Thanks for the feedback, ya'll. I loves it!
TOC is
here .
~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~
From part 11:
Quick on the heels of pain comes the searing heat of fury. The unmitigated gall of Lex’s actions and his belief that he not only would get away with it, but that he’s entitled to do anything he wants, causes a deep yearning for vengeance. I make a silent and solemn vow to bring him down and make him pay for his crimes and God help anyone who stands in my way.
Clark squeezes my shoulder again and I take in a deep breath, nodding to him that I’m all right. He looks unconvinced so I pointedly look at the watch on my wrist. Clark understands the message; although I appreciate the comforting gesture, our time in the penthouse is running out.
A moment later, Clark’s head snaps up and he looks intensely at the door behind me. I interpret his actions to mean he hears someone coming and my suspicions are confirmed when he immediately starts putting everything back in a blur. I just have time to get my scanner back into my bag before a gentle rush of wind flows around me and I find myself back in our room at the Apollo Hotel.
~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~
Master of Disguise - Part 12
~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~
He’s looking at me again. I can feel it. I haven’t checked, but I imagine those beautiful, gentle eyes staring at me full of disappointment and it kills me just a little more; I can’t bear to see it.
Upon our return to the hotel, I’d resolutely refused to discuss Lex’s sexual proclivities, choosing instead to send Clark out on patrol while I printed our evidence. It would be best, I’d argued, for Superman to be seen very far away from Metropolis to avoid association with our break-in and the damaged surveillance camera we’d left in the penthouse.
That was over an hour ago. I’ve been ignoring his attempts to ‘talk about it’ for at least ten minutes now, but the pitiful sounds coming from him are only getting more annoying. After he heaves another pathetic sigh, I slap my papers down on the table and turn to him, crossing my arms.
“What?” I bark. My sudden outburst startles him and I feel just a teeny, tiny bit bad about snapping at him.
“Are you…okay,” he asks tentatively.
“I’m fine.”
“Lois, your heart rate is one hundred fifty beats per minute sitting down. That’s not fine.”
It’s not; I know it’s not, but it doesn’t matter. I feel humiliated and refuse to discuss this with him. I look away from him and start shuffling the papers again, trying to avoid his sympathy. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
I hear him get up and successfully ignore him until I feel his hands rest on my shoulders. “Then don’t,” he says. “Just relax.”
My eyes slip shut when he starts kneading gently. I drop my head forward as he rubs the tension from my neck. His hands move, pressing small circles down the center of my back until the papers I’d been holding droop and then finally drift lazily from my loose fingers.
As his fingertips absorb the strain from my body and replace it with a warm lethargy, my thoughts become more ordered and rational. I begin to wonder what I gain by not dealing with the elephant in the room. Clark’s a clever guy. Based on what he saw and my earlier comments, he’s sure to have pieced it together by now anyway. He knows, or can guess, that this isn’t the first time Lex has cheated on me and that I knew about it before tonight.
I cling to the idea that Clark knows my darkest secrets and even after finding out what a fool I am, he’s still here. He knows it, yet he hasn’t run away from me. It’s this fact that finally draws the confession from my lips.
“I knew,” I softly admit. “Even before I married him, I knew he would cheat on me.”
Clark’s hands pause briefly on my shoulders before he continues with the massage. His only concession to my words is to press more firmly along my spine, but he doesn’t say anything. I’m very grateful for his restraint.
“The first time I suspected he slept with another woman after our marriage, I was devastated. Then I went ballistic and Lex got his first real dose of Lane fury. I think it shocked him a little. My tantrum made me feel better, but I didn’t really change anything. Right from the beginning, Lex told me that the pursuit of pleasure drives him and I had no delusions that our marriage would make him a monogamous man. I learned from my father that men aren’t honest when it comes to sex and they never stay faithful.”
“Lois, not all men are like that.”
I glance back at him with a sad, wistful smile. “I want to believe that. There are lots of men in my life that haven’t let me down. Perry was like a father to me, Jimmy is like a brother; Bobby, Louie and Henderson have all been trustworthy. You.” That earns me a smile. “But when it comes to romantic relationships … well, let’s just say that I put up with Lex’s behavior because my experiences have made me a cynic.”
What I can’t admit out loud is that my inadequacy in the bedroom was one of the reasons I asked Lex to wait until our wedding night to consummate our relationship. The idea of being intimate with him had scared me silly, but I hadn’t needed to worry. His expertise certainly made up for my shortcomings; sex with my husband hadn’t been a hardship. But for all his knowledge and skill, it hadn’t included much tenderness, or love.
“I gave up the idea that love existed a long time ago,” I explain, “so I settled for financial security.”
Clark’s hesitant voice pulls me from my thoughts. “I wish … it’s just … loving someone with your whole heart and being loved unconditionally *is* possible. You should never have to settle for less.”
His gentle tone cracks my detached façade and tears I didn’t expect slip down my cheeks. “I can’t … your opinion matters so much to me, Clark. It’s killing me to know that you see me as less now.”
He wraps his arms around my shoulders and pulls me into a gentle embrace against his chest. “You’re my friend and I care about you,” he whispers intently into my hair. “None of this changes my opinion of you; you’re strong, brilliant, beautiful … pig-headed.”
I snort with laughter and he hugs me tighter. “Nothing Luthor does will ever make me see anything but the most amazing woman I’ve ever met.”
His generosity and understanding are such a relief that I finally let go of the anger and pain of Lex’s perfidy. I sigh and relax completely, snuggling into Clark’s chest and allow my thoughts to drift. After a long, comfortable stretch of silence, I murmur, “you know, I think I’m glad.”
“About what?”
“Lex doesn’t make mistakes; he never would have given me reason to doubt his public image. It was Mrs. Cox that tipped me off.”
He doesn’t respond to my statement, but keeps holding me, rocking me slightly as the emotions and late hour take their toll. “I should get back to work,” I slur, struggling to pull my droopy eyelids open.
Clark shushes me and rocks me again. The last thought to run through my head is to wonder why the shushing doesn’t bother me.
~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~
“Can the two of you just…back up a little? Your hovering is making me nervous.”
Clark and I straighten and take a step back, but we ruin the resulting space by leaning forward over Jimmy’s shoulders again. We watch the screen as Jimmy types in the commands that will give him access to Lex’s computer. Ever since that first afternoon when he failed to hack into Lex’s files, Jimmy has spent every non-researching hour over the past couple of weeks developing this program and if it works, it’ll allow us access to everything Lex has on his drive. It’s now that we find out if the access codes we found in Lex’s office safe last night will gain us the evidence we need.
“Are you sure you can’t just log in using the access codes?” I ask for the twentieth time.
“Not without triggering a system alarm. Once we upload this little baby, though, my Trojan horse will act like a legitimate user inside the system and send us a copy of what’s there.”
It sounds perfect and I’m pretty impressed with him. Jimmy’s voice betrays the pride he feels about his creation, but it’s tempered with nervousness. Our midnight foray into the penthouse was successful, but we don’t have everything we need – yet. I really need this to work.
Jimmy’s fingers pause above his keyboard. “Ready?”
I place my hand on his shoulder and squeeze. “Go,” I say.
He hits enter and we wait, each of us holding our breath. We stay staring at the screen for a full minute before Clark asks, “What happens next?”
“Now, we wait. The system will see an authorized entry into the LexCorp system with a well-known virus attached. The network security will identify and neutralize the invasive program, but that part of the program is a diversion. With Lex’s access codes attached, the real program won’t look like a virus, it’ll look like an authentic login from inside the network.”
“How long will it take?” I ask.
Jimmy scratches the back of his neck. “Unfortunately, we have to wait for Luthor, St. John or Mrs. Cox to log into the system, so it depends on them.”
As it turns out, we don’t have to wait very long. Before the day is out, we’ve printed a ream of evidence and the information is still coming. I’m amazed at the volume of criminal activities. I thought I knew how crooked Lex was, but even I’m shocked by what we find: extortion, smuggling, money laundering, prostitution, arson, gunrunning, drug dealing, espionage, bribery and murder.
Lex is the biggest criminal on the eastern seaboard, if not the country, and perhaps the biggest crook of all time. He almost makes Capone look like a priest. The three of us dig into the information and it doesn’t take long before we start recognizing names and events.
“Samuel Platt,” Clark mutters. “Who is that? The name sounds familiar.”
I lean across several stacks of papers to look at the document in Clark’s hand. “He’s the scientist that died to prove the Prometheus transport had been sabotaged. Antoinnette Baines was behind it. She tried to blow us up; Jimmy and I barely escaped with our lives and she died trying to escape.”
“She wasn’t alone,” he says. Clark hands me a financial statement showing losses in the billions of dollars, including costs for building Space Station Luthor, as well as amounts for bribes, several bombs and a helicopter.
One vitriolic reference to my name catches my attention and my eyebrows climb. “He didn’t much appreciate it when I disconnected that bomb on the colonists transport, did he?”
“I guess not,” Clark agrees.
“Lois,” Jimmy calls, “look at this one – Lex was also involved with the testing of that experimental ‘smart’ drug on those kids, remember?”
“Wow, it looks like Dr. Carlton wasn’t funding his own research on the Mentamide 5,” I say. “Too bad he overdosed on his own drug – he could have clued us in to Lex’s involvement.” I set the page onto an ever-growing stack of evidence and reach for another when Clark’s pensive look catches my eye. “What?”
“That’s awfully convenient, isn’t it? You exposed two of his endeavors and Luthor’s partner took the blame and eventually met an untimely end, leaving his hands clean.”
The reference to Mentamide 5 and Clark’s observation tickles my memory about one file from Lex’s safe. I grab my notebook and open it to the page of names and dates I’d recognized before. Armed with that information and Clark’s theory, it takes little time to get a clear picture. Each time I had exposed one of Lex’s shady deals over the past couple of years, a partner had taken the blame and either died or gone to prison.
Max Menken had taken the rap for killing my friend, Allie Dinello, and for fixing the boxing matches using robotically enhanced fighters. Now I understand that Lex’s aim had been to create super soldiers, but when I exposed the boxers, Lex had gone on to clear my father of wrongdoing and had saved my life by shooting Max. It was the first time I’d thought of Lex as a hero, my own knight in shining armor.
Next we found evidence that Toni Taylor – the head of the Metro gang and the Toasters – had partnered up with Lex, only to take the fall when I exposed her. Lex had seen me that night I’d sung at the Metro Club. When he caught my eye and tossed me a rose, I had worried about my cover. Instead, Lex had used the opportunity to visit me, both earning my gratitude and creating an alibi the night Toni died in a warehouse fire.
He’d funded Miranda’s work with the pheromone spray, too. It was supposed to make people ‘drunk on love’ by removing their inhibitions. Well, it removed my inhibitions all right, but not the sexual ones. Inspector Henderson eventually dropped the felony breaking and entering charges when my evidence helped them stop Miranda from spraying the entire population of Metroplis with the more potent and permanent solution.
The list went on; the nuclear power plant scandal that I’d traced to the plant manager, Doctor Fabian Leek’s illegal cloning experiments, the stolen artworks I’d traced to an underground storage facility and then there was the bombing of the Daily Planet.
The main suspect in the bombing had been a street kid, Jack. I’d first met Jack when Louie caught him trying to fence my stolen laptop. After swearing Louie to secrecy about my novel, I took pity on Jack. I remember how hard it was to practically raise Lucy, so I helped Jack get a job as a copy boy at the Planet. Somehow, the explosives had been planted in his lunch box. Jack had never been cleared of the charges and had subsequently disappeared from juvenile hall. Poor kid.
From the accumulating file notes, it’s clear that Lex considered me a loose cannon and, as it turns out, an expensive one. In one year, my investigations cost Lex’s empire billions of dollars. Just as Clark had speculated, I’d been a thorn in his side, chipping away at his plans until he’d neutralized me.
“So why not just kill you?” Clark asks. “I’m glad he didn’t, but why the elaborate set up and marriage?”
“Several reasons,” I answer. “Lex loves a challenge and it was probably a thrill to win me over and to destroy my independence. We also overheard Lex saying that it’s embarrassing to do away with someone; that it announces he lacks the finesse to deal with something more creatively. He feels like he’s let himself down.”
Clark’s face twists in disgust. “There are so many things wrong with that statement that I don’t even know where to start. The sooner we get him behind bars, the better.”
I can’t help but agree.
~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~
tbc...
