Lex read the card once more and then noticed something else in one of the wallet compartments. Without thinking that this was in fact someone else's wallet, he pulled it out. It was a high level Luthor Corp. security clearance card. How did she get this?
He held up the card, "Do you work for my father?" The thought stung him, what if she was just some sick way for his father to spy on him?
"I just told you that I work for the military," she said flatly.
"Then where did you get this?" he pressed the issue.
"One of my men took the liberty, he enjoys it," she shook her head like she didn't understand the pastimes of whoever she was talking about. "How do you think I just drove up here, unannounced last week?" she explained, "As if I would really need it, your security sucks. I don't think I have ever even seen the face of the man who is supposed to be guarding your front gate."
He looked at her as if he didn't believe her. She leaned her head back on the couch and sighed, "How can I prove it to you?" As an afterthought she added, "I don't believe your father makes you so – paranoid. I also don't believe that I just told you something that I have never even considered telling anyone before and all you can do is…" Her voice trailed off as she leaned back and looked at the ceiling. I knew this was a bad idea, she thought to herself.
He looked at the security card. It didn't have a name on it; it was blank. It didn't really belong to anyone. He turned it over, the data strip on the back didn't look right either – kind of reflective. It was a fake – a damn good one. "I apologize," he said as he put the card back into the wallet. She gave him a sideways glance. "But you have to admit, it was a logical conclusion," he said in his own defense.
"I wouldn't have given you the whole damn wallet if there was something incriminating that I didn't want you to see in there," she pointed out. It was in plain view after all. There was a brief silence between them.
"Rhone?" he said quietly. She turned to face his profile. "Thanks," he said as he looked forward.
"For what?" she asked. Is he thanking me because I don't work for his father, she wondered?
He looked at her and handed her the wallet he had been holding. "It seems that everyone does everything humanly possible to avoid me, lie to me, or keep things from me. It's just comforting to know that at least one person has enough faith in me to trust me," he said sincerely.
She carefully took the wallet from his hand; she didn't want to upset him now by touching him. "I don't think that is true," she said with a slight shake of her head. How could she just finish telling him such a large secret and suddenly feel as though she should tell him more? You can never tell anyone about that, she told herself.
"It is true, even Clark keeps things from me. I don't know what it is, but there is some kind of reservation that I can just feel," he watched her return her wallet to her pocket.
"Clark keeps things from you? Clark? Are we talking about the same person here: farm boy, flannel shirt, late 60's Beatle hair, smile that could guide sailing ships safely to shore on a foggy night?" she asked with an amused grin. If the Kents ever found out about this, she hoped that they would appreciate her efforts. Who was she kidding? Of course they would. They were so damn nice.
Lex didn't like that last comment about Clark's smile, but he didn't let on. It was innocent enough, but he just didn't like it. He did see what girls like Chloe saw in Clark, but Rhone was a different kind of girl. Right?
"And I thought I was paranoid. You could be one of us with that complex," she smiled and shook her head.
One of us, he thought about her choice of words. Suddenly he realized something, "What are the Elite Independent Forces? I've never heard of it, is it part of the army?"
"And I thought you lost interest in me," Rhone joked. Actually, she was hoping that she was off the hook.
"Don't ever think that," he said. Did he just say that?
"The closest thing that you would probably have heard of is -- a soldier of fortune or a mercenary, but not exactly," she said as she brought her feet up on the couch and turned her whole body towards him. She didn't know how he would take something like this. Putting a description on her job was a little different than just giving someone a nice title.
Lex turned his body to face her and looked at her intently. This wasn't exactly something that he had been expecting. He thought that maybe she punched numbers or something. "What exactly is 'but not exactly?" He asked.
"To make a long story short…" she started.
"Don't," he interrupted.
She nodded slowly; she understood that he wanted the details. He always did.
She was silent for a moment; Lex could tell that she was thinking about something. "What?" he asked.
"I was just deciding if it would be easier to tell it from the beginning or if I should explain it and then fill in the gaps," she said.
He didn't say anything, but nodded for her to continue.
She looked at the magazine in her hand and tossed it on the small table next to the couch. "Five years ago, at the beginning of my senior year in high school, Marie was killed," Rhone said.
Lex nodded. She had mentioned Marie before, just not when her best friend had been killed.
"Essentially, I didn't know how to deal with it. We were always together. We had other friends, but they weren't close. So when it happened, I was alone," she explained.
"What about your family?" he asked, he could relate.
She blinked as though he had reminded her of something long forgotten, "My whole life, I always felt a – detachment from them. I don't have anything against them or dislike them; I just never needed them emotionally. So, to answer your question, they couldn't and didn't help." She paused. "I'm not saying I had a bad family life by any means. My childhood was like a Country Time Lemonade commercial. I was pretty happy."
"Detachment from the people who are supposed to love you doesn't sound very happy," Lex observed.
"Said the desert to the grain of sand," she said, "I'm sure that you could tell me some horror stories about what having a bad childhood is really about."
He didn't know if she was referring to his mother's death, his father's usual lack of interest, his father's occasional over interest, or the effects of the meteor shower. He absently ran his head over his head. He knew she wasn't trying to hurt his feelings, just making a truthful observation. The less than happy details of his life weren't exactly a secret.
"Anyway, that detachment plays a major role in the story that I'm telling you," she continued, "Marie and I had always made it a point to be physically active. Working in a comic book store can – keep things like that in the front of your mind." She gave him a faint smile and he returned it.
"After she was gone, there were just too many hours in the day. I wasn't really sleeping well, public school was less than challenging, and I didn't want to pick up more hours at work because Marie and I had worked there together. So I started kicking up that exercise regimen: skateboarding, running, biking, and swimming. One day, I enrolled in a karate class because despite everything else, I still wasn't preoccupied enough. I really liked it and enrolled in other martial arts classes that this place had to offer, different techniques. I finally found something to fill the void. I started spending as much time as I could there, going to all the sessions. If I may say, I was pretty damn good by spring," Rhone said.
Lex thought back to the bank robbery, "I believe that."
She smiled, "I was enrolled to go to a state college that fall and I had been working for some time, so I could technically afford to go. But barely, I was prepared to eat out of some dumpsters." Lex smiled faintly at the reference she made to their previous conversation in the library. She paused briefly, "I was practicing one day, and I heard these two guys talking about this – contest in Metropolis. Real money, real fast." She pointed to the magazine on the table.
"So you just…" Lex started to say.
"Packed a few things, told work that I wouldn't be there for a while, and took off," she finished.
"And your family?" he asked.
"I'm sure they would have disapproved," she answered.
He raised his eyebrows, "You never told them you were leaving?"
"I left a note," she held up her fingers in quotation marks when she told him what the note said, "Be back someday."
"How long were you gone?" he was mildly shocked that she would do something like that. Would she just leave some note when she was going to leave Smallville? Never even say goodbye? His chest was tight again; she was leaving soon. He found his way back to Metropolis once and a while, he would just have to make his way there more often.
"I'll let you know," she said.
"You haven't seen your family in four years?" he kind of wished that he could get away with something like that.
"I haven't even spoken to them. They have no idea where I am, what I'm doing. The last contact we had was the note that I left," she clarified.
"Why?" he asked. She held up one finger, indicating that her story would get there eventually. "I keep interrupting, I apologize," Lex relaxed into the couch, still turned toward her.
"No, I like it. That way I know you haven't perfected sleeping with your eyes open," she gave him a half smile.
She thought it was amusing that he had his knee on the couch so he could fully face her. She had never seen him sit like that before. In the library, his posture indicated that he wanted to. But he never did. Being refined must be a bitch.
"So how did you find out where they were doing this tournament?" he asked, interested. That article pretty much implied that it was secretive and he, a former man about Metropolis, had never even heard of it.
She furrowed her eyebrows and sat silently for a moment. She had never thought about it before. She didn't know where it was; yet of all the places in Metropolis she could have gone, she went to the right warehouse on the first try. And that was before she had the relic. She would have to ask Sensei about that later. "Women's intuition," she quickly continued, "The article pretty much sums up the tournament. I won; it was – a lot of money." She remembered whom she was talking to, "A lot of money for some girl that had only worked part time in a comic book store."
Lex caught her correction and smiled at his lap. "The article said you didn't go back for the next tournament," he looked up.
"The night of the final match, some of the guys that I had gotten to know invited me to go out to celebrate. Bouncers and even some of the guys that I had beaten in the tournament," she did an impression of them, "Come on, RC! No one's ever won a wad of cash like that, the least you can do is buy a few rounds!"
"RC?" Lex had a mocking smile and a raised eyebrow.
She rolled her eyes and exhaled loudly, "In the tournament, everyone called me RC."
Buy a few rounds? Lex narrowed his eyebrows, "Weren't you only eighteen?"
"And I don't drink," she added. "Even if I did, this bar was not the kind of place that checked ID's – or washed its glasses, or mopped up the blood and entrails, or cleaned its bathrooms," she paused for a moment and narrowed her gaze at him, "That from a man who went clubbing until six a.m. before he could drive – recklessly." She smiled facetiously.
He chuckled and held up his hands. She had a point.
"Do you want me to go?" she said suddenly.
Lex checked his watch. How did she do that? That was the second time she had known what time it was without even looking at a clock. He had greatly missed her the night before, and wanted her to eat dinner with him. "You know that you can stay," he stood quickly, looked down at her, and offered her a hand.
She looked at his hand. Talk about confusing, one minute he doesn't like to be touched and the next minute he wants to help her up? Not to mention, she had a fair amount of experience standing up on her own. He was just trying to be – polite.
"Interesting watch," she commented as she looked at his hand.
Lex brought his hand up to look at the Napoleon Frank watch he was wearing. "My mother gave it to me before she died," his voice had an absent quality and he continued to look at the watch.
Rhone stood and observed, "You loved her."
Lex noticed that she had stood without his aid and was slightly disappointed. He decided that they could talk about his mother later, if she wanted. She was telling him something pretty personal, and he didn't want to interrupt it. Not to mention, he was quite interested in her story.
He trusted her enough to talk to her about his mother. Occasionally his father mentioned her, but naturally it was less than touching or sentimental. He had had a few brief conversations with Clark, but usually the conversations they had always turned to something else. He gestured toward her wrist, "Yours is different, unique."
They began to walk toward the dinning room. She looked at her own wrist briefly, "It was a gift." She resisted getting a far away look in her eyes. She dropped her arm to her side.
"Old boyfriend?" he asked. Maybe he should buy her something… If he did, would she wear it all the time like she wore her watch – or her artists' tube, which only seemed to be absent when she was here? She paused for a moment. "I wasn't implying -- current boyfriend?" he said it coolly, but for some reason his thought caused a mild panic to spread from the base of his chest to his finger tips.
She knew he wasn't trying to make her feel bad in any way; there is no way that he could have known. "Can you – be trusted with some classified information?" she asked without looking at him.
Did he want to know? Some story about already having found true love… "I thought I already was," he said as he walked.
She nodded softly in concession. "I've never had a boyfriend," she said with a small smile.
"Never?" he asked. He looked at her and didn't really believe her. That had to change, and he was just the kind of man to take control of the situation and change it. He remembered the bank and the way her feral hair framed her face and fell over her shoulders. He stole a glance at her and admired her. She was so exotic and beautiful; he found it impossible that she had never been involved with someone. He resisted the urge to wrap an arm around her waist and promise her an enchanted evening in Metropolis.
"Not even a date, at least a real one," she gave him a sideways glance.
"A real one," he repeated. She held up her index finger to once again signal that the answer would come in time. He nodded with a small smile and opened the door to the dining room. Dinner was again, already on the table. Rhone wondered why Mark was making himself so scarce lately.
Lex wanted to hear more of the story she had been telling him. "So, you were in this – establishment…" he started for her. He pulled out her chair for her.
She looked at the chair and then to Lex. She smiled and resisted the urge to cover his pale hand with hers. "Thanks," she said as she sat down and allowed him to push in the chair.
Lex paused for a moment as he stood behind her, thinking of removing that invisible clip from her hair. He wanted to run his fingers through it. It wasn't exactly the kind of thing Luthors admitted to, but it had been a while since he had had the pleasure of hair. It was like most things; you want what you can't or don't have. …He wanted to touch her.
She began to speak, "So we were in this bar and – I hated every minute of it." Lex sat down in his usual chair. She told him a detailed story as they slowly ate.