“They think he was hit by a car,” the doctor was saying. “There isn’t much else that could explain the massive bruising on his back. What I don’t understand is that there is another, much smaller bruise on his chest.”
Lisa was strong enough to throw a couch through a wall. A man wouldn’t be much more difficult.
Lois found herself staring at the unconscious man in front of her and wanting to grab him by the throat and shake him. He at least knew where he’d taken Lisa; he might know where she was at.
The thought that she might have escaped from him only to be wandering alone in the mountains was as horrifying as the thought that Lana might have taken her. If she was lost it might be days or weeks before anyone found her, and while her strength would protect her from wildlife, it wouldn’t protect her from being cold and alone at night.
“How long before he wakes up?”
The doctor shook his head. “Given the amount of painkiller’s he’s been given, I wouldn’t expect him to be coherent for several hours.”
“I thought hospitals were supposed to watch how much medication they gave people?” Lois asked sharply.
“He became violent when we began asking questions about his injury and offered to call the police.”
The penalties for kidnapping in Colorado were severe; Lois didn’t feel sorry for him.
“How did he get here?” Clark asked. “Was it by ambulance, or…”
“He staggered into the emergency room on his own. He had keys in his pocket.” The doctor looked at them and said, “We keep an inventory of all the property.”
Clark nodded once and said, “You’ve been a great help, Doctor Levinson.”
“I’m always glad to help the FBI,” the doctor said.
“There will be police detectives coming soon,” Clark said. “Tell them what you told us and don’t leave anything out...”
“You think this man is a criminal?”
Clark nodded. “An accomplice.”
They were out of the hospital before the doctor could ask any real questions.
“Since when were you in the FBI?” Lois asked.
Clark looked at her levelly. “It’s a misdemeanor. We don’t have time to go through channels.”
“We’re as lost…wait. He had keys.” Lois said.
“He might have been well enough to drive himself to the hospital.”
Lois looked frantically around the parking lot. At this time of the year, sunset shouldn’t have occurred until late in the evening, but all the intervening mountains cut time off the day. If they didn’t…
“There,” Clark said.
Parked off in the corner near a tree was the limousine. The rear door on the driver’s side was missing. Lois suspected she knew why.
“She didn’t go quietly,” Clark said.
Lois felt a moment of pride. Her daughter knew when to stand up for herself. Accompanying it however was a feeling of worry. Lisa knew how important it was to keep her secret, and she would have waited until she was sure that there wasn’t any other choice.
“There’s mud on the undercarriage,” Clark said. “They had to go over some dirt roads.”
It had rained recently, which meant that places with dirt had become huge mud pits.
“They took her out in the country,” Clark said.
That didn’t cut off the possibility that they may have simply transferred her to another vehicle in the country while moving her to another urban location, but the odds were that she’d been taken to a rural location.
“We’ll get Joshua to have the team look into recent property transactions within a hundred mile radius,” Clark said.
“You don’t think he’d have been stupid enough to mark the route on a map,” Lois asked.
Staring at the car for a moment, Clark said, “There’s a map in the glove compartment. It looks like it’s been marked on, but I need to open it up to make much sense of it.”
He stepped in the direction of the car and Lois put a hand on his arm.
“It was a little stupid of Lana to let him go to the hospital,” Lois said.
“Maybe she didn’t realize how hurt he was.” Clark said. “Gave him his final payment and sent him on his way.”
“Does Lana strike you as stupid?” Lois asked.
Clark turned to stare at her for a moment. “No…not exactly.”
Lois was struck by a feeling of foreboding. “She had to know that we were going to find Bruno sooner or later.”
“It wouldn’t hurt if Bruno wasn’t around to say much,” Clark said. He stared at the car once again then grimaced.
“I can see something under the car,” Clark said. “It’s lined with lead.”
“The same thing that’s in Lisa’s glasses.”
“Lex died in a car bombing,” Clark said reluctantly. “Everybody always assumed that it was done by Intergang in Metropolis, but there were some suspicions that Lana was responsible.”
Would Lana leave some sort of trap for Clark? Lois wasn’t sure. Getting rid of Bruno though, that seemed like a logical next step to her plan.
With Bruno dead, the trail leading to Lana died as well.
“I don’t think we should…” Lois began.
Clark squinted. “Is that a camera…?”
Lois caught a glimpse of a something glinting in a tree before the world exploded around her, the flames tinted green.
**************
Lana stared at the small monitor and smiled viciously as she dialed the telephone number leading to the cell phone imbedded in the underside of the limousine. The picture on the monitor instantly turned to static, which wasn’t unexpected, given the magnitude of the explosion.
Getting Nigel to teach her how to do this had been one of her best decisions. Hiring specialists like Nigel was always expensive and usually led to the hireling thinking he had some sort of hold on the person involved.
But there was nothing in her background as a banker’s daughter or a socialite that gave any indication that she would know anything about the dirty side of wetwork.
No one knew that she’d been the mistress of Nigel St. John for more than a year right under Lex’s nose. The things he’d taught her…
He’d assumed he’d get control of Lex’s empire after Lex was dead. It was unfortunate that he’d been in the car at the same time as Lex met his untimely demise.
The beauty of the plan was that Bruno had bought all the parts himself, one piece at a time as per her instructions. Police would assume that he had planned to detonate the car himself and fake his own death.
She’d reported items stolen with a street value of the same amount Bruno had deposited in his accounts. She’d had him fence them through people he’d assumed were legitimate but she knew to be fronts for Intergang.
With any luck, the police would assume that Intergang had taken Lisa in hopes of blackmailing Clark into giving them some of the properties they’d tried to squeeze Lex into giving them. Bruno’s incompetence leading to his death, or perhaps the though that his heirs might be more amenable to making the sale would give them the motivation the police needed.
Lisa would remain an unsolved case.
Lana had several chalets in Europe. Once she got Lisa out of the country, no one would care where she came from and Lana would at long last have the daughter that had been stolen from her.
Speaking of which…
Lana rose from the table and slipped out the door hidden behind the bookcase, carefully locking it behind her. There wasn’t any sense in hiding her bomb making paraphernalia if she just left the door open.
Heading down the hallway she was reassured by the sound of the television.
The girl would grieve for a time, but eventually she would come around.
All the doors had locks on them, and the windows were barred. She’d be trapped here until she learned who her new mother was and what was expected of her. The first thing would be a little discipline. Lois Lane had been far too lax on her daughter, letting her get away with anything she wanted to do.
But there was time for that later. For now, she needed to bond the girl to her with more expressions of affection.
Bombs weren’t the only thing Lana had learned from Nigel. There were ways to influence a person’s thinking. The first step was to isolate them from their support system.
If Lisa received food, water and shelter from Lana and no one else, and if Lisa had no one else to turn to, it was inevitable that she eventually give in to simple human cravings for love and affection.
If that didn’t work, there were less pleasant things she could try to bind Lisa’s loyalty to her.
Lana absently caressed the heavy leaded pouch on her waist. With two kinds of kryptonite to use as carrot and stick, it was going to be easy.
*********
Lois woke to feel a heavy weight lying on top of her. She struggled for a moment and managed to shove it to one side.
They’d somehow managed to move the length of the car lot; in the distance she could see the firefighters working on the burning car. In the darkness no one had noticed the two of them, which was something of a blessing.
Lois blinked as she realized that there *were* two of them.
Clark lay face down beside her, the back of his jacket shredded and burning. She could see several sharp fragments of something that was sticking out of his back; it was glowing a sickly green.
He could have gotten away in time if he hadn’t tried to save her. Human bodies couldn’t withstand the sort of sudden accelerations that didn’t bother him at all, and so he’d had to move slower than he could.
He’d shielded her from the blast with his own body, and although Lois’s head and neck hurt a little, there were no burns on her skin, and no serious injuries that she could tell.
Clark on the other hand had born the brunt of it. There were dozens of places on his back that had been perforated; the kin around each injury was blistered and raw.
Lois grabbed for the largest piece she could find. She pulled it out, grimacing as it started to bleed.
This was a man who had convinced himself that he was a bad person, the sort who believed that he was fooling the world when he showed up in a brightly colored outfit. He saw being good as putting on a role, something that he sloughed off like a snake’s dead skin when he returned to being Clark Kent.
Yet this man who was never meant to feel pain had thrown himself in front of a fire for her. He’d saved her life, possibly at the cost of his own.
Something hot and painful blossomed in her chest, something that was unexpected.
She’d been attracted to him and even felt twinges of something that might be affection. But in this moment, this horrible moment she realized something she hadn’t known before.
This was the man she was meant for, the one person who made her feel like she wasn’t in control of her life or her emotions.
For years she’d dreamed of experiencing the kind of white hot love that she read about in romance novels, the kind that made you weak in the knees and unable to think about anything.
Lois was in love with this man, and it was too late.
She threw the shard as far away from her as she could possibly manage. Her hand’s shook as she pulled out the next largest and the one after that.
Each spot began bleeding, and the wound didn’t close over. It was soon apparent to Lois that she wasn’t going to be able to do this alone.
She felt a moment of panic clawing at her throat. This was outside her experience, and she wasn’t sure what to do.
She needed medical help and she needed it soon, or Clark was going to die.
Grimacing, she considered the choice she had to make. She was beside a hospital; medical care was around the corner. But if she used that help, then Clark’s secret would be out in the open. He’d be exposed to the world for what he was, something he never wanted, either for himself or Lisa.
Lois grimaced as she checked him for further injuries.
It wasn’t until she saw the flash of blue cloth under his clothes that she realized what she was going to do. As a plan ran quickly through her mind, she felt a sudden surge of relief.
Clark Kent wasn’t going into the hospital. Superman was.
All she could hope was that they would be able to save him.
