<<< Chapter Fourteen >>>
Lex hummed softly to himself as he laid out the silverware and arranged the flowers just so. The tune was one of his favorite arias from Mozart’s “The Magic Flute.” He knew Lois wasn’t a huge opera fan, but she liked – or at least tolerated – his ongoing love of the art form, and since she would be joining him soon, he wanted to be in the best mood possible. Because tonight was the night which would change his life forever.
Tonight, he would ask Lois Lane to be his wife.
He was confident that she would accept his proposal. With his contacts and his position on the board of LNN, he could give her a much bigger and more influential platform for crusading journalism than even the Daily Planet could provide. He could give Ultra Woman all the privacy and logistical support she could ever need or want. His media companies could let her know where she was most needed at any time of the day or night. Her rapidly growing business acumen could help him run his businesses both more efficiently and more compassionately.
And best of all, he loved her more than he had loved anything or anyone else in his life.
That was his trump card. He loved her. All the other stuff was just icing on the cake, more ammunition to convince her of the wisdom of his proposal. There was no need for a pre-nuptial agreement. Lois’s basic honesty and integrity were beyond reproach or any taint of suspicion.
And he wouldn’t mention the change to his will leaving her control of his fortune if he predeceased her until after she’d accepted his proposal. He knew it would make no difference to her, but he wanted her to know that he trusted her more than he’d ever trusted another human being, even Asabi.
Although the codicil in the will giving Asabi twenty percent of Lex’ stock in his companies spoke volumes about him as well. At least, he hoped both Lois and Asabi would understand the gesture as he intended.
The thought that she might not accept his proposal, despite all the additional inducements he might offer her, fluttered through his mind. He banished it with a brutal thrust of will. Nothing would interfere with this evening. No one would disturb them. It was their most private time. A personal time, one which no one else could intrude.
He even knew exactly what he’d say to her. The best part was that every word was utterly and completely true, the best kind of romantic speech. He’d rehearsed it often enough to have it memorized forwards and backwards, but once more – out loud – certainly wouldn’t hurt.
First, he’d stand beside her chair at the table and hold her hands gently. He’d say, “Lois, I’m no saint. I’ve done questionable things in the pursuit of my success, but unfortunately that’s the nature of big business.”
Then he’d step back, just a little, and continue. “And sometimes – through jealousy or frustration – I’ve overreacted. I’ve been ruthless with my enemies.”
Then he’d lean closer and seal the deal. “But, as God is my witness, I swear to you, from this moment on, I’ll change. I no longer want to hurt anyone.”
Then he’d kneel and give her the big finish. “I’m willing to devote my life to you, to commit myself to you totally and eternally.”
A pause for breath. His warmest smile. “Will you marry me?”
Someone clapped slowly and said, “A very nice speech, Lex.”
His smile faded. That wasn’t Lois’s voice. Who –
“Did you miss me, darling? Or are you rehearsing for some other beautiful young thing?”
Now he placed her. He knew the voice. And he knew that he was in serious trouble.
He stood slowly, then turned to face the intruder. “Hello, Arianna.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Surprised to see me again so soon? And here, of all places.”
“Yes, actually. How did you – “
“Get in past your upgraded security measures? It was one of Nigel’s secret passageways. To be honest, it was the only one that wasn’t blocked.”
“I’ll have to send a stern memo to building maintenance.”
She chuckled and oozed towards him holding a pistol in her right hand, the muzzle pointed it at his abdomen. “You prepared dinner for me? How very thoughtful of you!” She clucked her tongue once. “But I’m a poor guest. I should have brought a bottle of wine. Let’s see, you’re serving seafood. That calls for a gentle Merlot, don’t you think? Chateau-Thierry sixty-one, perhaps? Or perhaps not. It’s still early in the day.”
He cocked his head to one side, hoping that she’d be careless and step just a bit closer. “I am just as happy to see you here without wine as with, my dear Arianna.”
She stopped just out of his reach. “You’re still as charming as you ever were, Lex. And just as diplomatic. I know you’d rather cuddle an enraged rattlesnake than see me again, at least in a social gathering.” She indicated the table with her free hand. “Very nice setting. I’d imagine that your lovely young guest will be here shortly.”
Still too far away. He leaned in her direction. “How do you know this isn’t a business engagement?”
“No closer!” She stepped back and lifted the pistol. “This is a personal dinner, Lex. I know the signs. Besides, I saw the limo leave earlier. Asabi should have dropped Miss Lane off at the front door already. I’d imagine she’s all a-tingle with the thought of having dinner with the third richest man in the world.”
He smiled lopsidedly. “The new rankings came out in Forbes already? Drat. I was hoping to surprise you.”
Her eyes flashed. “You know I could never let anyone else have you, don’t you?”
Uh-oh. She was planning something bad. Maybe he could dissuade her. “Arianna – please don’t do what I think you’re planning to do.”
She smiled brightly and eased backwards. “What are you afraid of, darling? Are you frightened for your own life or for the life of your lovely young lady friend?” She tilted her head to the side. “I’d imagine that she’s quite willing to please you in any way possible. How fortunate for you.”
“Arianna – “ and he stopped. He couldn’t tell her about Lois’s secret. And he couldn’t let her discover it on her own. The first bullet that hit Lois would reveal Ultra Woman’s true identity to the world, and Lois would never again have a moment’s peace. They would have to isolate Arianna for the rest of her life or kill her, and he couldn’t risk letting Lois make that decision on her own. He had to deal with this situation by himself, and he had to do it before Lois walked out of the elevator.
“Cat got your tongue, Lex? Oops. My apologies. I shouldn’t repeat my taunts. Perhaps your mouth is too dry? Perhaps a sip of that lovely champagne you have chilling beside the table would moisten your lips.”
He examined her pistol more closely. It appeared to be a nine-millimeter Beretta, the same model the uniformed Metropolis Police used, the same model he’d used to teach her to shoot, and he was certain that Arianna could hit him multiple times at this range no matter how quickly he moved. He had to get closer to her.
“Arianna, if you need money – “
“Money?” She laughed without taking her eyes from him. “When I leave, I’m heading to Antigua and nineteen million pounds Sterling. That’s about thirty-seven million dollars or so, depending on today’s exchange rate. But you already knew that, didn’t you, my darling Lex?”
He didn’t answer and she didn’t give him an opening to move. “I also have a new identity waiting for me. By the time they discover your bodies, Arianna Carlin will have vanished.”
Bodies? No! She was planning to kill Lois as well as himself! He scrambled for something, anything, that might slow her down, even if just a little bit. “What about your practice? It would be a – “ he barely stopped himself from saying ‘a crime’ “ – a mistake to abandon your profession. You always loved helping people. You were very good at it, too.”
“Oh, please! Psychiatry was simply a means to an end. I used it to get to you and then to your mob contacts in the labor unions, and from them to the Mafia dons in the city. I did the rest of it myself, including the elimination of my competition. Did you know that I was the one who wiped out the leaders of the three major gangs two years ago?”
His eyebrows rose. “You? The District Attorney’s office claimed it was an internecine struggle between gangsters.”
“That’s how I set it up. No one knew I was involved except Nigel and Beth-Ann, and they’re both dead.” She sighed. “How unfortunate for them. And for you, actually, since you are ultimately responsible for their deaths.”
“Me? How am I responsible?”
She winked without moving her head. “Oh, darling, you pointed me at those ‘businessmen’ like a heat-seeking missile and stepped back. That day as we left the marriage counselor’s office five years ago, when you pointed out Don Meucci to me, all I had to do was to keep my ear to the ground and learn the names of his chief rivals, the Taylor family and the Goldmans. I lured them to that warehouse meeting. I set it up so that each of them thought the other two were there wipe out the competition.” She chuckled and sighed. “Ah, the good old days. Nigel planted the explosives which he triggered once the first round of shooting was over, and – well, dropping that roof on them didn’t do them any good.” Her eyes grew bright and her smile covered her face. “But it helped me quite a lot, don’t you think?”
As Lex hunted for something else to say, the express elevator dinged once. “Ah. Miss Lane is finally on her way up here.” She waved the pistol at him. “Back up against the bookcase.”
He complied, moving as slowly as he dared. “Since we’re already in my private library, might I recommend a suitable volume for you? May I suggest my copy of Machiavelli’s ‘Discourses on Titus Livius,’ a first edition in Italian? Or perhaps you’d prefer a good murder mystery? I have Robert Parker’s latest Spenser novel, signed by the author himself.”
“Stalling, Lex? That’s not exactly your style either.” The elevator dinged again, a higher pitch this time. “Good. She’s just now passing the sixtieth floor. She’ll be here in seconds.”
Lex glanced towards the elevator, trying to calculate his chances for a quick grab of the pistol when the doors opened. Suddenly Arianna lunged against him and jabbed the pistol hard against his belly. Her eyes stared up into his, and her face was alight with secret evil. “How about one last kiss, my darling? For all the good times?”
It wasn’t a good chance, but it was a chance and he had to take it. “If you’d like, Arianna.”
She licked her lips and he bent his head to touch his mouth to hers. He slowly slipped his hands down to her shoulders. Her left hand curled up behind his waist as she relaxed into the kiss. He was almost ready to make a grab for her pistol. Just one more second –
*****
She still didn’t know if her clothing sent the right signals. Asabi had been more than polite when he’d picked her up at her apartment and had spoken easily with her, discussing the weather and sports and Asabi’s recent escrima exhibition, but she wasn’t dressing for him. She’d modeled three dresses, five different blouse-skirt combinations, and four pantsuits before deciding on dark slacks with a spiffy pastel blouse and low heels. Yet she still wasn’t sure it was the appropriate outfit for the ordeal she knew she would undergo tonight.
Lois shook her head and sighed as the elevator signaled the passing of the sixtieth floor. She was sure that Lex planned to propose to her tonight, especially after their working dinner the night before. He’d been giving her signals for nearly three weeks, and the dinner he was cooking for her was probably his best dish. She was positive that he intended to do or say whatever he could to convince her to marry him.
And she still didn’t know how she would answer. He’d stood by her in good times and bad. He surely wished that she’d spent more time with him, but he’d never complained. And not once had he so much as hinted that Ultra Woman was taking up too much of her time or coming between them in any way. In that aspect of their relationship, he beat Rebecca, who seemed determined to reduce Superman’s visibility, by quite a wide margin.
Even so, the prospect of marriage to Lex – becoming Lois Lane-Luthor – neither filled her with giggly anticipation nor gripped her heart with cold dread. While Lex was, and always had been, a pleasant companion, an excellent dancer, and an interesting conversationalist, he didn’t knock her shoes off when he kissed her. The thought of spending time with him didn’t fill her heart with fluttery joy the way the thought of spending time with Clark did.
She sighed and admitted the truth to herself. She loved Clark. She liked Lex, tolerated his attentions, enjoyed the effort he put into their relationship, but she didn’t love him.
The thought of all those consecutive L’s in her monogram made her grimace, too.
For some reason, the realization that staring at ‘LLL’ on her bath towels for the next forty years would drive her to permanent and utter distraction tipped the scales to ‘no’ on the question of marrying Lex. There was no way she’d wed him just on the basis of convenience, companionship, or tolerant friendship. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them.
But she’d have to let him down lightly. She’d apologize for leading him on, of course. She’d promise to remain his friend – ew, that sounded awful, even in her head, and even allowing that she really did want them to remain friends. She’d assure him that any press coverage she gave him would be fair, unless he wanted her not to cover him at all any more. And she’d be okay with that, too. It was the least she’d owe him. And if the tabloid press got wind of the story of the breakup, she’d volunteer to be the bad guy and take the blame for the end of the relationship.
By now she was pacing the elevator, two steps across and three steps up, walk the diagonal back to her starting point, repeat the process while muttering to herself.
It wasn’t fair to him, she told herself, but it was better than being married to a woman who didn’t love him, who would end up being a problem to him, a woman who might even be angry with –
She suddenly stopped pacing. What was that sound?
It sounded like – a gunshot? How could that be? No one else was supposed to be here tonight, and surely Lex wasn’t taking target practice up there. It had to be something else, something mechanical. She replayed the sound in her mind and it still sounded like a gunshot, but she wasn’t sure if that’s what it really was.
The elevator reached its destination and the doors slid open. She picked up the acrid scent of cordite immediately. Lois glanced around the outer office but saw nothing amiss. She walked across the room and pushed through the door to the library.
She smelled the blood before she saw the body. “Lex!”
She scurried to his side and gently rolled him over onto his back. The steady stream of dark blood flowed from the lower left quadrant of his abdomen, just below the belt line.
He groaned weakly as she looked inside his belly and saw the misshapen bullet resting against his rib. Worse, the bullet had tracked directly through his liver and shredded the tissue badly. He was bleeding internally and externally.
She shuddered. A human being cannot survive without a liver, nor without sufficient blood volume. If she flew him to the hospital right now –
“So glad you could join us, Miss Lane.”
Lois’s head snapped up to take in the woman in the connecting doorway leading to the lounge. She wore a dark, stylish pantsuit, low-heeled sensible but obviously expensive shoes, and lazily brandished a deep blue semiautomatic pistol in one hand.
The woman looks like a cross-dressing English movie spy, thought Lois. Bond, Jane Bond. Or an ad for some obscure Canadian whiskey.
She shook herself out of her reverie. “I have to take him to the hospital right now.”
“How very direct you are. But I’m afraid it won’t help him.”
“He can be there in – “
“It doesn’t matter how quickly he gets medical attention, my dear,” the woman broke in. “The bullet track proceeds upwards through the small and large intestines, then bisects the liver. I’m afraid there is no chance whatsoever for his survival.” She sighed deeply, then pointed the pistol in Lois’s general direction. “You do, however, have time for a short goodbye. A very short one.”
“But – “
“Please, Miss Lane, believe me when I say this. I am still, after all, a doctor. If poor Lex had taken that bullet and fallen directly onto an operating table with an entire surgical team standing by for him, ready to operate on that particular wound and on Lex specifically, he would never awaken from the anesthesia.”
“A doctor?” Lois’ eyes widened with recognition. “I know you! You’re Arianna Carlin!”
Arianna smiled. “Very good, Miss Lane. You win – oh, dear, I’m afraid you don’t win anything except – “ she waved the pistol at Lex.
Lex groaned again and grasped Lois’s arm. “I’m afraid – Arianna is telling the truth. No – no doctor can save me now.”
Lois looked down at him. “I can get you help. You know I can.”
He flinched, then smiled thinly. “Not even Superman could – could help me now.” He tried a chuckle but it faded into another groan. “I – once killed a man in a very similar fashion. Unintentionally, I assure you. I was trying to arrest him, not kill him. And I didn’t – ohh! – I didn’t kiss him first.”
A tear formed and crept down Lois’s cheek. “Lex – please let me – “
“No. I don’t want my last moments to be – to be spent being mauled by well-meaning but – uh – futile attempts to save me. No – no heroic measures. I have a Do Not Resuscitate order on file with – aaah! – with my personal physician.”
Her eyes dampened. “No! Let me try to help you. Please!”
He paused and shuddered, then relaxed again. “I was going to propose to you tonight. I had it all planned. We’d have dinner, drinks on the – ahh – on the balcony – ohh!”
“Lex, please don’t try to talk! You can – “
He fumbled around until he caught her hand in his. “Lois, my – my darling. I only want to know – before I die – if you would have accepted – my proposal.”
Lois forced a smile and wiped the tears from her face. “I’ve been thinking about tonight, too. I kind of expected to hear a proposal from you.”
He closed his eyes and smiled back. “Then you’ve also – you’ve thought about your response.”
“Yes. Yes, I have.”
He squeezed her hand weakly. “Please don’t – don’t keep me in suspense.”
He’s going to die, she thought. And I can’t let him die feeling disappointed in me. “I would have said – yes, Lex, I’ll marry you.”
He smiled and sighed. “Thank you. I – I apologize for the setting, but I – ahh! – I am thrilled with your response.” He reached up and cupped her cheek with one bloodied hand. “I love you, Lois.”
She held his hand to her face. “Now let me take you to the hospital. Please.”
He took a deeper breath and let it out slowly. “Too – late. I would have – tried to – make you – happy – “
His hand slipped from her cheek and flopped to the floor. “Lex?” she called. “Lex!”
“Oh, I’m afraid Lex has slipped the surly bonds of earth and shuffled off this mortal coil, my dear,” Arianna purred. “I hope you don’t mind that I'm conflating those references. But don’t worry. I intend that you join him momentarily.”
With that, Arianna lifted her pistol and touched it to the back of Lois’s head. Then she pulled the trigger.
*****
Killing people was so satisfying, Arianna mused, that it was a shame she got to do it so seldom.
As the bullet struck her, Lois’s head leaned forward, then turned towards Arianna. The murderess thought for a moment that gunshot victims sometimes moved oddly at the moment of death.
Then Lois lifted her tear-tracked face to Arianna and stared at her with malevolent intent. Arianna stepped back as Lois stood up and turned to face her.
She fired again, this time at the center of Lois’s chest. Her intended victim’s hand blurred but her clothing didn’t puff out with the impact of the bullet.
She couldn’t have missed! Not at this range! Arianna stepped back again and fired once more. Lois’s hand blurred again. There was no other response except to step closer.
“Die! Why don’t you die?” Arianna fired three more times. Lois didn’t bother catching these shots. She only let them smash into her torso and clatter harmlessly away.
Suddenly Arianna felt a wall behind her. She lifted her pistol once again, intending to put a bullet into Lois’s eye, but her hand was unaccountably empty. She saw her weapon in Lois’s hand.
Lois turned her head and blew towards the balcony doors. They banged open just as Lois tossed the pistol through them and off the edge of the balcony to the street one hundred eighteen stories below.
Panic. Arianna hadn’t felt panic for years, but she felt it now. How could Lois be invulnerable? How could she move so quickly? No one could do those things except – except –
“Ultra Woman! You – you’re Ultra Woman!”
Instead of answering, Lois reached out and grasped Arianna’s jacket in one hand and pulled her closer. “You killed Lex, Arianna. Now I’m going to kill you.”
Hysteria joined panic in Arianna’s mind. Her voice wouldn’t work properly and her bladder control deserted her. “No! P-please no! D-don’t – don’t kill me! Please!”
Lois pulled Arianna’s face next to hers. “Mercy?” asked Lois. “You want mercy from me?”
Arianna felt her knees turn to water and her feet go numb. “P-please! Mercy, yes, mercy! Please – “
Lois shook her effortlessly. “You just deliberately murdered a man you claim you once loved! And you would have murdered me! You’re responsible for six deaths I personally know of! You blackmailed a frightened young woman for years and then shot her to death and tried to kill her parents! You’ve stolen, lied, cheated, bought judges, bribed lawmakers, destroyed people’s lives! And for what?” Lois shook her again. “Tell me why you did all of that!”
Desperate, Arianna grasped Lois’s wrist and tried to force her to let go, with no success.
“Talk to me!” Lois growled. “These will be your last words, so make them good ones!” A feral smile crept across her face. “Make them suitable for the morning paper. I promise to quote you exactly.”
Arianna suddenly found herself thrown into a wingback chair. Both she and the chair went over backwards and she ended up on her hands and knees, looking down at her purse.
Her purse! The Kryptonite!
She heard Lois’s shoes slip softly across the carpet as she scrambled for the small lead box. “Looking for another gun, Arianna?” Lois taunted. “What makes you think it would do you any more good than the last one did?”
The box! She’d found it! She flipped it open as Lois grabbed her by the collar again and lifted her bodily into the air, then released her and let her crash down onto the floor. Desperately fighting through the pain, Arianna spun and kicked out at Lois’s legs.
Lois let out a cry of shocked surprise and fell to the floor. Arianna was thrilled. It works! The crystal works on both of them!
Before Arianna could react, Lois was on her, slamming her fists against Arianna’s face and head. Arianna returned the punches as best she could, but even with the green crystal sapping her powers, Lois was younger and stronger. They traded blows for several moments until Arianna called up her last reserves of strength to shove Lois away with her leg. As Lois tried to resume her attack, Arianna kicked her once more, this time opening a gash on Lois’ cheek which spurted blood.
Lois fell to her elbows and knees, stunned. Arianna snatched her purse up and rolled away. She pulled out the little twenty-five caliber automatic pistol she kept there for backup or quiet killings and snapped a shot at her adversary.
Her hurried aim was awful. The bullet slapped against the wall far above Lois’s head, but the younger woman’s shocked expression was worth it. Arianna lowered her aim and pulled the trigger again, but Lois rolled out of the way and ducked behind a sofa. Another miss.
Arianna staggered to her feet. “I’ve got you now, Lois Lane, Ultra Woman, whatever your name is! I’m going to shoot you right between the eyes and watch you die. The Kryptonite will make you weak and helpless and I’m going to finish the job.” She limped towards the sofa carefully, knowing now that underestimating Lois Lane was a dangerous mistake to make. “Come on, Lois, don’t make this any harder that it has to – whoof!”
Lois popped up and threw her shoes into Arianna’s face, and before she could fire, Lois had rolled the sofa over towards her. Arianna stumbled backwards and tripped onto her back and fired another round into the ceiling as she fell. She recovered as quickly as she could and fired three times into the overturned sofa, trying to hit Lois with a lucky shot.
She rose to her knees and looked around, despite the swelling she felt around her right eye. Lois wasn’t making any noise that Arianna could hear, so she crept closer to the sofa and lunged around it with the pistol at the ready.
Nothing but a few splotches of blood on the floor.
Arianna quickly checked the magazine in her pistol. Four rounds, plus the one in the chamber. This was turning into quite an adventure, and she didn’t have any spare ammunition for the lethal little popgun. She’d have to be careful not to waste any more shots.
“Where are you, Lois?” she sang softly. “Come out, come out, wherever you are. I’m going to find you.” She grinned, enjoying the hunt. “Marco?” There was, of course, no response of “Polo” from Lois. “Come on, Lois, play the game with me. Marco?”
She stifled an urge to laugh. It had been too long since she’d personally taken care of her opponents. She’d let Nigel or Beth-Ann do it for too long. She missed Beth-Ann, but maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that Nigel was dead. After all, the money he’d squirreled away was waiting for her to draw on like vintage wine from a cool storage cellar. The silly man had believed that Arianna hadn’t known exactly where it was, how much was there, and how to get to it. Nigel’s hoard combined with hers would allow her to pick and choose any young man she wanted. All she’d have to do would be to bait a hook with a few dollars and a little cleavage, and they’d climb over each other to sacrifice themselves to her. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel.
But first she had this one little brunette fish she had to shoot. “Come on, Lois, don’t make this hard on both of us. You know I’m going to find you.”
Something whacked the floor across the room by the library entrance. She spun in that direction, then stopped at the obvious deliberate distraction. “You’re getting clumsy, Lois. The crystal is sucking your life away. Let me end your pain, Lois. Let me help – “
She turned as she sensed someone beside her, but something hard slammed into her wrist. She gasped at the sudden pain and stumbled slightly as she tried to transfer the pistol to her uninjured hand. A sudden sharp impact on the back of her neck took her breath away and turned her limbs into melting wax. She fell limply to the floor, face down, and dropped the pistol.
She tried to reach for the weapon but her hands refused to move. She felt her body going into oxygen debt, but she couldn’t make her lungs inhale. In fact, she couldn’t feel anything. Not anywhere.
She started to panic, then something made her roll onto her back. Her head wobbled loosely for a moment, then she felt a hand on her chin.
Asabi. It was Asabi kneeling over her. She tried to say something to him, but her mouth wouldn’t quite form the words.
She heard his voice as if from across the room. “You have murdered my finest friend, Dr. Carlin. And you have tried to murder Miss Lane, who is also my friend.” He showed her a straight stick of some kind. “You have forgotten that I am a master of escrima, and that it is a deadly fighting art. Your neck is broken and your spinal cord has been severed. You are dying. Not as slowly and painfully as you deserve, but you are dying nonetheless.”
Dying! Her neck was broken! No! It couldn’t be! She couldn’t die, not like this – he wouldn’t –
Her vision grayed out as if the lights were being turned down. She fought to sit up, to move her head, to do something, anything!
Nothing. No response. Nothing below her chin worked.
Asabi lifted his gaze and said, “Miss Lane, is there not an important task for you to complete?”
The light faded nearly to darkness. She heard a distant click, then Lois said, “The crystal is back in the box.”
“Then you will soon be well, Miss Lane?” answered Asabi.
“I think so. Thank you.” There was a moment of near silence as the lights went out completely. Only Arianna’s hearing still functioned. “Asabi? Did you really – I mean – “
“Yes. I did.”
“So she’s – “
“Yes. She is dead.”
It was the last thing Arianna Carlin heard in this life.
*****
Lois paused, trying to figure out how to feel. On the one hand, a woman was dead at her feet, a woman she herself had, in a moment of rage, intended to kill. What did it matter who actually did the deed? Lois had succumbed to the desire for revenge.
On the other hand, that dead woman had been a criminal mastermind who’d tried to kill her and had killed Lex. And she’d been responsible for dozens of other deaths, not to mention all the other hundreds of other crimes which would be laid at her feet.
One of which would be the death of Lana Lang-Kent.
On top of that, Lois hadn’t taken any of the several opportunities she’d had to kill Arianna. Did that make her more or less a heroine?
She’d deal with her feelings about her intent to kill Arianna later. Maybe tomorrow she could schedule some time to think about that. Or maybe she could stuff them in a blender and press the ‘puree’ button.
But why was Asabi there? What had brought him to the penthouse?
“Asabi?” she began. “How did you know to come up here?”
He stood and clasped his hands together in front. “The pistol.”
“What? Which pistol?”
“The one which fell from the balcony. It struck the limousine and penetrated the windshield. When I saw it, I knew that there was much trouble here.”
“I see.” She hesitated, then asked, “Is that how – I mean, was that what tipped you off to me being Ultra Woman?”
He shook his head slightly. “No, Miss Lane. I had suspected your dual identity since our journey to Brazil last year, and when Mr. Luthor returned from your boating trip several weeks ago it was confirmed to me by the simplified and almost identical stories told by all four of you, combined with several facts I gathered from each of you.”
“Oh, good. I suppose dozens of people have figured it out by now.”
“No. I know this only because of my close relationship with – my friendship with Mr. Luthor. Had I not been in this position, I would not now have this knowledge.” He closed his eyes and shuddered for a moment. “And now – my friend – my friend is – I have failed him when – “
Lois stepped closer and hugged him lightly. “Asabi, I’m so sorry. I know how much he depended on you and how much he cared about you. I know that he considered you his closest friend in the world.” She turned her head to one side and sniffed. “You didn’t fail him. If anyone failed him, it was me.”
He slowly put his arms around her back and bent his head until it rested on her shoulder. Then he wept quietly for a long time.
So did Lois.
