"Everything has been secured," Rhone said into her cell phone. She was sitting on the floor, leaning against her unused bed.
"Everything?" Griffin's voice asked.
"It wasn't exactly difficult," Rhone said flatly.
"Witnesses?" he clarified his original question.
"Most of them contribute a lot of what they saw to the trauma of the situation. I have also obtained the security tapes and made sure there was some strategically placed – static. Police reports have been properly – edited as well," she was trying to steer the subject.
"What about the billionaire?" Griffin stopped beating around the bush.
"What about him?" Rhone kept her voice stoic.
"What did he say?"
"I wouldn't know," she said plainly. She thought back to a few hours ago when she had sat quietly on the floor upon hearing Lex approach the door to her hotel room. She just listened as he rapped on the door for almost fifteen minutes. A part of her wanted to talk to him – she felt that way a lot since their first evening together. But the other part of her knew that it would just be question after question about subjects she liked to avoid. He was like that; he had to know everything. However, most people that had seen her do what she had done today would want to play twenty questions.
"You mean you pulled a stunt like that and you didn't even talk to him? I thought you two had dinner every night?" Griffin allowed his voice to get an octave higher. He looked around to make sure he was alone in the observation room, even though he knew everyone else was in the mess hall.
"For one thing, two nights is not every night," Rhone corrected him.
"Two nights in a row," he began, "and one of those nights involved you being at his castle until five a.m."
"I'm never telling you anything again."
"It's not like I told anyone," He was grinning.
"There's nothing to tell," she insisted.
"Well, you are going to have to see him," he said, "Most likely sooner than later -- for example, tomorrow." Both Rhone and Lex were going to be at Plant Number Three tomorrow, and he knew it as well as she did. She had to go back eventually. Silence was the only reply to his last statement. He had known her too well for too long, he thought. "Rhone?" he said into the phone he was holding.
"Yeah," she said, almost as if she were tired.
"Tell him," Griffin said softly.
"I've never just told anyone," she said as though in deep thought. No one can accept what you are, she told herself. No one can ever be that forgiving. And it's not like there wouldn't be more secrets anyway.
"And that has been your choice. But – I think this is different."
Rhone furrowed her eyebrows. What does that mean, different? "I don't under…" she was interrupted.
"Do you trust him?"
She stopped in mid-sentence and let the air go dead again. She had been trained to never trust anyone that wasn't on a very short list of people – sometimes she didn't think that she was even on it. What kind of question was that anyway? Why would she have any reason to implicitly trust someone that she had just met? Maybe it was because she…
"Tell him," thankfully, Griffin interrupted her thoughts.
Lex gazed at his desk. He was taking turns looking at the magazine that Pete Ross had given him, this morning's edition of the Smallville Ledger, and a folder from the hospital the bank robbers had been taken to.
Even if he weren't involved, the robbery would have made the front page in this town. But, since he was involved, it was the front page. He read through the article in The Ledger yet again. There was not a single word about Rhone Chade. Not a picture, nothing about her involvement, or her heroics. As a matter of fact, the story was erroneous. It made it sound as though the robbers had some sort of misunderstanding and attacked each other. He thought it odd that even though he really didn't do anything, this article unnecessarily painted him in good light. He didn't recognize the name of the author, Chad E. Rohen. Maybe he would send the guy a cheese basket -- or a car if he kept up the good work.
Then he looked to the file from the hospital. The man who was to watch the hostages had a broken nose and two cracked ribs. The one that came out to check on the first had a fractured skull. How hard do you have to kick someone to fracture his or her skull? The other two each suffered from a single bullet wound to the posterior. Lex had to allow himself a smirk at that.
He looked back to the article in Hand-to-Hand Monthly, to the Ledger, to the hospital report… Something wasn't right. He blinked. Again, he looked to the magazine and to the Ledger. He repeated this two more times. …Rhone Chade, Chad E Rohen, he thought to himself. Chad E. Rohen was an anagram of Rhone Chade. Lex had put things into motion that would allow him to obtain the police reports from the incident, but now he realized they would most likely mirror the story in The Ledger. How did she…?
Frustrated, he picked up Hand-to-Hand Monthly and held it close to his face. Maybe it was just a coincidence. He replayed everything that had happened since Rhone had arrived in his mind. No, this wasn't a coincidence. There had to be more than this four-sentence article in this rag of a magazine. He was glaring at the magazine inches from his face, silently demanding information that wasn't there.
He remembered the feeling of – mild panic he had when he pulled into his parking place and beside him was Gabe Sullivan's familiar car. …Was she -- gone?
Rhone silently opened the door. She knew he was there, behind his desk. As she stood wordlessly in the door, she tilted her head to the side, and gazed at him. It was almost 4:30 in the afternoon, so the sun wasn't filtering though the stain glass windows, playing off his milky skin the way she liked.
But – she liked this too, still exquisite. There was this intense look on his face. What was he looking at so intensely?
…Oh. She furrowed her eyebrows slightly. That was four years ago, how did he get his hands on that? What was she feeling? Was she proud of him for this? Or did she think that it would make this whole thing easier, softening the blow a little bit by himself? Did he already know?
She thought back to last night and most of today. She was working on her other comic book idea for almost all of those hours. In the back of her mind, she was thinking about what Griffin had said -- if she really should tell Lex. She debated how you tell someone something like that, then tried to convince herself she didn't need to tell him, then tried to convince herself that she had the nerve to if she wanted to.
He was still looking at the magazine as though he could start it on fire if he stared at it hard enough. She kind of wanted him to, if he were a freak like her, she could truly tell him everything. She let out a long and silent breath; that would be so – perfect. She smiled wryly at her thoughts.
She allowed herself a few more moments of admiring him. Unfortunately, he didn't show any signs of pyro-kinesis. She silently walked toward him and stood on the other side of his desk. She felt a strong tug toward the way she had come. She could leave and he would never know…
She raised her right hand slowly; it was wrong -- interrupting beauty. At least he was gorgeous no matter what he was doing – all the time.
As she closed her hand around the top of the magazine she said, "Mr. Luthor?"
He looked up, slightly startled that he was no longer alone. They looked in each other's eyes as he let go of the magazine. She turned the page he was looking at toward her and read the article. She hadn't read it in quite sometime, and even then it was only once when it came out. It wasn't like this one article in some obscure magazine was a threat to her. In any case, most copies of this and its follow up that mentioned her had been destroyed sometime ago.
Lex stood, "I -- didn't see you at the plant today."
She was still looking at Hand-to-Hand Monthly, "That's because I wasn't there."
He walked around the desk, "…So my secretary said." He walked beside her and leaned against his desk.
"I decided to take the day off," she said vaguely.
"I hope you are feeling better -- Chad," Lex said with a sideways glance at her.
She looked up him with a faint smile, "Usually only my men notice and appreciate my attempts at taunting the public."
"Your men?" Lex asked with an inquisitive look.
"I wasn't ill," she redirected the conversation. He raised his eyebrows at her. "I – was avoiding you," she hesitated slightly. He inhaled like he was going to say something. "After the – incident at the bank yesterday," she started.
Now this was a line of conversation he wanted to stick with. He looked at her with his hands in his pockets, nodding for her to continue.
"I just didn't want to face," she searched for a fitting description for a moment, "The Smallville Inquisition." She used the magazine she was holding to gesture towards the file and newspaper on his desk.
"Clark has told me that I – obsess, let my curiosity get the better of me," Lex admitted.
"He has told me the same," she said lightly. "You do ask questions – a lot of questions. So, that makes us similar in yet another way," she said.
"When did you take up freelance writing?" Lex gestured toward the newspaper on his desk.
"And that begins the barrage of questions," she said with a sigh.
"If you would just tell me what is going on, what was that at the bank, why you…?" Lex leaned closer to her.
Was she backing out of telling him? Was she that afraid that he would never want to speak to her again? What did she care? "Do you – remember the first night that we met?" she asked him as she started to walk towards the adjacent room that they had been in on that night.
"Of course," he said. How could I ever forget it, he thought to himself as he followed her into the room.
"Basically, Mr. Luthor, I said that I didn't think that we would ever get to know each other," she said as she took the same seat she had the night they met. "And I believed that," she added.
"But we have, and yet you insist on calling me Mr. Luthor," he did not take his position across from her. Rather, he sat beside her, much like he had done in the library. He wanted to see if he could identify her scent as well as be close to her.
"It's difficult to tell someone that you have come to regard as a – friend that you have been lying to them since the day you met," she didn't look in his eyes. It was odd that she thought that, they really hadn't known each other for long.
Why did everyone always keep things from him, lie to him? "Listen, Rhone, I don't really care about you fighting in Metropolis," he looked at the magazine she was still holding in her lap. Having her as a friend meant too much to him to get pissed off over something that she did for a week four years ago, four years before they even met…
She inhaled deeply; it's now or never. If he winds up thinking that you are horrible and evil, you can always blame it on Griffin. If you can tell him, you can trust him, she thought to herself. "This," she began, as she looked at Hand-to-Hand Monthly, "is only the beginning."
He raised an eyebrow at her. "Beginning of what?" he leaned forward.
"I did tell you that this whole invoice thing isn't my normal job," she reiterated.
He nodded, "I never remember you actually telling me what it is you do."
"I work for the military," she said before she had time to change her mind about this whole thing.
"I do know that you are in the reserves, if that is what you mean…"
"More of that freelance writing you were talking about," she said.
Lex looked at her in obvious need of some clarification. His sources were pretty reliable; those were government files. Such a large inaccuracy…
She held up a hand as if to pause his thoughts. She went into one of the pockets of her cargo pants and pulled out a black wallet. For the first time, he noticed how firm her arms were. He recognized the wallet as the one she had shown the police outside of the bank yesterday. She opened it and stared at it for a moment. Then she handed it to him.
He slowly took it from her and brought it closer to read the picture ID that was inside. To the right of a rather stoic looking picture of the woman beside him were the words "United States Military: Elite Independent Forces. Rhone Chade: EX-O." Then there were many more numbers and letters, but Lex had no idea what they meant.
Rhone sat silently, trying to gage his reaction. He was just looking at it. Say something, she thought to herself.