CHAPTER 29

He paced around the entrance to the alley, stopping to glance at her every few seconds before looking down again, lost in a whirlwind of thoughts. "How did you know I would be there with the suitcase?"

She tilted her head to pull her sweatshirt off, revealing a lithe, muscular frame still partially covered by a ratty children's t-shirt. "Cut into your phone lines."

He smirked instinctively. "You always were clever, Chloe."

"Don't call me that." She frowned and her forehead wrinkled; fine lines that he didn't recognize materializing between her eyes, faint and hardly visible but still there. "I listened in on your cell phone conversations, got the time and place of the drop-off, and decided that little Lexy could do without a million or two. Popped your friend's front tire. Came over here. The rest is history. So now if you don't mind, I'll be taking my briefcase and hitting the road." At
his look of disapproval, she scowled. "Don't make me remind you who has the gun here. Just because I don't flail it around like a lunatic," she looked at him pointedly, "Doesn't mean I won't use it if I need to. So see ya, Lex."

"Stay, Miss Graves." He stumbled over the name awkwardly. "Please. For a moment." She raised an eyebrow and his head began to spin. This was Chloe. How could it not be?

"What do you want, Lex?"

He smiled, growing surer of his gut instinct by the second. "You know, Miss Graves, most people call me Mr. Luthor."

"I'm not most people." She shrugged in annoyance.

He stepped towards her and reached out to brush his hand over the harsh edges of her face, his fingertips dancing delicately over the bruises. "Oh, I know that." He breathed her in, trying desperately to find something familiar there. He couldn't, this girl smelled like cigarette smoke and fire and danger and death. It made goose bumps come out on his arms, but the fact that her eyes fluttered closed reassured him, building his confidence. "I've always known that."

Her eyes shot open and she pushed him away. "Why do you keep saying that?" She asked, her voice hard and stone cold. "I've never met you before in my life. I mean, I've heard of you, who hasn't, but I don't know any Chloes and I'm not her, whoever she is."

He growled in frustration. "Why are you doing this?" He shouted furiously.

She met his frustration head on with another chilly glare, somehow seeming a taller, more imposing force. As if he was the one out of place. Lex felt weary and weakened and he didn't like it one bit. He had to get back to his car, his driver must be nearing full panic mode by now. As much as he had wanted to believe this hoodlum of sorts was Chloe, he was forced to accept that maybe his need to find her had blinded him to the differences between the two women. Chloe was all soft curves and vulnerability, strength and fortitude. This young woman in front of him was angles, grit, and smoke. She was beautiful, even behind the bruises, but he couldn't go on acting like an idiot for some street child. But even so…the resemblance was striking. And there was that strange sense of familiarity that had always been his weakest spot with her, his unexplainable need to tell her his darkest secrets. But now…now there were so many more to tell. He sank to the dirty sidewalk and sat with his face in his hands, feeling demeaned and humiliated. And angry. And hurt. "Open the suitcase."

She eyed him warily and flipped the silver buckles open. A loud gasp sounded from her chest as she grabbed the contents of the suitcase in her hand. "Where's the money, Lex! There's nothing in here but a bunch of papers!"

"I wasn't going to give him the money. Those papers are worth more than money." He glanced blankly up at the girl, who was now red-faced with fury. "That suitcase holds the future. I'm going to kill Superman."

Her mouth hung open slightly and she seemed so like Chloe then, wide-eyed, skeptical, angry, and scared, with so many emotions playing on her face that Lex could hardly distinguish one from the other. But it only lasted a moment before her mouth snapped shut and she nodded curtly. All feeling washed away, her face revealed absolutely nothing. "You do what you need to do." He watched her slip the papers back into the suitcase and close it tightly.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small business card and handed it to her. "You should come by sometime, Miss Graves. I can assure you my apartment is nicer than a street corner."

"How do you know I wouldn't just rob you blind?" She asked him
genuinely.

He stood up and brushed himself off. "Oh, I'll have you searched before you come in and when you leave." He felt a strange but welcome lift in his chest when he saw the wry smile she was sporting. "You're always welcome with me."

She snorted. "Lex, has anyone ever told you that you're absolutely
insane?"

"It's been considered a possibility." He looked to her with the utmost sincerity and felt sure that he saw some empathy there within the depths of her eyes.

She turned to walk away, throwing the gun on the ground behind her and
waving the business card in the air. "See you around, Lex."

He watched as she faded back into darkness. "Definitely." He murmured softly. As long as he had even the slightest reason to suspect that Mercy Graves was in fact Chloe Sullivan, she wouldn't be out of his sight for long. He could be patient and figure her out. She would slip, eventually. He reached for his suitcase and, just for good measure, flicked it open.

"That little bitch!" He laughed. Oh well. He kind of figured. She wasn't stupid enough to think he didn't have more copies. Like he hadn't been planning this for years, preparing for it since the day he was born. This was some sort of game. Considering that Chloe had despised such manipulations, it seemed only fair that Mercy would make him pay with one...well, she was sadly mistaken. This was one game that Lex planned on winning by a landslide.