Lois was getting very, very uncomfortable. She had been tied up and sitting in the same position for quite a long time. And, to further make the situation unbearable, she had not emptied her bladder that morning when she awoke. She remembered her promise to Clark before he left and wished she had been better about keeping that promise to stay out of trouble. Somehow she had managed to get herself into a real mess. She had seen an occasional person outside the room walking down the hallway, but none of them paid the least attention to her sitting in the room. It was almost like they were used to seeing people tied up and gagged in this room. She wracked her brain to think if anyone would try to rescue her, but no one knew where she was. She did not even where she was. All of her martial arts would not get her out of this fix. They had her and she was at the mercy of anyone who wanted to extract a penalty from her.
********************
A very weary and sad Superman arrived at the apartment as the police were examining the apartment. Clark made a judgment call to appear before Bill as Superman, instead of being Clark. He asked what was going on and was told that Henderson thought Lois and Clark might be in trouble.
Bill Henderson played the answering machine for Superman and was shocked at the strong response that Superman had to Ellen Lane’s message. Bill told Superman how he had arrived at the apartment less than an hour before to find the front door wide open and no one inside. He mentioned that Ellen Lane had dropped by, but they had sent her home with the promise to relay a message to Lois when they met her. Bill also told of the conversation with the neighbor who had seen a strange van parked outside the apartment and it was driven off by people unknown to the neighbor. Superman looked shaken after he heard the neighbor’s conversation. Bill also said it looked like only one person had been in the apartment the night before. No one in the neighborhood had seen Lois or Clark in a few days. Henderson asked Superman if he would help the police find both of them.
Clark examined the apartment as Superman. He did not find evidence of anyone else having been there in the last few days other than Lois. He examined the bathroom and determined that Lois had not showered
or brushed her teeth that morning, so she was either on a late night stakeout, or she had left in a big hurry that morning. If she had left hurriedly under her own power, she might be showing up any second. But if she left in a huge hurry was it of her own free will? There was no way to determine the answer to that question. Knowing Lois like he did, he assumed that he better get to investigating where his fiancée
was located, because she might very possibly be in major trouble.
Superman took to the air and headed over to Jimmy’s apartment. When he arrived, he noticed that Jimmy was nowhere to be seen and that there were major renovations going on in the apartment. Superman went to the window of the apartment and asked one of the men painting how he could located Jim Olsen. After the shock of seeing Superman wore off, the painter told him to go to the Ester Hotel, where Jimmy was now temporarily living. Superman went toward the hotel and located Jimmy right away because he was having breakfast on his hotel balcony. Superman asked Jimmy what he knew about Lois’ whereabouts and was not pleased that no one really knew the answer to where Lois might be. It was hard to search for someone who might be missing, but almost impossible to find someone who might be acting as an undercover person in an investigation. Was Lois missing, was she being held against her will, or was she just playing hide and seek with people who did not know where to locate her?
On the off chance that Lois actually was being held against her will at the last place that it was thought she had been, Superman hovered over the CostMart number one. He x-rayed the store with all its nooks and
crannies, but did not find anything to suggest that Lois was there. He deepened his search by taking the levels below the ground floor one by one, looking for any evidence that Lois was there or had been there
recently. When he got to the fourth level down, he saw a frantic effort to pack up files from file cabinets in several offices. There were also at least three different offices that were shredding documents at a furious
pace. He did not see Lois anywhere, but went back to tell Henderson his observations at CostMart. What-ever evidence might have been found earlier that day was being moved or obliterated at that very moment. As he left Henderson after reporting, he saw familiar red and yellow trucks with the CostMart logo that were lining up at the back of the main store to transport file cabinets to another location. Since there was no other activity that would require Superman’s attention he hovered high above the store and watched the beehive of unusual activity. He hoped against hope that he would be led to the Lois‘ location.
*******************
A young, very attractive blonde walked into the room where Lois was being held. With her were the two thugs who had abducted Lois, and they were still holding guns in their hands. The blonde moved over to Lois and indicated to one of the men to remove the gag. The blonde then asked for a chair, introduced herself to Lois as “Mindy,” and she sat down on the chair right next to Lois. She then told Lois she wanted to have a heart-to-heart talk with her. She explained that Lois would be killed if she did not cooperate.
Knowing that she had a lot to lose, Lois nodded her head she understood. The gag was removed, and the first thing out of Lois’ mouth was a request to use the bathroom. Mindy said she would consider the request
as soon as she got some answers to her questions. Lois attempted to answer the questions, but knew immediately that she was in big trouble. It seemed that Mindy knew that Lois had been in the store and had
sent Bill Henderson some faxes on the machines found in Bill Church’s private offices. Lois told Mindy that she was attempting to restart her career, as she had been sorely discredited by her stupidity of becoming the fiancée of Lex Luthor. She said she had heard rumors and was just trying to find anything that would help her look like she still had a connection to the world of journalism. She told Mindy that she just wanted to go home, and she would forget anything she saw or knew if she was released. That drew a smile from Mindy.
“Oh yeah? The great Lois Lane is going to ignore a little criminal activity going on under her nose?” asked Mindy.
“What criminal activity? What have I stumbled into that I don’t know about? All I want to do is go to the bathroom, go home, brush my teeth, and climb back into my nice warm bed. I don’t have any other wishes at this time,” said Lois.
A few minutes later Lois found herself being untied from the chair. She felt the blood rush back into her arms and legs. It took her a minute after being released to be able to stand up as her circulation was not moving. Mindy and the two thugs accompanied her to the ladies room and Lois went into the stall. The blonde told her not to close the door, so Lois did as she was told. No one watched her using the bathroom, but then again she was never left alone. Lois determined in her own mind that she was not in danger of being shot if they allowed her to have creature comforts.
When she was taken back to the room and retied to the chair, but not as tightly as before. This time she was blindfolded but not gagged. She sat alone for quite a while before she heard some noise of the door being
opened again. She was lifted, chair and all, taken out of the room, and loaded into the back of a van or truck. She tried to get someone to tell her where she was being taken, but no one would talk to her. She heard three doors slam, a vehicle engine start, and felt the vehicle begin to move forward. The chair she was sitting in moved around as they made turns. She was not sure if it would withstand many more curves before it would fall over. And, sure enough, on one of the turns just a few moments later, the folding chair fell over. Lois let out a scream as she hit the floor. The vehicle stopped and someone came back to upright her and put a gag back in her mouth.
As the door opened, Lois had a sensation of being whisked away from the vehicle. Seconds later she was set down, and Clark took off her blindfold. He untied her and she threw her arms around his neck. She was never so glad to see anyone!
“Oh, honey. Where did you get that terrible bruise on your cheek? Are you okay, did they hurt you?” Clark grabbed Lois and shot up into the clouds with her in his arms. He kissed her and checked her all over to make sure she did not have any wounds. Then he kissed her again. Lois held on to him like she was in fear of falling. She was so glad to see him and relieved that he wasn’t upset with her. “Honey, do I need to take you to a hospital?” asked Clark.
“Take me home. All I want to do is to be close to you and have you hold me.” Lois was sure that she was one very fortunate young lady that Superman would want to know where she was and how she was at all times.
When she got home, Clark called Bill Henderson to tell him that Lois had been located by Superman. He told Bill he was back from Smallville where he went for a short visit. They were both available for questioning if Bill wanted to ask them anything.
********************
When Lois and Clark got back to the apartment both of them were in a strange mood. Clark had not recovered from having to pick up so many lifeless bodies in the mud slide in China. Lois was feeling very foolish and frustrated that she had blown her only real lead to expose and dissolve Intergang.
“So, tell me how you decided that I needed to be rescued,” started Lois. “And just how did you find me?”
“The police were here when I returned from China. They said the front door was left open and Mr. Sears was walking his dog this morning and saw a strange van pull away from the front of the apartment building. I had just finished x-raying CostMart number one and watching the trucks line up to carry off the files they were gathering down on the fourth level when one of the trucks broke rank and went to CostMart number six. You were hauled out of that store, tied to a chair. I was trying to decide how to get you when you screamed and they stopped the truck to set your chair upright and gag you. I just swooped in and took you out.” Clark looked so weary that Lois was ashamed that she caused him so much trouble when he was returning from a long, tedious rescue and needed to rest.
Supper consisted of canned soup with crackers as both of them were too tired to even want take-out. They worked in tandem, neither wanting the other too far away. When it became bedtime, both dropped into bed and held each other like they would disappear if they let go. Both of them had bad dreams that night and comforted each other repeatedly. It was a long night full of demons, but as the sun rose in the morning, both breathed easier and the demons disappeared.
*******************
The next morning Bill Henderson called them. “I have a wedding gift for you two. It seems that Superman had stumbled into a frantic clean up of files in the L4 below the CostMart number one. When I got a search warrant to go to search the store, nothing was left to find. We thought that they had gotten away with the purging of the files. Then I learned that there was a wreck of a car and a CostMart truck in an intersection. When the patrolmen arrived there was no driver of the truck. So it was impounded and taken to the lot. Luckily, someone remembered that there was a CostMart search warrant and so they opened the back of the truck to find file cabinets. When we got to checking, they were the same ones as I was sent in a fax and the search warrant was based on. That constituted the burden of proof that we had something to arrest Bill and Mindy Church, Bill Church, Jr., and a side-kick of theirs, Nigel St. John. All four of them are in jail, being held without bail. There are some very powerful lawyers trying to find the loophole that will release them, but so far we have the head of the new Intergang in jail. Thanks so much for your help.”
Lois and Clark looked at each other. “We did it?!”
“Oh, you did it for sure! If you will wait a few days until we have a nice bow tied up on this arrest, I’ll give you the facts and you can free-lance it to the AP.” Bill was so happy. He had no idea exactly what Intergang was before they started to read the files, but he realized that they had dodged a very big bazooka.
