A/N: To all of you who have so faithfully waited, I will hopefully conclude this story this holiday season. In an explanation as to why this took to long, I moved away, and no longer have access to the Internet, so I'll try and get this done while I'm at my parents house for Christmas.

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Chloe lay on the bed, listening to the shower run, willing her breathing to return to normal. She knew that she was falling for him. He was so sweet yet so in control of himself. She knew he felt something for her, and she hoped that she could make that the same thing she was feeling. Love was a bit strong, she reasoned. It was something though. The sight of him made her breath catch and the feel of him robbed her of breath completely. His consideration for her made her heart flip flop and brought a smile to her lips, and his ability to deal with anything thrown his way made him seem so strong, like a provider... Chloe rolled her eyes at her own thoughts.

"Yeah, right." She muttered. "I'm *not* falling in love." She snorted, and then moved towards the nightstand to grab the painkillers. She swallowed a couple, and then lay back down, willing herself to get better, so that she could pick up where they had left off.

She heard the shower switch off, and schooled her expression, so that she didn't look mopey and love sick.

Lex toweled off, and then stood in front of the mirror, hesitating to open the door and face Chloe, lying on the bed, waiting... he shook his head.

"Mind out of the gutter." He told himself quietly. "Find a way to implicate Lionel, and then you can figure out what to do with Chloe." His mind drifted to all sorts of things he's like to do with Chloe.

Sighing and giving his mind up for lost, it was in the gutter and was going to stay there, he pushed the door open and stepped out. Chloe was asleep again. He chuckled. Now he could look at her all he wanted.

Pulling a chair up beside the bed, he slouched down, watching Chloe sleep as his mind began sifting through the things he knew, and how to use it against his father.

~*~*~

The next morning, Chloe slowly came around to Lex pacing the room. It wasn't an agitated pacing, but more movement to fuel his thoughts.

"Well?" She asked. He looked like he was figuring things out, and she didn't want to be left out of the process.

He turned and smiled a little to see her awake. "I'm just going through the facts at our disposal." He paused as if collecting his thoughts. Then moving to the bed he sat on the foot of it. "How are you feeling?" He asked solicitously.

Chloe scowled. "I'm feeling fine. Don't change the subject. Why are you pacing? Do Luthor's *pace*?" She asked.

He nodded. "When there is a need. Okay, we know that this involves my father, in some way or another."

"We know this how?" Chloe asked. Her mind was still feeling foggy from the drugs and she was fighting to clear her head.

Lex smiled patiently, and Chloe was struck again by how different he *was* then how he had always seemed to be. "We know that because Adams deserted me, and there is only one reason why he would do that. Secondly, Winston is involved, but I believe now, that he is only a pawn in my father's twisted game, whatever that may be. Whatever is happening, Winston is no longer in control. He's here in Smallville, not running his own empire and that tells us something. And lastly, this involves the plant in Smallville, evidenced by the files that you discovered.

"And your conclusions are?" Chloe asked.

Lex shook his head. "I'm not really sure. I was only running through the facts. I was waiting for my own personal journalist to put the spin on things." He stood up again, and moved for the door. "I'll get you some coffee Chloe. No more drugs for you. I need to find out what's going on, and I need you to help me do that."

Chloe frowned. "Hotel coffee?" She practically whined.

Lex smirked. "It'll have to do!" He turned, and stepped outside, shutting the door behind him.

Chloe sighed as soon as he shut the door, and carefully pushed herself to a sitting position. She gritted her teeth against the pain, and was happy to feel less pain then the day before. The day wasn't going to be a walk in the park if Lex wasn't going to let her have more painkillers, but she was determined to solve their problem.

She snorted to herself. 'Their' problem. She was definitely falling for him, if she was willing to take on that much connection with a Luthor.

She sat, mulling things over, trying to find the connecting thread. Using the plant as a front seemed silly and almost juvenile for Lionel Luthor. Why would he use the plant, since it was connected to him? In fact, before the employee buy-out, it had been his. And he hadn't stopped when Lex took the plant over. What could be so important, that Lionel would continue to control it, and risk exposure over it. And why Smallville? It wasn't exactly the central hub of criminal activity. Was that why? Under developed police force made it desirable...

Her thoughts trailed off, as the door rattled, and Lex pushed it open, holding two cups of steaming coffee.

"Figure it all out yet?" He asked. "Are you ready for your expose?"

Chloe shook her head. "Nope, I need that coffee first." Lex handed her the coffee, and then perched in his chair by the bed.

"Lex?" Chloe asked, after she'd consumed half her coffee. "One thing keeps throwing glitches into my thoughts. If you didn't have a clue, why didn't your father leave you at the plant to cover his butt in case his scheme, what ever it is, was uncovered."

Lex nodded, looked at Chloe over the rim of his coffee. "That bothers me too."

"So the question is, what do you know Lex?"

He looked at her. Her tone was different from the one he was used to. She was turning into Chloe Sullivan, star reporter, and while he didn't like the distant, almost disbelieving look she was giving him, he did appreciate that she was helping his to figure this out.

"What do *I* know?" He asked, a little surprised that she was turning on him.

Chloe nodded. "Something changed. Lionel knew that you were close or that you'd take the next step and figure it out. Obviously, your father would have had safe guards in place so that you didn't figure it all out. But recently you've done something to trigger those safe guards. That's the only explanation that works. You were obviously close to something or he wouldn't have risked exposure to take you out of the equation!"

Lex nodded. "So what, within a month, two weeks, and day?" he asked. "How close would he have let me get?"

Chloe shrugged. "I don't know. He's your father... you'd know better then me."

Lex sighed. "I haven't really been doing anything out of the ordinary. Just trying to make the plant run as best as I can."

Chloe gave him a blank stare. "No offence, but you are a Luthor. There's a standard to be upheld. You're telling me that you weren't bending any rules? That the entire plant is up to spec? That you have no shady deals under the rugs?"

Lex gave Chloe her blank stare back. "Can't say that I would like you very much if you were dogging me for a story!"

Chloe laughed. "What do you mean?" She asked in mock innocence. "I can't print everything we discover?"

He didn't even dignify her question with a response. He sighed. "Okay. Officially off the record..."

At those words, Chloe sat up a little straighter, and wished for a pen and notebook.

"Not everything is completely up to spec." He admitted slowly. "Now your father is not aware of this, because quite frankly, he's an honest man and I think he'd consider what I was doing dishonest."

"You don't." Chloe asked.

Lex shrugged. "There's all kinds of honesty. Some are just more, uh, pure then others." He waved his hand in the air as if to dispel the thought. "We were trying to come up with a product that we could produce cheaper, but in the same quantity. Ultimately, I wanted to be able to sell it at higher cost, and make a bigger profit."

"I follow." Chloe said. "Maybe not ethical, but not really dishonest."

Lex nodded. "Exactly. In the end, almost by accident, one of my personal research and development guys found something that did the trick. In fact, it was like miracle grow, but at half the cost. I could produce it cheap. I simply added to our existing fertilizer, which almost doubled our quota and I could sell for three times the production costs. The only new cost to me was extraction. But the new cost was covered by the new sales."

"Extraction?" Chloe asked. "Of what?"

"The meteor rocks." Lex said simply. "It's spread all over the Smallville area. I just had to find enough rocks. But then I realized that it's in the soil. It's all over the place, so I just had to dig Smallville up, extract the rock and put the dirt back."

"Weird." Chloe said. "And that's the only thing you're into right now?"

Lex gave her an empty stare. "Yes."

Chloe didn't push. She figured that whatever else he had going, probably didn't have to do with the plant, or that he just wasn't going to tell her, off the record or not.

"Fine. Then that must be it." Chloe lost herself in thought as she pondered the ramifications. "In fact, it doesn't really surprise me." She said finally.

"Why?"

"I have this wall in the school paper office. I call in the Wall of Weird. It's all this stuff that's happened in Smallville since the meteor shower. There's a lot of cases where you can see that the rocks had a direct influence on the weird stuff that's happened." She paused. "Maybe you shouldn't be spreading it around all over the States."

Lex shrugged. "Well, what's done is done. What are you saying?" He asked. "That my father is infected with the meteor rocks?"

Chloe shrugged. "No. All I'm saying is that they're weird and here we are smack dab in the middle of a weird situation, and I'm not surprised."

"So maybe what?" Lex asked. "My father is looking to spread the rocks around and he doesn't want me doing it first?"

Chloe straighten suddenly, and looked at Lex sharply. "What if he doesn't want them spread around at all! You said it was like miracle grow, what if it has other properties that your father has discovered?" Lex opened his mouth to speak, but Chloe plunged on. "No, listen! You were only investigating it for your specific purposes, what if your father wanted it for something else. Not only were you depleting his supply, but inevitably, your R and R guy would have figured it out too!"

Lex was looking at her, but his gaze seemed to pass right by her, as his eyes unfocused as his thought followed Chloe's line of reasoning. Suddenly he stood up. "We've got to get moving. I think you might be onto something and we can't figure it out sitting here. Plus, we've been in the same place for too long!"

He turned, and started gathering up the papers, and getting ready to clear out.

Chloe wasn't sure of the reason for their departure, but something she had said, must have triggered the right thought, because Lex seemed purposeful again. Rather then pacing aimlessly, trying to figure things out.

She scooted to the edge of the bed, wincing at the throb that started up in her arm. She gritted her teeth and stood up. It hurt, but she figured that if she moved slowly, and with deliberation, then she could minimize that pain. Maybe they could find some run-of-the-mill aspirin to take the edge off.

Five minutes later, they were checked out, and cruising into Metropolis city center in Clark's truck.

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A/N: I'm not done. Just posting the chapter I had I was working on.