned. “Wasn’t that when you meant for them to come.”
“I didn’t send them,” Clark said. “Lana has handled these flowers, and there’s red poison dust all over the room.”
He stepped further back out of the room and said, “I’ve got to go.”
A moment later he was gone, presumably to look in all the places he knew Lana had property.
*************
Lisa blinked as she woke, suddenly aware that they’d been driving for far longer than they should have. If they’d wanted to have her come this far, her father should have flown for her.
Nothing was familiar to her. The mountains were completely different, and unlike the Kent estate, where the trees had been cut back, here the trees loomed in every direction, barely leaving enough room from the road.
Before her was a large building that looked a little like a hunting lodge Lisa had once seen in a horror movie. There was an old battered pick up truck parked out beside the place, and in the distance Lisa could smell a lake that was much larger than anything on the Kent estate.
Had her parents decided to go camping?
Lisa risked allowing her glasses to drop to the bridge of her nose and she frowned.
The lodge was utterly deserted. To the best she could see there wasn’t anyone inside or anywhere nearby.
She began to get an unfamiliar feeling in her stomach, although the tingling in her ear still left her feeling confident.
She could handle any kind of human threat, but getting lost in the mountains…it would be hard to find her way home.
The man at the wheel glanced at her in the rear view mirror and said, “They’ll be here shortly.”
Lisa attempted to open the car door only to realize that it was locked, and nothing she could do would change that.
Nothing she could do that wouldn’t reveal just what exactly she was. If she needed to, all she had to do was give the door a solid shove and it would end up in the lake.
The driver looked at her and smirked a little. It was all Lisa could do not to reach through the divider and shove his face into the steering wheel.
Lisa frowned. She didn’t usually have violent thoughts, but the thought that he might be trying to keep her from her family bothered her a lot.
Absently she scratched her ear where the rose still sat, bedraggled and worn.
***************
“There were two recent deposits to Bruno’s bank account in the amount of nine thousand dollars each. Both were made in cash.” Joshua said.
“She didn’t want any kind of trail leading to her,” Lois said. “She must have told him how to split the money.”
Depositing too much cash raised red flags and tended to invite Federal scrutiny.
“I’m guessing that Clark is looking over all the usual places,” Lois said. “Are there any properties that she just acquired in the past couple of years?”
Joshua looked frustrated. “I’ve got someone on it. It’s not like they keep all this stuff online. Maybe someday…”
Lois scowled. It was the nineteen nineties. It ought to be easier to track someone down through this.
“Credit card receipts, company gas cards…any place where she’s bought an unusual amount of food.”
“I’ve pulled everyone off the jewelry detail and put them on this. These people know their business, and they won’t leave a stone unturned until we get Lisa back.”
What he didn’t say, and what Lois feared was that Lana wasn’t at all stable. Worse, she had the green poison that could kill both Lisa and her father, and she had it in quantity.
“Damn you, Clark.” Lois said to herself. They were supposed to be doing this together.
Joshua must have heard her because he looked up and said, “He can move a lot faster without a passenger and time is of the essence.”
Lois closed her eyes for a moment and swayed. There wasn’t any telling what Lana was doing to her little girl.
*********
Lisa had fallen asleep again; something was making her sluggish.
It was the sound of the door opening that alerted her. She opened her eyes and stared as she saw the woman from the restaurant…his father’s ex-wife.
She knew what Lisa’s father was, and that meant she knew how to hurt him.
Lisa realized suddenly that she was in real trouble.
Without speaking, she shoved at the door beside her and it exploded off the hinges to fly out over the ground and smash into a nearby tree.
She was out of the limousine a moment later, and when the driver tried to grab her, she punched him hard in the stomach.
He fell back against the car and slowly slid to the ground.
Before Lisa could worry whether she’d hurt him or not, the entire world changed around her.
Everything was surrounded with a filthy green haze, and as Lisa stumbled and fell, all she could do was scream inside her mind.
Unconsciousness came a short time later.
