"I still don't know if this is a good idea, Pete." Clark stared down
at the baby, still asleep but now snugly ensconced in an empty bushel
basket.
They were in Pete's kitchen, and Clark could only thank his lucky stars that Dale and Abigail Ross were gone on a second honeymoon to the Caribbean. He didn't even want to know what they might have said had they seen him and Pete walking across the field behind the Ross home with a baby as well as a load of camping equipment. As it was, Clark could practically hear his parents' voices in his head, admonishing him to call the police, to take the baby into town, to do anything other than listen to Pete.
But Clark kept his mouth shut as Pete continued.
"Look, Clark, for all we know whoever dumped this kid will come back to make sure he or she finished the job. You saw the blood on that jacket, same as I did."
"Yeah, but maybe.I dunno." Clark rubbed a hand across his chin. "I keep thinking there has to be a logical explanation."
"This from a guy who used to keep a spaceship in his backyard."
"Storm cellar," Clark absently corrected.
True, he had followed the river back upstream as far as the LuthorCorp plant, and hadn't seen anything unusual. He knew that if the kid had been lost accidentally there would have been search parties combing the area. But he still couldn't believe someone would be so malicious, so, well, evil, as to abandon a baby.
Maybe that was because he'd had some personal experience with being abandoned. Only from what little he'd learned about his home world his parents probably hadn't had a choice. But surely whoever had done this could have found another option.
"Clark, I'm not saying we don't go to the police at all. Just not yet. Not until we know the coast is clear, and she'll be safe in foster care or whatever the authorities decide to with her."
Clark raised his eyebrows. "It's a she?"
"Yeah, I finally had to break down and change her while you were stowing the gear. Definitely a girl," Pete grinned.
Clark was tempted to reach out and touch the baby, but he didn't dare. He could throw around hundred-pound hay bales like they were matchsticks. But he wasn't very good with small, delicate things. Better he leave that to Pete, who at least had a vague idea of what he was doing around infants.
"Twenty-four hours, Pete," Clark finally said. "Twenty-four hours to make sure no one's coming after her, and then we go to Sheriff Adams. Deal?"
"Deal." Pete smoothed the jacket that still covered the baby.
Clark cleared his throat. "So.what first?"
"First, we find something to put on her head so she stays warm. She's as bald as Lex Luthor. And, second, you go into town and see if anyone's looking for a missing baby."
"Clark?"
At the sound of the voice behind him Clark jumped. He whirled around to find his friend and editor Chloe Sullivan standing behind him.
"Jeez, Clark, I thought camping was supposed to be relaxing," she protested.
"Uh, yeah, well." Clark couldn't think up a witty retort. He usually couldn't around Chloe. Her mind-not to mention her tongue--moved too fast.
"I thought you and Pete wouldn't be back from playing macho men until tonight," Chloe tried again.
"It got a little too cold for camping," Clark finally offered. He'd come into the Talon to see if he could pick up any news, his third stop after Dosse's Café and the corner newsstand. Nothing. So much for his 'lost baby' theory.
He was momentarily tempted to enlist Chloe's help, but Pete's warning still rang in his ears.
"Clark, you know I love Chloe, I do," Pete had vowed. "But that girl has a mouth as wide as the Grand Canyon. This kid would be front-page news before her next diaper change. No Chloe, Clark. No way."
Clark could already see Chloe's reporter antennae on alert, and he quickly changed the subject.
"So, did we miss anything?"
Chloe snorted. "In this berg? Nada. Some kids took advantage of fall break from classes to soap some widows over on Elm. A liquor store over in Granville got knocked over, and the Luthors bought another hundred acres for some new housing development-Misty Acres, or Windy Poplars, or something nauseating like that. And the county grain elevators are getting ready for a bumper crop of corn. Exciting stuff, no?"
"Exciting," Clark smiled. He never needed the Ledger with Chloe around.
"And if you're looking for Lana she had a meeting with her paper cup supplier." Chloe looked at him steadily.
"Nope, I wasn't looking for Lana."
For once Clark was telling the truth. At the moment he was preoccupied with another girl, only this one weighed about ten pounds and currently was wearing one of Pete's rolled-up sweatsocks on her head.
"OK, then," Chloe seized his arm. "You can buy me a cappuccino and tell me all about your exciting sojourn with Mother Nature."
Clark took a quick glance at his watch. He'd promised to spell Pete for a while with the kid before he headed home, but one cup of coffee wouldn't hurt. And in the meantime he'd try to think of some underhanded way to pick Chloe's brain about missing persons cases and the obstruction of justice.
As they placed their order he wondered idly if the police would have him doing time when they found out he and Pete had willingly withheld evidence about a possible-probable--crime. They'd done it before, of course, but so far they'd gotten away with it.
With a human being as the evidence, however, that wasn't going to be possible this time.
But, he mused, at least when Sheriff Adams or his parents killed him he'd have some caffeine in his system.
"Lana? Is that you?" Chloe's voice called out.
"Yes." Lana Lang pulled off her blazer as she climbed the stairs of the Sullivan house. At the top of she struck her head into the first bedroom on the right. Chloe had painted it a bright cherry red and decorated it with political posters and newspaper clippings. The room's owner was curled on her bed, busily typing away on her laptop.
"Hey, Chloe, what's up?"
"How'd your meeting go?"
Lana shrugged. "How exciting can disposable coffee cups be? Paper or plastic? Waxed or unwaxed? Whee."
"Yeah, well, Clark stopped by the Talon. He was acting weird."
Lana raised her eyebrows. "Weird for anyone or weird for Clark?"
Chloe scooted to the edge of her sari-covered bed and stretched. "Weird for Clark. He was asking me about missing person's cases. Do you know if something's up I should know about?"
Lana bit back her smile. Chloe considered everything that happened in Smallville her business, especially if it involved Clark.
"Nope. He hasn't said anything to me. All I know is Pete was really psyched about their camping trip when he came by yesterday. I think he's been feeling kinda neglected. I mean, Clark hangs out with me at the Talon, and with you at the Torch, but he and Pete don't seem as close as they used to be."
"Lana, just because they aren't attached at the elbow anymore doesn't mean Pete's being neglected," Chloe snorted. "And now that Lex is in Metropolis during the week Clark has no choice but to hang with us."
"Gee, thanks, Chloe."
"You know what I mean."
Lana frowned thoughtfully. "If Clark has a problem he's more likely to keep it to himself than come to either of us."
"That's the truth." Chloe picked up her laptop and moved it over to her small, cluttered desk. "I still get the feeling something's going on I should know about. But I guess I should wait until he comes to me, huh?"
Lana smiled. "I would."
But of course she knew perfectly well Chloe wasn't going to wait for Clark to bear his soul to her. That just wouldn't be Chloe Sullivan.
Clark watched his parents from under his lashes as the three of them ate breakfast.
It was four thirty in the morning, and the sun was only now starting to show pale yellow over the horizon, but a long day of work stretched ahead of them.
Harvest time always sucked. Everything seemed to hit at once: corn to be harvested, threshed, and stacked; vegetables that had to come out of the ground before the first frost; repairs that had to be made to the house and barn before winter came.it was enough to make Clark seriously reconsider the value of farm life.
As his parents refilled their coffee mugs and Clark shoveled a few more pancakes onto his plate he was tempted to beg off work so he would go check on Pete and the baby.
Clark still had that gnawing sense of unease in the pit of his stomach about keeping the secret from his parents. He just kept telling himself that tonight time would be up, and he and Pete could call the police and hand the baby over to the proper authorities.
Besides, she and Pete had been doing just fine when Clark had left them. Pete's parents kept a small stash of baby supplies around them house for their various grandchildren, and he and Clark had managed to get the baby fed and changed again before Clark had had to rush home. Fortunately she wasn't a very demanding kid, because Clark honestly didn't know what they might have done if she had started screaming or spitting up. But she had seemed perfectly happy at the Ross house, and Pete seemed perfectly happy to take care of her. That had puzzled Clark a little, because he knew for a fact Pete always tried to duck out of babysitting his numerous nieces and nephews. But Pete had just shrugged and explained that this was different.
"Clark, I think we should start out in the back forty, get as much done as we can before it gets too late in the day," his father said, breaking into Clark's thoughts. "Can you manage without the tractor until I get it out there?"
It was a running joke in the Kent house that Clark could get half an acre down and ready for threshing by the time the family's rusty old tractor could rumble out into the fields. And he could, but Jonathan Kent figured they might as well use the tractor, too.
"Then I need you with me in the vegetable garden, Clark," his mother added with a smile. "We need to get the last of the pumpkins down into the root cellar."
"OK, Mom." Inwardly, however, Clark sighed-so much for his vacation. While his friends could spend their Fall Break at the Talon or the movies he would spend his up to his eyeballs in corn. And somewhere in there he needed to sneak in another call to Pete.
As if conjured by his mind he heard a squeal of tires and a second later Pete's old car swung to a stop in front of the Kent house.
"What in the.?" Jonathan Kent asked.
Clark stood, but Pete was already out of his car and pounding up the steps of the Kent porch.
Martha Kent rushed to open to screen door. "Pete, goodness, what's wrong? Are you all right?"
Jonathan stood and tossed his napkin on the table. "Pete, you know better than to drive like that! What's gotten in to you?"
But Clark quickly noted the white lines of stress around his friend's mouth and the expression of fear in Pete's dark eyes.
"What happened?"
"She's gone, Clark. Rose is gone."
Clark tried to pretend both his parents weren't staring at him. "Who's Rose?"
"The baby, Clark. She's gone. Somebody took her."
They were in Pete's kitchen, and Clark could only thank his lucky stars that Dale and Abigail Ross were gone on a second honeymoon to the Caribbean. He didn't even want to know what they might have said had they seen him and Pete walking across the field behind the Ross home with a baby as well as a load of camping equipment. As it was, Clark could practically hear his parents' voices in his head, admonishing him to call the police, to take the baby into town, to do anything other than listen to Pete.
But Clark kept his mouth shut as Pete continued.
"Look, Clark, for all we know whoever dumped this kid will come back to make sure he or she finished the job. You saw the blood on that jacket, same as I did."
"Yeah, but maybe.I dunno." Clark rubbed a hand across his chin. "I keep thinking there has to be a logical explanation."
"This from a guy who used to keep a spaceship in his backyard."
"Storm cellar," Clark absently corrected.
True, he had followed the river back upstream as far as the LuthorCorp plant, and hadn't seen anything unusual. He knew that if the kid had been lost accidentally there would have been search parties combing the area. But he still couldn't believe someone would be so malicious, so, well, evil, as to abandon a baby.
Maybe that was because he'd had some personal experience with being abandoned. Only from what little he'd learned about his home world his parents probably hadn't had a choice. But surely whoever had done this could have found another option.
"Clark, I'm not saying we don't go to the police at all. Just not yet. Not until we know the coast is clear, and she'll be safe in foster care or whatever the authorities decide to with her."
Clark raised his eyebrows. "It's a she?"
"Yeah, I finally had to break down and change her while you were stowing the gear. Definitely a girl," Pete grinned.
Clark was tempted to reach out and touch the baby, but he didn't dare. He could throw around hundred-pound hay bales like they were matchsticks. But he wasn't very good with small, delicate things. Better he leave that to Pete, who at least had a vague idea of what he was doing around infants.
"Twenty-four hours, Pete," Clark finally said. "Twenty-four hours to make sure no one's coming after her, and then we go to Sheriff Adams. Deal?"
"Deal." Pete smoothed the jacket that still covered the baby.
Clark cleared his throat. "So.what first?"
"First, we find something to put on her head so she stays warm. She's as bald as Lex Luthor. And, second, you go into town and see if anyone's looking for a missing baby."
"Clark?"
At the sound of the voice behind him Clark jumped. He whirled around to find his friend and editor Chloe Sullivan standing behind him.
"Jeez, Clark, I thought camping was supposed to be relaxing," she protested.
"Uh, yeah, well." Clark couldn't think up a witty retort. He usually couldn't around Chloe. Her mind-not to mention her tongue--moved too fast.
"I thought you and Pete wouldn't be back from playing macho men until tonight," Chloe tried again.
"It got a little too cold for camping," Clark finally offered. He'd come into the Talon to see if he could pick up any news, his third stop after Dosse's Café and the corner newsstand. Nothing. So much for his 'lost baby' theory.
He was momentarily tempted to enlist Chloe's help, but Pete's warning still rang in his ears.
"Clark, you know I love Chloe, I do," Pete had vowed. "But that girl has a mouth as wide as the Grand Canyon. This kid would be front-page news before her next diaper change. No Chloe, Clark. No way."
Clark could already see Chloe's reporter antennae on alert, and he quickly changed the subject.
"So, did we miss anything?"
Chloe snorted. "In this berg? Nada. Some kids took advantage of fall break from classes to soap some widows over on Elm. A liquor store over in Granville got knocked over, and the Luthors bought another hundred acres for some new housing development-Misty Acres, or Windy Poplars, or something nauseating like that. And the county grain elevators are getting ready for a bumper crop of corn. Exciting stuff, no?"
"Exciting," Clark smiled. He never needed the Ledger with Chloe around.
"And if you're looking for Lana she had a meeting with her paper cup supplier." Chloe looked at him steadily.
"Nope, I wasn't looking for Lana."
For once Clark was telling the truth. At the moment he was preoccupied with another girl, only this one weighed about ten pounds and currently was wearing one of Pete's rolled-up sweatsocks on her head.
"OK, then," Chloe seized his arm. "You can buy me a cappuccino and tell me all about your exciting sojourn with Mother Nature."
Clark took a quick glance at his watch. He'd promised to spell Pete for a while with the kid before he headed home, but one cup of coffee wouldn't hurt. And in the meantime he'd try to think of some underhanded way to pick Chloe's brain about missing persons cases and the obstruction of justice.
As they placed their order he wondered idly if the police would have him doing time when they found out he and Pete had willingly withheld evidence about a possible-probable--crime. They'd done it before, of course, but so far they'd gotten away with it.
With a human being as the evidence, however, that wasn't going to be possible this time.
But, he mused, at least when Sheriff Adams or his parents killed him he'd have some caffeine in his system.
"Lana? Is that you?" Chloe's voice called out.
"Yes." Lana Lang pulled off her blazer as she climbed the stairs of the Sullivan house. At the top of she struck her head into the first bedroom on the right. Chloe had painted it a bright cherry red and decorated it with political posters and newspaper clippings. The room's owner was curled on her bed, busily typing away on her laptop.
"Hey, Chloe, what's up?"
"How'd your meeting go?"
Lana shrugged. "How exciting can disposable coffee cups be? Paper or plastic? Waxed or unwaxed? Whee."
"Yeah, well, Clark stopped by the Talon. He was acting weird."
Lana raised her eyebrows. "Weird for anyone or weird for Clark?"
Chloe scooted to the edge of her sari-covered bed and stretched. "Weird for Clark. He was asking me about missing person's cases. Do you know if something's up I should know about?"
Lana bit back her smile. Chloe considered everything that happened in Smallville her business, especially if it involved Clark.
"Nope. He hasn't said anything to me. All I know is Pete was really psyched about their camping trip when he came by yesterday. I think he's been feeling kinda neglected. I mean, Clark hangs out with me at the Talon, and with you at the Torch, but he and Pete don't seem as close as they used to be."
"Lana, just because they aren't attached at the elbow anymore doesn't mean Pete's being neglected," Chloe snorted. "And now that Lex is in Metropolis during the week Clark has no choice but to hang with us."
"Gee, thanks, Chloe."
"You know what I mean."
Lana frowned thoughtfully. "If Clark has a problem he's more likely to keep it to himself than come to either of us."
"That's the truth." Chloe picked up her laptop and moved it over to her small, cluttered desk. "I still get the feeling something's going on I should know about. But I guess I should wait until he comes to me, huh?"
Lana smiled. "I would."
But of course she knew perfectly well Chloe wasn't going to wait for Clark to bear his soul to her. That just wouldn't be Chloe Sullivan.
Clark watched his parents from under his lashes as the three of them ate breakfast.
It was four thirty in the morning, and the sun was only now starting to show pale yellow over the horizon, but a long day of work stretched ahead of them.
Harvest time always sucked. Everything seemed to hit at once: corn to be harvested, threshed, and stacked; vegetables that had to come out of the ground before the first frost; repairs that had to be made to the house and barn before winter came.it was enough to make Clark seriously reconsider the value of farm life.
As his parents refilled their coffee mugs and Clark shoveled a few more pancakes onto his plate he was tempted to beg off work so he would go check on Pete and the baby.
Clark still had that gnawing sense of unease in the pit of his stomach about keeping the secret from his parents. He just kept telling himself that tonight time would be up, and he and Pete could call the police and hand the baby over to the proper authorities.
Besides, she and Pete had been doing just fine when Clark had left them. Pete's parents kept a small stash of baby supplies around them house for their various grandchildren, and he and Clark had managed to get the baby fed and changed again before Clark had had to rush home. Fortunately she wasn't a very demanding kid, because Clark honestly didn't know what they might have done if she had started screaming or spitting up. But she had seemed perfectly happy at the Ross house, and Pete seemed perfectly happy to take care of her. That had puzzled Clark a little, because he knew for a fact Pete always tried to duck out of babysitting his numerous nieces and nephews. But Pete had just shrugged and explained that this was different.
"Clark, I think we should start out in the back forty, get as much done as we can before it gets too late in the day," his father said, breaking into Clark's thoughts. "Can you manage without the tractor until I get it out there?"
It was a running joke in the Kent house that Clark could get half an acre down and ready for threshing by the time the family's rusty old tractor could rumble out into the fields. And he could, but Jonathan Kent figured they might as well use the tractor, too.
"Then I need you with me in the vegetable garden, Clark," his mother added with a smile. "We need to get the last of the pumpkins down into the root cellar."
"OK, Mom." Inwardly, however, Clark sighed-so much for his vacation. While his friends could spend their Fall Break at the Talon or the movies he would spend his up to his eyeballs in corn. And somewhere in there he needed to sneak in another call to Pete.
As if conjured by his mind he heard a squeal of tires and a second later Pete's old car swung to a stop in front of the Kent house.
"What in the.?" Jonathan Kent asked.
Clark stood, but Pete was already out of his car and pounding up the steps of the Kent porch.
Martha Kent rushed to open to screen door. "Pete, goodness, what's wrong? Are you all right?"
Jonathan stood and tossed his napkin on the table. "Pete, you know better than to drive like that! What's gotten in to you?"
But Clark quickly noted the white lines of stress around his friend's mouth and the expression of fear in Pete's dark eyes.
"What happened?"
"She's gone, Clark. Rose is gone."
Clark tried to pretend both his parents weren't staring at him. "Who's Rose?"
"The baby, Clark. She's gone. Somebody took her."