Title: One Stone
Author: Minnie-May
Distribution: Archive permission granted to: Naughty-seduction, Girl Friday, Electric, all others please ask
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters. Obviously. Although I wouldn't mind owning Lex ^_~
Summary: "So Ms. Sullivan the question on my mind is this; why do interviews with you tend to end in murder and mayhem?" Chlex
Rating: PG-13
Feedback: Yes please! Send to: sweet_senshi@hotmail.com
Spoilers: S1 and beginning of S2
Author's Notes: It's like the Chlex version of Mission Impossible! Only not.
Chapter 3: Mission Not-So-Possible
Metropolis at night sparkled. It was as beautiful as it was frightening. On the street she stood in the upper section of the city there was almost nothing to fear. The building she wished to enter was a steel and chrome giant in the heart of the downtown business section. Although there was a fair amount of traffic it was basically dead. Everyone who frequented these streets were at home by now, getting ready for the weekend. Chloe ran a hand through her short blonde hair and wondered if she should have accepted the wig that Chad had offered.
After the meeting with Lex, Chloe had went about researching Spencen Incorporated and had found that everything that Lex said was true. There was a suspicious list a mile long related to the company that had everything from bribery to disappearances. Chloe knew that if she could get into the building then she would have a chance at poking around in the file cabinets, maybe find some of the more dirty business deals.
After confiding her plan to Chad, Smallville's only Goth, he had offered to find her something that would allow her to blend in the building. Chloe smoothed her hand over the rough fabric of the cleaning lady outfit she wore and wondered again where Chad got all his supplies.
After a final deep breath to gather her courage, Chloe placed her hands on the dirty concrete door of the side entrance and pushed. The door opened slightly and Chloe let out a sigh of relief. She had feared that it would have been locked like the rear entrance had and she would have to give up the trip as useless. Before she could push the door all the way open, however, a pale hand grabbed the door handle and yanked it closed. Chloe felt a cold chill go down her spine as she realized she had been caught. Slowly she turned around, wheels already in motion about how she would get herself out of this one. What she saw made her start once more.
"Lex Luthor!" Chloe cried in surprise, feeling a sense of relief so powerful flood through her that she nearly fainted.
"Say it a little sounder Sullivan, I think there were a few people in the city that didn't hear that" Lex said venomously, craning his head around the dark alley beside the building. There was no one around to hear their conversation so Lex relaxed slightly. As Lex checked out the perimeter the power to verbalize had returned to Chloe.
"What are you doing here?" she hissed at him in a whisper, now very much aware of the fact that his hand was still on the door handle behind her and she was sandwiched between the door and his body. Chloe was suddenly glad that the dark atmosphere of the alleyway hid her blush.
"I'm here to save you before you do anything stupid" Lex replied matter-of-factly.
His hand went from the door handle to the small of her back and he stepped away from her as he attempted to maneuver her away from the door. Chloe yanked herself out of his grasp and gave him an indignant look. She was no damsel in distress, she could take care of herself fine thanks. Internally she was fuming at the audacity of Lex assuming that she would get herself into trouble. The plan had flaws, sure, but she knew what she was doing.
"I'm not going anywhere Lex. So you can just go off and "save" someone else. I'm fine" Chloe said icily. Lex looked weary as he stared at her but she was holding ground. The thought entered his mind to just pick the small blonde up, throw her over his shoulder and leave but he somehow felt that would be demeaning. Besides, no matter how much he wanted to admit that he was fully changed he realized that he was still up for an adventure.
"You are not fine. You have no idea what you'll find in there and I can't let you go in there alone" Lex said, breezing past her and pulling the door wide open soundlessly. Chloe felt her jaw drop and tried to pull herself together before answering.
"Alone?"
"Well I obviously can't stop you. Or did you change your mind?" the last question came out as more of a challenge and Chloe stepped up to the door and shot Lex a cocky smile. "No, I guess not," he mumbled as she shot past him into the building.
As Lex eased the door closed behind the two of them he let his gaze sweep up and down Chloe in her maid uniform.
"Interesting outfit choice" he said wryly.
***
Lex walked down one of the long, dark hallways of Spencen with Chloe tailing him close behind. They had been all over the abandoned building for the last 15 or so minutes trying to find where the company kept all of its dirt. Chloe had assumed that much of it would be in the record's room, so they had decided to check there first. After getting lost in the wide, empty hallways a few times they had finally come to find that the records room was locked. Lex had attempted to jimmy the lock with one of Chloe's hair pins to no avail.
"Wow, you really were quite the juvenile delinquent in your day weren't you?" Chloe had asked in amusement.
With that plan gone the two intruders had decided to go straight to the top. They would look through the offices of the most powerful members of the corporation and hopefully Spencen himself. As of yet Lex and Chloe had been lucky enough to avoid any security that might be on patrol but as they got up to the top levels of the corporation Lex reminded Chloe to precede with more caution.
"I don't think I need to remind you what would happen if we were caught snooping around in here" Lex hissed as a file cabinet Chloe opened let out a protesting squeal. Chloe rolled her eyes in annoyance at Lex's overprotective streak.
"General badness, I get it Luthor" Chloe stated, closing the cabinet quickly and breezing past him down the darkened hall. She had tried to play it off as best she could but when the drawer had issued forth that loud squeak her heart had jumped into her throat. She tried to remind herself that breaking and entering was all in a day's work for an investigative reporter. 'I should look at this as an adventure', she thought. 'And hey, my worst adventure with Lex Luthor? Pretty much still my best adventure.'
Lex's thoughts, however, were in a much different vein.
'She doesn't even care that at any moment a highly trained security guard could turn the corner and catch us. We're in real danger here and she's just excited to be playing Nancy Drew. It's almost admirable really, in an insane way.' Lex felt a smirk pull at the corner of his lips and shook his head.
Lex caught stride with Chloe as the two turned another corner and stopped dead. A dull light was emitting from under one of the huge office doors and even from where they were standing they could hear the faint ebb and flow of conversation. Lex and Chloe exchanged a worried look. Lex grabbed Chloe by the arm and pulled her around the corner, out of sight of the occupied office.
"Guess we're not so alone after all Sullivan. Too bad we couldn't find any of the information we were looking for. Although apparently a lot of Spencen employees have an extensive porn collection," Lex whispered to Chloe, his eyes sparkling with humor.
"Please, I'm trying to repress" Chloe said, scrunching up her nose.
"Anyway I think if we go further down this hallway there's a back exit that would take us to the car" Lex said, placing a hand under Chloe's elbow and beginning to propel her forward. Chloe planted her feet on the ground and glared at Lex incredulously.
"I'm not going anywhere Luthor until I get this story." Lex's mouth hung open slightly in surprise as he struggled for words. "As far as I'm concerned this is the best break we've had yet. A meeting in the middle of the night in an empty office building? That just screams 'sleazy business' and I fully intend to find out what they're doing in there" Chloe said, pulling her elbow from Lex's grasp. Lex stared at her once more like she had grown an extra head.
"You can't be serious?"
"Dead serious. Go out and wait for me in the car, I shouldn't be long," Chloe dismissed as she poked her head around the corner and scooped out the hallway for any other signs of life.
"And how do you propose you're going to get in on this clandestine meeting may I ask? Walk in and say you need to clean up?" Lex's tone was unbelieving but Chloe chose to ignore him. He was right of course. She had to find a way to get into that office without stopping the conversation or alerting anyone that something was wrong.
That's when she noticed the air vents. High up in the ceiling were long metal tubes of ventilation with a mess grill every so often. The vents ran directly over the lit office in question. If she could crawl up into one of those vents she could be directly overhead and hear every word without anyone being the wiser.
"The vents!" Chloe whispered excitedly. "I'll use the vents."
Lex's gaze followed Chloe's to the long metal air vents above their heads. There would be no way to talk her out of this and no way to get her out of the building without making a scene and broadcasting their presence. He would have to go along with this insane plan. Luthor scowled but suggested that they enter the air vents from the office next to the lighted one so they could use desks and chairs as leverage to get them into the ducts.
Thankfully the desk was right over the entrance, but even so Lex had to give her a hand up into the air vent.
"Hands!" she hissed as she felt Lex grope her bottom.
"Believe me Sullivan, that's the last thing I'm thinking of right now" Lex hissed back and maintained the hold on her butt until she was safely in the air vent. Then he propelled himself forward and up into the small square entrance.
Tape recorder in hand Chloe led the way shimmying along through the vents. It was only a few seconds before they were over the illuminated office and Chloe hit the record button on her tape recorder as soon as the voices started to come into focus. Through the mess wire grill in front of her she could get a bird's eye view of the office below her. It was huge and posh with a leather and wood motif that was a cross between country and rock star. Near the long cherry wood desk stood two men in business suits sorting through files scattered across the desk.
"The Linwood account? Is that taken care of too?" the man in his early 40s asked. Chloe had a feeling that he was the leader of this whole operation the way that he was barking orders at the other man. The other man, younger and fidgety, verified her suspicions.
"Yes Mr. Spencen. We just told Linwood that we knew what his son was doing on the side as a, ahem, hobby. We made it very clear that if he didn't sell over all his commanding shares than we might be a little too generous with the information we had acquired."
"Ah good job" Spencen said, sounding pleased. He closed the file and picked up another one from his desk, flipping it open.
"Now, about LexCorp" Spencen began. Chloe shot a worried look over her shoulder at Lex, whose gaze had suddenly narrowed. He seemed to be paying complete attention to what was going on now.
"We don't have all that much to go on yet sir" the lackey supplied, sounding more nervous now. "There's Lex's criminal record, but that's common knowledge. There have been a few cover ups from when he was a teenager but you find that when Lionel Luthor buries something it stays hidden."
"So nothing personal to go on" Spencen said, sounding dismayed. The lackey perked up now, his words rushing together in an excited stream.
"Well not quite but Lex is really fond of Smallville. He's been doing all these clean up projects with the town and building all these new facilities. Not to mention that he seems to have made some friends there, practically with a family called the Kents. I'm sure that if you found a way to threaten the town Lex would be more than happy to be more reasonable." Spencen let out a long chuckle that chilled Chloe's blood and patted his lemming on the shoulder.
"Lex Luthor enamored with a town called Smallville? Well stranger things I suppose…" he trailed off here and shook his head. "Look into ways of breaking into that town. Try bribing some of the local politicians, if we have a few of them in our pockets than it'll be easier to get a foothold. I won't have LexCorp standing in my way" Spencen said, closing the file in his hands.
A loud buckling noise sounded all around Chloe and Lex. Chloe felt panic shoot through her system as she realized that the metal of the vents wasn't as strong as she had hoped. The thin sheet directly underneath her was beginning to bend forward and separate from the rest of the vent. Lex reached out a hand to grab her but it was too late as Chloe found herself rushing to meet the thick carpet in the office below. She hit with a resounding smack and a piece of the vent fell on top of her. Chloe winced and looked up as both men stared down at her in shock. She still had the tape recorder chuckled with white knuckles in her hand. She tried to hide it before they noticed but Spencen caught sight of it as she tried to slip it in the pocket of her maid uniform.
"Looks like we have a curious little visitor" Spencen said, walking over to where Chloe had just scrabbled to her feet and had pressed herself up against the wall. Her eyes darted around for anything that she would be able to use in self-defense against the man.
"You're air vents aren't very sturdy" Chloe remarked as her hand came down on a vase sitting on a shelf behind her. She held the vase behind her back as she continued to backtrack across the room.
"Well the vents are conventionally made for air, not people" Spencen remarked, sounding amiable as he took another menacing step toward Chloe. She wildly hoped that Lex was on his way to the car right now.
"Smith call for security" Spencen shot over his shoulder. As Smith began to dial Spencen added, "Tell them not to call the police."
Chloe's stomach lurched at his last statement. There was only one reason why they wouldn't bring the police in. Her body was drenched in cold sweat and the hand that held the vase was slippery. She stopped moving backwards and allowed Spencen to close the distance between them. On the count of three she would smash him with the vase and get the hell out of there. One….Two…Thr-
A loud scream of metal rubbing against metal and Lex was on the floor a few feet from Chloe. Her eyes went wide as he calmly picked himself up from the floor and glanced around the office. Spencen was visibly shocked.
"Lex Luthor!?""
"Hello Howard" Lex said, all charming charisma, as if he hadn't just dropped from the man's air ducts. Lex nodded towards Chloe and then inclined his head toward the heavy oak doors of the office.
That was all Chloe needed. She pulled back her arm holding the vase and swung as hard as possible at Spencen's head. It connected with a crash and Spencen went down. Chloe jumped over his prone form and both she and Lex raced to the door and threw it open. Behind them Smith was yelling something and as they entered the hall at a dead run they could hear the sound of the security men's boots slapping the ground not far in the distance.
Chloe had never run that fast in her entire life. Adrenaline shot through her body as she followed Lex through the winding hallways to the back exit. Down several flights of stairs and the security was still chasing them and Chloe's legs were on fire but she didn't care. The door slammed open and the Bonnie and Clyde team were finally outside in the fresh Metropolis air. Chloe was sure she had never seen anything as beautiful as the sky as she raced behind Lex towards the car.
As she jumped in the passengers seat Lex was already downshifting and giving it gas. Behind them she heard the door smash open again and saw the security men pull out their guns and train them on the car. She ducked in her seat as a rain of bullets followed them away from the building. Then they were gone.
There was a deadly silence in the car for a few long moments until she heard something strange echoing in the space around them. It took her a few minutes to realize that it was the sound of her own laughter.
"You're unbelievable Chloe" Lex said, then laughed himself.
***
TBC